How devastating is Grim Horizon?

[Wicked Clown Luv]

I intend to play with this on, C/I, I have no interest in any other difficulty settings. I'm just concerned that permanently having some of these dark events active removes too much choice from the player. I also intend to have double turn timer on, and maybe double avatar project length. Would these two options cushen the blow of getting ♥♥♥♥♥♥ on bad permanent dark events?

Heading into this as a new player from Xcom EW C/I, which was what I started with and stuck with in that game as well until I could beat it reliably lol.

[Fringehunter7719]

I haven't tried it on commander, but on legend it's really not that bad most of the time. By the time the dark events stack up the game is getting much easier.

The problem is that there are a few dark events which can be utterly crushing, and if they sneak through via coming at a bad time, being hidden when you can't afford the intel to reveal them or being combined with a surgical sit rep then that can be virtually campaign ending.

Due to the lesser number of dark events that stack up in commander than legend, the chance of that happening should be pretty low though.

[learnedhand]

Yes, grim horizon isn't so bad. The worst events are ones that affect the strategic layer, like having the black market shut down or double the scanning times. Many of those are not permanent unless you're using some mods (like me) that have bugs that make things persistent and not expire. If it the text actually sets a time duration it should expire even with grim horizon.

Most of the events add little buffs to the enemies and those are mostly harmless. The events around the Chosen are entirely harmless and I am not even sure they are working properly.

The only events that could sink your campaign by themselves would be the avatar project breakthroughs coming at a time when you have a short window (<7days) to reduce the clock and no viable options to do so.

However, you may want to suicide your campaign voluntarily if you get Lost world or Rural checkpoints early on in the campaign. Lost world adds lost swarms in any mission and quickly makes missions super tedious. Rural checkpoints reduces your supply drops by half for the next drop. If it expires, its not too bad, but again my game has truly permanent events so its a real pain in the ass.

[EleventyBangBang]

I did a Veteran run with it on. I was hoping it would make the campaign harder as time went on... Which I guess it did but it wasn't enough. The only one that really hurt me was Gone to Ground (no more black market for the rest of the game.) Elerium was a big bottleneck because of that.

[Tamiore]

Speaking about L/I here:

As Fringehunter7719 above said, it's really not that bad UNLESS you get really unlucky with RNG giving you something REALLY bad REALLY early with no way to counter.

It also depends HEAVILY on how willing you are to adapt.

Say, getting "Barrier" active pretty much prohibits you from ever successfully hacking or using mind-effecting psi. But you can still win the campaign if you learn to play without those.

Many other dark events are similar —сompletely devastating if you were relying of something too much, but very manageable once you learn that you can win without said something.

All-in-all, grims horizons REALLY improve the replayability and fun-factor if your are after new challenges outside of your comfort zone.

[Wicked Clown Luv]

So wait, are events that have time limits in their description like gone to ground actually permanent in grim horizon? Is this not known for certain?

[learnedhand]

Originally posted by Fresh:

So wait, are events that have time limits in their description like gone to ground actually permanent in grim horizon? Is this not known for certain?

I can't give you a definitive answer since I've had it both ways with grim horizon on. In some of my earlier campaigns, Gone to ground (black market shutting down) would only last for the limited duration and then a scan would pop up to have the black market again. But recently, I've had it and other time limited events last for most of the campaign. We're talking 6 months or more.

So I'd like to hear from others.

[Fringehunter7719]

Originally posted by learnedhand:

Yes, grim horizon isn't so bad. The worst events are ones that affect the strategic layer, like having the black market shut down or double the scanning times. Many of those are not permanent unless you're using some mods (like me) that have bugs that make things persistent and not expire. If it the text actually sets a time duration it should expire even with grim horizon.

That's not right. Every event I've seen with an expiration duration, including alien cypher and signal jamming, persists indefinitely with Grim Horizon. I got caught out by this advice after someone posted it before.

What actually happens is that when you permanently defeat a chosen in their base any active dark events launched specifically by that chosen will cease. I can't actually quantify what counts as a dark event launched by a specific chosen though.

The best ones to let through are ones with one time instant effects, like small and major avatar progress breakthroughs.

[learnedhand]

Originally posted by Fringehunter7719:

Originally posted by learnedhand:

Yes, grim horizon isn't so bad. The worst events are ones that affect the strategic layer, like having the black market shut down or double the scanning times. Many of those are not permanent unless you're using some mods (like me) that have bugs that make things persistent and not expire. If it the text actually sets a time duration it should expire even with grim horizon.

That's not right. Every event I've seen with an expiration duration, including alien cypher and signal jamming, persists indefinitely with Grim Horizon. I got caught out by this advice after someone posted it before.

What actually happens is that when you permanently defeat a chosen in their base any active dark events launched specifically by that chosen will cease.

The best ones to let through are ones with one time instant effects, like small and major avatar progress breakthroughs.

Then my memory is all screwed up, a distinct possibility.

[Tamiore]

Also, "Gone to Ground" (no more black market) may be somewhat special case, as in terms of game-mechanic it's a ONE TIME effect.
I would not be too surprised if what happens is that there is a very slim chance "second" black market is generated (as a mission reward after the first one is gone), thus circumventing this dark event.