Let's begin. Our boy Dripoff is the Rooks' Heavy Raider. At first glance he might not seem too suited to looting. His appearance, size, weapon class and abilities all give him the bearing of a brawler like Doomchild. However, direct your attention to the Rally skill.

















Loot! As the name suggests, activating this skill provides a boost to store-smashing and looting speed for Dripoff and his crew, for ten seconds. This boost stacks with the Raider crew passive bonus, as well as the passive bonus from the Lieutenant Katch. More on him later.

Loot! is what makes Dripoff a powerhouse of theft, and its uses are determined entirely situationally. The duration is not long enough to use Loot! to open a store and fully loot it, so one must decide whether to prioritise opening the store, looting it dry, or if one doesn't care.

Examples:

• Trigger Loot! when you reach a weapon store in enemy territory to ensure you grab the weapon and leave quickly.
  
• Trigger Loot! after you break open a store to drain it dry in a matter of seconds if an enemy is on the way or you're needed elsewhere.
  
• Trigger Loot! to deny stores that are important to the enemy team by looting them at the start of the match!

These are just a few ways in which Loot! can be used in a much more strategic capacity than it first appears. For example, if your enemy has a ranged character, it might be wise to deny them the chemical stores necessary for them to build the Ice Mod on the Super Nailgun.







Lieutenant
The Lieutenant we want is Katch and no other. There's no need to worry about editing his perks manually, because he will automatically assign points that benefit his looting prowess as you level him up. Katch is fantastic for our purposes because he loots faster, more lucratively, and has a higher chance of finding crafting materials for you. In addition, he has perks available that grant himself and the team stacking armour for each item he loots.

This synchronises incredibly with Dripoff's passive; Freighter, that grants stacks of armour and melee damage up to 80 stacks as he loots. Be aware, however, that Katch and Dripoff do not have an abundance of damage in this build, but you will be quite tough to take down if you loot a lot, early on.

Crew/Footsoldiers

The cannon fodder, the bright young hopefuls, the wannabes. Our backup boys are pitiful combatants, but selecting the Raider crew means that your looting ability increases massively. Not only do they loot faster once stores are open, they gain more cash for doing so!

Consider levelling Etch to level 10, also, to unlock The Anarchists. The Anarchists are a unique Rooks crew that deal immense damage to storefronts. They also grant increased damage to Vending Machines and Drone Crates, as well as the Glass Barriers on the Takeback map, Steel City. Using The Anarchists means never having to waste your use of the Loot! skill on opening a shop, meaning you get the full duration to rapidly loot even the medium stores.

Another use for the crew is to stand near a Large Store, just out of reach of the Guard [AI] and then trigger an "Attack" command. They will move in and aggro the guards first, allowing you opportunity to get in some free hits. Be aware, however, the Guards will prioritise attacking you once you join in.

Now let's look at these stores, in the next section!

The stores in the game are all present when the game begins, but they are shuttered and locked down. Thankfully, we have a helpful member of the Smash + Grab staff who will open up these security systems for us at each Round of the game. When the game begins, only the Round One stores will open. These include small cash stores, and tier one weapon stores.

The two stores we're interested in are as follows:

• The Urban Pastoralist, located right above/below spawn on both maps.
  
• Elektronik, located in the middle and at the top/bottom of both maps.

The very first thing you want to do is get your Sprint Boost from spawn, and then head right to The Urban Pastoralist. Once you get the Shovel, head to Elektronik. On Upmarket this is the middle small cash store. This will, with Katch as your Lieutenant, allow you to almost guarantee getting The Thumper right after the match begins.

Once you have this weapon mod applied, looting stores becomes even easier, as Dripoff's slow movement speed and small-ish stamina pool will be alleviated by the movement boost from the weapon mod and the stamina/speed buff from the Sprint Boost. Every time the vending machines spit out a Sprint Boost bottle, you want to take it.

Getting cash from the green rectangles on the map is the primary objective - but don't forget you also have the speed necessary to deny the enemy important materials that are gathered from the stores! It is entirely possible to prevent the enemy team from getting any chemicals if you focus on looting The Best You stores on the map, which means no Ice Nailguns or Hammers.

There will be times when your team asks for help. They'll want you to stop "wasting time" looting if they're particularly ignorant of how much of an impact looting has on your ability to win.

You don't have to ignore them and keep looting! The beautiful aspect of this build is that it makes you a very good assisting character! After levelling Katch enough, he will start to grant your crew stacks of armour, that stack with Dripoff's own stacking armour and melee damage from looting. This makes you rather difficult to kill early on when enemy teams have few damaging mods.

If an ally needs help, you can enter combat with Dripoff's Q ability, and then enable an escape with his E. Alternatively, position yourself out of attack range when you use the E, and you will grant every nearby Leader with an armour boost.

With the movement speed from Sprint Boost and The Thumper it is entirely possible to catch low health enemies who have used up their escape skills or stamina. You can then feel free to pummel them. Don't forget about Power Strikes!

Pick Dripoff, pick Katch, pick Raiders or Anarchists, loot money, win game.


Thanks for reading the guide, I hope this helps anyone trying to find a new playstyle, or a way to win that doesn't rely entirely on beating skulls in and being stomped on.
It's entirely possible.





Special thanks to:

• Moogz/Angel for the store names, hit up his Twitch channel for some very competent Doomchild play. https://www.twitch.tv/guardianangelz
  
• United Front Games, for supplying the images I used in "The Basics" section. They're a brilliant bunch of Devs and they've put together such a great game, with so much depth and entertainment to be had.
  
• Everyone at the Official Smash + Grab Discord server for letting me know how great they are and giving me the idea to one-up all those awesome guys. Come hang out! https://discord.gg/9YKRa
  
• RuntCash for telling me about the usage of Attack commands on Guard [AI], and Mommy for helping me test out that function.