Cache Stages in Bounties

[OricSharp]

Every goddamn time I run into a cache stage in a Bounty mission, I know I have no chance in hell of finding the caches, so I'm failing the mission.

 

Why do I know I have no chance of finding the caches?

I'm looking for a chubby roundish box, brown, on a field of chubby roundish boxes, brown. It's got a light on, but so does every goddamn other thing. 

Bonus! I only figured out what they looked like by pure luck.

So I'm looking for a needle in a haystack, except the needle's disguised, and I'm not told what it even looks like. Not the faintest description, nothing.

I get five minutes to check a ridiculous amount of space for three of these, before they magically teleport away via some means that prevent me from being able to chase down the convoy (which, let's be honest, would be the logical thing to do when confronted with "I'm looking for something, but it's small, I don't know what it looks like, and it could be anywhere," which tells me that the Lotus is just as stupid as that hat she wears. I'd had my suspicions given her inability to adjust her estimates, and her bizarre flat inflections, but this certainly seals that).

And, of course, there's everything trying to kill me. Avoiding death costs me the majority of the time that I have to find these stupid things.

...and the occasional shifting of the objective location without any kind of forewarning or callout from the Big Hat Brigade. Sure, I can be told how Eidolon Lures feed on the energy of Vomitalysts every time I so much as pass one on the street, but no, let's not explain anything else.

 

How to salvage this trainwreck of an objective:

A) Lotus has a fleet of ninjas in sapient orbiter ships. It's actually more difficult to explain why she doesn't ask them to narrow things down than it is to explain why it makes sense that she would. Narrow the bloody field a bit. Also, why does she not show us what they look like in the first place? I only figured out what they looked like by stumbling on one by luck. Until I found that, I was expecting...I don't know, maybe the caches that show up in the Orokin areas?

B) Seriously, how do these things vanish like that? It's ridiculous how they just teleport. There's got to be some means of conveyance, and therefore a target to destroy to acquire the things after they've been taken, before they get to their base.

C) Time limits on everything is bullS#&$. Drop them. They don't increase the difficulty, they just make things annoying at first - if I can start finding these things consistently, then the time limit will be irrelevant, because I'll probably end the stage with 2:30 left on the clock more often than not.

D) Scrap it, because it's frankly pointless to force a scavenger hunt. If I had the time to look, I'd probably find the stupid things by using the Codex Scanner, until I didn't need to use it anymore.

[Oreades]

The caches are relatively easy to find if you are methodical about how you approach the bounty/incursion. 

You will want some kind of loot detection, my preference is Animal instinct. Even tho the range is hardly that great it really doesn't matter too much. Since even Animal instinct gives just enough range to be useful.The caches will show up as normal generic white loot squares on your minimap.  

The key is to position yourself just far enough inside the mission circle so that the range of Animal Instincts loot detection should be just about touching the edge of the mission area. That takes a bit of trial and error if you aren't used to it but you get a pretty good feel for how far in you can go. 

After you have your range from the edge set you pretty much just run the circle keeping trying to maintain that approximate distance from the edge of the mission zone. Usually there will be 2 if not all three of the caches placed along that outside edge. 

The mission area changing place is actually beneficial to us as players since it only happens once you have cleared out enough caches, the game is essentially narrowing down your search area for you.

If all three of the caches aren't around the outside edge, you start moving inwards, keeping an eye on your minimap for any suspicious loot boxes. There are a few of the cache missions that have a decent amount of loot box clutter but all you need to do is break things as you go.