I’m trying to finish all the achievements in as few missions as possible. For that I’ve been playing through all the factions one by one, try to get a win and as many faction achievements as possible on the first try, then move on. There were some rough spots, but I started getting some pretty good results toward the end (first try for all three faction achievements + a win for Zenith Guard, Flame Behemoths, and Hazardous Mechs).
So when it came time to wrap back to the beginning and start filling in the missing faction achievements + work toward some of the common achievements you can’t get by accident, I was feeling a bit too cocky. The plan for the first game was:
- Untouchable (no mech damage on the first island)
- Chronophobia (destroy all time pods on first three islands)
- Trusted Equipment (no new equipment or pilots)
- Ramming Speed (Rift Walkers, do a kill with a 5+ square dash)
The first one I wanted just because I had Bethany as the leveled up time traveler, and that achievement seemed pretty easy with a starting shield. The last three seemed like a reasonable combo: if I’m not picking up pods, there won’t be any equipment or pilots to upgrade. And it’d also mean having the excess reactor cores for the utterly craptacular dash upgrade.
It was a horrible idea. Turns out that destroying the pods doesn’t just lose you the goodies from the pod, it also counts against a perfect island. Also I had to take some grid damage on the first island that would have been avoidable normally, since there was an achievement riding on not damaging the mechs. So very little rep available for reactor cores, and no other source for them at all.
Then to add insult to the injury, both of my rookie pilots got +3 Grid Defense as the first skill and +1 movement as the second. No power from there either :(
The result was that I entered the third island with a total of 5 upgrades across all my mechs: the dash (that I wasn’t able to get the achievement with) for the Prime, +1 extra damage for the Cannon, and immune cities for the Artillery. That’s not a lot to work with for the third island: pretty limited damage, no disables at all, and not enough HP to reliably block spawns, just one ability that affects multiple squares. Lots of push, but not a ton of mobility to get the pushes in the right direction.
I could kind of scrape by the initial four missions of the island, but never without taking some grid hits. (Even when going for the easiest rather than the most rewarding missions). By the final battle of the island I had only two grid left. Only one lousy achievement to show for two hours of gameplay so far, everything riding on this battle, and the setup looks totally impossible: the boss hits for two damage for three squares in a straight line, and starts right behind a cluster of buildings. It’s totally impossible to avoid damage completely (especially since I need some mechs for other purposes as well), so the best I can do is direct the boss at a single-building square.
Round two, pull every trick to stay safe at one grid point, but at the cost of killing just one enemy. Round three, stare at the map for ten minutes, and there’s just no way out. But, wait, what’s that! Resisted! The stupid pilots with their combined +9 Grid Defense come through for the first time in the game. Still alive for round four!
Stare at the board for five minutes; there’s just no way to avoid two grid damage. Stare for another five minutes… Well, at least there’s a way to take two damage on one square rather than one damage on two squares. That’s better in theory, so might as well roll the dice again. RESISTED! And at this point I’ve actually done enough incidental damage to the enemies while pushing them around that I manage to clear the board and get the two achievements.
Of course I was still at one grid, so had to pump all the reputation into the grid. The third island had provided literally no advancement. I decided that the final battle would be easier than the fourth island, and tried my luck. The first level was actually not too bad, and I even managed to spend a bit of time arranging for the Ramming Speed achievement. But the second level? It was just brutal, from full grid to dead in two rounds.
But as far as losses go, that was about as satisfying as it gets. But maybe the way to do the challenge achievements is with a custom squad… I think I’ll do that for Engineering Dropout.
(The real hurdle for the achievement hunt is going to be Lightning War; might need to drop to easy for that. I just don’t see how to play this twice as fast).