Solo Side Mission: Avenging Cobra on Insane Difficulty

[intenselygoodtime]

This was utterly the most discouraging/brutal start of the ~5-6 missions thus far, and a ton of searching yielded nothing useful for INSANE difficulty.

Warning: I don't know how much randomness there is to deal with, but the lure of purple loot this early in the Insane campaign was worth the perseverance.

I chose to ignore the optional "complete the mission in 15 or less turns" objective, as the first 8 turns were just too frustratingly RNG-dependent.


Character: Mikayla Dorn
Armor: Autoloader (60% chance to reload 1 primary weapon ammo at turn beginning).
...I would also have chosen the one that gives you a good chance to gain an AP if you didn't take a shot this turn, but in Solo that's not going to happen very often...

Grenade: Frag. Active Healing is an utter waste of AP on Insane. Literally no one should spend AP nor skill points on healing, as all points must be spent on things that maximize add'l AP and/or add'l

Skills:
Fast Fingers was *crucial* to save turns reloading.
Precision Shot when you're up against one enemy or absolutely need to down one.
Bullseye whenever you have a spare AP that you don't need to save on Overwatch.
Weak Spot and Sharpshooter are my passives. On Insane, you generally don't waste antything on healing.

Goal is to lure the floaters down the slope to the right, and just keep rerolling the dice until you kill them both without taking too much damage. I'll assume default map rotation, where the crate + ladder are on the left, and the slope is on the right.


Turn 1: Move to the steel+sandbag half-cover, and Overwatch (OW) up the slope. Only overwatch to the inside of the divot, not above the concrete, to maximize

Bug note: My cursor would sometimes simply not render the move-mode lines/selections here -- at least half the retries. Clicking outside the fog of war consistently caused the move-mode to appear, then I could mark normally. In exactly one case, the move-calc bugged out and I was able to move to that first cover in a single AP. ;) Didn't roll crits that time though...

Turn 2: You must crit-down the damaged drone with a single shot/AP here, otherwise just go ahead and reload. With your remaining two AP, take a shot at the other drone and set up another Overwatch. If you're lucky, you can drop the 2nd one with Fast Fingers, but ultimately you'll get a free reload when they die & despawn.

Turn 3 & 4: Your goal is to be fully reloaded, standing in full cover on the LEFT EDGE of the doorway into the broken building, with OW straight through the first room and out the door on the other side. If you end up with an extra AP in there (perhaps lucky crits on the previous battle), then queue bullseye before the OW. The Sniper will most likely run across your field of fire but stay on the other side of the building this turn. The Drone will run around the right side of the outside of the building, and OW toward you from the right corner -- but luckily out of range.

Turn 5: You *must* take down the Drone in 2 AP. If you're lucky, the 3rd AP can be spent to lob a frag grenade and outright kill the Sniper. Don't forget that grenades can be bounced off all kinds of weird surfaces and angles, and the entire environment is in play! In both cases where I killed the Sniper, it was by bouncing the frag off of a wall -- or once, the slave pod itself -- to land in his lap, doing full damage.

From this point onward, you'll have two characters w/ranged weaponry -- play as normal.

Note that a group of Wretches spawns the moment you open the pod door, so if you're not doing a speed-run (15 turns), take a moment to position yourself, refresh skills, and have the spare AP to drop a grenade into them.

Two large groups will spawn once you eventually free the 2nd captive; park the captives on OW out the upstairs window, side-by-side, and Mikayla the Sniper directly firing out the open-side toward the stairs.

Also a "surprise" Grenadier and Drone will spawn as you sprint for the LZ.... So just don't. Park in cover facing the stairs, and have one character trigger it and retreat to cover/OW.

The LAST thing to get is the Rare chest.