Tips for an esper

[/proc/self/nolimits]

I am following this guide
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2797432198

I am level 12, I basically did some jopa quests and went through some tunnels killing stuff.
Now my glimmer seem to be high and there is all sort of esper everywhere hitting me hard lol.
I am still using cloth and I have like 4 or 5 powers but I think I am not even near as powerfull to hold my own against so much stuff.
What should I do?

I guess I need some tips on where to go after the jopa quests =)
and what to aim on doing

[glass zebra]

In general you can follow the main quest, while doing found locations on the way for extra loot and XP. You should usually really not need to do much exploring other options (but you always can, just keep zone tier in mind) or know about the world a lot to progress. The main quest almost draws a line over tiers on the world map, so following that or taking one step back if things get too much is usually the easiest way to go about it.

If you took psychic migraines, you are mostly left with a smaller selection of armour pieces for a while though and with that 10 agility, you *could* be using a gun maybe but basically only in melee range and hope to hit. Some of the best mental mutation gear items are worn on the head (knollworm skull, plastifer bonnet, enigma cap, psychodyne helmet), while you are also missing out on one of the best mental mutation tinker mods on the head (two-faced for more face slots). You can still stack up some AV until you get to plastifer (ignore DV, since it is rather useless with 10 agility), but high AV pieces in early to mid game usually weight a lot, so you might run into carry capacity issues with that 10 strength. A backpack can help though.

That is imo a rather harsh all-in build, so especially for a new-ish player it can be expected to quickly get into the danger zone. If you still want to follow that one exactly, it sounds rather important to quickly get a good follower with some nice equipment and probably babysit them a bit to not get killed by some hunter or sucked into a space-time-vortex and be lost. Hunters scale with you and not just with the zone they spawn in, so even low tier zones can be pretty dangerous. Getting some way to see better is probably useful or to mostly run around at day, so you don't have a sight disadvantage. Clairvoyance would help a lot, but if you did not get it by now, that is kind of a moot point. You could check traders for night-vision googles though, which can help in dungeons.

Keep your escape options in mind when entering a new zone and if you see the message that hunters are present, you can also instantly leave and let them fight it out with some of the other creatures in that zone (but again: they scale with you and might not have much issue with the creatures there) and basically dance up and down around the stairs a bit to let them get closer until you can fight them better.

Light manipulation is honestly one of the best starting mutations for Espers, since it should be enough to kill basically every single being, but not many before going onto a long "cooldown", so keep your stacks in mind and again: have an escape route.

Grenades can also help to keep dangerous enemies at bay. Gas grenades usually makes creatures pace around them, freeze/thermal grenades provide rather good CC and in general they can deal a lot damage when you get into trouble. Check out Argyvee for recipes or grenades.


How are you getting killed/into danger? Is it elemental damage, cc or stuff like sunder mind? If you stay on the stairs, sunder mind and confusion can be battles by simply going up again, though that does not work when you are frozen. Thermal grenades or pouring warm stuff over yourself can help to get out before you get up again. General danger stuff should be covered by the guide, but if you have some specific problems it would probably be best to name them.

[Vivisector 9999]

Glass Zebra has lots of good advice in the above post.

As the one who wrote that guide... yes, it is due for updating. Unfortunately, as I am currently raising a toddler, it's hard to find the energy for anything else these days.

That aside, the Esper build I currently use is:

Strength: 10
Agility: 10
Toughness: 18
Intelligence: 18
Willpower: 24
Ego: 20

Calling: Apostle

Mutations: Esper, Clairvoyance, Procognition, Light Manipulation, Telepathy

Note the increased Willpower and lack of migraines.

If you follow my guide, you're going to farm enough Ego points from Esper Hunters to end up with a stellar Ego anyway, so boosting Willpower (and spending your first few level-up points to raise it higher) will help you resist their powers better, as well as lower the cooldowns on most of all your powers (including the all-important Precognition) and open up the Willpower skill tree, which has a few things of interest to a Esper. Having lower Ego at the start also means the Esper Hunters won't escalate as quickly.

And you can still have a helmet, with all the benefits Glass Zebra mentioned.

The only thing I don't like about this build is that you have to wait for Sunder Mind to pop up when buying mutations. But Sunder Mind is not something you really need in the early game anyway.

Live and drink, aspirant!

[glass zebra]

From reading your guide: Precognition was able to be used on the world map I guess? Since you said "brings you back to the world map". It is still one of the best mutations overall for many of the reasons you've mentioned. I used nectar rerolls a lot in the past and basically treated any mutant starting with precog like "this means infinite AV and the mutations I want, with added invincibility".

Yeah light manipulation is imo pretty much the best early game Esper damaging ability. The cooldown on sunder mind is just too high early on for killing a single enemy and you usually do not find enough "bosses" early on for it to really shine. It is also the one that scales the best with Ego. Things can be different if you do a random village start and e.g. are tasked to get someone from some issachari lair though.

The addition of warm static also changes stuff a bit for Espers and can boost those followers a ton with precognition and domination. I had a Rimewyk follower in Moonstair that was still really useful with some mutation boosts and warm static can also make sure that even high level followers that usually have like 0-1 mutations still get a lot to boost. And you can fully control them with precognition, unlike your own. I would also like to mention that you can already get all trade goods for free with that apostle's proselytize (but you can't combo that with confusion to break easier through MA).

For farming faces, you can also use cooking recipes. I used hulk honey + spark tick plasma with an electrified weapon pretty often to e.g. getting irritable palm faces just south of Ezra. They have -10 DV (so your low agility does not matter) and e.g. the vibrokopesh dismember does not really care about their AV either. They also just wait in place when you clip all their parts off. They do hit hard though, so you better have some AV... and their faces are plant parts, which sometimes suck. I usually only need 2 screens with trees to get 4 +2 ego faces (played a lot with two-headed). Tree reputation also does not really matter, so the worst part is really that they are plant parts and that you need some AV, but then it takes like 5 minutes to get a few +2 ego faces.

[Æthelbald]

collect 34894 glimmer and die

[Melt for Me]

My best tip would be using your future golem for travel between screens. The psychic glimmer is zero when you're piloting it.

[Pizzarugi]

If you want an easier time dealing with esper hunters, you could make an effort to clone yourself. You can have up to 3 clones as followers, and if you also happen to roll temporal fugue, you've now got an army that lags your game and overwhelms literally everything. Given the cost and rarity of cloning draught, I highly recommend at least getting Precognition beforehand, because your clones have no sense of self-preservation unlike you.

[glass zebra]

Originally posted by Pizzarugi:

You can have up to 3 clones as followers

I don't think there is a real limit. I just tested it and had 5 clones and they all still followed me. The limit is your computer.

[Pizzarugi]

Originally posted by glass zebra:

Originally posted by Pizzarugi:

You can have up to 3 clones as followers

I don't think there is a real limit. I just tested it and had 5 clones and they all still followed me. The limit is your computer.

Must be a change that was done. I could've sworn there was a page somewhere on the wiki that listed the number of followers you can have: 1 proselytized, 1 beguiled, 1 water ritual recruit, and 3 clones. This is assuming you don't have the 7+-pointed asterisk which increased proselytize and beguile count by 1.

You are right, regardless though. The next big limit to your follower count is going to be your computer. The game doesn't like having lots of entities in any one zone at once.

[glass zebra]

Originally posted by Pizzarugi:

Originally posted by glass zebra:

I don't think there is a real limit. I just tested it and had 5 clones and they all still followed me. The limit is your computer.

Must be a change that was done. I could've sworn there was a page somewhere on the wiki that listed the number of followers you can have: 1 proselytized, 1 beguiled, 1 water ritual recruit, and 3 clones. This is assuming you don't have the 7+-pointed asterisk which increased proselytize and beguile count by 1.

Water ritual followers are not limited either. There is also the True Kin implant that increases proselytize by x, where x is 1 + 1 for every 100 compute power.

[Pizzarugi]

Originally posted by glass zebra:

Originally posted by Pizzarugi:

Must be a change that was done. I could've sworn there was a page somewhere on the wiki that listed the number of followers you can have: 1 proselytized, 1 beguiled, 1 water ritual recruit, and 3 clones. This is assuming you don't have the 7+-pointed asterisk which increased proselytize and beguile count by 1.

Water ritual followers are not limited either

I have 1300 hours in the game and I'm still learning something new about it.

[Lur Nen Rue]

yeah updated info about this game are scattered everywhere and you have to look for it

wiki still not updated that StorageTank that you get from flesgun turret can be modded with suspendors AND it can hold lava safely (for lava throwing shenanigans with truekins anyone?) at the moment

for cloning merchant seems like there something going on if you clone too many, just have my game breaks and suspect im cloning too many merchant in my playthrough, at first they wont update their merchandise first red flag i spot, now i refrain from too many blatant clone pouring