Why does it seem that I can never “breach protocol” gang members? Is it because they all have resistance to it? Is it the “resistant to” icon the one that shows the RAM shard? I suppose the “fine manual” tells me what all those icons mean (some, like electricity and fire, are pretty obvious, others not so much), right?
Another question: how do I get my “cold blood” stat up (the one on the lower left)? I read somewhere that putting bodies in dumpsters helps, but I’m not seeing it. Do the people have to be dead?
So I’ve begun playing this and am now ten hours in and very much enjoying it. Sure it can be tropey as hell but it’s a lovely world they’ve built and I’ve been really enjoying the random NCPD callouts I find as I go around the map. I’ve been doing that more than any of the actual quests at this point.
IMO, you’re doing it right! I’m on my third or so run through the game, and I’m about level 29 and street cred in the mid-forties, and I still have a big chunk of story missions to do before getting to the point of no return. I am using a mod that sends me gigs to find the 190 or so “hidden gems,” little vignettes with shards and loot scattered around the city, which is cool. Because I am not doing this for the first time, I have no qualms about being led to things I would (and did) have missed on my own. But I’m pretty much ignoring the big story players most of the time.
Keep in mind though that the game does turn higher level enemies into bullet sponges. If they are six or more levels above you they are going to be damn near impossible to kill without a lot of work and probably quicksave scumming. There are mods to undo this but I haven’t tried them yet. Just be aware when you scan gangers. A skull where you’d usually get an icon for their role/function means you are in for a world of hurt.
I’m wondering if I stumbled on these things in my playthrough or whether I missed cool stuff :) Can you remember any examples of what these things are? I might try a modded playthrough to remind myself how to play before the expansion comes out.
Just giving this another go now myself. Never played much past the prologue. I liked the simple story beats in that more than the silver hand stuff. I’ll will give more effort this time as bugs mostly ran me off. Prolly going sans mods but are there any must haves at this point?
Those are the things where you come across, usually, a body with some loot and a shard of archived conversations on it. Tells a little story about life on the streets, that sort of thing. The stuff you find can be decent, or just sellable. Some of them hook together in little mini-sequences of vignettes, too.
I have not found anything that’s a must have, but then, I have not really spent a ton of time sorting through the bajillion pr0n mods that are the bulk of them.
Because it took like a year to get it into a shape that was more broadly appealing I think. I liked it quite a bit at launch, warts and all, but it has only improved over time.
Time for another playthrough! First, though, I need to find and install the best mods. That step often becomes a game in itself for me. I think I’ve spent as much time modding Skyrim as playing it.
If anyone has suggestions for great second-playthrough mods, I’d love to see them.
For spoilery reasons it’s worth mainlining the primary questline until you hit a a clear act break. Then you can completely ignore the main plot forever. Every single sidequest will still be there but if you do them after the Act break they can be more interesting.
Generally once you get to the post-Heist part and you are searching for a way to fix what’s rather dramatically gone wrong, you can take your time and bop around. Currently on my playthrough I’m level 32 and still have not set in motion the last couple of things necessary to get me to the point of no return.
I’m finding the game a lot of fun this way, though I wonder how much I want to play after the ending bits. In my other runs, I pretty much stopped there. I did find a little mod that lets me reset attributes along with skill points, which is really useful and not terribly disruptive of balance. I’ve thought about some of the combat rebalancing mods, but haven’t gone that route yet.
One problem I have in this game is sort of like the problem in Skyrim, where I always end up as a stealth archer it seems. Here, hacking is so powerful even after the 1.5 nerf that it feels silly to not use it. Which in turn pushes you to put points in the Intelligence line, which of course means you have less points for other lines, etc. But the ability to wipe out whole groups without doing much other than hiding behind a dumpster or something is compelling, especially as there are times when the enemies are bullet sponges otherwise.
I found it clever (if annoying a bit) that they gate crafted weapons to your current skill loadout. So, you can’t dump all your points into Crafting, unlock the highest tier weapon crafting, make stuff, then ditch those points (which you could do without a mod, for cash) because then you can’t equip those guns. But you can cherry pick just those nodes if you have 20 in the Tech attribute and reset at least.
I have had a few playthroughs and generally think the hacker is the best, by far. Aside from being powerful, the mechanics of other styles do not work very well. One big issue is that armor is generally worthless as far as protecting you. So any kind of non-stealthy gunner or melee build is going to get into trouble fast.
Sneaking is marginal, at best. Again the problem with any stealth melee is that once you attack someone, you can easily alert all the guards, especially with cameras and all that. It slightly better with silenced weapons, but only a little.
This just leaves hacking which can not only fry people at extreme range, but also turn off cameras and disable security system. It is not that hacking is OP, but more like the other builds turn into exercises in frustration with a lot of safe-scrumming because things can go very wrong, very easily.
I think the fix is greatly improve armor and somewhat improve stealth mechanics.
Seems like way too much to me, but what do I know. I suppose Phantom Liberty might at the stage that Orion could be in the design stages, and only one Witcher ‘thing’ is being made by CDPR… but then what’s Hadar to be??
