Apothecary melee attacks are a guaranteed seed recovery (if you skill for it)
Justicar is really useful. Two justicars can almost give each other a lot of AP, although you’ll trigger a few of those purple cycles. +3 AP +1 WP when fully skilled!
I just used the full heal edict on one of my knights right before the end of the mission (from about one third damaged). Afterwards he has light wounds needing 18 days to heal. I did have the warp surge effect in play that decreases max health by 1 though, so perhaps the game counted him as still slightly wounded (in a way that it wouldn’t for an unwounded soldier who had max HP decreased).
The Justicar’s ability to give other knights AP (and optionally WP) is really powerful. Right now I’m using it with an interceptor who will teleport in to the middle of a group of enemies, fling some melee blows around, then be handed some more AP to kill some more or get out of there (or using teleport strike, do both). Teleport strike uses loads of WP but will often refill that immediately as it gets loads of kills.
On the subject of pre-order / paid bonuses:
- The book (Melee +15% crit, +2 crit dmg) is a very good early game item but nothing game-breaking. You have as many of them as you want.
- The hammer (+10% crit, +1 crit dmg, activate for +1 stun instead of extra damage) is fine for the early game, especially in combination with the book. It becomes very good in the mid game due to the excellent selection of upgrades.
- Garran Crowe, who shows up early in the mid-game, is massively overpowered though. A level 20 knight when your other knights are perhaps level 3 to 5. Fixed loadout and abilities but they’re good for all situations, the only thing he’s lacking is armour. The really big thing though is his ability that subtracts 50% from the warp surge meter. It’s effectively “never suffer surge effects again”.
The big thing I’ve been learning recently though is how to abuse the free AP the game likes to give out. Every time you finish off the last active enemy, all your knights are refreshed to full AP, get a free reload and can use all once-per-turn abilities again. The same thing happens every time you activate a new pod when you have no active enemies. This is hugely exploitable to avoid end turn warp surge and render any time limits trivial. No more slow plodding about, just finish all objectives on turn one! (This is hyperbole, it’s usually more like turn 3 or 4.)
I assume the designers were wanting to avoid the problem in XCOM where your last soldier accidentally disturbs a pod and you don’t have a chance to prepare for their attack. But they already warn you about nearby pods when you’re about one AP from disturbing them so that shouldn’t really be a problem. As it is, it rewards reckless charges. I guess that’s not entirely a bad thing though, it certainly keeps the game flowing fast.
Actually I think that book is somewhat OP for certain builds that are crit-dependent. Getting +2 dmg is actually pretty good when added to other +crit dmg abilities and auto-crit powers like Hammerhand. I did not realize that was a bonus - I’ve been using the heck out of it and early game it was a notable help.
The character and class system turns out to be surprisingly deep - depending on how you customize your dudes, they can do all kinds of interesting things. Also, every class definitely has cool and useful stuff it can do. Apothecaries can become excellent healers and skull-mavens with extra uses of skulls and combos of buffs + unlimited range with the right mix of skull abilities. Justicars have a useful “give other people AP” abilities. Interceptors are a fan favorite of course b/c they teleport around and slice the shit out of stuff. (I have a level 9 Interceptor named Bamf Storm b/c he killed so much stuff he maxxed level first.) And Purgators are IMO the early game go-to with their hefty psycannon and excellent AOE Psychic Assault, especially when tooled up with the right abilities. Then the Elite Classes are also a nice boost: I’ve got a Purifier and a Librarian so far. The Purifier is actually kind of a bad ass, moving through hazards and critting the bejesus out of stuff. The Librarian is the most potent class I’ve seen yet in terms of special abilities - the Psionic Storm thing (whatever its called) is awesome. Plus they can eventually teleport. So, a big thumbs up on the classes and abilities.
That does lead me to one kvetch: if you get a higher level guy using the requisition system, his abilities will be randomly picked and often suck, and there’s no respec that I can see. If I play the campaign a second time I’m going to avoid improving that line in the Armory so I can get lower level dudes and custom-level them. Now that I’ve seen how stuff works and the class abilities for 6 classes, I have MANY ideas for uber customized dudes.
Overall: the big “battle winners” early are the Purgators and Interceptors but both the Justicar and Apothecary have their uses. The Elite Classes seem like a nice boost for the latter part of the game and maybe they will replace my other dudes? We’ll see.
You research a servo skull early on that lets you take seeds at range without even using AP. Takes up a slot, but almost mandatory to bring along 1.
Bummed about the Advanced Classes being so random to get. Probably halfway through the game and haven’t even seen one yet. Sounds like its really easy to miss them altogether. They need a better way to give people the options to recruit. Maybe even through construction and/or research.
In terms of the advanced classes, there will be an event, somewhere in what appears to be the midgame where the Grand Master offers you the choice of 1 of the 4 advanced classes. After that, advanced classes can appear in the random offer of a recruit post mission if you have that slot in the Armory unlocked. I’m not sure if the upgrade level of the armory slot affects this, and I’m not 100% sure that you can’t get offered an advanced class earlier if you have the slot unlocked. I think I saw a Purifier offered pretty early but I didn’t recruit him due to poverty of requisition. However, I’m not 100% on that - I might be misremembering a Purgator.
Also, apparently there IS a way to respec but it requires having a certain upgrade in your ship AND having a dead Grey Knight to use up as a resource. Since my whole strategy relies heavily on keeping my Grey Knights alive (I haven’t even had a Critical Wound yet, 350 days in) that’s not going to be an option for me. (Even if I do lose a Grey Knight I would probably just save scum b/c I don’t like losing dudes.) In theory I could do something cheesy like bring a low level schlub on an easy mission and have him “take one for the team” but that’s really lame IMO. I feel like if they are going to have a respec option, it needs to be less gated and obscure. That’s the first real negative design choice I’ve seen in the game, from my POV.
Yeah, it’s a shame you don’t have the dead guys from the tutorial mission hanging around in a freezer to provide you with a couple of “free” respecs and make the feature more obvious.
So far the tactical portion of the game I’ve been finding very easy (playing on relentless difficulty, iirc), and it’s only becoming easier as I gain experience with how the game works. I’m certainly not expecting to lose knights ever.
I do feel like the 2 advanced classes I’ve seen (Librarian and Purifier) are very cool and I want to see the other 2, but I also feel like the base 4 classes are actually quite strong in their areas of focus, and I don’t feel like you NEED the advanced classes to have a strong squad.
I don’t think that youtuber is right. I fully healed my squad before ending but I still have to heal. Or maybe there is some buffer involved depending on your medical facilities.
I got a named purifier from some choice, he is named and has 99 lives. Can’t change his equipment either. He’s nice because of the warp meter manipulation.
Ok, so the strategems? I can use them every X turns!?!? I thought they were one use per mission. That makes them really powerful
Librarian I like the AOE stun bomb. Stun a cluster, then rush in some guys to execute everyone (+1 ap to all per execution) 5 stun if I use a warp charge!
There seems to be some RNG on what skills you get offered.
I haven’t seen a strategem that can be used more than once a mission yet. Except when I did a scripted mission and it had 2 phases which reset all the used items for the second phase.
Yeah so I played for 29 hours total, didn’t finish the campaign, and uninstalled. Good core game with a few issues. In order of how much these contributed to my cumulative annoyance:
1)Lack of feedback on choices, and on necessary things that can bite you in the ass. None of these are gamebreaking but I kept having situations arise that felt “shitty” and that’s a bad feeling in a game.
2)Lack of a respec option and the fact that higher level recruits get their ability points spent without player input means that higher level recruits can come “pre-gimped” which is ferociously annoying to someone who likes to meticulously build troops.
3)UI that just doesn’t make it easy to see what you need to know. Most of the info is there, but just not well integrated or well presented. Also, the inventory system is a huge mess of nested menus where something simple like checking the upgrades on a masterwork weapon can take 4 or 5 clicks. This is a small issue each time it comes up, but it comes up a LOT.
4)Tutorial and information generally not clear or well presented, which feeds into #1 above.
Overall, a good game design IMO let down some annoyance/QOL factors. As a younger gamer, I paid the gamer-annoyance uphill both ways in the snow and I LIKED IT. Nowadays, I’m just too old, tired and jaded to put up with this crap.
If the game gets patched or modded to address these things or if guides/walkthroughs become available to avoid all the pitfalls, I might try it again. But as of now, I was both enjoying and being annoyed by the game perpetually until the annoyance broke me.
I mean I got 30 hours of play out of it and a good amount of enjoyment up to that point so it’s not a bad game or ripoff. But I had hoped for more.
Perhaps I shall try out the King Arthur tactics game…
Ding!
You’ve been following this thread just so you could say that, huh?
For the record, it’s NOT actually bad, so Justaguy2’s conclusion is without merit. It’s a good game that has aspects that annoy me, cumulatively to the point I wasn’t able to finish the campaign, but I did get 30 hours of play in.
Yeah, my, um, less than two hours of play pretty much align with what @Sharpe says. It’s a game I want to get at some point, on sale, but which didn’t make me want to keep it at full price. If there were fewer things to play out there, or I had less of a backlog, I might have kept it.
I can’t disagree with any of the annoyances listed (particularly the inventory system), but I’m still enjoying it a lot. Helps that I got it for free so I can’t possibly feel any buyer’s remorse. :)
Had a second critical wound this morning, almost entirely because all my best troops were unavailable for a difficult mission. The end of the mission was pretty much ignoring the enemies and charging the objective on the last turn.
I’m enjoying it, but just not at a “gotta run home from work to play it” level, but rather “looking forward to more on the weekend” level. I like it for an X-Com adjacent 40k experience. It’s good. It’s not “not a bad game.” It’s just not Warhammer: Elden Ring or whatever either. I expect patches and time, maybe even a DLC, would bump it into greatness, or gotta play another campaign status.
I’ve also been moved to read up a bit on Grey Knights. They are pretty cool and it is feeding my enjoyment of Chaos Gate. The wrist rocket bolters and weird armor were a meh thing to me, but now I’m appreciating how that chapter is unique in psychic power and the way the Emperor wields that chapter.
Finally, and I know it’s a sore topic, but for those who care ( @lordkosc ) it seems the dev team will be streaming 9 pst to 11 which maybe will help with some of the annoying Twitch drops before the patch.
Edit: confirmed, they are live now and you get all dev drops in 15 minutes. Also they said the May update is “very soon” that will give all drops.
You can respec, but it requires dead marines and a bunch of ship upgrades to do it, at least according to the stuff I’ve looked up on it.
For people in general, I have a question. How do you upgrade gear?
Per the internet it unlocks early. Per actual playing it never unlocks and they’re all liars.
Like, I’ve never seen it come up. Supposedly there is some mission, but I’ve never seen it.
Some sites mention said mission appearing by Day 12. At Day 120 I’ve never seen it. Hence the liars comment.
I believe it’s gated by one of the research benchmarks in the seed-related category of research (middle chunk of the research tree). Also, the mission that relates to seed research that I believe you are referencing came up around day 200 to me. From what folks on the intarwebs say that can come up some where around day 150 to 200 or so, depending on your progress and choices.
Since my whole strategy was based around not ever having any dead marines, there was no effective respec option for me, unless I had wanted to farm dead marines. I did consider that but felt it was too annoying (“come on newly recruited level 1 Marine and go die so another Marine can commune with your corpse and respec!”) to actually do. An alternative would have been to require building the necessary upgrade, but then just have a manageable cost like say having the Marine be unavailable for 5 days for every level of respec.
Following it for the same reason I follow any thread, I’m interested!
Hoping for the patch that removes Denuvo and adds “it’s good” to forum posts
Here, let me try to help avoid some future annoyance for you guys:
One big thing to be aware of is that you WILL need to harvest seeds, and in fact will need to harvest seeds in order to research the technologies to more efficiently harvest seeds and to reduce future seed costs. So pay attention to the “blink and you miss it” moment when they explain harvesting seeds - despite 29 hours of play I’m still not 100% sure on how exactly to harvest a seed reliably without using the Seed Harvesting Servo Skull (which requires the aforementioned upgrade, which in turn requires you to harvest some seeds first.) I guess I got lucky the first go round and got a seed early that let me research the seed skull. When I did my latest restart I got bitten in the ass by the lack of that seed and couldn’t research anything at that point. I guess I needed to pay more attention during the interminable and poorly explained voice over / tutorial bits.
Another big one is that you do need to build the Exterminatus upgrade at some point b/c if you don’t have it when a certain thing happens (it happened to me around day 350, not sure of the typical timing) then you get hit with a pretty nasty penalty that can screw you real hard.
Another one is to make sure you are bringing in enough servitors to continuously work on your ship - if you fall behind the curve shit can snowball, and the upgrade that generates servitors is just a small addition, not a source of servitors to actually sustain upgrading.
Also if you do want to get your Marines killed so you can respec, you do need to first build the upgrade that saves their geneseed instead of sending it to Titan. Marines that die before you have that upgrade are not available as a resource for respecs.
Another really big one is to definitely positively save-scum before the Grand Master reports b/c the choices you make there can have punishing results, with no warning ahead of time, and no information at all on the consequences of your choices. I guess they wanted this to be “story driven” but when I’m making all these strategic decisions and then get screwed by a choice I made with no intel ahead of time it makes me feel like I’m not actually playing a strategy game.
Unfortunately there are other incidents that occur with no warning so you can’t save scum unless you save scum all the fucking time, and they have the same “choice that can screw you hard without any info ahead of time” problem, so I guess if you want to actually play a strategy game you need to save scum every few days.
(As you guys can see, this started out as a helpful post but became progressively angrier. That is my reaction to this game in a nutshell.)