The Returning Player Guide

A Guide by a Returning Player for Returning Players

Preface
So you’ve heard the latest commotion around The Division. You logged back into the game
after over a year of not playing, and you are flooded with new information that you have no
idea what to do with. You see new menu items, flashing warnings, and new areas.

WHAT IS GOING ON, WHAT DO I DO?!

Well don’t worry! I’m here to help answer your questions and guide you back into the game.
In this guide, we’ll be covering the basics for you to go with, comparing the old Division that
you remember playing to the new Division that is a million times better.

We will be primarily focusing on PvE and gearing up.

So if you are a returning player, read on, and hopefully you’ll have a better understanding as
to what has changed since the launch of the game, and how to approach the content.

And to start with; No... the Vector is no longer OP. You may as well get rid of it now.
Contents
Preface

World Tiers
The Old Way
The New Way
World Tier 1
World Tier 2
World Tier 3
World Tier 4
World Tier 5

The End Game Activities

The Old Way
The New Way
Collect Story Intel
Dailies/ Weekly’s
Underground
Missions/ Incursions
Search and Destroy
PvP
West Side Pier
Global Events

Items & Types

What to Expect

ReCalibration

Optimization
World Tiers
This is probably the most important change to understand.

The Old Way

Previously, the PvE world was split into sections, all with different level requirements. You
had a few named bosses around, but their loot was meaningless. In general, once you hit
level 30, there was no point to roaming around the map, other than to explore and immerse
yourself in the environment

The New Way

Before level 30, you are on World Tier 0. You need not worry about World Tiers until you hit
level 30.
Once you hit level 30, the entire PvE world map scales up to your level. Starting at World
Tier 1 (WT1).
At WT1, enemies are all level 30. All areas have the same level mobs.

Each World Tier has a specific Gear Score requirement, all while increasing the difficulty and
loot gear score drops. You can see the information below:

● World Tier 1
○ Gear Score Requirement: 0
○ Gear Score of Drops: 163
○ Enemy Level: 30

● World Tier 2
○ Gear Score Requirement: 163
○ Gear Score of Drops: 163 - 182
○ Enemy Level: 31

● World Tier 3
○ Gear Score Requirement: 183
○ Gear Score of Drops: 183 - 204
○ Enemy Level: 32

● World Tier 4
○ Gear Score Requirement: 205
○ Gear Score of Drops: 205 - 229
○ Enemy Level: 33

● World Tier 5
○ Gear Score Requirement: 230
○ Gear Score of Drops: 230 - 256+
 ○ Enemy Level: 34

What does all this mean?

Your primary objective once you land back into the game, is to go through content, go
through missions, do as much as you can in each bracket, and earn enough loot to hit WT5.

Once you are in World Tier 5, that is when the real end game begins.

In my case, when I returned, I was automatically invited to World Tier 2. As my gear score
was around 170.
I did missions, incursions, you name it, I did it. All in the name of getting my Gear Score up.

So, get yourself to World Tier 5 by acquiring loot.

Do not worry about builds or anything like that just yet, as you will be actively replacing your
gear all the time.

Everything else in this guide will be focused on WT5, as that is where the meat of this game
is.
The End Game Activities
What is the end game now?

The Old Way

When you last played, it was most likely at the time where there was no end game. You
reached level 30, and the only way to get new gear was to go to the Dark Zone.
The Dark Zone was a mess. Full of hackers, all the cache’s were looted all the damn time. It
was utterly pointless.

The only way to progress was to craft your gear. And that required high level crafting
materials, only found in the Dark Zone. Either rarely dropped from the named bosses, or in
those cache’s which were shared for your instance. Leaving you having to play during off
peak hours to have a chance at looting those cache’s. It sucked, and was one of the main
reasons why I stopped playing.

The New Way

Oh boy, where do I start?

You’ve hit World Tier 5, what now? What do you do?

LOOT!

Seriously, loot drops everywhere now. No longer is loot only dropping from bosses, no
longer is the Dark Zone a requirement. There are chances for loot to drop everywhere. Even
killing trash mobs that you can one-shot may drop set items. So keep an eye out!

Collect Story Intel

So first and foremost, collect all the world intel. Those phone calls, echoes, survival guides.
You know those items that tell the story of the world? They now reward you XP.

Once you “level up” passed level 30, you are rewarded a cache to open from your inventory.
Collecting 4 intel’s will level you up. There is no XP scaling, you just need 400,000 XP to get
a new cache every time. And in WT5, you are receiving over 100,000 XP per item collected.
It’s the easiest method to getting your Gear Score up.

But what’s in those cache’s you ask? Well, basically anything.

You get 2 items, could be a couple of Gold weapons. Could be a Set Item!
You could get even more lucky and have a BONUS roll for a 3rd item, which is a Classified
Item (more on that later).
So get all of that intel collected, get your free cache’s.
To add to this… It is best if you wait until WT5 before collecting all these items. As the loot
from the cache’s scale to your current World Tier.
If you have already collected all the world intel last time you played, well unfortunately, you
got screwed out of free XP.
You can create another character, get them to 30/ WT5, and use them to collect the intel if
you want to get those free cache’s.

Dailies/ Weekly’s

When you open your map, you’ll see a “Mission Overview” option. Click it.
These are all your current objectives. You have Daily Missions that reset every day. Weekly
Missions that reset each week… you get the picture.

Doing these missions will reward you more gear and currencies. Simple right?

Underground

If you haven’t got it yet, I would highly suggest buying the Underground DLC. It’s a new PvE
experience which recently received a re-work.
Think of it as a completely new game mode. It has its own leveling structure (so you start at
level 1, and work your way up), its own intel to collect, random maps and enemy types…
basically you run through from point A to point B, collecting on your way and completing the
mission at hand.
There are numerous difficulty levels, as well as modifications to the mission which you can
apply as you level up, making it more difficult, but more rewarding.

The underground scales, so you can run solo, duo or in a full group. It’s up to you.

If you enjoy leveling up and unlocking new things, then Underground is perfect for you. The
bosses there drop good loot, including Exotic Items (more on that later), which can all be
used in the normal PvE world and PvP.

Missions/ Incursions

Like before, you can still replay missions. But unlike before, they are actually rewarding this
time round. As bosses drop items which have large loot pools. Specific Exotics can drop
from certain bosses as well. You’ll be able to find this info on the Wiki

Incursions on the other hand, are like missions, but a lot more difficult. They will have certain
objectives you need to accomplish as a team. Think of them like mini-raids.

Incursions are challenging for new and returning players. So make sure you read a guide or
watch a youtube video on the incursion you are about to enter. Otherwise you will be in for a
world of hurt.
Search and Destroy

You will also notice that at each safe house there is a mission board. The board will provide
you 3 locations of groups of enemies in that specific area which you need to kill.
Once you kill those enemies, you are rewarded with Intel.

Collecting Intel then allows you to target a specific boss to kill.

There are varying difficulties of these bosses, the harder ones require more intel, while the
hardest ones may require a group.

You can keep collecting as much Intel as you want. Stack it all up and then go and speak to
either the Daily HVT (High Value Target) Officer, or the Weekly HVT Officer in the Base of
Operations.

Dailies are reset each day, weekly’s each week. Just keep an eye on the cost, as the higher
they cost, the harder they are. If you fail, you cannot retry it until the reset.

PvP

Yes, there is still PvP! I won’t be going into too much detail on this as I don’t play much PvP,
but you still have the Dark Zone. Same objective, more or less same type of gameplay as
before, but with a re-worked Rogue system.

Purchasing Survival and Last Stand will give you access to new PvP modes.

Survival - Go into the world with nothing, get new items, get to the dark zone, obtain items,
get out. You are faced against PvE mobs, and other players as well.

Last Stand - Objective focused PvP game mode. Large map, capture the points, build
defenses, tackle with players and NPC’s, first team to the highest score wins.

Skirmish - Simple PvP mode. Players only, smaller map, 4v4. First to 20 kills wins.

The rewards from PvP are quite big! You will often get new caches to open, all of which is
usable in both PvE and PvP.

West Side Pier

This is a brand new area of the PvE map, introducing a new way to play, as well as a new
instanced mode - Resistance.
The WSP doesn’t have static spawning mobs. Instead, the mobs spawn dynamically based
on where you are. They aggro a lot easier, and are a lot tougher than normal PvE mobs.

While you are in WSP, you will often receive a new mission to accomplish. This mission
spawns automatically, and will automatically enroll you into it. You don’t need to go
anywhere to start these missions.

Completing these missions will reward you not only a ton of loot, but Phoenix Credits (PxC)
and Div Tech (a high end crafting material, you may remember).

WSP is a hell of a lot of fun, and a completely new way to play the game. I will often find
myself just running around WSP, doing missions as they spawn. They can be very
challenging.

You also have a new mode - Resistance. This is an instanced PvE mission with waves of
enemies. Endless waves. The idea is to get as far as you can. Each wave becomes
increasingly more difficult, so be prepared!

Global Events

At the time of writing this, there is a global event. It lasts for one week.

During this time, there is a modifier to all PvE activities. Right now it’s called “Strike”. Where
every NPC will drop a grenade after death, damaging all other enemies around them. This
will apply to every enemy NPC, regardless of your location or mission.

You also have further modifiers to existing missions.Not all missions have these, but the
Mission Overview will tell you which ones are affected.

On these missions, there are 2 more difficulty levels of the Global Event. Currently during
Strike, we have

Pre-Emptive Strike - When you are consecutively shot, a new bar fills up. Once it’s full, you
will receive explosive damage. If allies are near you, they will also receive a portion of that
damage.

Tactical Strike - Like above, but allies take even more damage from other ally explosions.

Each global event is different, we do not know what the next one will be.
Completing a Global Event will reward you Global Event Coins (GEC). Trade in these coins
at the specific vendor to receive a chance at getting specific Classified Items or Exotics.
Each Global Event says which classified sets are available in the cache’s that you can buy
with the GEC.
The Global Event is by far the quickest and easiest way to get high level gear. So when it’s
active, spend time farming instances and completing the events.
Items & Types
Gear is split into different rarities:

● Worn
● Standard
● Specialized
● Superior
● High-End
● Exotic
● Set
● Classified Set
Once you are in WT5, you need not worry about anything under High-End (bar exception of
weapon/ gear mods, where there are some superior gear mods that you can buy, which are
pretty good to have).

So we will talk about High End and above.

High End weapons and armour all have different talents or perks. For weapons, they have
Talents (a lot more talents than the last time you played), for Armour there are perks. Each
perk and talent is different for different styles of play. There are META’s, which I will not go
into here. But generally, find what is best for you.

For Set Items, they will have bonus perks every 2,3 and 4 pieces equipped. There are
various sets, all for different styles of play. I’m a collector, so I’m just collecting everything,
and in turn… running out of stash, pretty fast.

For Classified Set Items there is a bonus 6th perk. Which, in my humble noobish opinion, are
mostly amazing. These items are much more difficult to obtain.

Exotics on the other hand are unique weapons, that have a unique talent. Some are great,
others… not so much. They have a very low drop chance. Each one of these weapons have
3 talents, one of which cannot be recalibrated as its specific to that weapon. If you get an
exotic, try it out, see how it performs. It may work well with your build, it may not. But these
items are indeed very rare, and can provide some huge bonuses depending on your build.

What to Expect

In all honesty, you will be getting loot all the time. Seriously. From when we used to play,
and only having loot drop once in a blue moon, Massive have taken the Diablo approach and
made loot so much more accessible.

You will be flooded with High-End and Set Items. They will not stop dropping for you. So it’s
best to check what stats they have, what gear score it is, and dismantle lower end versions
of the same set items you have.

The same can be applied for when you get a Classified Set Item. If you get one of these, you
may aswell dismantle all the non-classified versions of that item, as you will not be needing
them anymore.
As for dismantling… if you want to get rid of any Set or Classifieds, always, always, always
dismantle them and don’t sell them. Why? Because you will have a chance of getting Div
Tech when they are dismantled. So keep that in mind!

ReCalibration
Recalibration is just like it was before. I can’t see much change here, apart from the costs
and the number of talents available.
For certain High-End items, it will cost you PxC and Credits. For Sets and Classifieds, it will
only cost you Credits.

Credits are easy to come by, just sell everything you don’t need (except for sets and
classifieds), and you’ll have millions in no time.

As for the question “Should I Recalibrate X talent?” - it’s up to you, and it’s up to what build
you are going for. You can always go on The Division Subreddit and ask.

Optimization
And here is the real min/max end game.
Once you get your classified sets, once you get your exotics and high-ends that you’ll never
depart from. You can start looking at Optimizing them.

Effectively what this does is raise the core stats of the item bit by bit, including their gear
score.

It will make your weapon do more damage, it will make your stats higher for your armour.

But doing this is incredibly expensive. Credits-wise, it’s not an issue, but you need Div
Tech… and a lot of it.

With it costing 50 Div Tech per go, you will soon find yourself running out of Div Tech in no
time.

So make sure that you are not going to be replacing that item you plan to optimize. Make
sure it’s part of a loadout and stays in that loadout. Otherwise you will regret spending that
much Div Tech.