Cartels

"Cartel Life is an incredible experience which embodies true competitive spirit and provides a new way to play Arma 3 at the highest level."

Walt (Top 10 War Kills, Civilian Council)

Introduction

A portion of Olympus players don't consider cartels a mere event. Fighting and owning cartels is what they do. Cartel fighting is highly competitive and difficult to learn for most. Cartel fighters have an interesting type of culture that is rarely associated with any other portion of the community.

All cartels are located in either the warzone or the peninsula positioned parallel of warzone. New Life Rule (NLR) and Random Death Match (RDM) do not apply inside the warzone or at cartels. Players do not have to engage people inside the warzone in order to kill, tase, or titan them.

Perks

Every illegal processed drug on the server can be sold at drug dealers or distributors. Each of those drugs are taxed by the owners of the corresponding cartel. If you sell heroin at a drug dealer, 15% of your profit will automatically be transferred to the gang who owns the heroin cartel. If your gang owns the cartel, you will not pay any taxes. The only drug that cannot be taxed through cartels is Acid, which is also known as LSD or frogs.

When you gang owns the arms cartel, you'll receive a 15% discount on all purchases you make at the rebel outpost. When you make purchases at rebel outpost without owning the arms cartel, 15% of the normal item purchase cost is automatically transferred to the owner.

When players use the drug dealer inside the warzone, they will be free from paying cartel taxes.

A map of the warzone.
A map of the entire warzone, including the cartel peninsula (circled).
A picture of the warzone drug dealer (circled).

Capturing Cartels

If you wish to capture a cartel, you'll need to join a gang. A singular player cannot own a cartel, his or her gang will own the cartel. Once a player is within 95 meters of the red triangle marker of the cartel, it will start capturing. A player must have a weapon that utilizes 5.56 caliber ammunition or greater to capture a cartel. Players cannot capture cartels from inside a vehicle.

When you begin capturing a cartel, a progress bar will appear at the top of your screen. This progress bar indicates if you've captured the cartel or not. The text in the bar will read "uncapping" if you are reducing the percentage of the cartel that another gang owns. The text will read "capturing" once your gang owns the cartel but you're still increasing the percentage of the cartel that your gang owns. The text will read "contested" if a player from another gang enters the capture zone.

If more than one gang member is inside of the capture zone, that gang will capture the cartel faster. When two gang members are within the capture zone, the capture speed is increased by 37.5%. When a third gang member enteres the capture zone, the capture speed is increase by an additional 37.5%. There are no further capture speed buffs past that point.

This live page HERE constantly displays who owns the cartels on each server.

The progress bar when your gang is capturing a cartel.
The progress bar when your gang is uncapping a cartel.
The progress bar when the cartel is contested.
The notification you'll receive if a gang begins capturing your gang's cartel.
The map marker when a player is inside the cartel capture zone.
The normal cartel map marker.

Map Locations

Normally, the cartels rotate. "Meth & Weed" cartel will sometimes switch locations with "Moonshine & Heroin". An important thing to not is that, unlike all other cartels, the arms cartel is always in this central location.