Anyone implemented their own ironman mode through shear willpower?

[CromNsteel]

Just wondering. Also like to share my experience with ironman mode in XCOM. It was the most satisfying game completion i have ever felt. You must try it.

I was on final mission, whole squad killed except my 1 last soldier who was the only one gifted with ability to finish the game as i recall. Only enough points for 1 last shot at 70% chance to hit, miss and its all over! I hit, i won, i fist pumped and fist pumped hard, bloody lovin it! The whole game was really intense, really enjoyable because you feel the 'realness' of it, the losses hit hard and are a part of the challenge, tactics change considerably.

Now my experience with Wasteland 2: I feel like the biggest cheater EVER when playing this game. So many saves and loads. Basically i can control time so even on hard dificulty im just a god, unbeatable, unstopable, and sadly becoming unenjoyable. So ive decided to wait for the directors cut and attempt my own ironman mode through willpower alone, has anyone achieved this yet? Is it even possible to have such an impenetrable willpower? This i shall find out...

Food for thought:
The only problem with a built in ironman mode is the dreaded misclick, if your finger twitches and you make an unintentional move by mistake, your screwed. But then again arnt mistakes a very real part of combat? so does this not add another dimension of reality to the experience?

[Beef Hammer]

I've tried it, it's ALOT of fun, but it will get VERY frustrating if you think you're even going to get close to passing checks for 50% of the game. LOTS of exploding traps, jammed doors, alarms etc. But it really feels like the way you SHOULD play, you know, hard with real consequences.

[dnrob7]

Maybe but not on the hardest difficulty..
Gotta say I don't like how the diffficulty setting work in this game. All it does is nerf all your weapons and boost the enemy's.
It doesn't even change the damage stats for your weapons or anything. It simply does not do what it says it will.
You do half of the stated damage for any weapon. I don't like that. No way would I try iron man.

[Kalsu]

Same as dnrob7 , unless they change the lazy way for difficulty setting , i aint gonna try an ironman run. Game industry need to change those lazy settings for difficulty.

[henrywiddas]

yes i have although after my 11th run i decided to give myself 10 lives in total as a few situations where if you don't know what coming up in advance it can mean certain death...

i thoroughly recommend it as a way to play the game though, pure ironman with no extra lives has given me some of my most memorable moments ever in gaming

[CromNsteel]

yep i reckon a few lives will be needed so semi-ironman mode really. i havnt finished the game so itll be pretty hard on ranger difficulty with zero lives! im remembering how many loads it took me to beat that last guy in Ag centre, he was bad!

[khemeher]

If you have a bunch of time to invest in restarts, then this is probably a fun metagame. My experience with the game thus far is that any mistake at all can lead to disaster if it happens at the wrong time. I'm a little pressed for time, so I'll be taking advantage of the ability to save & control time. :)

[henrywiddas]

it took me nearly 200 hours to get to california with ironman/supreme jerk so you need time but it's fun having to live with consequences and an added bonus is you get to spend hours creating new parties and tweeking stats. I ended up resorting to min/maxing though to try and cope and because i'd read california had a huge difficulty spike and that without min/maxing on Supreme Jerk you dead...

[Slim]

I have been trying this for the last couple of month. I have so far had to restart about 5 times and can consistently make it to Titan Canyon. Here are a few tips and thoughts:

1) At the start of the game, if you trade in all secondary weapon, pain pills, junk that are found in dig site, you can purchase a Famas right away. Put that on Deth and she can easily carry the group through AG or HP. After the first radio tower is up, head back to Citadel and get a M16 and a Bulldog, the 3 weapons will carry the group through initial parts of prison and RNC pretty easily.
2) If you want to get the recruit out of Darwin village, I found I needed one person at Chr 6 (great for leadership btw), rest at Chr 1, then recruit Vulture's cry, Ralphy and Takayuki. This will put your Chr at 20 (6+1+1+1+4+3+4). Use Kiss Ass at the first encounter at radio tower and have vulture's cry tame a doggie for 21. The last point can come from a spiked collar trinket or level 10 attribute point. To get around the turrets, I had made one of my original 4s with 5 Awareness and 5 speed to get be able to hack the first turret in turn 1 and hide along the wall.
3) Leadership is very important in the beginning. One of my runs ended when vulture's cry broke the ambush line I setup for a pack of Honey Badges rushed forward twice only to get eaten alive.
4) Weaponsmithing becomes important midway through Arizona, have to make sure all weapons are Jam free because do enough battles, and you will have one encounter where the primary weapon on my 4-5 guys jammed and you are facing some hard hitters.
5) The randomness of the game is the hardest part to get through. Some times you get lucky with the chests and get good weapons early on, sometimes you get unlucky with critical failures and don't get much loot, recruits going rogue, weapons jamming, random crits. Take out as much random as possible with leadership, weapon mods, max intel person to level up lock pick, safecracking, computer science, know how each encounter and position your group on high ground, don't take unnecessary hits etc.

I am currently on my 6th run after last run failed when a Monk explosion one shotted my primary healer... I will update this later.

[henrywiddas]

keep updates coming, interesting reading! my favourite death was on about my fifth run when i instant killed about 3 of my party walking through a field of land mines

second favourite was being completely ripped apart by that raider bloke who turns up when you try and rescue the prostitute at the rail camp place

good luck when you get to california!

[Slim]

Run #6 ended when a 91% hack of a turret in Darwin Village failed and that turret turned around and OTS my hacker/lockpicker.

Run #7 is going strong. A few notable tips:

1) Darwin village turret can one shot kill, so instead of trying it at level 11 with 91% success rate, I tried it at level 12 with 100% success rate. My hacker had 10 Int, 5 speed and 5 awareness and I had access to a PDA (shrine next to Darwin village) which increase CS at the cost of 1 Coordination. But I ended up not able to use the PDA because my coordination was only at 2 and using the PDA will decrease my AP to only 8. You will need minimum of 9 AP, preferably 10. With 9AP, you can walk-in, head toward the turret straight ahead, engage and hack. With 5 speed and awareness, your turn will come up before the 2nd turret has a turn, get behind a wall and use a turn to save up AP for the next hack, rinse and repeat. Make sure rest of the party is outside the door or the doggie might get killed to mess up the 22 Char needed for recruit.

2) For Titan valley, I lost the monk escort early to honey badgers. I normally can position my party in a way to block him from rushing forward. Didn't work this time so he died. I decided to reform my group with non-judgemental followers and position myself to kill the Monk suicide guy first for each group. I usually kill pretty much everything in TV because I don't like either the monks or DBM. Also, killing everything is very profitable and has minimal impact on the rest of the game. It's easy to find high ground to make most of the large fights trivial (The ramp up the hill is good for group at the gate, guard tower outside the gate is great for group inside the gate, the guard tower in the middle of titan temple is good for DBM.

3) Made it to LA, here you will need to up ourdoorsman to 5 or 6 right away I think. I got caught with a 75% escape chance group with CoC pulse rifler who one shotted one of my recruits. Luckily it was scotomo who is not an essential part of the team. Sad to leave him behind, but the game goes on.

[henrywiddas]

commiserations on Scotchmo, but part of the fun or ironman is having deaths like that, makes it more memorable...

[Slim]

Run #7 update:

Almost wiped on Robinson fight when I failed to remember/notice a Rocketeer who fired her rocket at us. Lost Pistol Pete instantly and had to triage the rest of the group. Used a bunch of explosives to kill most of the enemies while spending saved up points to level up surgery on a couple of guys who were left standing. Slowly rezzed and healed the party under sharpshooter fire and finished the fight limping on one leg.

Got to Hollywood, went through half of the quests. Then I stupidly tried to disarm the chest in Rambeau's shop with 91% success rate. Of course, critical failure tripped the alarm, aggroed the room. The 3 guys in the room were not hard to kill, but of course now the whole town is after us. Have to make a decision here whether to keep going and wipe out the whole town or start over. I am fairly confident that I have the firepower to wipe out Hollywood and the Bastion, but I don't like to use violence on a faction I can agree with when there is a peaceful solution...

I think I will restart this weekend. Give me a week to vent off the frustration.

[henrywiddas]

ouch! i've never even got to hollywood, i need to restart a game too at some point, apparently story-wise california really takes it up a notch but i loved arizona too tbh

getting sidetracked by stellaris at the minute though...too many games, too little time...