The most frustrating game of 2018

[Gamer Warrior]

It feels waay too hard and also unpolished.

You get barely any resources or medpacks. Even after scanning every inch of the first 7 locations I could barely upgrade some of my weapons to lvl 2 and purchase any grenades/meds.

The difficulty just skyrockets around The Sea Titans and the House of Bones. My squad of 3 VS around 8 or so enemies, including Nova Sect guy who can hit all of them at a crazy distance with his chain lightning? Yeah, you can sneak around and pick some of the enemies off, but my weapons simply don't do enough damage to kill in 1 turn.

With no sidequests that would let you level up more or collect scrap you are pretty much stuck.

The Tank enemies just go all over the place - they can break walls of a building and then suddenly appear on the 2nd floor.

Multiple times I could hit an enemy who is around 15 cells away through a solid ceiling with 100% accuracy, while only getting 25% accuracy on someone just 5 cells away and out of cover.

So I am basicly stuck on House of Bones, only 1 medpack, all of my units are 2 hits away from death, my weapons cant kill anything.

Not to mention that the game's language is determined by your Windows language, so I am stuck with russian text and english voiceover? Great...

[LeftPaw]

Looks like you are trying to clear map locations before moving on. This will never work. Keep moving, scavenging, and ambushing isolated targets. Return to locations when you are ready to take them on.
One of the first things I do when entering a location is scout out the exits.

Remember you can return to the ark at any time to upgrade, you probably already know that.

[Legadian]

In this game:

Never pick a fight unless you know (1) what you want from it and (2) that you're going to win (and by win, I mean take as little to no damage as possible).

This game isn't a hack and slash / heal spam game. It's about tactics and conserving your resources.

[Devoras]

I'm finding it a little too difficult for me too, though that's probably partly my own fault for picking the middle difficulty instead of normal. The game works really well at small-group battles, but once you get outnumbered more than 2 to 1 it becomes too hard. Trying to take out a boss man with 2 dogs, a pyro, couple of marauders, hunter and medbot with my 3 early characters has been too much for me, even with a bunch of them grouping together for grenades at start. I can pick off the hunter with stealth ahead of time, but the others are grouped too close together.

[jep]

Also, in the early game, all it takes is using artifacts to upgrade your grenades and Selma's root ability to get a third silent weapon. It's a cakewalk even without upgraded weapons (even on Very Hard Iron Mutant, as if you do it right the guys don't even scratch you).

Yeah, this isn't obvious as the game doesn't really handhold much.

[Gildongs]

It may look impossible at first, but like Starboard said, go scout other areas and kill off stragglers. Feel free to use those EMP grenades freely - you dont really need to save them later when you get those gun mods that have 50% chance to stun robots - and take out some high level robots too.

Also, make sure to take the perks that help add to chance to crit. During a certain stage early on, you will not have enough gunpower to 1-turn kill unless you have crits. Dux should be able to stack crits to 100% if you build him up right. For 24 health guys now, I have 7min dmg silenced gun on each character, but I have 75-100% crit on one character that has crit dmg of 10+. So I end up doing 10+7+7 =24 for one turn kills. Bomin's rush skill or 2x shot skills used in those situations where you accidently get no crits.

[jep]

Originally posted by Devoras:

I'm finding it a little too difficult for me too, though that's probably partly my own fault for picking the middle difficulty instead of normal. The game works really well at small-group battles, but once you get outnumbered more than 2 to 1 it becomes too hard. Trying to take out a boss man with 2 dogs, a pyro, couple of marauders, hunter and medbot with my 3 early characters has been too much for me, even with a bunch of them grouping together for grenades at start. I can pick off the hunter with stealth ahead of time, but the others are grouped too close together.

Ah, that's the exact fight I was talking about. Use your artifact points to upgrade your grenade damage before going there if you want a really easy fight.

First, pick off any patrols. Then the medbot can be silent killed without alerting the nearby enemies (it's kind of dumb thematically, but it works). Just drop an EMP on him (or if you're doing it later, use EMP weapons/skills) and fire away with the silents. Also helps if you've been gathering artifacts and upgraded EMPs to last an extra turn, but even if not you can just bring a second one.

So that's him taken care of. Then position your stalkers behind the trees surrounding the group. throw two grenades (which can get everyone) down and root the group. Then use Selma to shoot the Pyro. Husse will shoot you but in full cover behind the trees he will most likely miss. Then use your next turn to just pick them off, using regular weapons not silent. I did it just the other day and it was laughably easy, even with my low level group.

[Devoras]

I don't have anything fancy like emps or rooting, I just got Selma into my group. I put some nice mods on the crossbow(improved crit, fire damage, range) and found a bigger gun for the boar, but didn't have enough weapon scraps to upgrade anything yet. I have one helmet, one light armor, no medkits, found one artifact, 2 regular grenades, one smoke, and 3 molotovs.

I realize the solution is probably to come back later and leave them, but that looks like a nice prize they're guarding and didn't want them to haul it all away before I can get it.

[Legadian]

One of Selma's abilities is the "root" he was talking about.

[Devoras]

Originally posted by Legadian:

One of Selma's abilities is the "root" he was talking about.

Yes but you have to level that up I think

[Legadian]

Originally posted by Devoras:

I don't have anything fancy like emps or rooting, I just got Selma into my group. I put some nice mods on the crossbow(improved crit, fire damage, range) and found a bigger gun for the boar, but didn't have enough weapon scraps to upgrade anything yet. I have one helmet, one light armor, no medkits, found one artifact, 2 regular grenades, one smoke, and 3 molotovs.

I realize the solution is probably to come back later and leave them, but that looks like a nice prize they're guarding and didn't want them to haul it all away before I can get it.

Originally posted by Devoras:

Originally posted by Legadian:

One of Selma's abilities is the "root" he was talking about.

Yes but you have to level that up I think

Exactly how much content are you skipping over before you get there? By that fight I had Selma and root on each of my two play-throughs.

[jep]

Loot is static, apart from a couple of bugs that let you blow up artifacts you shouldn't be able to. It'll still be there for the rest of the game.

EMPs can be bought at Iridia. If not at the outset, as soon as you level up a little.

[LastGameLastGame]

There is no need to really skip anything in quest zones, optional zones you can do whenever you like. Only place you kinda want to delay killing stuff is in High Road, there you want to kill 2 dogs and run into Fallen Angel for third silent weapon. After that full clear everything.

[Devoras]

Originally posted by Legadian:

Exactly how much content are you skipping over before you get there? By that fight I had Selma and root on each of my two play-throughs.

I think I had literally one battle with Selma in my party before I had the option to go there. There were two ways to go and because the duck mentions finding a secret way through the forest I thought that way would be the better way to go. I didn't skip anything to get there; though I admit it's not my primary mission to do so.

[LastGameLastGame]

The moment you recruit Selma, she should be lvl7 and able to get Tree Hugger right away.

[Devoras]

Originally posted by Dascrub:

The moment you recruit Selma, she should be lvl7 and able to get Tree Hugger right away.

Is that true? I thought it was one of the later ones. I didn't pay much attention, the active abilities you can get weren't very interesting with the first guys I had. I found it more useful to try and upgrade health up to 9 points as soon as possible so I don't have to waste medkits like I was. Getting hit once does 4 damage, so after getting hit just once I would have to use one or else risk going down the next time that character was hit. I recalled when I was setting up the difficulty that they were supposed to heal 50% of the damage they took after the fight, but they never healed at all, which made me use a lot of medkits. I might have read that wrong in the difficulty setting.