Which DLC to enable/disable?

[♫ MeoWHamsteR ♫]

Just bought the XCOM 2 collection edition, which DLC should I enable/ disable for my first playthrough?

[Greb]

Sometimes a good old fashioned vanilla with nothing (except maybe cosmetic pack DLC) can be a good way to find your feet. Bleh to that, I say.

Jump right in with WOTC on Easy / Normal. Uncheck "Integrated DLC" and then check "Alien Hunters and Shen's Last Gift" DLC (which is below those two) and if its your first run through WOTC keep the "Lost and the Abandoned" tutorial mission checked.

If you don't untick Integrated DLC you'll never see any of the unique story missions for the respective DLC, instead the game will just put them in without any warning, you'll stumble upon alien weapons, the alien rulers and be expected to build SPARK units without knowing you could / why.

So uh yeah. Keep it all on, untick Integrated DLC, then tick the two boxes below it, when starting a new game.

[♫ MeoWHamsteR ♫]

Thank you very much!

[4rrakis]

A small addition: The base game's tutorial (not Lost and Abandoned) includes a bit of story and some cutscenes, so you should enable it if you want to see everything.

[Mhblis]

Oh and just a heads up Alien Hunters can be a little tricky so don't fo it early in a campaign.

It takes a little prep and you will walk through them easily.

[Darkness Muta]

Originally posted by Greb:

Sometimes a good old fashioned vanilla with nothing (except maybe cosmetic pack DLC) can be a good way to find your feet. Bleh to that, I say.

Jump right in with WOTC on Easy / Normal. Uncheck "Integrated DLC" and then check "Alien Hunters and Shen's Last Gift" DLC (which is below those two) and if its your first run through WOTC keep the "Lost and the Abandoned" tutorial mission checked.

If you don't untick Integrated DLC you'll never see any of the unique story missions for the respective DLC, instead the game will just put them in without any warning, you'll stumble upon alien weapons, the alien rulers and be expected to build SPARK units without knowing you could / why.

So uh yeah. Keep it all on, untick Integrated DLC, then tick the two boxes below it, when starting a new game.

Thanks for this info as I have had the base game for a while but never played it and just recently bought the full collection on sale just to get all the DLCs cheap so this will be useful for me when I do finally start up my first playthrough. When I did play through the tutorial just to try out some settings I thought it was better to run it with the Integrated DLC checked since that is how it is by default.

[♫ MeoWHamsteR ♫]

Hey guys, so I've progressed a bit in the campaign and got to the reaper and skirmisher mission, but I am unable to finish it since at the end of escorting the Skirmisher guy, I get blocked by an invisible wall very close to the extraction, next to what seems like an explosive tank. I am unable to blow it up and thereforee cant finish the mission.

Please help!

[Rob'sEvilTwin]

I enable everything except Anarchy's Children - I personally don't like the aesthetic :P

"Untick Integrated DLC, then tick the two boxes below it, when starting a new game" is great advice, on your first playthrough. I tend to Integrate now, but I am on my 29th playthrough.

[Animeye]

Looks like in your other thread, you figured out the invisible wall issue.

A couple notes regarding the DLC stuff for your future playthroughs:

Doing the "Lost and Abandoned" option does the following:

• gives you the tutorial mission
  
• forces your first resistance faction to be the Skirmishers
  
• I think it forces the chosen to always have the same strengths and weaknesses (either that or I was always very unlucky).

So to keep future games feeling unique, I recommend disabling that option.

As for "Integrated DLC" versus the DLC missions, the change is essentially as mentioned before. Integrated DLC removes the unique missions, but makes their content available earlier on. This means you can get their goodies earlier, but also means their baddies can appear earlier. Doing the DLC missions means their content won't appear until after you do the mission for it. Note that, like facilities, those missions never expire, so you can put them off until you feel you are prepared for them.
Also, the unique mission for Shen's Last Gift gives you a free spark, whereas doing the integrated means you will have to build your first. Similarly, The unique mission for Alien Hunters gives you the hunter weapons for free, whereas doing integrated means you have to first research them and then build them.