To those saying the difficulty balance is whack and way too hard and extreme, i can't say i agree.

[PotatoLord]

I've seen many posts complaining about the difficulty. I have finished and reviewed the game when the game first came out before even the balance patch and found it way too easy. Now recently i replayed it after noticing it have a dlc and free content update patches. Gave it a try again since i saw comment saying it became difficult again.

Can't say i ever find the difficulty "hard" after beating the game back on legendary. Just sometimes annoying (due to bugs or UI problem)
But i would like to share some tips to those finding the game hard via my playstyle and tactics, hopefully it will make people appreciate the game more and maybe help them in their run.

0: Position and line of sight: I don't have hard number on the line of sight range and i usually use my gut feeling but the general tip is that usually, when you spawn in a map, there will be a enemy pod close to you, and if you use all 15 move point of your knight, you will encounter them. Use one knight, and only 1-2 full AP point of movement first to scout ahead, if the game notifiy you there are pod nearby, usually it means if you go any further, the enemy will see you and will trigger them. (Bug not withstanding, so you use group with the rest of the knights first then move ahead to prevent triggering the pod and 1-2 of you knight being too far away to be of any use.

1: Play aggressive and use melee often : Remember you are using gray knights, melee is your most powerful tool in the asernal. Not only does it gap close you and the enemy, melee crits give you the option of precision targeting that range attack doesn't have unless its via skill or special weapons. They are your best friend and with maybe some luck and math. You can trigger and execute to further gain ap to further play aggressive. Overwatch in this game is very weak compared to xcom, don't rely on it because i think the ai also will try to navigate around it, and the range is short and the damage is fixed, ( you can't crit in overwatch).

2: Best Defence is the best offence: If all the enemies are dead, your knight won't take damage. Never give your enemy any turn more than necessary. In fact, aim to clear the entire enemy pod in one go so that the enemy can never act to damage you. Because this game have limited enemy UI element that matters: how far can enemy move, what is their range in visual form. You can't mouse over an enemy to see how far they can move and how many ap does it take up, you can't reliably foresee what the enemy will do, unless its against pox-walkers. Therefore sometimes, you put your knight behind full cover, but the enemy will have enough ap to flank your full cover knight and get a shot in. So in order to prevent that situation, either kill all of them or put them in a bad situation (e.g knock them out of cover or set-them on fire or directly overwatch over them) by the end turn.

4: Turns and buff: The game doesn't really tell you this but, once you clear all the "Triggered" enemy, you reset your ap and skills and reload your weapons. The "Turn" only officially end when it goes to the enemy and the warp meter starts filling up. But it is still the same turn, meaning your buff which last only 1-2 turn, still stays on. This is especially potent with the apoth "warp-speed" buff and the strategem that give all your knights 50% crit (sad they nerfed it). Because if you kill all your enemy, move forward and trigger another pod, it is still the same turn, your apoth reset his skill so he can buff again, and the original buffed knight still have his buff. This can lead to a giant snowball of turn one spawn in map, buff one knight, encounter enemy, reset your AP, buff again, kill all enemy, reset, buff again, move to trigger another enemy pod, reset ap and skills again. Buff and kill all enemy and on and on and you get the idea.

Lastly: So far the tip i gave you are all combat based, how about the general campaign? Servitors and travel speed. Focus on your ship reactor, and speed. Because why do only 1 mission when you can do 2 or maybe rarely luckily do all 3 mission and reap all the rewards. Focus on servitors missions first at the start of campaign so that you can improve your reactor so that you can improve your travel speed, so that you can use that speed to do more mission per bloom spawn (hopefully always aim for 2 missions per spawn). So you can extract more seed for research that matters. You don't have to get all research, and frankly, more than half the strategem are useless imo. You only ever need 2-3, the rest is a bonus. Focus on the campaign, trigger the main story plot point so you have more options given to you.

Bonus tip: Gate of infinity was right fully nerfed because it was that powerful, but it is still extremely potent. 50% of crit is still 50% of crit. Research these 2 and the rest can come later after your story research. Once you have your librarian, infinite gates of infinity, abuse it. In this type of game, AP gain and Movement speed is king, try to abuse them.

If you have any more tips to give, feel free to come and discuss or if you disagree with me, feel free to come post how wrong i am and how bad this game is and bla bla bla

[kongol36]

not sure you have it at highest difficulty reading what you posted or your blind...

[PotatoLord]

Originally posted by kongol36:

not sure you have it at highest difficulty reading what you posted or your blind...

You can check my achievement history and see for yourself.

[Mecha Wings]

Originally posted by PotatoLord:

Originally posted by kongol36:

not sure you have it at highest difficulty reading what you posted or your blind...

You can check my achievement history and see for yourself.

We actually can't 'cause you have it privated or something, but I have achieved 100% recently and your experience seems to have been exactly like mine.

[PotatoLord]

Originally posted by Mecha Wings:

Originally posted by PotatoLord:

You can check my achievement history and see for yourself.

We actually can't 'cause you have it privated or something, but I have achieved 100% recently and your experience seems to have been exactly like mine.

Okay, i checked my profile and didn't realise my game info was set to friends only, i've changed it so you can check now i think. I don't think i will 100% this because i don't know what the dlc achievements are and the remaining achievement required you to lose knights or get them to critical condition 5 time and i just can't bring myself to do it.

[Mecha Wings]

Originally posted by PotatoLord:

Okay, i checked my profile and didn't realise my game info was set to friends only, i've changed it so you can check now i think. I don't think i will 100% this because i don't know what the dlc achievements are

You need to kill 2 more enemies with the Dreadnought, 32 more enemies with the Techmarine's Combat Servitors, 10 enemies with Lunete, win 5 more Frigate Deployments, win a mission with a squad of only Techmarines and when there's that event in which one of your Archeotech excavation site gets corrupted, you need to choose the option to destroy the site. I'm pretty sure you can just use save-reload with most of these, the last one requires a new campaign so wait for the next DLC i guess.
(I compared your achievements with mine and it showed me the hidden ones)

[JPLRocket]

Largely agreed. I've written several guides on the game (DM_Post_Demons on reddit) and have finished the game on legendary/grandmaster. In addition to the fact that Librarian mass teleporting is saving a lot of movement AP and helps keep your buffs up, it also resolves the big QOL complaint players have--that they have to watch each knight move. Buff the librarian with iron arm and warp speed (in that order!) and activate chaplain litany of focus on first turn, then march him at the nearest pod and deliberately trigger it. With warp speed biomancy it almost always will be activated that same turn, so you can get right into the action.

I've found that with a good stun team it's frequently possible to finish an entire mission in 1-2 'enemy' turns, so with warpscorn I often experience zero warp surges.

I will note- upgrading servitor production supersedes even engine speed. It's great to hit two missions, but once you've got servitor production up, the ability to prioritize missions that give the gear and knights you care about (halberd lv2, hammer lv2, falchion/sword lv2/3, bolter lv2, passive wargear lv2/3, crozius arcanum lv3, stun grenade, power armor lv2/3, chaplain any level) is worth even more since you can ignore the base mission reward entirely.

My upgrade line after initial repairs is generally servitors, engine, prognosticar 1, reactor, servitors, engine, prognosticar 2-3, reactor, engine, prognosticar 4-5, guns 1-3. Everything else is second to these; if I have a gap and can squeeze the infirmary upgrade before hitting the craftworld I'll do it since I usually have 2-3 guys get wounded at the end of the fight there, but it's not a high enough priority to exceed the other stuff.

Probably the biggest piece of advice I can give to new players for QOL is rush the craftworld. You can get a guaranteed lv1 librarian after it, so the lower level your team is, the easier he is to level up and get his spammable gate of infinity, and the fewer missions you have to run with no spammable gate of infinity. Once you have a lv3-4 librarian, you can just pop each enemy group and have the librarian mass teleport everyone repeatedly; by mid levels the chaplain can do this for 3 wp (his auto, chaplain invocation of focus) and you can top him up with the willpower 1 strategem as needed.

Players frequently view the justicar 'honor the chapter' ability as "OP" which I think drives a lot of the player belief that the game is too hard. HtC costs 1AP+3WP to give 3AP+1WP, so it net yields 2AP for 2WP for the team. Rather than viewing it as OP, it should be viewed as a standard to match with autos and abilities. For example, Litany of Hate nets 2AP for 1WP; invocation of focus nets 3 WP for 1AP. Chaplains can enter combat with IoF up, then switch to LoH after everyone uses their auto from IoF. In doing so, they effectively create 2WP and 1AP for free (which in turn can be used to generate more).

Mass teleport trades 5WP for ~8AP (plus saving time and enabling complete use of pre-battle AP on buffing activities). Fully upgraded Apothecary Iron Arm biomancy (triggering on self and using 0AP) at worst will enable 1 execution, which means it costs 3WP to net 4AP. Frequently it's far better than this, being worth a further 3WP and 1AP if it triggers on the apothecary.

The WP:AP math is what players need to be doing to identify what skills are actually 'worth it' and which ones are not (most damage abilities are not worth it, except force strike, psybolt, and flames of purity)

[PotatoLord]

Originally posted by Mecha Wings:

Originally posted by PotatoLord:

Okay, i checked my profile and didn't realise my game info was set to friends only, i've changed it so you can check now i think. I don't think i will 100% this because i don't know what the dlc achievements are

You need to kill 2 more enemies with the Dreadnought, 32 more enemies with the Techmarine's Combat Servitors, 10 enemies with Lunete, win 5 more Frigate Deployments, win a mission with a squad of only Techmarines and when there's that event in which one of your Archeotech excavation site gets corrupted, you need to choose the option to destroy the site. I'm pretty sure you can just use save-reload with most of these, the last one requires a new campaign so wait for the next DLC i guess.
(I compared your achievements with mine and it showed me the hidden ones)

Thanks for the heads up, i'm not sure i will revisit this game again so fast for now, maybe wait for a new dlc or content patch then i'll try again.

As for the other tips, i agree too. There are many ways to make your run smoother and unfortunately this game have the "cheese" way or the harder way. And i hope the dev will see to buff the other abilities to make them also viable so that players who play defensively can enjoy the game more. This game if played like xcom with slow and taking cover and taking pot shots is a sure fire way to take damage and lose knights.