so in the first part of the game, the bullets and attacks of bandits on my cuprino did not do much damage.

still driving the cuprino. I fought one bandit car in eastern area, no biggie, but the second one took out the health of my car super super fast. and it was not rockets.

I went and bought some more shields.

what changed? I want better bullets too if they got better bullets!!

Just follow the story and get a monarch in exchange for your cuprino...

sweet. thanks. that helps. I was freaking out a little. I have been buying most of the schematics, and I was MISSING most of the ATMS (in my pc game, the E to get the money was really small, and I was thinking that alot of money places did not have money, like the vending machines, when they probably did, and I screwed myself out of alot of dough) so I am sort of money poor and was worried about the cost of upkeep on cars.

As far as i remember, the monarch is a trophy for winning a race against starkey so no money needed.
Nevertheless: Even if the monarch is more rigid than the cuprino, add additional armour and life will be a lot easier.

yeah, I got the monarch, and did the easy timed race twice to get points before realized I was tricking out a rat rod. duh. then went out and killed enought bandits to get heavy armor. i am thinking of starting over. I missed some cards and I missed a ton of those plants that boost your health. I may stick it out and play through and then do it again. it is fun game. unlike borderlands which I did love, it stays pretty dangerous. some missions are more dangerous than others. I found the kamakazee jackals to be pretty hard. I had to go slow, save often. they would just come out of no where and melee the 6uck out of me.

The plants to boost your health are pretty important if you prefer a relaxed experience when playing.
The tougher your character is, the more you can play the game the oldschool way like Doom & co.
Otherwise if you're looking for a challenge, skip 'em! Most people complain that Rage is too easy...

The jackal canyon is one of the visual highlights in the game right next to the dead city.
I ended up using lots of spider bots to do the job for me and the pumpgun loaded with pop rockets.

I found that the plants up your health (I mean the apophis infusion) by 10 points each. what is the base health? I just went back to wellspring and got one more infusion, gonna go get another

I'm not 100% sure but i think your health starts with about 100 and ends up with 177 when you've used all apophis fusions that can be mixed with all the plants found in the game.
Some plants necessary for mixing the potion do not grow again after being picked up.

You might also want to pick up the defibrilator upgrade from the guy that shows up later in the game at Sally's bar in exchange for 20 feltrite crystals.