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Everything you’ll need to know to play and enjoy the glorious Jurassic duck.
Before You Begin
Before you play sucho for the first time, you need to be in the right mindset to really enjoy it. That mindset is really easy to get into.
1- Accept that as a juvie, you will undoubtedly be eaten at least 2-6 times before you reach a river. Why rivers? More on that later.
2- Get relaxed. Breathe deep, and imagine slow things. Sucho is a slow trotter, and an even slower walker. It’s about the slowest carnivore in the game on land. This is fine.
3- I don’t know why I made a third one, this is pretty much all you need to do.
Color Selection
Sucho is a rare bird. It’s a carnivore that you can really play around with. Since as a juvie, if anything sees you at any distance you are almost certainly dead, camouflage isn’t really all that important. It’s not important as an adult either, because you’re gonna be hunting from that magical place– UNDER THE WATER
So, pick whatever colors strike your fancy. I like the firebelly newt approach, which is a female skin and all giga 5 except for the underbelly, which is the rex color that is currently bright orange. Looks really cool when you stand and 3-call. A little edgy, but it works.
Go nuts, experiment. Enjoy yourself. If you try out a skin and don’t like it, you’ll probably be eaten at least once before you hit a river so it’s not a big deal to change. However, ideally, you don’t get eaten so do try a little bit to get a skin you like.
The Juvie Sucho in its Natural Habitat
Welcome to Dark Souls. Every enemy is faster than you, stronger than you, and is out for your blood. But that’s okay, because you are patient. You are the river. No matter how slow you have to go, you keep on moving along the path of least resistance.
The first thing you should know about sucho is that it does NOT need to eat to progress to adult model. That being said, any food you can get your skinny little snoot around is a welcome meal. Absolutely eat oros and ‘ttacos at every opportunity, but only it it’s out of the open and there are no noisy things nearby.
Standard juvie-hunting-ai rules apply; if there are a lot of them, be careful, and don’t do it in the direction of any local roars
However, you DO need to drink. Three times, minimum, to reach adult without dehydrating to death. That being said:
DO NOT WAIT FOR YOUR WATER TO BE EMPTY TO DRINK
You drink at a staggering rate of ONE PERCENT PER SIP
Rain is your friend.
Maps are subject to change, but currently on V3, spawn at the bay, if you’re not already, cross away from the radio tower. Get about halfway up the beach and head directly south. Just keep trotting your slow little butt along that direct south route, and eventually you’ll hit the delta, which also branches into the great ravine, both of which are prime sucho hunting grounds.
IT MAY ALSO BE HELPFUL TO KNOW.
– As a juvie, it’s more efficient to travel via water than it is to sprint, and it’s faster than trotting. Make your way down the beach via the water.
– You will always have a quite long oxygen timer. When you’re out of stamina on the beach, or along any deep river, swim no matter what. When your oxygen gets low enough you start to worry, get back on shore and let it regen, then get right back in the water again.
– Previous point works really well because sucho has a static swim speed. That means that unlike all other dinosaurs, your swim speed is the same no matter how long you’ve been swimming. Every other dinosaur eventually “runs out of steam” and swims i n c r e d i b l y s l o w l y
T I P S F O R S U R V I V I N G A S A J U V I E
Use the ground as cover. Any time you can put a hill or rock between you and a potential predator, that’s an opportunity to break off your escape vector and hide as well as you can.
DO TAKE NOTE: hiding inside rocks or under water by sitting is against even official server rules and on official servers can result in a ban.
The Sucho, the Submarine
So. You made it to the river, or the lake, or, lord help you, the woods you like, and you’ve made it to adult model. WAIT! Don’t click that growth button yet! Eat anything you can, preferably small things, and eat the gores. You can only eat the small and tiny gores left by most juvies and the current ai while you are yourself a juvie. After that, you have to hunt larger prey if you want to eat gores.
NOW THAT YOU’VE GROWN
Your playstyle becomes completely different. You are now able to move on land, but you should always stay near rivers deep enough to swim in. As an adult sucho, you are in your prime for the glorious way of the water ambush. Your swim is relatively quick, it drains your stamina VERY slowly, and the best part of all…
YOU BECOME A SUBMARINE
You will naturally go completely under the surface of the water as adult model sucho. This is intentional.
As an adult, when you swim in deep rivers, your swim leaves no ripples and makes no noise. In lakes, it does both, which is why sucho does its best work in the big rivers along the giant ravines on V3.
Hunting as a sucho is doable as a solo player, and sucho is one that actually really lends itself to solo play, but it’s better with a partner.
Stamina management is very important as a sucho. You use stamina slowly while running, and a little faster while swimming, but it regenerates EXTRAORDINARILY slowly. If you do a big swim for a long time and you run out, you can’t sprint after any prey once you get on land and then your swimming capabilities are really limited.
Don’t travel by water once you reach adult. If you do, don’t stay in past half stamina. Once you get to half stamina swimming, unless prey is in sight and within reach or predators are in the area, get on land and walk or lay down and bask. Ideally, you spot prey at medium range and slip into the water unseen and ambush while they are close to shore.
This is where it’s helpful to have a partner. You can more effectively hunt things that would normally run away from you (carno, cerato) with this method.
1. Land sucho is obviously on land, either walking towards or otherwise holding attention of shoregoer prey.
2. Water sucho does a s w i m m and gets as close to the target as possible.
d. Water sucho emerges from the water and runs at/bites prey item.
If you are playing alone, remove step one.
Sucho is not the best in fights, but it can definitely pull its weight. Sucho may not as tanky as some things, but the closer you are to full adult the stronger you are. Don’t pick fights with adult apexes (herbs and carnis alike), but pretty much anything else is on the menu. Be cautious around allos, but other than that… eat.
Tag team fighting is usually really great as sucho. While one target engages, another comes in from behind and attacks, confusing the target and drawing attention away from the more damaged sucho.
As a sucho you have pretty good bleed resistance and heal, and you heal quickly in general. Do attack carefully, but don’t be timid either. If you’re confident with your skills, use your own battle judgement.
IF YOU GET BIT BY AN ADULT GIGA, YOU ARE GOING TO DIE. It is all over already once you’ve been bitten, DO NOT TRY TO SWIM AWAY. You will almost certainly die in the water and get banned from official servers.
Parting Words
-Be prepared to die as a juvie. A lot. You are a hamburger with really weak legs as far as every other carnivore on the map is concerned, and nine times out of ten there isn’t anything you can do about it.
– If you don’t like taking things slow, if you lack patience, sucho is probably not for you. If you desire the hard-n-fast lifestyle that typically comes with the active hunters, if you like traversing the entire map over the course of an hour, sucho is probably not for you.
– If you like the idea of ambushing things from the water, spending most of your time swimming or lounging about, sucho might be for you.
– If you love hunting prey while they have no idea you exist, then appearing like a phantom of death from the water and eating them before they realize what just happened, sucho is absolutely for you.
– If your spirit animal is a crocodile, a duck, or some combination of those two animals, you will love sucho.
– if you like pina coladas, and getting caught in the rain… wait, that’s not right.
I’m getting distracted. The point of sucho is to be the stealth tank. The nuclear submarine. You surprise your prey into paralysis and finish them at your leisure. You befuddle your predators who have to watch as their prey vanishes from all view into a dimension that is lethal to them. You are the shadows. You are the night. You… are water.
The last thing I will say will benefit you both as a sucho player, and as a non-sucho player. This is it, the one big secret. Those of you who have stayed this far are worthy. Turning on night vision reveals animals that are underwater within the range. This is the anti-sucho radar. Dilos will pick up on you at night if you creep up to them and they are wary of the water. Expect this the longer sucho is a swimmy swimmy boi. Use this to avoid biting your teammate when goofing off underwater. Use this to end miserable suchos that are in your giga’s territory and think they’re sneaky. Use this to check to make sure water is safe and to get away before you get got as a dryo.
Be slow. Accept the slow. Be patient. Be calm, cool, collected. Be like water. Flow, crash, all that good stuff.
Happy fishing.