Day limit?

[explosion]

Is there a limit to how many days you have to finish the game or is it just for flavor/are there points where a temporary limit is introduced? I just wanna make sure I'm not screwing myself by wasting time

[Depaskala]

There's a steam achievement for finishing under 35 days, for those who feel a bit speedrunny.

[Ninth Hour]

There's no time limit- just whether or not you want to get the Full Steam Ahead achievement (finish the story by day 35).

Personally, by playing "naturally", without intentional grinding, I was able to finish every mission by Day 33. This was on Experienced difficulty. I replayed a number of solo missions in the first few days, when I had only 4 crew members, as after taking on the 3-member missions, there weren't any suitable ones left for the remaining person. This is what I meant when I said that the grinding wasn't intentional- I wasn't repeating missions just to get extra XP and loot but so that the crew member would not be idle that day. However, progress was slowed down as a result.

If I had wanted to be more efficient in the early game, I suppose that I could have scouted more of the world map to find new missions or bars (to open up more crew member slots) but this was a risky proposition, as sub combat wears you down quickly, early on (before you have torpedoes and can submerge) and access to bars in other regions is often gated anyway, by the story. Also, you may not have the gallons to hire another crew member even if you gain extra slots. Nor might you be well equipped to take on even solo missions in another region.

[11clock]

How do you beat the game by day 35, anyways? You only ever have enough crew members to do two missions per day (and sometimes only one per day, especially early on). I am approaching day 40 and just beat the second major boss. The max crew members by this time is 7, with most missions requiring 3 or 4 crew members.

The only thing I can think of is skipping missions, but then it gets much harder to stay on the difficulty curve.

[letir]

1. Search the map every day, collect all loot on water and kill as much enemies as possible to get more.
2. Stay ahead of difficulty curve by going around the world first and grabbing every piece of free stuff, open up new bars to get access to more upgrades.
3. Buy more crewmembers as fast as possible and be efficient with them.
4. Don't waste time for buying common stuff, hunt for unique powerful weapons/items first, look at bounties as well.
5. Don't grind missions, gather your core team with necessary skills.

[Ninth Hour]

Originally posted by 11clock:

How do you beat the game by day 35, anyways? You only ever have enough crew members to do two missions per day (and sometimes only one per day, especially early on)

As long as it is not gated by the story, you can go exploring for the later bars, which will increase your crew member slots, either on arrival or by way of an extra slot becoming purchasable on the sub. In fact, you need to do this proactively if you want to meet the 35-day goal.

I completed the game after 130 hours, so I don't recall all the particulars but I do know that, at a certain point, your sub will be strong enough to explore areas further than the story requires and to then cycle through all the battles on the maps you have uncovered so far. This process allows you gather gallons, shards, bounty points etc. So money becomes less of a problem eventually and you can purchase all or most of the sub upgrades available at a given point in time (including extra crew slots and extra crew members).

Depending on your level of patience, gathering renewable loot and fighting respawning enemy ships may get tedious, but it is an effective way to advance your economy and, by extension, your effectiveness on missions.

Originally posted by 11clock:

I am approaching day 40 and just beat the second major boss. The max crew members by this time is 7, with most missions requiring 3 or 4 crew members.

I'm fairly sure that you can get 8 crew members by day 20-something (at the latest) and 9 members well before day 30. I got my final member by day 29. See above for the value of exploring the map ahead of story events.

With these numbers, 3 missions per day becomes the norm (with the occasional opportunity for a 4th). You just need to explore the entire region, before committing to any mission, then determine what combination of missions you can run to efficiently use all your crew members in a day. Even in later maps, there are a number of missions that require just 2 or 3 crew members (the 2-crew missions dry up by Atomic City but there are still a few 3-member ones and- at that point- you should have a full complement of 10).

I finished all missions by day 33 of my first (and so far only) playthrough and could probably have done so by day 32 if I was a bit more efficient with mission selection in the final area of the game. Skipping non-story missions isn't necessary.

That being said, I will agree that progress is very slow in the beginning part of the game.