finished game on hard - tips and observations

[VladK02]

1. Act 4 and 5 are buggy. Hell of an observation :)
2. Map warp travel points - what you unlock in act 3, thats the entire game, plus/minus a few extra systems. So, dont be like me and scrimp on spending warp points. I finished game with extra 30 warp points n the bank. So many warp jump encoucnters I could have avoided :) Basically, dont be afraid to reduce every warp route you unlock to yellow, and the routes between your planets and footfall - to green - or even just a direct warp jump between footfall and your colonies. You have more then enough warp points.
3. Profit factor and loots. Most expensive stuff costs 160 profit factor - thats the holy heavy bolter and human-sized power armor. Most other stuff costs 100 profit factor. The power armor you get for free - 1 from argentas companion quest, 1 from loot drop in the necron tomb. The holy heavy bolter you also get for free in the necron tomb. So, you dont need to work your butt off to get profit factor to above 110 or so. Just, dont worry about it. Use profit factor to respec, to hire mercenaries. I finished game with 119 profit factor, and my colonies were not maxed out. So, dont worry about profit factor too much, in act 4, you will be able to max out whatever you want.
4. factions. You can only max out ONE faction per playthrough, and you do that by colony buildings. (plus navy - you can max one faction, plus most of navy tree, i THINK). So, plan ahead, which faction you want. Bolter and power armor you get for free, so this rules out drussians. You get top end heavy, medium and light armors and weapons though regular playthrough, so whatever gun or armor you see in faction rewards, drops are better. There are only a few pieces worth looking out for - the blooddrinker staff, +2 psy rating, i believe thats a faction reward not a drop. And one of the factions has +1 psy rating headgear piece as last rank reward. If you want to be a mage, that is.
5. magic damage in the end-game is garbage. You are fighting necrons, which have imunity to mental damage. If you have mages, build them to buff, not to damage.
6. Argenta....yeah, her and the holy heavy bolter.....This is your one-man-win-team right here.
7. officers. Contrary to popular belief, you dont need 4 officers. You need 1, realistically. Stack resolve/willpower abilities and items, so your extra turns come from heroic acts and the bring it down ability is more of a help. Ring of inqusition, +30 resolve right away...item is broken, imho. Needs a heavy nerf. Pop the ring pre-combat, with right argenta and officer build, you get heroic turn start ability activated, right off the bat, before combat even begins; and then the chain kills begin.
8. I could not get pascal to work no matter what i tried. So i relegated him to my skill-check boy. Stack his INT, stack his skills, he will pass you half the skill checks in the game, and thats what he does. Not combat.
9. Assasins have ability, if your perception bonus is 10+, you ignore deflection and armor. Pro tip - build around this ability.
10. Yriel as sniper is flavor, but realistically, best guns are human, so you want a human sniper.
11. Ulfar is trash. You would think a space marine would be a good dps or tank, but he isnt. His stats are marginally better then a baseline human, but his skills are hot trash. Also, game doesnt have good astartes equipment. You can give him heavy bolter, but argenta is MILES better at it.
12. Psyker and navigator damage falls off starting mid-game. Build them as buffers from the get-go. Late game cassia is only useful for her willpower/toughness buff. She buffs your actual buffer with willpower, and your actual buffer then buffs argenta with all sorts of game-breaking buffs.
13. Space combat. probably the trickiest bit of the game. You want to hold off fighting pirates right away, buff space faction a bit first, get some better gun pieces. Dont forget, you have to MANUALLY move space loot to cargo hold; you find some loot here and there in the early game, so those first few pirate fights, you shouyld not be doing them naked, you should already have 1-2 levels with the navy. You just have to move loot to cargo, and then trade with navy before the first pirate fight. But you should hold off even more, and build on your colony a navy faction building, this gives you a free navy corvette as an NPC for every fight, disposable, and 5000 rep for that early shield gen and the gun, to get you rolling. makes it easier, not having to save-scum. Your forge world, you get to choose heretical path for it, it rewards you with space macro cannons...It looks good on paper, but later on you get better guns, and damage from macro cannons is not primary dps anyways, and herertical forge world is not very good long-term so....think twice.
14. melee is useless. dont bother. Yeah you can swing for 50-100 damage. ONCE (or twice). great. meanwhile, that bolter chick over there cleared the entire map.

overall, game is unbalanced i think. Final boss fight was over in 3 turns for me. Argenta got fired up into the stratosphere, started critting final boss for 500 per shot. Thats with him having 50 deflection by the way. You all know amount of shots she can put out; boss having 15k hp - Ctan just melted away...

Operatives. Surprisingly good. You grow to love them. They strip armor, dodge and i think deflection off the target. You need this for bosses. pascal is good at it.

Grand strategist. Meh. You only get him for one reason - rear area, double bonus + 50% ranged damage, and attack area, double bonus +50% damage taken. This is all you need. park argenta in one zoen, paint the boss in another zone, and let the good sororitas sister know that heretics require her attention.

[addictedtotanks]

I wish I had known no.2 wehn I started. I didn't skimp at all and would use the points a lot, to create short cuts between clusters. Now I wish I had saved them So I could just create huge custom routes between my own colonies lmao

[Hekk]

There is a staff that makes necrons take mental damage.
Other types of psykers deal warp/energy damage.

If built well there is no damage fall-off, if anything, psykers start doing damage late game. Sanctic stacking tactical insight can do thousands of damage every turn.

[VladK02]

There is also a random cassia event - if you jump orange/red warp routes, you can get cassia event, and +2 to warp points. I had that happen twice in my game.

So technically, if you jump long enough, you will get enough warp points to paint the whiole map green.

[twinsenvr4]

Pretty good thoughts...

Although have to disagree HEAVILY on Cassia, please don't sleep on her. She is godly up there with Argenta. If you follow Werglia's (Youtuber) build, you'll be able to clear groups in her first turn. And I'm playing on Daring. And by groups, I mean 6+ mobs that have 500+ hp. She has pull/push navigator skills that bunch them together and then you can debuff toughness by like 50% to finish them off. Chapter 4 boss fight, the one debuff on the boss took his health from I think 7500 to 5000 just from the debuff, lol. Do NOT sleep on her. And because of all the kills, she makes it quick to build momentum everytime her turn comes up. And the fact that you make her a Grand Strategist helps with others damage as well.

And melee isn't totally useless, gotta have something else to put in front of Cassia and Argenta, lol. But my Assassin Psyker can do about 500-1000 per turn with just melee attacks once the Lethality is built up. But in the Chapter 4 boss fight, I ended up using the Siphone Life staff and hit the boss for 1500 TWICE in the same turn and ended up killing it, lol.

[Red Star, Blood Moon]

Originally posted by Hekk:

There is a staff that makes necrons take mental damage.
Other types of psykers deal warp/energy damage.

If built well there is no damage fall-off, if anything, psykers start doing damage late game. Sanctic stacking tactical insight can do thousands of damage every turn.

Err this is
not clarifying things.

[moda]

I think the rebuild of characters is part of gameplay. On start game you build strong melee party, at the end of game - rebuild to shooter party. Maybe change arhetype.

[Revan619]

Rethink your whole opinion on psykers. https://youtu.be/g7-xs42KtVg?si=DEeu0PIlLo5BxIIc you can literally one turn every necron encounter even on unfair

Your opinion on officers, navigators and ulfar is also a skill issue. They are all insanely OP when built right.

Pasqal makes the party immune to damage and can one turn assassinate people.

Some of the best snipers are also not human.

Melee can also do up to 1000 damage per swing and have unlimited attacks a round when built right.

Grand strategist also allows you one turn every encounter when built right to build momentum and give allies self buffs for free.

I think if you played again on unfair you would have to learn the deeper mechanics as burst fire builds don't do as much without heavy support on unfair from pasqal, cassia and Jae

[Ferrsai]

Originally posted by Revan619:

Rethink your whole opinion on psykers. https://youtu.be/g7-xs42KtVg?si=DEeu0PIlLo5BxIIc you can literally one turn every necron encounter even on unfair

Your opinion on officers, navigators and ulfar is also a skill issue. They are all insanely OP when built right.

Pasqal makes the party immune to damage and can one turn assassinate people.

Some of the best snipers are also not human.

Melee can also do up to 1000 damage per swing and have unlimited attacks a round when built right.

Grand strategist also allows you one turn every encounter when built right to build momentum and give allies self buffs for free.

I think if you played again on unfair you would have to learn the deeper mechanics as burst fire builds don't do as much without heavy support on unfair from pasqal, cassia and Jae

Most of that sounds like the system is terribly designed, which jives with my initial impression and experience so far. Leveraging the game's mechanics should definitely be encouraged, but trivializing encounters with certain combinations is laughable bad design.