Story help - Back streets of magenta street (level 46)

[F2F01]

Firstly, I love this game. I already have 90 hours in it. But wow, talk about a difficulty spike.

I have also done all side missions up until the last two I unlocked (Drakis Nest and Magenta Street market place 46, which I think are the end game areas and were too hard to beat for me). Most of my characters are mid 40s.

I am playing on normal, and until recently things were fairly easy. I would have to concentrate and focus, but I could usually beat most missions first try, if not 2-3 tries.

But this mission is crazy. I just got swarmed my first try, and I simply don't see a way to beat this without either going to Safe difficulty or equipping everyone with the best meta builds.

There are so many enemies that you just get swarmed and have no chance. Enemies stay just out of range so that you have to charge in, but then you are totally surrounded. To make things worse, all the mechanics of the game have been combined and just work against you.

Finally get a good shot on an enemy? Too bad, they have impulse fields. So now they are still alive and you gotta wait for 10 minutes and watch 20 enemies attack you in a row.

Finally work your way to their back line and in melee range? Too bad you are surrounded by brutes who knock you back into the wall and stun you.

Not to mention that enemies also have plenty of shooting skills that damage your action points, so have fun slowly moving your tanks forward while everyone enemy and their mom take pot shots that delay your turn by 10 AP.

Now take all of that, and add the TON of enemy snipers that have unlimited uses of Fire Support. So have fun getting shot at +3 times each time someone attacks you once.

What is absolutely mind blowing is that on TOP of all of that, by this point in the game the damage of enemies have gotten so high that 1 or 2 normal attacks by an enemy sniper or knife guy is enough to kill anyone except your tanks.

So all of this is happening, I am still able to dodge or block most of the damage, but in this level it becomes a simple numbers game and I am being crushed.

So what can I do? Should I just farm a bit and get everyone to 50?

Should I use some meta builds? I used to think my builds were pretty good, because until now I was having a good time with little trouble...

[Snowberry825]

The enemies here are very tanky. They all either have impulse shield, high block, or high dodge. The best way to deal with these type of enemies is freeze. Freeze is by far the best CC and debuff in the game, period. It's works like a stun that nullifies block/dodge, but it lasts 3 turns and only 1 enemy is immune to it (Legendary Snow Tima). Build Leton for high freeze chance (Absolute zero, Frost Sword, Endless Training mastery). He doesn't need to do any damage so just build him super tanky with high hit chance. If you have a Glacier Tima, they also have 100% chance freeze and are very tanky. Having both on your team will give you a significantly easier time.

Equip Impulse Shield on all your squishies. In the early game, you can ignore defense because you can reliably kill them before they get a turn. You can't do that end game because enemies won't go down in 1 shot anymore. In return, they have a chance to one shot you instead. Even in 46V Magenta Street Market Place, you may sometimes find your tanks getting 1 shotted too. Impulse Shield is just that good. Character positioning becomes more important and you can't just rush in head first, otherwise your squishies will have a bad time.

If you're having trouble against stun, have your melees be equipped with Veteran for stun immunity.

Utilize smoke grenades to counter their Snipers.

Use drones. Even if their mastery board is not filled out, they're still good fodder.

If you're using 1 Shot 1 Kill/Catharsis combo, consider ditching it. It becomes less useful end game as enemies becomes increasingly tankier. Instead, consider using Breakthrough or Prior Planning to reduce their block or dodge chance by 50% respectively.

[The nameless Gamer]

If you are referring to Magenta Marketplace (46V)

1) Under no circumstances should you start in the north. The mercenaries are well entrenched there and the position cannot be overwhelmed without casualties. If you start elsewhere though, they will leave their vantage points, ditching an overwhelming advantage.
2) Bring smoke. The mercenary gunners have Chain fire and Fire support, the Snipers have fire support too. Basically, when one attacks your character, ALL of them do. Without a high dodge/block chance, the target is going to literally be buried in bullets. But... fire support gives them Action Time (AT in the future) +30. With the gunners using Chain fire, that's +60 AT. Once you weather the hail of bullets, send in your biggest damage character with One Shot One Kill (Mine is Martial Artist Irene). Gunners and Snipers have 70-75 and 50-60 speed respectively. A character with at least 100 speed will get to move twice for one turn they take. Gunners and snipers also don't have much survivability, 1S1K works on THEM.
3) Use AT and speed to your advantage. Along with smoke grenades, bring upgraded Frost grenades, which add another 50 AT, delaying the mercenaries even further. If you have them, your 100+ speed characters will have a field day.
4) Melee enemies mostly have Impulse fields and 100%+ block chance. Freeze (Leton and a Frost Draki), Breakthrough, Black Mage Sion with Magic acceleration, Irene's Red Panda 6th Style (Can't be blocked unless Final Resistance procs) make short work of them.
5) Equip Emergency Rescue System on Kylie's drone you'll be using. Once per deployment, the drone can resurrect someone with the same effect as Second Heart (25% of HP and takes the turn right away). But make sure to keep the drone 5+ tiles away from VHPD members who aren't Jane, so the drone doesn't use it up on one of the grunts.
6) Avoid confronting the White Tiger gang members. They will prioritize fighting mercenaries otherwise and you don't need to worry about them stealing your boss-kills.

[Snowberry825]

From the OP's 2nd paragraph, I believe OP is referring to the story mission "46S Back Streets of Magenta Street " not "46V Magenta Street Market Place."

[Bryxia]

The final mission is hard, but not undoable, just go around to clean the snipers, and connect with the north entrance, before entering into the main area.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2225216578

[The nameless Gamer]

Originally posted by Lysinc:

From the OP's 2nd paragraph, I believe OP is referring to the story mission "46S Back Streets of Magenta Street " not "46V Magenta Street Market Place."

Could be my bad, 46V is pretty similar.

OP, are you referring to the 46th Scenario mission (arresting Foo Kraal) or Magenta Market place (46V)?

[F2F01]

Originally posted by The nameless Commander:

Originally posted by Lysinc:

From the OP's 2nd paragraph, I believe OP is referring to the story mission "46S Back Streets of Magenta Street " not "46V Magenta Street Market Place."

Could be my bad, 46V is pretty similar.

OP, are you referring to the 46th Scenario mission (arresting Foo Kraal) or Magenta Market place (46V)?

The 46th Scenario mission - arresting Foo Kraal.

Thank you all for the replies so far! I have a lot to think about and adjust for my next try.

[The nameless Gamer]

Ah... if that's the case, I'll give a TL:DR version, since it wouldn't differ too much. Equip the "Justice victory blade" set on Albus (50% reduced damage from criminals) and the ability "Wind Walk, to reach high places without having to climb stairs. That makes him great for sniper-hunting. Smoke and frost grenades remain. Especially the latter can help a LOT, because White Tiger members tend to cluster up. The ones with Impulse fields are mostly White Tiger Scroundels and Butchers (the guys with hatchets). Swordsmen and Assassins don't have those. Leton and Irene are for weathering their attacks, preferably under smoke cover combined with a high block/dodge chance and Massiveness (can't be knocked back) or Veteran mastery (can't be stunned at all). Equip Second heart on a crucial member of the team, if you have free slots. White Tiger gunners carry Spider Web grenades, which you can turn against them by summoning a fully matured Ash-covered Yasha with Giselle. Properly built up, they are a nightmare to fight for them and a great help for you. With Kylie, bring an Incineration drone with the Reinforced fire thrower module (causes Confusion on critical hit). And once again: Speed and AT. The VHPD suppressors and Heixing can use the Checked fire ability, adding AT +50 on hit/block, +25 on dodge. With upgraded frost grenades, checked fire and their favoring of fire support/counterattack, your characters' turns will come a lot sooner than theirs.

[Trolleur_Durden]

It's often tempting to go full mastery sets, but there are a few masteries that are so good that you should consider them standalone. Those are :

-Veteran. Immunity to stun is extremely useful, because a stunned character can't dodge or block, and therefore dies very fast. If you lack spots in Support, you can use Massiveness instead, especially on ranged characters that tend to stay near obstacles in the environment, because most of the stuns are caused by knockback and collision. Also, there's a very good item that you can farm in the lvl 46 violent case, namely the Sturdy head gear, that gives you stun immunity.

Stun immunity is mandatory, period.

-Impulse field. This game is very "swingy", with a lot of crit chance flying around for everyone. Meaning that a character can sometimes withstand a lot of punishment and suddenly implode because of a critical strike. This makes Impulse field almost mandatory on all of your squishy characters. On those who tend to take risks, like Heixing who likes to push forward in order to reach a good sweeping fire spot, you can also consider Second heart. If you manage to go above 100% block chance (fairly doable on characters like Albus, Irene, Battlemage Sion and Leton), you can consider not using Impulse field, because a blocked hit can never crit. Be careful though, because some enemies have ways to reduce your block chance, so 100% block chance doesn't guarantee an absolute crit immunity.

-Catharsis + One Shot One Kill. One of the most OP things in the game, even if it doesn't work on everything. This is what makes Heixing so insane. Don't put it on everyone though. Only the most resilient enemies have Impulse fields, allowing you to often clear a lot of fragile DPS with ease thanks to this combo.

For the last story mission specifically, you have to be careful and take things slow. Don't try to rush the enemy "bastion" where they are barricaded, because the barricades don't provide cover. Only the most resilient characters can afford to go exposed through here. Advance slowly and try to progress while following the borders of the map, in order to make an "outside sweep" before considering committing to their fortress.

Against snipers and the usual chain fire strategy, smokescreen is quite good. You can also use a very tanky character in order to purposely draw the fire on him, in order to give the White tiger shooters a lot of AT penalty.

[StaticSpine]

I tried to take things slow, but the Northern police post was attacked by a mob of ~20 gangsters including couple of bosses, and this led to failing the mission, which makes slow approach questionable.

[The nameless Gamer]

Originally posted by staticspine:

I tried to take thing slow, but the Northern police post was attacked by a mob of ~20 gangsters including couple of bosses, which makes slow approach questionable.

Said attack on the VHPD members starts when you take down Foo, if my memory serves. Rather than bursting him down, consider putting him into a Starlight Prison first, afterwards peck him with AT-increasing attacks or freeze him with Leton, so the goons start flocking to your position. My first attempt at that mission ended the same as yours. Irene and Sion obliterated Foo in one round and his goons busted through the northern blockade.

[StaticSpine]

Okay, thanks! Unfortunately, the game doesn't telegraph that clearly.

[Starmachine24]

What i usually do is first go straight forward from the spawn point and then i don't go straight into the middle, since Foo and his entrenched snipers are very deadly especially since there are a host of other enemies there as well. So what i do instead is to go around the middle and clear out the enemies on the sides first then procced into the middle. Weirdly enough for me when i murder Foo his goons still stubbornly are attacking my crew rather than try to breakthrough the blockades.

[zeta]

This is a very good example why the game is a GREAT SRPG, at this point you can play it as a strategy game or a RPG game.
As a RPG game it's easy, just do what you describe in the end of the post, level up, farm equipment and talents, and the map will become quite easy (in normal),
As a strategy game, I'd say rely on the police force... set up the fort at your starting point, set someone out to aggr mobs and play defense. Once you decimate the first (couple) wave(s) of enemy force including bosses like Foo and Darius the rest should be easy....