Legend/Ironman - Finally Complete! (Some Tips As Well)

[Hoot]

Well, that was a massive undertaking! Just completed my first (and likely only) L/I run and I just wanted to share my victory here. It's not exactly a rare thing but I think it's enough of an achievement to celebrate! I used no mods and was playing with the DLC integration on. Lost and Abandoned mission disabled. Templar Ally start.

My XCOM campaign history, by number, went like this :-

(COMPLETE) 1 - Vanilla XCOM2 - Veteran
(COMPLETE) 2 - Vanilla XCOM2 - Commander
(COMPLETE) 3 - XCOM2 WotC - Commander

(FAIL) 4 - XCOM2 WotC - Commander/Ironman
(FAIL) 5 - XCOM2 WotC - Commander/Ironman

(COMPLETE) 6 - XCOM2 WotC - Commander/Ironman

(RESTARTED on GATECRASHER) 7 to 50 - XCOM2 WotC - Legend/Ironman
(FAIL at MAG) 51 to 55 - XCOM2 WotC - Legend/Ironman

(COMPLETE) 56 - XCOM2 WotC Legend/Ironman

The reason I typed that out is because of the desperation I felt doing all those restarts and I just wanted to let people know that if you persevere and have patience (a lot of those restarts were because I screwed up trying to rush things) you can make it fairly handily to the endgame even on L/I.

As far as builds go I went RR > GTS > Infirmary > Proving Ground (for Bluescreens) and my research path early game went Modular Weapons, Alien Biotech, Hybrid Materials, Mag Weapons, Gauss Weapons, Plated Armor.

Luckily I got Inspired Mag Weapons and had them up at fairly early but I had to stay on basic armor for a long time because I had to EVAC out of 2 Supply Raid missions in a row and I had zero Alien Alloys for an amazing length of time. I'd met Andromedon enemies on my missions before I got Plated Armor. Thankfully after I struggled through that part the rest of the upgrades came fairly fast.

I started with a Templar who had a pretty awesome skill set (Reaper, Bladestorm, Fortress, Quickdraw and Sustain). It helped that Reaper was his Corporal skill, it meant that I could clear up at least one pod with him + 1 grenade in the early game. My starting continent bonus was Tactical Analysis (the one where the enemies lose one action if you pop the pod on your turn) and my days, this was so, so incredibly useful.

I played incredibly safely and the overall campaign probably took me way longer than it should have. A certain part of beating the game on L/I revolves around your starting RNG, i.e. what skills your starting faction soldier has, your continent bonus, do you get any inspired research and what are your resistance orders like? The only thing that sucked for me was my orders, nothing remotely useful until I'd already unlocked Power Armor (was still on Mag weapons at that point).

Anyway, there are some general tips I formulated as I was playing :-

• Don't be afraid to EVAC out of early missions if it's going pear shaped or you know you can't win without heavy losses. Later on soldiers become somewhat expendable but early on you need them to get as much experience as possible. I probably could have afforded to fail double amount of missions that I did and I would still have been OK.
  
• Get Bluescreen rounds ASAP. MECs and Codices are probably the most significant mid-game threat you face and having this item makes them a lot easier to deal with.
  
• Get a Mimic Beacon ASAP. It really is like having a "Oh no!" button. Saving a couple of shots on your team can be decisive.
  
• Rush Mag Weapons over Armor. The idea behind having more damage is that the enemies should be dead sooner, limiting how many turns they are around to take shots at you. With proper positioning and careful play you shouldn't be getting hit much anyway.
  
• Don't lose your cool when one of your dudes gets taken out by a CRIT even though he's behind full cover and has aid protocol on him. I restarted so many times, and the times I made it to Mag Weapons then restarted I probably could have kept playing, but I lost my temper after losing guys to what I labelled bullcrap. I still lost a couple of guys in my completed run, one to just such a thing, so I immediately turned the game off and came back to it when I wasn't raging.
  
  Other than that it's just standard advice. Don't rush into the black. Try not to pop more than one pod at a time. Realise that retreat (even just falling back further into the map and breaking LoS) is an option on non-timed missions and above all just have fun. Don't rage. Chance is an element of the game but eventually you come to see that you can actually pull a campaign through in spite of all but the most egregious ♥♥♥♥-ups.
  
  Anyway, I'm XCOM'ed out. Peace.
  
  https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1587653842
  

[Messsucher]

Good reading, thanks for that, and congrats for your achievement. S!

I agreed on lot of things but I have some questions.

1. Why build RR before GTS? I think the only reason could be that if it happen you don't get soldier to sergeant before finishing GTS, then GTS is too early. I think it is not a biggie to get RR late when compared to get GTS early and that precious 5th soldier.

2. Did you kill Chosen before they assaulted your ship, or did you take the assault?

3. Why did you restart GC so many times?


I am myself undecided should I play L/I or some lesser difficulty with hordes of modded aliens added since there is no achievement for L/I. I am hell bored of official aliens.

In XCOM:EW there was I/I, and that was hell, tote ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, I can tell. I swore I will never do it again lol.

Anyway, congrats, enjoy your beer or whatever you fancy while waiting for XCOM 3!

[Hoot]

Thanks, matey! A beer actually sounds pretty good! ♥♥♥♥ it, ima pick some up after my Jujitsu class tonight.

In answer to your questions :-

1. I didn't get 5 kills on Gatecrasher with my Templar (so no promotion) and I knew I wouldn't be able to take him on enough missions, thanks to the TIRED condition, to get him to Sergeant before/as the GTS completes. I figured in that case building it first would have been a waste. It would have sat there doing nothing until I hit Sergeant, whereas with the RR as soon as it completes I can start doing Covert Actions immediately, some of which were really useful.

2. Nope. I had to defend against the Hunter twice and the Warlock once. The first one was a bit hairy. Templar only survived because by that point he had Fortress and 2 MECs wasted their missiles on him. Didn't take the Chosen Strongholds down until I had Plasma Weapons and Power Armor. Thankfully the assault is fairly simple with a Reaper. You just work your way down one side of the map, taking out each pod then Squadsighting the power generator with 2 Sharpshooters parked at the base. I had the Defense Matrix up for the Warlocks assault and that made it even simpler.

3. Well, a lot of the time I was too hasty with my Templar and ended up popping all 3 pods on Gatecrasher. This resulted in wounds/deaths and I just figured it would make it easier if I had a solid start. I likely could have continued in probably half of the cases (where I only lost 1 guy or had 3 men wounded) but I felt like I needed every advantage I could get in the early game so I kinda decided I wanted either a flawless Gatecrasher or a 1 wounded man Gatecrasher.

I never completed XCOM:EW on Impossible, only on Classic, so I really, really wanted to get this done so I could feel like I actually "finished" the game. Once is enough for me :)

You should give L/I a try! It's probably a lot more forgiving than EW once you figure out the interactions between everything! If you do I wish you luck, may the RNGesus be with you!

[Messsucher]

I am 100 % sure based on my non ironman legend run that it is not even close to XCOM:EW I/I. The latter gave me plenty of moments that this is the most stupid thing ever I do. It is just so stupid it was unbelievable. Every alien you meet is one shot sharpshooter, and you don't have any tools to deal with it (in the beginning other than smoke grenade). So it is total RNG.

And yeh, I think I most probably have to at least try several times L/I on XCOM 2. Can't live with the fact that many people have done it, but not me :)

[Abrakadabra]

Don't be afraid to EVAC out of early missions if it's going pear shaped or you know you can't win without heavy losses. Later on soldiers become somewhat expendable but early on you need them to get as much experience as possible. I probably could have afforded to fail double amount of missions that I did and I would still have been OK.

Citations jsut so annoying here so I jsut copied this part.

That is a very valuable lesson you learned.

I made the same experience.

Early to midgame, even if you buff difficutly beyond l/i, gets so much easier, when you know that. You can evac and aboard left and right and then back again and you still wont have any problems. As you said, till you get a 6 man squad, you just wanne farm xp and xp and more xp in the safest possible way.

That makes the harder early game so much easier, its prolly the single easiest tactic to beat higher difficulties even if you havent played that long.

Did the same thing.

One time I thought Id just try how often I could possible aboard. Not on purpose. Not evacing from missiosn that went well, but as soon as there was even moderate risks taht I could loose soldiers I just evaced. Game warns you and you think omg its bad and I didnt get the rewards and blalbla, but all the while your soldiers are healthy, not injured, nobody died and you get to 5 and then 6 soldiers.

Very effective strat for early game.

[Hoot]

Yup, I agree with you. With all the red warnings and klaxons and what not the game really makes it feel like you shouldn't abort ANY mission, but that's just not the case. Like in the Darkest Dungeon, failure is just a part of the experience.

[happy]

my last L/I saw me lose...15 soldiers(ok, mostly rookies, but still^^-i field rookies on supply mission mid game)
and abort/lose/ignore 5-6 midgame missions when my squad was just too weak due to a horrible horrible horrible avenger defense and it's consequences.

There is a lot of room for screwing up in wotc L/I, a lot of aborted/restarted campaigns can actually carry you through.(but yeah, sometimes you want to restart cause the cute girl died)

[Abrakadabra]

Originally posted by happy:

my last L/I saw me lose...15 soldiers(ok, mostly rookies, but still^^-i field rookies on supply mission mid game)
and abort/lose/ignore 5-6 midgame missions when my squad was just too weak due to a horrible horrible horrible avenger defense and it's consequences.

There is a lot of room for screwing up in wotc L/I, a lot of aborted/restarted campaigns can actually carry you through.(but yeah, sometimes you want to restart cause the cute girl died)

Thats why I like gving defense matrix some priority.

Not high enough a priority to help me vs very early, random, freak dark events that send a ufo hunting you sometimes super early. Too early but also too rarely in that stage that it would justifiy building it before stuff like rr, gts, training center and coms. I usually also go for proving ground first. But often times I actually got the matrix before even infirmary and sometimes even before proving ground.

Immediately upgraded matrix and put an engineer in there.

It saved me in several runs. Those 4 upgraded turrets are insanely powerful. They save your squad a ton of actions and do serious dmg with okayish aim. Each turret shoots twice. Thats 8 offensive actions they provide with super long range. Even if all 8 shots only kill lets say 2 enemies that are appraoching you that is already huge. Even if they miss almost everything and kill only one enemy. Usually they do a lot more though.

Well worth the delay of other facilities if you ask me. If you just start a certain difficulty and youre not just terminating everything then id definitely give it a priority. Right after you build the most important facilities. And I think I read somewhere that the matrix also helps vs chosen sabotage?

But im not sure. I think I heard it but i could be wrong.

[Hoot]

Originally posted by iluvpumpum:

And I think I read somewhere that the matrix also helps vs chosen sabotage?

But im not sure. I think I heard it but i could be wrong.

You're correct. After I had it built the Chosen always failed at sabotaging the Avenger.

I had it upgraded and staffed as soon as it was built though so maybe the chance for them to fail scales with the state of your facility? Like 50% chance for basic, 75% for upgraded and 100% for upgraded and staffed or something.

[Nadir]

Originally posted by Hoot:

Well, that was a massive undertaking! Just completed my first (and likely only) L/I run and I just wanted to share my victory here. It's not exactly a rare thing but I think it's enough of an achievement to celebrate! I used no mods and was playing with the DLC integration on. Lost and Abandoned mission disabled. Templar Ally start.

My XCOM campaign history, by number, went like this :-

(COMPLETE) 1 - Vanilla XCOM2 - Veteran
(COMPLETE) 2 - Vanilla XCOM2 - Commander
(COMPLETE) 3 - XCOM2 WotC - Commander

(FAIL) 4 - XCOM2 WotC - Commander/Ironman
(FAIL) 5 - XCOM2 WotC - Commander/Ironman

(COMPLETE) 6 - XCOM2 WotC - Commander/Ironman

(RESTARTED on GATECRASHER) 7 to 50 - XCOM2 WotC - Legend/Ironman
(FAIL at MAG) 51 to 55 - XCOM2 WotC - Legend/Ironman

(COMPLETE) 56 - XCOM2 WotC Legend/Ironman

The reason I typed that out is because of the desperation I felt doing all those restarts and I just wanted to let people know that if you persevere and have patience (a lot of those restarts were because I screwed up trying to rush things) you can make it fairly handily to the endgame even on L/I.

As far as builds go I went RR > GTS > Infirmary > Proving Ground (for Bluescreens) and my research path early game went Modular Weapons, Alien Biotech, Hybrid Materials, Mag Weapons, Gauss Weapons, Plated Armor.

Luckily I got Inspired Mag Weapons and had them up at fairly early but I had to stay on basic armor for a long time because I had to EVAC out of 2 Supply Raid missions in a row and I had zero Alien Alloys for an amazing length of time. I'd met Andromedon enemies on my missions before I got Plated Armor. Thankfully after I struggled through that part the rest of the upgrades came fairly fast.

I started with a Templar who had a pretty awesome skill set (Reaper, Bladestorm, Fortress, Quickdraw and Sustain). It helped that Reaper was his Corporal skill, it meant that I could clear up at least one pod with him + 1 grenade in the early game. My starting continent bonus was Tactical Analysis (the one where the enemies lose one action if you pop the pod on your turn) and my days, this was so, so incredibly useful.

I played incredibly safely and the overall campaign probably took me way longer than it should have. A certain part of beating the game on L/I revolves around your starting RNG, i.e. what skills your starting faction soldier has, your continent bonus, do you get any inspired research and what are your resistance orders like? The only thing that sucked for me was my orders, nothing remotely useful until I'd already unlocked Power Armor (was still on Mag weapons at that point).

Anyway, there are some general tips I formulated as I was playing :-

• Don't be afraid to EVAC out of early missions if it's going pear shaped or you know you can't win without heavy losses. Later on soldiers become somewhat expendable but early on you need them to get as much experience as possible. I probably could have afforded to fail double amount of missions that I did and I would still have been OK.
  
• Get Bluescreen rounds ASAP. MECs and Codices are probably the most significant mid-game threat you face and having this item makes them a lot easier to deal with.
  
• Get a Mimic Beacon ASAP. It really is like having a "Oh no!" button. Saving a couple of shots on your team can be decisive.
  
• Rush Mag Weapons over Armor. The idea behind having more damage is that the enemies should be dead sooner, limiting how many turns they are around to take shots at you. With proper positioning and careful play you shouldn't be getting hit much anyway.
  
• Don't lose your cool when one of your dudes gets taken out by a CRIT even though he's behind full cover and has aid protocol on him. I restarted so many times, and the times I made it to Mag Weapons then restarted I probably could have kept playing, but I lost my temper after losing guys to what I labelled bullcrap. I still lost a couple of guys in my completed run, one to just such a thing, so I immediately turned the game off and came back to it when I wasn't raging.
  
  Other than that it's just standard advice. Don't rush into the black. Try not to pop more than one pod at a time. Realise that retreat (even just falling back further into the map and breaking LoS) is an option on non-timed missions and above all just have fun. Don't rage. Chance is an element of the game but eventually you come to see that you can actually pull a campaign through in spite of all but the most egregious ♥♥♥♥-ups.
  
  Anyway, I'm XCOM'ed out. Peace.
  
  https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1587653842

well done... I think you did well to lose less than 10 soldiers, I lost 47 soldiers on my run which I finally completed this morning (wotc l/I) after many failed attempts.

I (think I) went RR -> GTS -> Power -> Lab -> Proving early game.

Bailed out/failed 7 missions. Evac'd on a couple of early chosen warlock missions for damage limitation. Rushed to Evac zone on Council missions to avoid chosen once.

I delayed assaulting the chosen bases until I had maxed out tier 3 gear and all colonels, in fact I had 13 or 14 cols when assaulting first chosen base. I was worried about the Chosen spawning more than twice with the high sarcophagus HP... but it turned out to be quite easy actually. I think it has 80 HP and you have 3 rounds including the round the chosen in to destroy it. More than enough time. As for the Chosen just corner them and focus fire. Rangers are your friends.

Because I delayed so long I had to survive 4 Chosen Avenger assaults. Early on these are tough but when you have a party of colonels it becomes easy especially with bluescreens as you say.

Final mission was a joke. Seriously once you can front parties of colonels the game becomes pretty easy. The exception is post-chosen when you start skipping missions the avatar clock can tick up pretty quickly and with regions lost you can lose access to story missions so I almost lost the campaign this way (I had 3 days left before a Sabotage covert op finished).

Overall it was a stressful experience and a rather counterintuitive game. You can't really play the game with your guard down, you have to be awake all the time.

[Herald of Rivia]

I'm trying L/I after completing C/I in WOTC
I still can't get past the retaliation mission.
dude you're great

[Hoot]

Originally posted by Negative Mental Attitude:

I'm trying L/I after completing C/I in WOTC
I still can't get past the retaliation mission.
dude you're great

It was a stressful experience for me to say the least. Just gotta keep trying, man :) Once you know the mechanics inside and out it becomes fairly straightforward to get through missions and prevent your guys from getting borked.

The first retaliation mission should have a Chosen that has a weakness specific to whatever faction you started with. Make sure you bring that soldier on that mission and it makes it a lot easier. At that point it's actually OK to fail the mission as long as you kill the Chosen and keep all your guys alive.

Good luck, man ;)

[Commander Gorda]

If you want an easier start in L/I you can farm lost before the retaliation mission. You should be able to get a sgt that way and the first squadsize upgrade that way.

[Lao]

Hello and congrats!
I am working on a guide and walkthrough for legends ironman. Maybe it will be helpful for somebody:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2005560675