Does Duty Eternal have any good qualities?

[tadleszcz]

I'm currently waiting for the next DLC (if it'll be good of course) to try and get into the game again and it turned out that I completely missed the release of Duty Eternal. From what I see its a complete mess in most ways, but I'm still curious about it and would appreciate an answer if someone has time to spare. Does the DLC destroy the balance/is the tech marine OP? Are any of the new missions it adds any good? Does it modify the base game's pacing? How far do would I need to progress in the campaign to access the new content?

[ZexxCrine]

Nothing will ever EVER be more op than intercepters justicars and librarians. the techmarine is a solid support class that does his job very well and has a massive toolbox that you must prep before missions. The dreadnaught is fun to pilot and powerful in its own right, but I wouldn’t say it’s broken either.

I personally really enjoy the technophage missions once you have the dread and the starskiff is an extremely challenging mission with a crazy good reward.

People claim that the pacing gets destroyed by it, but when you stop and think about it, not much if anything really changes. The main point of contention is that technophage missions start popping up before you are even close to unlocking the dreadnaught. These missions are designed to be tackled with 4 knights and a dread. It’s possible to win with just 4 knights, but it requires very meta play or extremely turtling play to accomplish. As a result most if not all players avoid those missions entirely until they either have a dread or an extremely meta setup. That all sounds terrible, but in reality it doesn’t change very much when they start showing up. In base game 3 missions will pop and for the most part you will only be able to reach 1 or 2 of them at any given time. With the dlc 1 of the 3 missions will be technophage. Since most players ignore them, myself included, that means that 1 of the 3 missions you would have gone to is no longer an option, but you could only reach 1-2 missions anyway.

As far as when to access IIRC(it’s been a while) you gain 1 introductory dreadnaught mission before the craftworld mission. 1 mission after the craftworld where you actually obtain the dread. then like 2-3 missions where lunette is in your group. And that all culminates in probably the single hardest mission in the game that unlocks the starskiff which is an absolutely crazy mission that takes a very long time and will require you to bring your A team. Took me like 3 hours to beat it the first time, but I was overly meticulous I think. I personally recommend the dlc but do note that on the whole it will make the game harder in general. But you can always just start a campaign with it off if you really don’t want to deal with it.

Also, and I believe this is true but I haven’t done it myself, you can uninstall just the dlc. Start a campaign. Play up to the craftworld mission. Then install the dlc and it should add all the dlc into your current run as the dlc didn’t require a new playthrough to activate. That might curb the early game a bit considering even in base game the early game was the hardest part by far.

[Bubs]

Originally posted by ZexxCrine:

Nothing will ever EVER be more op than intercepters justicars and librarians. the techmarine is a solid support class that does his job very well and has a massive toolbox that you must prep before missions. The dreadnaught is fun to pilot and powerful in its own right, but I wouldn’t say it’s broken either.

I personally really enjoy the technophage missions once you have the dread and the starskiff is an extremely challenging mission with a crazy good reward.

People claim that the pacing gets destroyed by it, but when you stop and think about it, not much if anything really changes. The main point of contention is that technophage missions start popping up before you are even close to unlocking the dreadnaught. These missions are designed to be tackled with 4 knights and a dread. It’s possible to win with just 4 knights, but it requires very meta play or extremely turtling play to accomplish. As a result most if not all players avoid those missions entirely until they either have a dread or an extremely meta setup. That all sounds terrible, but in reality it doesn’t change very much when they start showing up. In base game 3 missions will pop and for the most part you will only be able to reach 1 or 2 of them at any given time. With the dlc 1 of the 3 missions will be technophage. Since most players ignore them, myself included, that means that 1 of the 3 missions you would have gone to is no longer an option, but you could only reach 1-2 missions anyway.

As far as when to access IIRC(it’s been a while) you gain 1 introductory dreadnaught mission before the craftworld mission. 1 mission after the craftworld where you actually obtain the dread. then like 2-3 missions where lunette is in your group. And that all culminates in probably the single hardest mission in the game that unlocks the starskiff which is an absolutely crazy mission that takes a very long time and will require you to bring your A team. Took me like 3 hours to beat it the first time, but I was overly meticulous I think. I personally recommend the dlc but do note that on the whole it will make the game harder in general. But you can always just start a campaign with it off if you really don’t want to deal with it.

Also, and I believe this is true but I haven’t done it myself, you can uninstall just the dlc. Start a campaign. Play up to the craftworld mission. Then install the dlc and it should add all the dlc into your current run as the dlc didn’t require a new playthrough to activate. That might curb the early game a bit considering even in base game the early game was the hardest part by far.

Someone told me the uninstall doesn't work after a save has dlc content. Otherwise, good take on everything written.

[ZexxCrine]

Originally posted by Bubs:

Someone told me the uninstall doesn't work after a save has dlc content. Otherwise, good take on everything written.

If that is the case and it’s based on saves, you could always go to the save location in appdata local low and move it somewhere else and then start a new campaign. Idk if that would work but it might be worth a shot if you are one of those people who would rather not deal with the technophage missions early.

[Machine Spirit]

I recently levelled up my techmarine to have three servitor slots and he finally seems viable to take on missions but he will never be as good as taking a grey knight, so he still isn't a solid pick for me.

The dread can be fun but the servitor requirement to repair him limits that. Repairing the dread is the last thing I would use servitors on. Ive said in another thread that the devs should change this, have the dread repair automatically over time so long as you have a fully healed techmarine in your roster. Still keep the servitor repair too but have that as an instant repair option. This one change would be a huge improvement to the DLC imo.

I think the new bloom assault missions are the worst thing in the game, they make the technophage missions without a dread seem reasonable.

[Bursacio]

DLC is fun go get it. Also makes the game more difficult which is more fun and strategies.

[Mecha Wings]

Yes, it adds more stuff. Fun stuff.

[ShartinYaeger]

Now that they've patched and fixed a lot of the core issues that Duty Eternal had (Dreadnought being buggy as hell, DLC enemies spawning outside Technophage missions without an option to turn them off etc), I can say Duty Eternal is worth it *on discount*.

The Dreadnought itself starts out fairly weak (its only marginally tougher than a basic Paladin), its weapons suck and it needs to be protected every mission to be useful. Once you get armour and weapon upgrades (pick up multi-melta ASAP, it makes it a lot more useful), it starts to be more of a wrecking ball. The big downsides are that it still can't be teleported, it cannot be buffed by any squad abilities except Tech-Marine, and there is no way to increase its attacks. It also starts to suffer in the late game especially on harder difficulties, because enemy damage starts to outpace armour stacking on it (this is why I don't bother with Paladins as well, they're too easily negated by the insane burst damage some late-game enemies do). On a side note, the best change they did was allow the Dreadnought on the final assault mission, as a static gun turret he's fantastic at mowing down incoming waves of Plague Marines.

The Tech-Marine is pure utility and support, he's not a damage dealer. You basically don't take him unless you're deploying the Dreadnought. The servitors range from good utility (plasma cannon knockback AOE, multi-melta support fire) to useless (heavy bolter Overwatch does nothing, CC servitors just die usually). Once I level the Tech-Marine to have extra servitors and all of his heal/increase armour/increase damage on Dreadnought abilities, I stop levelling him as a priority.

[John Hadley]

The techmarine can be a really good stun damage dealer when buffed with the stun biomancy to help out as a source of AP in multi-round battles. He gets a lot of free damage with melee first strike. His first strike and his servitor that can cause enraged both synergize really well with stun biomancy enabling him to get hits on enemies between turns when they don't cost any AP to prime those enemies for execution at the start of the next round. His first strike having knockback enables him to really waste the AP of melee enemies because they spend all their AP to run up to him only for him to get a free hit and whack them back. His flamethrower ability costs a lot of WP but it also does a lot of damage to groups of enemies without preventing him from having a normal melee attack like characters with ranged weapons like psilencers, psycannnons, or flamethrowers.

[John Hadley]

I like the techmarine and the dreadnaught but the DLC kinda makes everything tedious and less fun by trying to limit your choices and trying to compel you to do missions that are more difficult by making them cause extra virus growth. Either you will avoid those missions and you'll feel disgruntled about virus threat growing faster than normal with you not really getting any benefit from the additions of the DLC or you will do them and you'll feel disgruntled about not really having much choice to pick between missions anymore because you feel like you always need to do the tough mission plus whatever else you happen to be able to reach so you can't make choices based on what rewards you'd like to receive from missions anymore. You'll also feel disgruntled about the repair of the dreadnaught being linked to servitors which always feel somewhat short of supply in the game.

[ShartinYaeger]

Something to keep in mind is that with Duty Eternal enabled, the game assumes you have the Gladius frigate. So if you don't have it, try to progress the story enough to get the retrieval mission. It helps massively with those '3 in one corner, one way off' mission spawns on the campaign map.

The other main benefit to the Gladius is you can use it to level up less important squaddies by grinding out easy mission on auto-resolve with it. Late game it's handy for deleting a mission from the map with easy auto-wins from your levelled up roster.

[Mecha Wings]

Originally posted by Fun Police:

Something to keep in mind is that with Duty Eternal enabled, the game assumes you have the Gladius frigate. So if you don't have it, try to progress the story enough to get the retrieval mission. It helps massively with those '3 in one corner, one way off' mission spawns on the campaign map.

The other main benefit to the Gladius is you can use it to level up less important squaddies by grinding out easy mission on auto-resolve with it. Late game it's handy for deleting a mission from the map with easy auto-wins from your levelled up roster.

Have being playing the game since launch, it was always like that: that's why they added the Frigate, not the other way around.

[ShartinYaeger]

No they specifically added the frigate because the archeotech missions and Dreadnought missions add so many more points of interest, its too hard to hit them all and stay on top of the existing missions.

[Mecha Wings]

Originally posted by Gnarl:

So about how many missions out of every 5 or so can we use a Dreadnought? I don't mind it takes awhile to unlock, but once I get it, is it only like one out of every 5 missions I can run one? They're my favorite thing about 40K.

Thanks for responding in advance!

The way the game works a bunch of missions (3 usually or 4 near endgame) spawn in the map at the same time every random days and they expire after a while, you have to choose which you are able to reach and/or want to complete (usually 2 with a fully upgraded ship), and among them there’s always a Technophage mission after the Dreadnought questline starts (this also means that you’ll see this very difficult missions before actually having the Dreadnought. They are not impossible without it, but some people prefer to avoid them ‘till the Dreadnought becomes available, which is not a good idea since the corruption of the planets will spread faster).
You’ll have to want to play Technophage missions to use the Dreadnought, but sometimes the rewards of other missions will be better.
Also you can bring him in the final battle of the campaign since a patch earlier this year.

[ZexxCrine]

Originally posted by Gnarl:

So about how many missions out of every 5 or so can we use a Dreadnought? I don't mind it takes awhile to unlock, but once I get it, is it only like one out of every 5 missions I can run one? They're my favorite thing about 40K.

Thanks for responding in advance!

about 2 in 5 missions on average

[Kaldor Drai-stop]

I've just purchased the base game and duty eternal DLC and was wondering if i turn OFF the dlc and beat the base game, is it simply a matter of enabling the DLC and continue playing?

Do i lose all my progress from the base game or does it carry over?

Thanks heaps!