dark events to avoid at all cost at first stage ?

[rpc]

which are the dark event you can easily manage and which are the more difficult ?
thx

[Halfinger]

Easiest: 100% increse to recruitment cost.

Hardest (at very early game) Faceless on missions.

I don't care at all: Adding progress to avatar meter.

[Giant Space Hamster]

Reinforcements on all missions for a month can be difficult early on. Faceless on all missions can also be a pain early on.

Poison rounds and additional armor for enemies from dark events doesn't affect every enemy on a mission so they're generally pretty easy to deal with.

Increased detection radius on enemies is usually trivial for me.

Adding progress to the doom counter: YMMV. I usually let this one activate because I never really have a problem keeping the doom counter low enough with black site missions if necessary.

[azmountaintroll]

UFO Hunting Avenger is something you'll want to put off until you're ready for it.

[CavityCommunion]

In the beginning I go after ones increasing the avatar bars. I ignore black sites while upgrading my xcom team/contacting resistence cells. Once the bar reaches full or one less then I go after black sites, still doing missions that stop avatar bar increases. Once the avatars are at about half way then I focus more on poison rounds than any other.

[Zara]

I pretty much always stop UFOs and Avatar Breakthroughs because UFOs can be annoying depending on terrain, and Avatar so I can ignore the bar for longer. Aside from cutting your next supply drop in half, the rest aren't really that bad

[jouertue]

early i stop faceless, major breakthrough and more enemies on every mission, recruitment depends if you need to recruit.. about the others i always follow reward priority. i had to face reinforcements on every guerrilla and it wasn't that bad.

later ingame, crysalids is the worst, then more enemies i guess.

venom rounds are equipped by officers and shieldbearers i think, armor stunlancers and troopers..faceless are not a big threat later..

[gimmethegepgun]

For the entire game, the absolute worst is always the one that doubles intel costs for a month.
Halving the next supply drop is pretty bad too, but frankly if another op gives supply as a reward that more or less covers it. Still means you're giving up the reward of the supply drop op in favor of countering a different event though.

Faceless and reinforcements on missions are events that you WANT because they mean more enemies to kill and corpses to collect (especially Faceless in the early game, since that can get you meme bacon sooner)

[km_md60]

half supply and double intel cost are the worst thing that could happen.

Faceless and reinforcement are hard early on.

The rest you can deal with.

Late game with enough weapon upgrade and badass armor, you are unstoppable anyway.

[Eru]

Early game would probably be Avatar breakthroughs, depending on how my campaign is going. Vigilance can absolutely destroy mission as well.
Late game, infestation. ♥♥♥♥ that.

[meyerik]

People have been saying he faceless one isnt that bad. But arent they hidden amongst civilians? Dont they reveal themselves while you are in a tight combat, making it even more difficult?

[gimmethegepgun]

Origineel geplaatst door meyerik:

People have been saying he faceless one isnt that bad. But arent they hidden amongst civilians? Dont they reveal themselves while you are in a tight combat, making it even more difficult?

Or, more often, they don't reveal themselves until after everything else is dead.

Besides, Faceless corpses!

[Black Jesus]

Origineel geplaatst door meyerik:

People have been saying he faceless one isnt that bad. But arent they hidden amongst civilians? Dont they reveal themselves while you are in a tight combat, making it even more difficult?

If you know what to look for or what to do Faceless on missions is trivial. As a general rule I stay away from civilians anyway because I'm either in Concealment with my Rangers OR because I have it mentally drilled into my head that every civilian is a hidden faceless. I don't debate it with myself I just assume they are. It's soooo much easier that way for me.

Also someone was showing a trick with a grenade something about friendly fire warning and if you don't get it with a civilian then it's a faceless I'd have to pull it up again but there is a detection trick. Anyway my strategy revolves around ignoring civilians and blitzing aliens anyway so I don't need to close the distance and a faceless will auto reveal if you get close enough add to that I usually end turns on overwatch and BLAM dead or near dead Faceless.

[gimmethegepgun]

Origineel geplaatst door Black Jesus:

Also someone was showing a trick with a grenade something about friendly fire warning and if you don't get it with a civilian then it's a faceless I'd have to pull it up again but there is a detection trick.

That only works on Retaliation missions. The game gives precisely 0 ♥♥♥♥♥ about hitting civilians in other mission types.

[C4Warr10r]

Origineel geplaatst door gimmethegepgun:

Besides, Faceless corpses!

Which means mimic beacons. Which means easy game. Mimics are ridiculously OP. They draw enemies to them, even causing them to stand in the open, and will usually take two rounds of fire. No more getting a soldier wounded or killed because your somebody blew that one "Sure" shot.


What I avoid, at all costs, are intel cost increases and reinforcements. Reinforcements can completely break vertain guerilla ops, especially hacking on a train. Those missions are tough to complete in time anyway, just because of how trains work. No top cover, long open areas to either side, turrets on the roof.....very easy to get flanked BEFORE somebody drops wherever they please.

Intel cost increases just put you behind in the geoscape, bad enough, but they can also blow a mission. When the Avatar project is getting close to completion for the first time and you REALLY need to start taking down facilities, it's soooo easy to fall for the intel cache trap. 80% chance to hack that lamp post for some intel? Not on your life. Failed hack, cover blown, and at BEST you only have to waste one turn (timed mission) dealing with enemies you could have wiped in an ambush.

In turn, you can then lose region support if you fail, which makes intel cost very costly in short order.

[hk_prometheus]

Unless I have at least one Ranger with Phantom and Concealment, I will usually try to avoid the UFO Hunts XCOM event. Sadly, after you get the Phantom Ranger the UFO missions become extremely easy just make sure you have at least one Sharpshooter who can take down the objective using Squadsight. The Defense Matrix is probably one of the most useless facilities in the game next to Laboratories because by the time you build one your dudes can clean house on UFO missions anyway. It would be nice to see them make some adjustments there to keep the UFO event interesting late game.

I find Vigilance to be particularly nasty especially early on in the game and more so on smaller maps. If you play on Legend its possible to activate 3 pods at once as soon as you get revealed and early in the game you simply won't have the manpower or mimic beacons to deal with this, meaning you must evac and fail the mission. Once you get a couple of mimic beacons and increased squad size II then Vigilance becomes a non issue. If you play on lower difficulties this event is probably not as big of a deal because you have less enemies to deal with.

Faceless on every map is surprisingly something that I feel benefits the player more than the aliens. Faceless are incredibly stupid and easy to deal with, if you flashbang them they can't even attack you. Even if they do attack you they don't do very much damage and are easy to clean up in your next turn. Best of all, they give you faceless corpses which help you build mimic beacons. If you're the cautious type you can always carry a couple of battle scanners with you while this event is up and you shouldn't have any problems. I usually never try to counter this event unless I desperately need whatever reward it offers.

Increase intel costs and decreased supply drops are not a big deal in the early game. They become a much bigger deal as you move forward, though. If you get stuck with increased intel costs during your first month it's not going to hurt you much, you only really need to unlock one area during this time. Same with supplies, you get so few in the beginning that having them cut down by 50% isn't much of a loss.

Avatar breakthroughs aren't great but they aren't really critical in the early game, either. If you have to deal with one so be it, its not going to mess you up much. Best case scenario it will add a pip or two to an alien facility which you can counter later and reduce by the same measure. This is one of those events where if the reward is ♥♥♥♥ and the mission is listed as Very Difficult then I don't recommend countering it.

Alien Facility construction is actually beneficial to the player, as it gives you another facility to tackle later on if you need to buy time and gear/level up your dudes. Powergame, etc.

Increased Recruit costs is pretty much the least important event to counter, ever. Unless you're constantly losing troops and/or getting your dudes hurt, in which case you probably aren't going to win anyway and should probably think about restarting on a lower difficulty level until you learn how to play the game.

Reinforcements on Guerrilla OPS is something that often happens anyways, regardless of whether the event is up or not. Also, even when this is event is active it doesn't seem to guarantee that there will be reinforcements, either. I've run several OPS missions with this event up and never had any additional reinforcements called in. I simply ignore this event when it pops up unless there is a heavy reward attached to it that I need at the time.

Stuff like Venom rounds and Extra Padding are minor annoyances and only effect a small number of Advent enemies. These are things that you can mostly ignore at any stage of the game, imo. Same with Resistance Informant, I know many people think Retaliation missions are hard but personally I find them to be some of the easier missions in the game so I tend to never bother with this one.

Then there's Chryssalids on every map. That one is probably the worst event in the game to get stuck with. Thankfully, you won't get this one in the early game, in fact you won't see this event pop up until after you've encountered Chryssalids for the first time in your playthrough which usually doesn't happen until your 4th or 5th retaliation mission.

Cheers! Hope this helps.