How do you rush SPARKs early game?

[Pliskin]

I just beat the game in normal difficulty and i only got SPARKs once before the final mission, i want to replay the game again with Ironman mode on and get SPARKs very early game as i am in love with these robots, is there a guide to it? Should i get Laboratory first and then Workshop to speed up everything?

Edit: i forgot to mention i used Hunters to reduce Avatar project as i've learned it's easy to ignore it.

Speaking of which, is it safe to ignore unneeded missions in favor of getting a research done? I won't do that until i get a kill on a MEC, as i need their corpse to begin research, then farm for Elerium cores and supplies to manufacteure as many as possible.

[|H|H| Fr3ddi3]

On normal, i'd honestly turn the DLC integration off and make the tower mission show up, then tackle that mission the day it pops up. You get a Spark upon completion, someone else may correct me but, afaik, there is no quicker way of getting a Spark, and you get this one for free.

Skipping missions is really not advisable, you should always attempt every (timed) mission even if you feel you have no chance of completing the primary objective, this is simply because you always have the unofficial secondary objectives in getting troop experience from kills and corpses for research / blackmarket ... and if things look very spicy / things start going wrong, you can always EVAC.

The only caveat is for council and faction missions, where early EVAC is blocked and the potential for an entire squad wipe is high, but even then you should only really skip these missions if you are taking drastically under ranked troops on these missions when compared to that the enemy will have.

[Phexfunk]

Just do Shens Last Gift and get it for free....

[Amanoob105]

Originally posted by Phexfunk:

Just do Shens Last Gift and get it for free....

This .
Chances are high you can access that mission long before you'd have the resources together to buy one normally, even if you wait until you already have mag weapons and bluescreen rounds to make the mission more manageable.

[Veylox]

Laboratory and workshop are the two building you definitely don't want in your game, and probably the reason why you got the sparks so late to begin with. Just get the proving grounds fast and do the research that unlocks SPARKs

I don't recommend doing Shen's Last Gift on ironman, too much can go wrong with this mission

[megansweden]

In WOTC if you leave everything unchecked (uncheck integration and don't check the mission) you can do a project in the proving grounds to unlock Sparks, which costs nothing and gives you your first Spark. You do need a Proving Ground to do it though. Mind you if you also leave The Nest unchecked you will also get Rulers at random with no warning as soon as force level increases enough to spawn their alien type.

I don't understand why you would need to skip missions in order to finish a research? Research happens in the background while you are doing other things. Unless you mean you're almost done researching an armor or a weapon tech upgrade and don't want to do a mission with the old tech. In which case it would depend on the type of mission - Guerilla Ops you can skip and the only risk is having the Dark Events go live immediately. Other types of missions you will lose contact with the region. Unless it's your starting region, which you cannot lose.

[Veylox]

Originally posted by megansweden:

In WOTC if you leave everything unchecked (uncheck integration and don't check the mission) you can do a project in the proving grounds to unlock Sparks, which costs nothing and gives you your first Spark. You do need a Proving Ground to do it though. Mind you if you also leave The Nest unchecked you will also get Rulers at random with no warning as soon as force level increases enough to spawn their alien type.

I don't understand why you would need to skip missions in order to finish a research? Research happens in the background while you are doing other things. Unless you mean you're almost done researching an armor or a weapon tech upgrade and don't want to do a mission with the old tech. In which case it would depend on the type of mission - Guerilla Ops you can skip and the only risk is having the Dark Events go live immediately. Other types of missions you will lose contact with the region. Unless it's your starting region, which you cannot lose.

If the nest is unchecked rulers will only appear on advent facilities, and I'm pretty sure the game tells you which ones too, so the risk is about the same as the nest mission ; as long as you don't go where they are, they don't activate

[Flaminski]

Sparks are made in the proving grounds, you need to do the advent officer autopsy to unlock building the proving grounds.

[Enigmatic]

I kind of ignore them, not sure why.

[megansweden]

Originally posted by Veylox:

Originally posted by megansweden:

In WOTC if you leave everything unchecked (uncheck integration and don't check the mission) you can do a project in the proving grounds to unlock Sparks, which costs nothing and gives you your first Spark. You do need a Proving Ground to do it though. Mind you if you also leave The Nest unchecked you will also get Rulers at random with no warning as soon as force level increases enough to spawn their alien type.

I don't understand why you would need to skip missions in order to finish a research? Research happens in the background while you are doing other things. Unless you mean you're almost done researching an armor or a weapon tech upgrade and don't want to do a mission with the old tech. In which case it would depend on the type of mission - Guerilla Ops you can skip and the only risk is having the Dark Events go live immediately. Other types of missions you will lose contact with the region. Unless it's your starting region, which you cannot lose.

If the nest is unchecked rulers will only appear on advent facilities, and I'm pretty sure the game tells you which ones too, so the risk is about the same as the nest mission ; as long as you don't go where they are, they don't activate

No, that's if Integration is checked. If you uncheck integration and DON'T check the missions, they will appear at random. But you can build the weapons immediately from day one in Engineering (still only once though).

[Veylox]

Originally posted by megansweden:

Originally posted by Veylox:

If the nest is unchecked rulers will only appear on advent facilities, and I'm pretty sure the game tells you which ones too, so the risk is about the same as the nest mission ; as long as you don't go where they are, they don't activate

No, that's if Integration is checked. If you uncheck integration and DON'T check the missions, they will appear at random. But you can build the weapons immediately from day one in Engineering (still only once though).

Oh wait so there are three different settings, integrated, checked and unchecked, I thought two of those were the same

[Amanoob105]

Originally posted by Veylox:

Oh wait so there are three different settings, integrated, checked and unchecked, I thought two of those were the same

Four if you count not downloading the DLC .

But the normal three are:
Integrated - Rulers first turn up on Facility Assaults, so no unique mission. The weapons can be got from the off but have to be individually purchased.
I forget how SPARKs work beyond there being no mission needed to get them.

Directly selected - Ruler weapons are gained for free from a (green) scan site that turns up a month or two into a campaign. After that a (white) mission will turn up a month or two after you can it which is the rulers unique story mission and kicks off the rest of them turning up in missions until dealt with.
Of note here is a bug where if you put off scanning the first site for too long (several months) the following mission will fail to appear.
SPARKs will be buildable after a few months when a (white) mission will turn up after a cutscene involving Shen plays, also a few months into a game and you complete it. It will also net you one free spark for completing it.

Not directly selected - The Rulers will start turning up on (if I remember right) your first supply raid. All the ruler weapons can be accessed from the start, but have to be paid for.
SPARKs can just be built from the moment you build the Proving Ground.

[KRON]

Originally posted by Amanoob105:

I forget how SPARKs work beyond there being no mission needed to get them.

But there is a mission if you don't integrate the DLC.

[Amanoob105]

Originally posted by KRON:

Originally posted by Amanoob105:

I forget how SPARKs work beyond there being no mission needed to get them.

But there is a mission if you don't integrate the DLC.

But (as I mentioned before) only if you directly select the option.

[Marcus]

There is a mod called starting spark - problem solved you get one for gatecrasher.