Spoiler-Free Guide to Game Mechanics

Overview of as much of the mechanics of the game as I've been able to research over the course of multiple playthroughs. Good place to start for advice on character builds, especially if you're stuck toward the beginning of the game.

Introduction

EDIT- not sure I'm going to continue updating this, given that the game has mostly died out at this point. Still waiting for a major balance update that fixes a lot of issues (as of 2022, there was a major balance update but it didn't really fix the issues, although difficulty settings helped). Until then, this guide will sit in its current state. Most of the info is still relevant, even if a few of the numbers are now incorrect.

EDIT 2022 - at the request of Kwic, adding this note - the minimum Awakening for a given mission was removed a few patches back. Once upon a time it was 3% to encourage players to try and explore a bit without it counting against them, but with the addition of other missions things were changed to allow more room. Now you have more than enough consoles to smash to roll back the awakening timer that you can have 0% Awakening for numerous missions and can generally complete all of the missions and all of the DLC on a single playthrough with only a little forethought.

Current as of patch 1.06 (an upcoming balance patch could change a lot)

This is my first guide for a game, so my presentation is probably going to be a bit rambling until I get things better organised. I'll keep adding to this over time as I discover new things. If there's something I missed, let me know in the comments and I'll see about adding it. I'll also try to keep this as spoiler-free as possible by only describing the mechanics, not the specifics of any of the missions or the lore of the setting, but there's bound to be minor spoilers just in describing the tactics needed for the enemies.

I'm also going to put important things that newbies miss in bold underlined to draw attention to them. There are a LOT of topics for certain things that show up in the forums, either asking if something is a bug or complaining that it doesn't work the way they think it should.

You control a cohort of TechPriests and troops, searching through newly discovered Necron tombs on the planet of Silva Tenebris to recover Blackstone (basically XP) and lost STC patterns (blueprints), trying to take/recover as much resources as you can within a limited timeframe. Opposing you are the Necrons, who will seek to kill you at every turn, but are also an effectively insurmountable foe once the tomb is fully awake. To reflect this, you need to keep track of Awakening, probably the most important mechanic in the game as it informs almost every decision you'll make. There are plot decisions and such, guided by the other characters aboard the Caestus Metalican, but the storyline isn't the purpose of this guide. The bottom line is that once the tomb is fully awake, you'll have to confront the Necrons at their full power, and leave the planet. Whether the planet is reduced to ashes, shut down for a more thorough looting, or you die in the attempt is up to you.

Mechanicus is divided into three main areas:
- The Caestus Metalican (your voidship in orbit), where you can rank up and equip your tech priests and check the rosters of equipment, troops, and available missions
- The tomb map, where you move between rooms within a specific mission and deal with events
- The combat map, where you actually fight individual Necron units until completing a victory condition

Gameplay isn't exactly open-world, more like a set of instances with the freedom to switch between different parallel storylines. A fair amout of it is randomly generated as well, with a few setpieces being preset.

You'll be spending most of your time on the combat map, as that's where the meat of the gameplay occurs. But first we'll have a look at the other two places.

Caestus Metalican Interface

First up is the Caestus Metalican, the massive voidship where Magos Faustinius oversees the operations on Silva Tenebris. You have three buttons across the top to cycle between pages - Tech, Missions, and Cohort.

Your Tech screen is the simplest, showing a roster of how many things you've unlocked during your exploration of the Necron tombs on Silva Tenebris. This is broken into five pages of upgrades with buttons on the left. Try not to think of this as a list of achievements, because without modifying the game or editing a save file, it's impossible to fill in every single entry on those pages. Instead, this is just a more easily sorted list of the things that you've unlocked during this playthrough, including a list of your canticles (single-use abilities).

On the other side you have the Cohort screen. There are 6 slots there for TechPriests (though only 2 will be filled initially), and 7 slots for troops (5 small and 2 large ones, and only Servitors will be filled in initially). The troops can only be looked at by hovering the mouse over them, which will show their basic stats. TechPriests, however, can be ranked up to give them new skills, and equipped with a wide variety of weapons and subsystems to increase their abilities.

Lastly is the Missions screen, which shows a list of character portaits on the left side. The first portait is Magos Faustinius, and clicking on his portrait only gives a basic overview of your performance during your exploration of Silva Tenebris, including total awakening percentage, markers that show how much awakening was gained as each mission was completed and what rewards were obtained for them, and which locales have been opened up. The other five portraits are your support crew, who each offer a variety of missions that will unlock over the course of the game.

The missions offered by your 5 support crew are sequential, but don't necessarily all need to be completed, nor do they need to be completed in order. They unlock through a combination of Awakening percentage and by completing a certain number of missions in a locale, which allows the story to unfold in a fairly organic way, opening up more possibilities as you play.

Accepting Missions

The format of gameplay for Mechanicus is that you select a mission from the Caestus Metalican, dispatch your TechPriests and optional troops to explore that section of Silva Tenebris, and move through the Tomb Map interface and Combat interface until you complete whatever goal the mission gave or die trying. Once the mission is over, you have a debriefing screen that lists your rewards, upkeep costs, and status, and you'll be taken back to the Caestus Metalican again where you can make changes to your loadout or skills before choosing another mission.

When you select a mission and accept it, you'll first be given a roster screen to select which TechPriest(s) will be going along (minimum 1, as if there are no surviving TechPriests, the mission ends in failure), and any troops. This is a spot where new players often make several key mistakes:

First, your Arvus Lighter has 6 seats (upgradeable 1 seat at a time to a maximum of 12 via mission rewards) to bring characters with you, be they TechPriests, Servitors, Skitarii, or even Kastelan robots. Your TechPriests are individuals (brought along one at a time), while the troops slots have infinite copies. This means that early on, you'll have two TechPriests and only the Servitor icon lit - you can bring multiple servitors with you, and they're zero cost. Lots of people think that you can only bring one servitor along and never think to click the portrait a second time to get another servitor.

Secondly, all of the troops outside of the Servitor have a Blackstone cost. Because Blackstone is effectively your XP for ranking up TechPriests, players think that bringing along troops is a loss - it's not. Think of the Blackstone cost there as being an investment, because when you complete the mission, ~80% of the Blackstone cost for any surviving troops is refunded. If you bring along Skitarii and never deploy them, then they'll never have the chance to be hurt, so you've lost a trivial amount (about 3-5 per troop, which isn't going to make a difference even if you do it in every mission). So if you think you might need the firepower, bring along a couple of Skitarii - if you don't use them at all, they'll have cost you nothing. You're not required to just stick to Servitors to avoid cost, but if you want them for extra CP and to use as meat-shields, go right ahead. Early game they can make things much easier by taking hits for you.

Awakening in Missions

This brings me to another mistake new players tend to make, that prompts tons of forum posts complaining about it, and that's Awakening. Completing a mission with less than 3% awakening will still add 3% to the global count (explained below). So if you're skipping events to get a lower percentage, don't - you're only leaving behind possible rewards for no benefit. Now, if your percentage is too high and you're likely to get 4% or more by mission end, then skipping rooms is an option, but don't feel like you always need to rush - efficiency is important, but not at the expense of lost resources.

Now, Awakening actually has two counters - one that applies globally, and one that applies only while inside of a specific mission. You accept missions from one of 5 characters with different goals and agendas, select which TechPriests and/or troops you'll be taking with you, and attempt to accomplish a goal within that mission until you are either successful or all of your TechPriests have been incapacitated.

At current there is no permanent death mechanic, so at worst, if you fail a mission by having all of your TechPriests killed, the most you suffer is heavy repair costs and failing to obtain the rewards offered by that mission (admittedly, if you lose a string of missions in a row that can really set you back).

Mission selection is important. There are a total of 46 missions in the game, but perfect play will only allow you to complete 34 of them at best, and typically closer to about 30-32. The reason for this ties into the Awakening metre.

While in a mission, every step you take into an unexplored room, even empty rooms with no features in them, increases your the Awakening metre by 2 points. Every 5 points will increase the Awakening level for that mission. This starts at zero, but for every level, the necrons gain additional benefits that make fights more difficult:

Level 0 - no effect
Level 1 - your presence is detected
Level 2 - additional necrons spawned
Level 3 - necrons resurrect 1 round faster
Level 4 - additional necrons spawned
Level 5 - necrons resurrect 1 round faster
Level 6 - necrons will attack first in battle
Level 7 - necrons resurrect immediately

Additionally, every new combat round after the first one in each encounter will give another point on the awakening total. This means that you have 19 ticks before you're reaching the 4% awakening for mission end that you want to avoid, with new rooms counting as 2 ticks. Given that most missions only have 6-9 rooms in them, and you can often roll the counter back by destroying consoles, you generally have some leeway for fights and exploration. Important note - the consoles in combat can be scanned first for a Blackstone reward of typically 70-130, and then destroyed to roll back the Awakening Counter by 2 ticks. It's up to you if you want to do both, as there is no story adjustment based on whether you break or scan consoles, just the BS reward and the awakening, so if you're willing to miss 100 BS to kill a console that you didn't get to scan at the last second before a round ends, that's an option. Normally, you'll have more than enough movement to zip around the map by spending CP to scan and break all of the consoles early on so that you don't need to worry about missing any or accidentally breaking unscanned ones with blast attacks. You cannot roll the local awakening count below zero, so if you somehow have a console left to break and awakening is at 1 or 0 ticks, you'll be wasting the effect.

During a fight, Necrons that are downed but not killed by a critical hit can re-animate. By default, this takes 3 turns, which actually means they'll stand up and take a full turn on the 3rd turn after they were put down. Any given necron can only re-animate once, and will rise with 50% of its original HP to continue fighting when sufficient time has passed. To prevent this, you'll either want to end the mission early, either by escaping the area or scanning all terminals if that's the goal, otherwise killing all enemies. Downed Necrons count as killed for this purpose, so if you can get all of them down at the same time, you won't need to waste attacks finishing them off, and they count as dead for mission reward purposes.

If finishing the mission suddenly by downing every Necron at the same time isn't possible, you can always attack a downed Necron. While downed, they have no armour and only take one point of damage to finish off permanently (a handful of Necrons are never downed - Canoptek Spyders, Scarab Swarms, Canoptek Acanthites, basically anything that isn't humanoid). Additionally, critical hits will finish off a Necron on a killing shot, denying the chance to reanimate. Necrons can only reanimate once - the second killshot will always force them to teleport away.

Awakening level 1 seems to have no effect, but may have a small impact on how many enemies are spawned or how quickly it takes for sarcophagi to open during an encounter. Awakening levels 2 and 4 each add more necrons to the fight, usually 1-2 extra warriors of whatever type is most common in that area.

The important ones are Awakening levels 3, 5, and 7. Each one shortens how long it takes for reanimation protocols to trigger, with Awakening level 7 ensuring that necrons can stand back up after being killed immediately, and will even continue their turn as normal if they were killed by an opportunity attack.

Finally, Awakening level 6 seems to be bugged and has no apparent effect. Even while triggered, it doesn't affect Necron initiative at all. Either that or there is some hidden effect that anyone has yet to puzzle out (leave me a comment if you find something).

Completing Missions - the Tomb Map

You complete missions by triggering the rooms in the tomb marked by white diamonds. Each of those is a plot-critical advancement, and while they can be done in any order, they must all be completed to finish the mission, and the mission will end immediately after the last one is resolved.

There are several other types of rooms to pass through during missions, all of which are optional, but you'll need to go through some of them in order to reach the plot-critical rooms. The types are as follows:

Events - marked by a <!> these rooms will give a short description of the current situation and provide you with three options. Hover over each option to see more information about it. Often a support character will provide additional dialogue, sometimes before the description of the room. The support character provides correct advice about 80% of the time, so listen to what they have to say. The results of your choice may feel random, but they're actually reasonably appropriate to the scenario if you're paying close attention.

Encounters - marked by 3 red necron silhouettes, these are optional fights which are usually worth doing because completing them successfully without taking an undue amount of time will usually roll the Awakening metre back a 2-5 ticks.

Glyphs - marked by a green square with a necron symbol on it, these will present you with 2-5 glyph shapes, each with a different effect tied to them. If you want to be in the spirit of the game, pay attention to which glyphs give which effects, as they are consistent, and write them down for later reference. Otherwise, there are several guides on Steam which already list all of the glyphs and their effects that you can refer to.

Empty rooms - these have no marking on them, but will still raise your Awakening by 2 points the first time you enter them.

Backtracking through rooms you have already explored doesn't give any additional Awakening, so you can use that to bypass rooms that you don't want to deal with. Since glyphs are easier to reference and tend to give more beneficial effects once you know them (or have a guide), it's usually in your interest to hit most of the Glyph rooms and the encounter rooms if at all possible, but ultimately you should only skip exploring rooms if you're running long on Awakening and concerned about hitting a 4% total by the end of the last encounter.

Global Awakening

When you complete a mission, your Awakening in that mission (ranging from 0 to 7) will be added to the Global Awakening count. Fractions are ignored, and you cannot gain less than 3% Awakening upon completing a mission, even if your Awakening count was zero during that mission.

This creates a hard timer for the game, and encourages action economy, always moving forward, and trying to maintain high efficiency on every turn. It's possible to keep most missions below 3%, but you'll probably have a few outliers at 4 or 5%, so you'll typically have a limit of about 31-32 total missions that you can accomplish before endgame is triggered. Because of the 3% minimum, skipping exploration in the tombs generally won't net you a meaningfully lower global Awakening, while it will definitely lead to having fewer items and weapons. MAJOR Change here as of a couple patches ago, there is no longer a minimum 3% awakening, but I didn't bother updating the guide for years after that patch. So yeah, keep your awakening as low as possible and you'll be able to explore every room of every tomb and complete every mission without hitting 100%, but if you mess around too long in combat then you might run out of time.

There is no in-game effect for the global Awakening counter, outside of triggering missions to become available. The earliest that the final boss becomes accessible is about 72-75%. When the counter reaches or exceeds 100%, all other missions lock, and the only mission available will be the final boss. This also means that if you start your second-to-last mission at 97% or higher, it doesn't matter if you finish with 0 or 7 Awakening, that's still going to be your last mission.

Mission selection is important. There are a total of 46 missions in the game plus the final boss (make that 57 with all of the DLC), but many of them are unlocked either by doing missions in a particular area, or by completing missions for a particular character. (I know, the Game resources show Mission files going up to 91, but those refer to the combat maps, not the objective missions - a single 'Mission' can include multiple combat maps, and most of those are chosen from a random pool).

Tech-Acquisitor Scaevola offers a total of 12 missions, most of them involving the salvage/theft of Necron technology, which rubs several of the other characters the wrong way. Completing all 12 of her missions will close off the final mission for Videx, and unlock a different ending, as well as a Steam achievement. (I suspect the different endings are triggered by completing the final mission for Videx or Scaevola, but I think those require finishing the other 11 before the final mission will show - more testing is needed)

Lector-Dogmatis Videx offers a total of 12 missions as well, most of them involving the spiritual health of the cohort, purification of the tomb, and putting forbidden necron knowledge to the torch. This makes him the direct opposite of Scaevola, as he would rather see the forbidden lore destroyed where she wishes to acquire it for the good of mankind. As such, Videx's final mission will lock off Scaevola's mission when completed, making finishing either of their storylines mutually exclusive, unlocking another different ending, and a Steam achievement.

Dubdomina Khepra is the leader of the Skitarii forces and her missions centre around assisting the troops on the ground and often reward more access to troops to assist the cohort as a result. Her missions don't affect the ending, but are often still worth doing for the rewards (especially since she gives more TechPriests and better troops). She offers a total of 11 missions.

Quartermaster Rho is in charge of supplies. He only offers a total of 6 missions, mostly centred around obtaining resources, and providing certain technology in return. He typically offers more Blackstone and fewer items for completed missions.

Prime Hermeticon Captrix is a field operative working alongside the Skitarii. Her missions are all bossfights, with a total of 6 of them throughout the game. Unlocking a mission from her requires a certain percentage on Global Awakening, as well as finishing a certain number of missions within a particular zone (each of the six zones is named for the boss of that zone). Of note, the final boss becomes available at 72-75% awakening and can be fought early (for a steam achievement), and the final boss' arena will include all of the other bosses that haven't been fought yet. There is a canticle that only unlocks upon finishing 5 of the 6 bosses, which pretty much requires careful juggling of all 5 of the mission givers to unlock all of the bosses before time runs out (I suspect it might be impossible to get that Canticle while also completing Scaevola or Videx' mission path, but I haven't been able to confirm yet).

Because of how this is laid out, it's basically impossible to hundred-percent the game in a single playthrough, or even two or three playthroughs. More testing is needed, but it appears that seeing all of Scaevola's storyline while avoiding all of Videx's (or vice versa) along with all of Khepra's makes it impossible to also complete Rho's or Captrix's storylines as well. At the time of this writing, I believe that the fewest possible playthroughs to see all of the game's content would be once for Videx's story, once for Scaevola's, once for Khepra's and Rho's, and once for Captrix (where you dip into each of the other stories to unlock the locales and bosses).

Combat Map Interface

When you enter a room with three red Necron silhouettes or one with a white diamond, you'll go into the combat interface. There are a couple of missions where the white diamond just leads to an event instead, but that's very rare - 99% of the time, it'll be a combat.

In combat, you have a map grid overview of the map, and you'll take turns one unit at a time moving, shooting, and using skills. The turn order is displayed across the top so you can see which units are going to take their turns 9 units in advance, and you can hover your mouse over a portrait and the camera will zoom to that unit.

The turn order is randomly determined, and the only thing you can do to influence that is to delay your action (see below). However, the order isn't entirely random. At the start of a mission, the game invisibly takes all of your TechPriests and any troops you've selected, and shuffles them into a random order. That order will remain the same for the entire mission, even from combat to combat, even if you delay actions. When combat starts, all possible necrons (including any hidden ones, or any that could be spawned by other things) are also shuffled. Then the game randomly shuffles through those two sets of units and puts them in a turn order, but making sure that your TechPriests and troops always keep their same sequence even if there are Necrons between your turns. For troops that aren't deployed yet and necrons that haven't spawned yet, their turns are still there but hidden from the turn order, so if you summon troops, they will be inserted into the same spot on the turn order every time.

One of the effects you can have from an event is ++Initiative or --Initiative, referring to whether the Necrons are faster (++) or slower (--). If the Necrons have ++Initiative, then on the first turn (and only the first turn), their units will all go first, with all of your TechPriests going last, then things will shuffle again for the next turn (all turns are always shuffled unless initiative modifies that). If the Necrons have --Initiative, then the reverse is true, with all of your TechPriests going first, then Necrons last. Depending on the map, this can be a minor concern or a massive advantage, mostly depending on how large the map is, the movement rate of the units, and the range of the weapons - the easier it is to get close enough to attack, the more Initiative matters.

When a TechPriest's turn comes up, the camera will zoom to that unit, and an interface will show along the bottom. This lists their portrait, current HP and armour values, all of their possible actions, passive skill effects, and a delay turn hourglass at the bottom right with a small X next to that. The hourglass only shows until that unit has taken any action (movement, skill, attack, whatever), then it becomes an X to end that unit's turn. Using the hourglass will delay that unit's turn until the end of the current round, with all delayed units taking their turns after every other unit has finished. A unit can only be delayed once, and as soon as you take any movement or actions, you lose the ability to delay.

Now, troops and necrons generally get very little to do on their turns - typically some movement, one attack, and maybe one special ability. TechPriests, however, get lots to do on their turns, since they tend to accumulate a bunch of weapons, support systems, skills, etc, as well as having Cognition Points (Cog Points or CP) to buy more movement and fuel other abilities. There is no required order for using your abilities - you can move a little, use a skill, move a little further, make an attack, and continue moving in any order, provided you have movement/actions remaining. The limitation is that you can only use any given weapon/skill/ability once per turn (and many skills and support systems are once per 2 or 3 turns or even longer cooldowns), and you can only buy more movement if you have CP to spend for it.

Movement is along a square grid from space to space. Distance is calculated by actual distance, not by grid spaces, so diagonal movement often leads to what seem to be rounding errors but actually aren't - moving 5 spaces north and 5 spaces east might cost 10 spaces of movement in many games, or 7.5 spaces if diagonals are at +50% cost, or 5 spaces if diagonals are free, but in Mechanicus the game actually uses the proper 7.07 spaces. As a result, circular blasts and arcs from flamers are more accurate to how much area they should cover than most boardgame systems, but it does mean that occasionally you'll have one floating movement point after you cover what should have been a maximum distance move. It also makes it somewhat easier to judge distance at a glance, rather than needing to count spaces, but for many people it makes it harder to count spaces because many of us are very used to boardgame approximations for diagonals rather than real distance.

Movement is highlighted in cyan and orange, showing which spaces you are able to move through, and a line for your projected path to move to that space. The cyan area has no additional cost, while the orange area costs 1 CP to move into. Once you've spent that CP to move into the orange area, any additional movement that isn't used is stored, so you can move into the orange area, make an attack, and not waste any movement - whatever movement was left becomes cyan, allowing you to continue moving at no cost (effectively because you've already paid for that block of movement.

Making attacks is a matter of clicking on the weapon, then either clicking on the target or positioning the arc or line and clicking to fire. Melee weapons generally require you to be within reach of the target (the arc scourge is an exception), while ranged weapons usualyl require you to be within the maximum range of the weapon but not within melee reach - while in melee with any live enemy, your ranged weapons are disabled (flamers are an exception).

With a handful of exceptions, almost all weapons and skills cost Cognition Points to use, which brings us to...

Cognition Points - your lifeblood

Now, you may notice that since everything is driven by the Awakening metre, you're going to be under the gun at all times, trying to get through missions as quickly and efficiently as you can. You'll need to balance this sense of urgency against the risks of pushing too fast and becoming overextended or caught in a bad position, and the risk of leaving loot behind by rushing past it. As a result, efficiency is your primary concern in how you build your TechPriests, how you deploy them, and what actions you take during an encounter.

Your efficiency is going to be directly tied to something called Cognition Points (CP). You begin with a pool of up to 4 CP, which always starts at zero at the beginning of a mission. CP are stored between encounters, and finishing an encounter will automatically absorb all of the available CP left on that map to top you off. Excess CP above your maximum are lost. You can increase your maximum as a reward for specific missions (most of them from Khepra or Rho) by 1 point each time to a maximum cap of 10 CP.

You can earn CP to fill this gauge in a variety of ways:
- as a reward for certain glyphs or events during a mission
- by stepping close to an archive during combat (Necron data troves marked with an orange cog on the map)
- by using your Servo-skull to drain an archive at a distance
- by stepping close to a downed necron, or finishing it off at range or with a critical hit
- from a variety of skill upgrades, canticles, and equipment

Archives are worth a special mention. Archives contain 1-3 points depending on their size, and are clearly marked as such on the combat map. Stepping into an adjacent space will drain that archive of all CP, but will leave any extras above your maximum so as not to waste them. Archives also refresh back to full value at the start of a new combat round. Only TechPriests can pull CP from an archive (not troops), but will pull from them automatically even when it isn't their turn, so long as there are points left to pull and you're not at maximum CP.

CP can be spent to buy additional movement, with 1 CP buying your base movement again. When moving a TechPriest (troops don't have this option), the cyan-highlighted area shows where you can move at no cost, but moving into the orange-highlighted area will cost 1 CP upon crossing the line into that area. Because you can move, stop to take an action, then continue moving, movement that has already been paid for with CP will become cyan movement to help ensure that you don't waste any. You can also move all the way to the edge of the orange area, then once you stop moving, will get another orange area, again and again, spending 1 CP for each additional block of movement, allowing one TechPriest to sprint around the map and accomplish many things in a single turn, so long as you have enough CP to spend on doing it.

Many weapons, skills, and upgrades have a CP cost associated with them as well, which is meant to be a balancing factor. More powerful weapons cost more CP to use, and you won't have much CP to work with in the early game (this is actually your biggest limiting factor). You need to balance how much CP you're generating against how quickly you're spending it - generate too little and your powerful weapons will go unused, generate too much and the points above your maximum are wasted. There really isn't any hard math on how much CP you'll need to generate, but try to keep a rough idea in mind of how much CP it would cost for your TechPriest to fire every weapon and use around half of their skills and subsystems in a turn, and compare that to how much CP you're likely to generate from skills, archives, and even kills (via the Dead Analytics skill on the Lexmechanic). If there's more than a few points disparity between them, that's probably not good.

Most combat maps have 3-5 CP on them from archives, but there some what very little (or even none), and some with 20+ later on in the game (one specific map in Mhelob has 54!). In general, the tomb of Mhelob tends to have a lot more, while the tombs of Ubjao and Neftusk tend to be very low on archives.

Weapons cost from 0 to 5 CP to fire them, with the amount of damage a weapon does being generally tied to how much CP it costs to fire. Skills are most often 1 CP to use, but there are a few that are 0 or 2. Summoning troops into combat can be done at the start of a round (and the option to do so only shows if you have enough CP to do so and have surviving troops that haven't been deployed in that combat yet), and costs 1-5 CP depending on the troop type.

Because CP factors into basically everything you do, it should be clear why generating lots of CP to spend is so critical.

Ranking Up

Improving your TechPriests involves spending Blackstone. Blackstone is gained for finishing missions, but also from scanning necron consoles during missions, killing necron units, and as a reward for many glyphs and events during the game. Each time a TechPriest ranks up, the cost of ranking up again will increase, starting at just above 100, but increasing for each rank. Blackstone is kept as a total pool shared by all TechPriests, so be careful about ranking one up far above another. Further, when you gain an additional TechPriest, that TP will always be at Rank 1, so sometimes it's a good idea to stockpile a bit of Blackstone to rank them up quickly so as not to have one very weak TP in your cohort (unless you have no intention of using the new TP, in which case, save your money).

When you upgrade a TechPriest, that TechPriest will gain an additional augment slot, and unlock either a new skill or an additional piece of armour. Which skills are selected has a big impact on how a TechPriest will perform in combat, and what combat role they will perform.

The Blackstone costs for ranking up are as follows:
Rank 1 = Free, all TechPriests start at rank 1
Rank 2 = 121
Rank 3 = 134
Rank 4 = 148
Rank 5 = 163
Rank 6 = 180
Rank 7 = 198
Rank 8 = 218
Rank 9 = 240
Rank 10 = 264
Rank 11 = 291
Rank 12 = 321
Rank 13 = 354
Rank 14 = 390
Rank 15 = 429
Rank 16 = 472
Rank 17 = 520
Rank 18 = 572
Rank 19 = 630
Rank 20 = 693
Rank 21 = 763
Rank 22 = 840
Rank 23 = 924
Rank 24 = 1017
Rank 25 = 1119
Rank 26 = 1231
Rank 27 = 1355
Rank 28 = 1491
Rank 29 = 1641
Rank 30 = 1806
Rank 31 = 1987
Rank 32 = 2186
Rank 33 = 2405
Rank 34 = 2646
Rank 35 = 2911
Rank 36 = 3203
Rank 37 = 3524
Rank 38 = 3877
Rank 39 = 4265
Rank 40 = 4692
Rank 41 = 5162
Rank 42 = 5679
Rank 43 = 6247
Rank 44 = 6872
Rank 45 = 7560
Rank 46 = 8316
Rank 47 = 9148
Rank 48 = 10063
Rank 49 = 11070
Rank 50 = 12177
Rank 51 = 13395
Rank 52 = 14735
Rank 53 = 16209
Rank 54 = 16209
Rank 55 = 16209

You cannot rank up beyond 55, because at that point all 6 skill paths are full and there are no buttons to click on to trigger a rank up, even though there's a cost of 16209 listed for rank 56.

Of course, there's minimal benefit to ranking up beyond 25, as that's when you have the minimum number of augmentation slots to equip top-tier kit in every possible slot and should have already purchase your best skills anyway.

Over the course of the entire game, assuming you go out of your way to hit as many events and glyphs as you can with good accuracy for rewards, while also completing most of your missions within 3%, you'll complete about 32 missions, and earn about 32000-34000 Blackstone.

Ranking up a single TechPriest while leaving all of the others at rank 1 thus means you can reach about rank 35 with that Single TP, for a cost of 30660, and you might reach Rank 36 for 33863. Ranking up 2 TPs comes out to about Rank 28 at 15078 each, but is likely to have one reach 29 at the very end. Ranking up 3 TPs limits you to about rank 25 at 11001 Blackstone each. 4 TPs comes out to rank 22 for 7941. Five TPs is rank 20 for 6338 each, and finally Six TechPriests at even rank comes out to rank 18-19 for 5015 or 5645 each.

This means that a full cohort of 6 TechPriests can _barely_ complete two full skill paths on each member (but will probably have a couple of them that are 1 rank short), while a smaller cohort of 3 TechPriests can feasibly have full kit slots, two full paths, and a scattering of other abilities.

Skill Paths

All skill paths are not created equal. Until the devs release a balance patch, there are several that are very much out of order, resulting in some paths being very worth dipping into for one or two ranks to get the best things, then never touching again.

Explorator - the melee and mobility path, this is intended to create a melee specialist that can move around between enemies and place strong single-target damage where needed. Additionally, since enemies moving out of melee reach triggers a free attack, they can be used to pin a ranged enemy down for at least one free hit as they try to back up. Some melee enemies also trigger opportunity attacks as they approach, allowing for the Explorator to sometimes act as a front-line tank to help logjam melee enemies to keep more fragile ranged characters behind him safe.

Secutor - the troop-leader path, the Secutor focuses on providing buffs for troops, either for more damage, more armour, getting them into the fight faster, or giving them free attacks. Sounds useful on paper, but in practice by the time the Secutor starts to get rolling, the other TechPriest classes have already left it in the dust.

Tech-Auxilium - a support class, with a scattering of abilities that don't really reflect any central theme. Each of the abilities is useful for a different sort of build, making this a good class to dip into for other classes.

Lexmechanic - another support class, but this one with the very clear roll of CP generation. All 5 abilities are built around generating more CP, making this a must-have in most cases, particularly on some of the Ubjao missions where there is very little CP provided by archives.

EnginSeer - another support class, focused entirely on healing. Given that all damage that you haven't repaired by the end of a mission costs Blackstone to repair (even if the amount is largely trivial), you'll still want one of these for in-combat healing, if not necessarily to top everyone off as fights are wrapping up.

Dominus - the ranged weapon path, with a focus entirely on energy damage and effectively the opposite of the Explorator.

All skill paths upgrade in the same pattern of 9 ranks - odd ranks grant an ability (some are active with a cooldown or CP cost, others are passive benefits that are always on), while even ranks grant a piece of armour (head, torso, arms, or legs) in whichever order you desire. You can mix and match armour from multiple classes, but can only have one head, one torso, one arm, and one leg equipped at a given time (yes, make sure you equip them, they cost augment slots to use), making it important to consider which combination of kit you want for a TechPriest.

Class: Explorator

Rank 1 ability - Escape. This is quite underrated and probably in the top 5 for most useful/powerful abilities. Increasing movement speed by 3 metres isn't a big deal, but ignoring opportunity attacks is huge. Enemies with melee attacks can generally make a free attack on you if you move out of a space within their reach, and giving them free damage in order to fall back is a bad move. This is compounded by the fact that you cannot use ranged weapons while in melee with anything. This isn't the most important ability to pick up early on, but it becomes very useful around Ubjao and even moreso later once Lychguards become common.

Rank 3 ability - Noospheric Scan. This automatically scans any enemy within melee reach, showing you their armour and HP stats. Useful, but there are lots of ways to get that information, and in the late game it's barely worth knowing.

Rank 5 ability - Angered Spirit. When a weapon is used, it charges up the machine spirit for that weapon. Depending on the weapon, this may take 1-3 uses before the machine spirit is charged. Once it is, the next attack with that weapon will gain some sort of bonus. Most commonly, this bonus is either more damage, or not requiring any CP to use the weapon, or destroying some of the target's armour. Angered Spirit adds another 2 damage on top of whatever the machine spirit effect is for each weapon. A nice bonus, but generally not something you pay much mind to.

Rank 7 ability - Blessed Generator. Power Field Generators are an augment that fits into the backpack slots on a TechPriest, which provide a bonus of 2, 3, or 4 damage to all physical damage attacks made during the turn that they are activated. They cost 1 CP to activate, and have a cooldown of 3 turns, and this augment makes them not have any CP cost. For melee specialists, this can be stacked for a very nice bonus to damage (two of the Tier 3 Power Field Generators gives a total of +8 damage to physical attacks). Note that there is currently a typo that the Energeia Enhancers at Tier 2 and 3 are listed as Power Field Generators (only the name is incorrect, they have nothing to do with this ability and affect energy weapons instead).

Rank 9 ability - Traveller. So long as you are not equipped with any ranged weapons, you gain +1 damage to attacks, +3 metres to movement, +1 to both types of armour, and +15% to your critical chance. This is a nice ability for those that are fully committing to an all-melee build. Currently the display is bugged so that Traveller will not show until you are in a mission, where it will still provide the buffs properly. In order to claim the buff, you need to either have both of your ranged weapon slots empty, or have them equipped only with the Arc Scourge weapon (provided by the Omnissiah Edition of the game), as all other weapons will deactivate the buff.

Armour parts:
Head - +1 HP, +1 Physical Armour
Torso - +3 HP, +1 Physical Armour
Legs - +2 HP, +3m Movement
Arms - +1 to all Physical Damage

All four of these parts reflect the preference of melee combat for the Explorator. The Head part is okay, but certainly not best-in-slot in most cases, the Torso part is 1 HP less than the same part on the Tech-Auxilium making it a straight downgrade, the Legs are 1 HP less than the same part on the Dominus making it a straight downgrade (although if you're going fully melee you wouldn't want to waste Blackstone on buying the Dominus leg part as the bonus range from Dominus rank 1 isn't useful to you at all), and the Arm part provides a unique bonus to all physical damage attacks. If you're going with a fully melee build, you'll do okay with most of these armour parts, but the Torso from Tech-Auxilium is strictly better, and an arguement can be made for the Head part from Lexmechanic to get +1/+1 armour instead of 1 HP and 1 Physical armour only. If you're willing to trade away the 1 point of damage from the arm parts, the Lexmechanic arms have a 20% dodge chance that goes a long way toward your survivability.

Class: Secutor

Rank 1 ability - Servant Protocol. This allows your servo skullto be used on a troop unit to give +1 Damage, +4m movement, and +15% critical chance. In the early game, you'll generally want to save your Servo Skull for grabbing CP from across the map, but once you're a few ranks in and have someone else building into Lexmechanic, you can afford to use your servo skull to buff your troops. The +1 damage is forgettable, but +4 movement really helps given that troops can't spend CP to buy more movement leading them to often be outpaced by TechPriests.

Rank 3 ability - Command Fire. This is the core ability for the Secutor, and the main reason to consider having one at all. When you use this ability, you must have at least one troop unit within 8 metres of you. If you do, you can select an enemy unit anywhere on the map, and if any of your troops that are within 8 metres also have line of sight on it and are within range to attack it, they will. This can result in several of your troops all shooting together, which can stack up damage very quickly to focus a target down. Since they all fire in sequence, it's possible for one trooper to kill the target, then the next trooper to finish it off, ensuring that it cannot use reanimation protocols and allow you to collect the CP for the kill at a distance. Strangely, the area damage from the Kastelan and Kataphron both has no effect - even though they're using a flamer and a torsion cannon respectively, the attack will only hit the target designated by Command Fire with no area damage, and no chance of friendly fire. Command Fire has a 3-turn cooldown, so it can be used every 3 turns which may require some forethought to avoid wasting it in suboptimal circumstances.

Rank 5 ability - Command. Similar name to the previous ability, this provides either a +2 bonus to the next attack that all of your troops make, or a +2 bonus to both armour types for all troops until the end of the turn. If you can arrange a gun line where you have several Skitarii Rangers or vanguards all with relatively open lines of sight, you can use this immediately before using Command Fire to really ramp up the damage.

Rank 7 ability - Optimized Optimization. Weird name, but this is another ability that improves a backpack item. In this case, Cognitive Canisters can be used to provide a buff to one trooper unit, giving them a bonus to damage and critical chance. The cooldown is usually 3 turns, but this ability reduces it to 2 turns, allowing you to use them every other turn for bonus damage. Not a bad ability if you're aiming for a challenge where you rely mostly on troops, but not worth it outside of that as troops are quickly left behind on damage scaling compared to TechPriests.

Rank 9 ability - Reinforcements. This allows you to drop one single troops unit anywhere on the map without waiting for a new round. While this is a useful ability to a pure Secutor, it really isn't worth being the final ability in the class, and really isn't useful outside of a troops-centric challenge run. If this ability were given much earlier, then it might be a bit more useful.

Armour Parts:
Head - +2 HP, +1 Energy Armour
Torso - +4 HP
Legs - +3 HP, +1 Movement
Arms - +2 HP, +20% Critical Chance

The Secutor parts really aren't all that useful compared to those granted by other classes. The head armour is identical to the Dominus, but you get more from the Dominus' skills than from the Secutor. The torso armour is identical to the Lexmechanic but you get more from the Lexi's skills than from the Secutor. The leg armour is 2 movement worse than the Dominus and 1 movement worse than the Explorator but otherwise the same. The only part that really stands to be all that useful on its own is the arm for +20% critical chance, which also gives 1 more HP than the same part on the Tech-Auxilium, but there are other parts already vying for the arms slot (Explorator, Dominus, Lexmechanic) that are usually higher priority. What the Secutor's armour does have going for it is that it stacks HP higher than any other single class. In a troops-centric challenge run, you're probably going to be out front, tanking hits to prevent your fragile troops from being killed (which is somewhat the opposite of the theme that Skitarii are supposed to be expendable while TechPriests aren't), but it does make for a somewhat workable tactic with that particular playstyle. Ultimately, the Secutor doesn't have much to recommend it outside of wanting to have a specific playstyle that is entertaining for theme and for added difficulty.

Class: Tech-Auxilium

Rank 1 ability - Cognition Freedom. This is probably one of the most powerful abilities in the game. Once every three turns, you can turn this on to make your next weapon attack cost zero CP. In the early game when you're unlikely to have a weapon that costs more than 1 or 2 CP to use, that's moderately useful, but as soon as you unlock a few power weapons that take 3 or more CP to fire and use that as a balancing factor, this ability swiftly becomes game-breakingly powerful. If you're finding things difficult or just want to cruise down easy-street, every TechPriest buying a single level of Tech-Auxilium for this ability alone is a huge boost in overall firepower.

Rank 3 ability - Defensive Protocol. Whereas Cognition Freedom is one of the most powerful, this ability is forgettably useless. You can now use your Servo Skull to give a single TechPriest +1 Physical armour for the rest of the turn. That has minimal applications, it's easy to forget that the buff is even there, and there are almost always better things to use your Servo Skull for in the early game, and in the late game the bonus is too small to really matter.

Rank 5 ability - Bless. This is the TechPriest version of the Secutor's Command ability, offering either +2 damage to the next attack each TechPriest makes or +2 to both armour types for the rest of the turn. This completely overshadows Defensive Protocol, but ultimately you'll almost always be using this for the bonus damage.

Rank 7 ability - Master Refractor. This makes Refractor Fields block an additional two damage. Refractor Field Generators are another backpack augment that projects a bubble that provides some temporary HP to yourself and all allies within about 3 metres for the rest of the turn. These temporary HP don't show anywhere but they ablate incoming damage very well. In version 1.05 this ability was bugged, but it's difficult to tell if the devs fixed it with version 1.06 as there's no visual indicator of how much ablative HP you've gained - enemy attacks just deal less damage, and tend to just say "DMG absorbed" without it being clear how much damage was actually blocked. This ability, combined with either a pair of Refractor Field Generators or a Refractor Field and a Spot Light can make for a very effective front-line tank that can soak up hits while taking minimal damage.

Rank 9 ability - Overzealous. This is another very powerful ability, but takes some significant investment to get to. Canticles are powerful once-per-mission abilities that give a variety of bonuses. This ability allows you to cast one of them for the price of 2 CP without using it up from your stock, once every three turns. This can result in all sorts of nasty combinations, such as ignoring enemy armour, shredding enemy armour, healing a unit in an emergency, boosting ally armour, gaining a huge bonus to movement, etc. The sky is really the limit for this ability. Of note - the game calculates whether or not you can use the ability based on the 2 CP cost before you cast it, but when you use it, the canticle will trigger first and the CP cost will be spent afterward. Fot Blessing of the Omnissiah, this means that you'll need to have 2 CP to use Overzealous, then it will give you 3/6/9 CP from the canticle, which will max out at your normal maximum, THEN the 2 CP will be taken out to pay for it. Depending on the size of your CP gauge, that may make Blessing of the Omnissiah a less-than-useful canticle to play with Overzealous.

Armour Parts:
Head - +2 Energy Armour
Torso - +4 HP, +1 Physical Armour
Legs - +2 HP, +2 Movement
Arms - +1 HP, +20% Critical chance

Tech-Auxilium has some of the better armour parts to choose from. The head armour gives +2 energy armour but no HP, but since the majority of enemies make energy attacks, that's actually a benefit. The torso gives the same HP as the Secutor but also +1 Physical Armour, making it a candidate for best-in-slot unless you're specifically stacking Energy Armour (in which case you'll go with EnginSeer or Dominus). The Leg slot is an acceptable alternative to the Explorator or Dominus, being 1 HP less and 1 movement less than the Dominus and only 1 movement less than the Explorator, but you'll still want the Dominus legs on most builds. The arm is the only disappointment, being the same as the Secutor but 1 HP less, and critical hit builds aren't really all that important compared to other factors.

Class: Lexmechanic

Rank 1 ability - Enhanced Analytics. This gives you one free CP at the start of your turn. This is probably one of the best abilities to start off with, as CP fuels everything that you do. It's also one of the abilities that is most useful in the very beginning of the game before you have access to powerful kit, and doesn't drop off in usefulness as the game progresses. Having an extra CP from each TechPriest (by each of them buying Lexmechanic 1) really adds up during a fight.

Rank 3 ability - Extraction Protocol. This allows your servo-skull to extra all CP from an archive rather than just one. Early game you'll find a 2 or 3 CP archive in maybe half of the maps, and occasionally more than one in a single map. In Ubjao you'll find them much more rarely, but in Mhelob, Akropis, and Neftusk, they'll be even more common. For early game, you probably only want one TechPriest with this ability, but as you get deeper in (and particularly after Ubjao), having several TechPriests with this ability can be quite useful.

Rank 5 ability - Dead Analytics. This gives you +1 CP whenever you kill an enemy. This can only trigger once per weapon attack, even if your weapon kills several targets, but it will trigger even if the enemy goes down and gets back up from reanimation protocols. This can result in a very good feedback loop, where you spend a lot of CP to ensure kills, get CP from doing that, and allow the next TechPriest in line to spend more CP to get kills. Not a top-tier ability, but certainly a good one.

Rank 7 ability - Sacred Scanners. Scanners are another backpack augment, used for drawing in CP from a source that isn't nearby. Just like you can send a servo-skull to pull CP from an archive or from a downed necron, you can use a scanner for the same thing. This reduces the cooldown on scanners by 1 turn, allowing you to use them every turn rather than every other turn, but honestly, scanners are probably one of the least useful augments to equip anyway, so this ability doesn't matter much.

Rank 9 ability - Overcharged Cognition. This ability has two effects. The first is a passive that when you are hit, you gain +1 CP, even if that hit dealt no damage. The second is an active ability that can be triggered once every 5 turns to completely fill the CP gauge to maximum. Since the best weapons all guzzle CP, the active ability here is definitely deserving of a top slot on its own, but the passive synergizes nicely with a Tech-Auxilium using Refractor Fields and/or Spot Lights to provoke attacks and soak up the damage from them, which would make for a great late-game combination if you weren't already wiping out entire rooms before they can act by the time you had enough ranks to create this combination.

Armour Parts:
Head - +1 Energy Armour, +1 Physical Armour
Torso - +4 HP
Legs - +2 HP, +2m Movement
Arms - +2 HP, +20% Dodge chance

Lexmechanic armour is a mixed bag. The head part gives one of each armour, which is actually better than HP in most cases. The torso part is only +4 HP with no armour at all, making it identical to the Secutir, strictly inferior to the Tech-Auxilium, and generally weaker than the Explorator, EnginSer, or Dominus torso parts. The legs are identical to the Tech-Auxilium. The arms are one of the three parts tied for best-in-slot, given that a 20% dodge chance avoids a lot more damage over the course of a mission than any of the HP/Armour versions do. If your build doesn't specifically want the Explorator or Dominus arms for a bonus to damage, the Lexmechanic arms are the best ones for survivability (plus the matrix dodge animation is rather funny to see).

Class: EnginSeer

Rank 1 ability - Cleansing Anointments. Harmful status effects last 1 less turn. Every other turn, you can cleanse a negative status effect from yourself or another unit anywhere on the map. There are really only two status effects in the game, and they both tend to show up only in the early game. Canoptek Acanthites and Scarab Swarms will hit with an acid attack that does minimal damage but deals 2 extra acid damage at the end of each of your turns for 2 turns. The passive from this ability will shorten that to 1 turn if you're the one that was hit, and you can use the active ability to remove the effect entirely before it triggers. The other effect is a movement speed debuff caused mainly by Immortals with Tesla Cannons which reduces your movement rate by a few metres for one turn. All three of those enemy types become very rare as the game goes on, with Acanthites disappearing entirely, Immortals swapping out for heavy gauss flayers instead, and scarabs only showing up rarely when Canoptek Spyders spawn them (which will usually be killed in the crossfire before they hit anything anyway), so this is an ability that's only nominally useful in the very early game.

Rank 3 ability - Auto Repair. You heal 1 HP at the end of each of your turns. This doesn't sound like much, but it does a long way toward survivability and reducing repair costs at the end of a mission, enough to consider having it on several techpriests by the end of the game, or at least on your tank and healer.

Rank 5 ability - Distant Prayers. Heal yourself or one other TechPriest anywhere on the map for 3 HP. This is a nice spot-heal for when you can't get close enough to a target to heal them more effectively, but isn't really an ability to rely on as your primary source of healing given that it costs 1 CP and can only be cast once per three turns (making it equivalent to Auto Repair in terms if HP per turn average)

Rank 7 ability - Enhanced Repair. Curatio Claws (not mechadendrites, only the claw versions) heal +2 HP, and have 1 less cooldown. This makes you a true healer, and will generally see you equipping two of your best Curatio Claws onto this character for maximum healing by mid game, then will be out-moded by late game once you're killing everything too fast for it to hit you anyway. In a challenge run where you either don't take high-damage weapons or rely mostly on troops instead of TechPriests, this ability is golden, because troops tend to be nearly killed from only one or two hits and need a lot of HP to get them back out of danger.

Rank 9 ability - Benediction. Once per three turns, for 1 CP, you can either heal all Troops to max HP, or all TechPriests to max HP. This will replace your Curatio Claw spam for late-game, as on the rare occasion where you suffer significant damage, you can just kill most of the room, use Benediction to top off and avoid repair costs entirely, then put the killing shot into the last enemy.

Armour Parts:
Head - +1 Physical Armour
Torso - +3 HP, +1 Energy Armour
Legs - +2 HP, +1 Energy Armour
Arms - +2 HP

EnginSeer got the short end of the stick for armour parts. The head part offers only 1 physical armour, making it 2 HP worse than the Explorator's version. The torso part is identical to the Dominus, which isn't bad but isn't great either. The legs part is an interesting oddity in that it gives energy armour instead of bonus movement, making it possibly useful if you're stacking energy armour. The arm part is rubbish giving only 2 HP with no further effect, making it substandard to the Secutor and Lexmechanic arms, and definitely the worst arm part you can take. It might be worth it to grab the EnginSeer legs if you're specifically stacking energy armour for a ranged specialist and aren't all that worried about melee damage or movement speed, but that's a very specific and unlikely build combination.

Class: Dominus

Rank 1 ability - Enhanced Weapons. This gives +4m range to all ranged attacks, which is a significant benefit given that pistols typically only have a range of 8m, and many of the rifles have a range of 12 or 15m. However, where this really shines is on the Cognis Flamer, Incendine Combustor, Phosphor Blaster, and Heavy Phosphor Blaster. Each of those weapons has an arc, ranging from 30 degrees to 120 degrees, hitting all targets within that arc (including allies, so be careful of friendly fire). Increasing the range of any of those weapons makes it significantly easier to hit multiple targets, giving a much better benefit than just the bonus range does for other weapons. Note that the Arc Scourge is NOT a ranged weapon, even though it can attack targets a couple metres away. This ability is definitely worth it for a 1 rank dip.

Rank 3 ability - Attack Protocol. This allows the servo skull to deal 1 damage to enemy targets as it scans them, ignoring armour. While this can be funny to occasionally kill off a downed enemy across the map, it actually doesn't come up that often, and 1 damage to a target is increasingly irrelevant after the early game.

Rank 5 ability - Angered Spirit. This is exactly the same ability as the Explorator gets at the same level. I need to test it, but I believe they stack, though there isn't much reason to want to go into both Explorator and Dominus deep enough to get both copies of Angered Spirit.

Rank 7 ability - Enhanced Enhancers. Energeia Enhancers cost -1 CP to use, this is another backpack item augment. Since Dominus is all ranged, and almost all of the ranged weapons deal energy damage, this makes it moderately more economical to take a pair of Energeia Enhancers to get some really nice burst damage. Note that as of version 1.06, the Tier 2 and Tier 3 Energeia Enhancers are mislabeled as Power Field Generators. Look for the ones that give bonus energy damage, and this ability will apply to them, as it is only the label that is wrong, and only in the equip screen (they show correctly during missions).

Rank 9 ability - Rites of Range. So long as you don't equip a melee weapon (which means no Power Axe, no Omnissian Axe, no Infestus Mechadendrites, and no Arc Scourge, but Cognition Mechadendrites are fine a they aren't a weapon), you gain +4 range on ranged weapons, +1 damage, +1 to both types of armour, and +15% critical chance. Like Traveller, this doesn't show on the equip screen but does show in missions. This is a decent ability but not one of the real game-breakers.

Of note, Infestus Mechadendrites count as melee weapons, but do not (as of patch 1.07) turn off the Rites of Range buff on the Dominus. Unknown if this is a bug or intentional.

Armour Parts:
Head - +2 HP, +1 Energy Armour
Torso - +3 HP, +1 Energy Armour
Legs - +3 HP, +3 Movement
Arms - +1 to all Energy Damage

Much of the advice for the Explorator applies here, with a different goal. The Dominus head armour is the same as the Secutor and generally best in slot unless you somehow need physical armour because you're not watching your positioning. The torso part is the best one that offers HP and Energy armour, and identical to the EnginSeer version. The legs are best-in-slot for almost every build, having the most HP and the best movement bonus. The arms are situational, being great for a purely energy-damage character but less so if you have a variety of damage types. If you're going for a pure sniper, stay with all energy weapons, Energeia Enhancers, and all Dominus parts, but if you're going for a hybrid you'll probably just want the legs and maybe one other piece, while taking the arms from the Lexmechanic, and other parts as needed for survivability.

Build Combinations

Over the course of the game, assuming you're taking the time to scan every console when you can (make sure to scan them first for Blackstone then break them to roll back the Awakening), making good decisions on events and glyphs, and completing missions, you should earn between 32k and 34klackstone. This total is split between all of your TechPriests, but the amount that levelling up costs increases with each rank.

If you take only one TechPriest into missions and don't bother ranking up any of the others, that single TechPriest can have rank of bout 35 by the final boss. Given that full augment slots (4 armor, 9 weapon, 6 mechadendrite, 6 backpack) are only 25, you're losing out a lot buying that many ranks on a single TechPriest, because every even-numbered rank in a given path gives a redundant armour part (since you'll only be using the 4 best ones for your build), and the augment slots given over 25 don't matter. This is a highly suboptimal build, but can be fun making a Secutor that relies almost entirely on troops for damage while having tons of support abilities.

If you rank up two TechPriests, you'll reach about rank 28 on each of them by end-game, which is almost enough to complete a three skill paths and definitely allows full augment slots. Still, because the game is driven by action economy, fewer TechPriests is less powerful, so this is technically a minor challenge.

Ranking up three TechPriests yields average rank of almost 25, which is enough to max two full paths and still have a couple ranks to play with, and almost reach maximum kit slots.

Ranking up four Techpriests yields an average rank of about 22, enough to complete a second complete path but not quite enough for full kit slots. Still solid for making a set of specialists that each max one or two paths and have a scattering of abilities from other paths.

Ranking up five TechPriests yields an average rank of roughly 20, which is only slightly less powerful individually than four TechPriests while having 25% more actions due to having a fifth character. Unless you dig deep into Khepra's missions, this is usually the max you'll get, and is honestly overkill by the time you get the fifth one, unless you're deliberately limiting yourself in other ways for the challenge. (hopefully this will change with the balance changes in coming patches)

Obtaining a full cohort of six TechPriests is worth a steam achievement, and gives an average rank of around 18-19. You're well into overkill by the time you get your sixth TechPriest, and you'll probably struggle with making the last two TechPriests unique rather than just effective copies of another TechPriest you already have.

The most powerful combination to start from as a character build is as follows:
Start at rank 1
Buy 2 ranks in Lexmechanic, selecting the Arms part
Buy 2 ranks in Dominus, selecting the Legs part
Buy 2 ranks in Tech-Auxilium, selecting the Torso part
Buy 2 ranks in Explorator, selecting the Head part
Evaluate how you want to build from there

The first levels in Lexmechanic give a much-needed boost to CP and reduce damage taken by 20% due to one in five enemy attacks missing outright, both which are great for early survival and use of whatever good weapon you can get first. After that, the Dominus ensures that you can control the distance to an engagement by increasing your range by 4m as well as giving you the best leg augment available, letting you dart in, shoot a target, then back up out of range, or use that movement to cover distance to scan a console then get back out, or to get in position to setup a crossfire. After that, you should be starting to see more difficult enemies as the most difficult missions are generally Missions 4-6 because the number of enemies begins to increase while you still don't have much in the way of good weapons. If you have at least one high-damage weapon that costs a lot of CP, the first rank of Tech-Auxilium makes that weapon much more economical to use, while the torso part gives a huge boost to survivability. You'll want to focus on laying down as much damage as you can while avoiding return fire at this point, because even if you build into EnginSeer you won't have much healing, and your ability to self-heal will be mostly limited to Curatio Claws and Curatio Mechadendrites. After that, a level in Explorator for even more movement speed and immunity to opportunity attacks rounds out the build while still leaving enough available ranks to complete one entire skill path even if you plan on ranking up a full cohort of six TechPriests - the head augment for Explorator isn't even necessary, it's just an easy spot to grab the last armour part and isn't a bad option unless you already have plans to build into a different path that has a better head.

This is by no means the most powerful combination for end-game, but where game balance currently is, you really don't need something super-powerful for endgame. Missions 3-6 are the hardest due to the combination of having no good kit, weapons, skills, troops, or even basic utility that early, but once you get at least one good weapon and a couple of skills, the difficulty drops significantly. Once you get one good area-of-effect weapon like a flamer, the difficulty plummets and never really recovers.

Equipment

TechPriests have two restrictions on what upgrades they can equip - augmentation slots, and equipment slots.
Augmentation slots are shown below the TechPriest's name, and are grey when unused and blue when used. You will have a total number of Augmentation slots equal to your rank, so buying additional ranks opens up additional slots to handle your item load.
Equipment slots are based on the location that an item plugs in onto your TechPriest, and are limited to the following:
2 Backpack slots (1-3 augmentation slots each)
2 Range Weapon slots (1-3 augmentation slots each)
2 Mechadendrite slots (1-3 augmentation slots each)
1 Melee weapon slot (1-3 augmentation slots each)
1 Head Armour slot (1 augmentation slot each)
1 Torso Armour slot (1 augmentation slot each)
1 Arms armour slot (1 augmentation slot each)
1 Leg armour slot (1 augmentation slot each)

Systems that plug into each of these slots will cost between 1 and 3 Augmentation slots (although armour upgrades always cost only 1). As such, in order to equip top-tier kit in each slot, that will cost a total of 25 Augmentation slots as well. However, you'll find that augmentations tend to become rather superfluous after about 15 slots.

Your most important equipment slots are your ranged weapons and melee weapon. Each TechPriest is allowed to use any number of subsystems in a given turn, but can't use a single subsystem more than once in a given turn (though many have a cooldown of 2 or 3 turns before they can be used again). Because the whole game is effectively running on a timer at all times (even if that timer relaxes at some points), you still want as many actions as you can manage each turn.

Equipment (actually called STC blueprints) is obtained via completing missions, and occasionally from opening Glyphs or events during a mission. When you obtain the STC for an item, that effectively gives you unlimited copies of that item, so finding a Macrostubber (pistol) in one of the early maps would allow you to equip up to 2 Macrostubbers per TechPriest (due to equipment slot limitations) regardless of how many TechPriests you have, filling up one ranged weapon slot and one augmentation slot for each one you equip.

The majority of equipment drops are random, but are weighted toward giving low-tier items in the beginning and high-tier items in the late game. Most weapons are all individual items, even if many of them are upgraded versions of each other, and can be obtained in any order. However, you cannot obtain the T2 version of an otherwise identical item until you have the T1 version, and cannot obtain the T3 version until you have the T2 version. This applies to Power Axes, Omnissian Axes, all Mechadendrites, and all Backpack subsystems.

When an item is offered as a reward for a mission, that item is also removed from the random loot pool. So if Videx offers a Cognis Flamer as a mission reward, from then on that is the only way to obtain a Cognis Flamer during that playthrough. Of course, which items are offered as mission rewards are also effectively random, so you may need to adapt to not having access to certain items during a given playthrough if you're trying to follow a certain storyline. This would normally be a complaint, but in Mechanicus this helps ensure that you might try out suboptimal weapons that you wouldn't otherwise use to cover gaps in your armoury.

Best Kit for Early-game

Because item drops and rewards are semi-random, it's rather difficult to write a guide for which weapons to always build toward, because any given item may not drop during a specific playthrough. However, some recommendations can be made.

Good early-game weapons include the following:
- Phosphor Serpenta: 6-8 energy damage for only 2 CP and a whopping 15m range, plus it scans target stats on a hit
- Arc Rifle: 1-10 energy damage and a minor AoE with 15m range, unreliable but decently powerful
- Cognis Flamer: 4-6 physical damage, 8m range, and a 30 degree arc, your first true AoE attack
- Infestus Mechadendrite: Not so much a great weapon as some supplemental damage and a pushback to get out of melee, plus you won't feel bad about 'wasting' the attack to finish off a downed Necron
- Power Axe: 3-5 damage, only takes 1 attack to charge the machine spirit, and the MS effect strips armour, good for tough enemies that you can't otherwise hurt easily if you're willing to juggle around it

Good early-game subsystems include the following:
- Curatio Claw or Curatio Mechadendrite: at least a little healing is very useful early on
- Refractor Field: great for tanking hits for yourself or nearby allies
- Spotlight: Pairs well with a Refractor but works okay without one as it buffs armour and compels nearby enemies to attack you over any other target
- Cognition Mechadendrite: Great way to get free CP
- Infestus Mechadendrite: already mentioned under weapons, basically a free low-damage attack

Melee Weapon Stats

Melee Weapons
These count as melee weapons for the purpose of the Explorator and Dominus top-level abilities, although they fit into several different equipment slots. All weapons have a 10% critical chance as a base, modified by equipment and skills.

Power Axe, Tier 1
Slot: Melee Weapon
CP cost: 1
Range: Adjacent target
Damage: 3-5 Physical
Machine Spirit: 1 use to charge, hit destroys 1 Energy Armour and 1 Physical Armour
Aug Slots: 1
Special: Triggers opportunity attacks

Power Axe, Tier 2
Slot: Melee Weapon
CP cost: 1
Range: Adjacent target
Damage: 5-7 Physical
Machine Spirit: 1 use to charge, hit destroys 2 Energy Armour and 2 Physical Armour
Aug Slots: 2
Special: Triggers opportunity attacks

Power Axe, Tier 3
Slot: Melee Weapon
CP cost: 1
Range: Adjacent target
Damage: 7-9 Physical
Machine Spirit: 1 use to charge, hit destroys 3 Energy Armour and 3 Physical Armour
Aug Slots: 3
Special: Triggers opportunity attacks

Power Axes are your basic melee weapon, and in the very beginning of the game are one of your best sources of damage. Enemies that don't have melee attacks will need to move out of melee reach in order to shoot, so positioning yourself in melee with an enemy will let you hit them with the power axe once, plus a free attack during the enemy turn when they try to move away. You only get one opportunity attack from the end of a TechPriest's turn until the start of that same TechPriest's next turn, so be mindful of your positioning and initiative order (which you can see at the top of the screen) to ensure that your free attacks land on the targets you want them to. Unless you're going with a Dominus build that entirely eschews ranged weapons, you'll want most of your TechPriests to carry at least a basic Power Axe if they can spare the augmentation slot. Note that opportunity attacks don't cost CP to use.



Omnissian Axe, Tier 1
Slot: Melee Weapon
CP cost: 1
Range: Adjacent target
Damage: 2-4 Physical
Machine Spirit: 1 use to charge, hit immobilizes the target for one turn
Aug Slots: 1
Special: Triggers opportunity attacks

Omnissian Axe, Tier 2
Slot: Melee Weapon
CP cost: 1
Range: Adjacent target
Damage: 4-6 Physical
Machine Spirit: 1 use to charge, hit immobilizes the target for one turn
Aug Slots: 2
Special: Triggers opportunity attacks

Omnissian Axe, Tier 3
Slot: Melee Weapon
CP cost: 1
Range: Adjacent target
Damage: 6-8 Physical
Machine Spirit: 1 use to charge, hit immobilizes the target for one turn
Aug Slots: 3
Special: Triggers opportunity attacks

The Omnissian Axes are usually given as a mission reward. They deal 1 point less damage than the power axe, and instead of shredding some armour, the will immobilize the target for the remainder of the turn. The same advice on positioning and opportunity attacks with Power Axes applies to the Omnissian Axe as well, with the additional concern that your immobilization effect only occurs on every other attack due to needing to charge up the Machine Spirit. Take note of this when choosing where to place your attack, as an immobilized target can't attempt to move out of melee reach and provoke an opportunity attack. If the machine spirit isn't charged, you'll probably want to attack the target you wish to immobilize to charge it up so that the opportunity attack will immobilize it, while if the machine spirit is already charged up, you might want to forgo your attack to avoid killing the target if you're using that target as cover from ranged attacks and might kill it with the first hit. Note that opportunity attacks don't cost CP to use.



Infestus Mechadendrite, Tier 1
Slot: Mechadendrite
CP cost: 0
Range: Adjacent target
Damage: 2 Physical
Machine Spirit: None
Aug Slots: 1
Special: Pushes the target back 1 space.

Infestus Mechadendrite, Tier 2
Slot: Mechadendrite
CP cost: 0
Range: Adjacent target
Damage: 4 Physical
Machine Spirit: None
Aug Slots: 2
Special: Pushes the target back 1 space.

Infestus Mechadendrite, Tier 3
Slot: Mechadendrite
CP cost: 0
Range: Adjacent target
Damage: 6 Physical
Machine Spirit: None
Aug Slots: 3
Special: Pushes the target back 1 space.

Infestus Mechadendrites have a couple of significant uses. They use up a Mechadendrite slot instead of a melee slot, allowing you do supplement how many attack actions you can take in a turn. Since they also have no cost and no cooldown, this makes them useful for a free poke to finish off a downed necron and prevent reanimation. Also, they're useful for being able to push a target away in order to avoid suffering an opportunity attack when you move out of reach, or to circle around enemies to push them into more advantageous positions. Currently there seems to be an irregular bug that pushing an enemy along certain stairs may push them at an angle instead of straight back, or fail to push them at all. Large enemies (destroyers, spyders, Agrolehk) cannot be pushed back. As of patch 1.06, these do deal damage to destroyers and necron panels properly (1.05 and earlier had a bug that prevented them from doing damage to something that couldn't be pushed). It's generally worth it to have at least one Infestus on most of your TechPriests up until mid-game just for the push effect and the free hit to finish off a downed necron, but they become less relevant in late-game.

Of note, Infestus Mechadendrites count as melee weapons, but do not (as of patch 1.07) turn off the Rites of Range buff on the Dominus. Unknown if this is a bug or intentional.



Arc Scourge
Slot: Ranged Weapon
CP Cost: 3
Range: 2.5m (which is effectively 2m with a rounding error)
Damage: 3-10 Energy
Machine Spirit: 1 use to charge, attack costs no CP
Aug Slots: 1
Special: Hit chains to other targets within about 2m, dealing 3-6 energy damage to each

The Arc Scourge is a special weapon offered for purchasing the Omnissiah Edition of the game, is available at the very beginning of the game after completing the tutorial, and occupies a unique niche. It's the only melee weapon to use a ranged weapon slot, the only melee weapon to hit multiple targets, the only melee weapon to hit targets further away than the adjacent space, and seems to be the only weapon that can hit multiple targets but doesn't cause damage from friendly fire. It's also the highest damage weapon that only uses 1 augmentation slot, though that comes with the drawback of it being the highest CP cost weapon in the early game as well. In the very early game, the high CP cost makes it much less useful than it would appear, though the Cognition Freedom ability for Tech-Auxilium 1 makes it one of the best options for the first half of the game. Because it only takes one use to charge up the machine spirit, and the machine spirit effect is that the attack won't cost any CP, that effectively means that combined with Cognition Freedom, you can fire it at no cost for 2 out of every 3 turns. With that combination, the early game is drastically easier, which feels a bit like an unfair advantage for those who've purchased the Omnissiah edition. By late game, the effectiveness of the Arc Scourge drops off, but it remains a solid weapon through about 60% of the game. Note that because it deals Energy damage, it actually doesn't synergize that well with an all-melee explorator, despite counting as a melee weapon, but it can be used to provide a bit of variety of damage types to a class that is otherwise purely physical damage.

Ranged Weapon Stats

Ranged Weapons
These count as ranged weapons for the purpose of the Explorator and Dominus top-level abilities, and all use the ranged weapon equipment slots (of which each TechPriest can have 2). Further, all of these weapons (even the ones that fire an arc that hits multiple targets) can have their ranged increased by the first rank of Dominus, which makes several weapons excessively powerful.

Macro Stubber
Slot: Ranged Weapon
CP Cost: 0
Range: 8m
Damage: 2-4 Physical
Machine Spirit: 2 uses to charge, deals +1 damage
Aug Slots: 1
Special: None

A good early-game pistol to provide a bit of damage variety, but quickly outmoded.



Gamma Pistol
Slot: Ranged Weapon
CP Cost: 0
Range: 8m
Damage: 1-2 Pure Damage
Machine Spirit: 2 uses to charge, destroys 1 Energy Armour
Aug Slots: 1
Special: Deals "pure" damage, which means it bypasses Armour entirely

Situational at best. The Gamma Pistol deals too little damage to make it effective at ignoring armour, but it's possible that terrible luck at which weapons drop from missions and events may mean this is your only other ranged weapon outside of the Phosphor Blast Pistol for the first few missions. Basically outmoded as soon as you acquire literally any other ranged weapon, but the visual effects do look very cool. Stripping Energy Armour every third shot makes it nominally useful for a challenge run when combined with any other energy weapon.



Phosphor Blast Pistol
Slot: Ranged Weapon
CP Cost: 0
Range: 8m
Damage: 1-2 Energy
Machine Spirit: 1 use to charge, deals +1 Damage
Aug Slots: 1
Special: Scans the target

This is the weapon that you virtually always begin the game with, and in most situations it's a better option than the Gamma Pistol, though if you have no other options in the very early game you'll probably want a Gamma Pistol and a Phosphor Blast Pistol rather than two Phosphor Blast Pistols if only for damage variety. Being able to scan targets by shooting them means you don't have to use your servo skull for that purpose, freeing it up for grabbing CP. The damage is only 1-2, but the machine spirit gives every other attack +1 damage, so your average damage comes out to 2 per turn.



Phosphor Serpenta
Slot: Ranged Weapon
CP Cost: 2
Range: 15m
Damage: 6-8 Energy
Machine Spirit: 3 uses to charge, no CP cost
Aug Slots: 2
Special: Scans the target

This is essentially a greatly upgraded version of the Phosphor Blast Pistol. It deals a lot more damage, enough to one-shot Necron warriors early in the game, and has almost double the range. This will probably be your go-to weapon if you get one in the early game, and you'll stick with it until area-effect weapons become common. The 2 CP cost is a little steep for early game, but can be ablated easily with Cognition Freedom, although you'll probably want a zero-cost pistol for your other ranged slot until you really have a good amount of CP income each turn.



Phosphor Blaster
Slot: Ranged Weapon
CP Cost: 3
Range: 8m
Damage: 6-8 Energy
Machine Spirit: 3 uses to charge, deals +3 damage
Aug Slots: 2
Special: Hits everything in a 60 degree arc, scans all targets hit

This is where things get nuts. This will probably be one of your first area effect weapons, and it's a monster. The scan effect is secondary the fact that this beast deals as much damage as a Phosphor Serpenta while covering a 60 degree arc out to 8m. Combined with the +4m range from the first rank of Dominus, this can hit an absurd number of targets, and this isn't even the craziest weapon in the game. As soon as you pick this up, so long as you have enough CP income to use it, the game becomes drastically easier. Be careful of friendly fire, however, and you can't use it in melee (unlike the flame weapons), so you'll still need to pay attention to positioning to get the most out of it.



Heavy Phosphor Blaster
Slot: Ranged Weapon
CP Cost: 4
Range: 10m
Damage: 8-10 Energy
Machine Spirit: 3 uses to charge, deals +3 damage
Aug Slots: 3
Special: Hits everything in a 120 degree arc, scans all targets hit

This is essentially a much more powerful version of the Phosphor Blaster. It has all of the same tactics as above, but the arc is even bigger, the damage is higher, and the costs for using it are higher. Given that Cognition Freedom largely mitigates those costs, this is one of your main late-game weapons that helps to wreck entire rooms at once. Again, friendly fire is a concern, as is accidentally destroying consoles that you want to scan for Blackstone first.



Arc Pistol
Slot: Ranged Weapon
CP Cost: 1
Range: 8m
Damage: 1-2 Energy
Machine Spirit: 2 uses to charge, extends AoE to 6m
Aug Slots: 1
Special: Hits targets within 3m of original target, on a spread about 240 degrees pointed away from the shooter, for 1 Energy Damage

This is the first of the Arc weapons, and it's really only situationally useful. The base damage is equal to that of the Phosphor Blast Pistol, but the Machine Spirit only extends the AoE rather than increasing damage, and the weapon doesn't scan targets. For the price of 1 CP per shot, that's generally not worth it unless you can hit at least 2 other targets with the AoE, and even then, a single point of Energy Damage may not get through armour at all. Be careful of friendly fire, because it will hit allies within the affected area.



Arc Rifle
Slot: Ranged Weapon
CP Cost: 2
Range: 15m
Damage: 1-10 Energy
Machine Spirit: 2 uses to charge, extends AoE to 6m
Aug Slots: 2
Special: Hits targets within 3m of original target, on a spread about 240 degrees pointed away from the shooter, for 1-2 Energy Damage

The Arc Rifle is significantly better than the Arc Pistol, having the same area hit mechanic, but with a much longer range, better primary target damage, and better area damage. For 2 CP, it's a bit risky since it can still deal as little as 1 damage or as much as 10, but occasionally that'll come through in a ping and really hit hard. The AoE deals a little more, and is less likely to be entirely ignored by enemies, but still isn't much. Still, hitting several targets is better than only one. Again, be careful of friendly fire.


Heavy Arc Rifle
Slot: Ranged Weapon
CP Cost: 3
Range: 15m
Damage: 1-20
Machine Spirit: 2 uses to charge, extends AoE to 6m
Aug Slots: 3
Special: Hits targets within 3m of original target, on a spread about 240 degrees pointed away from the shooter, for 1-2 Energy Damage

The Heavy Arc Rifle is essentially the same as the Arc Rifle but costing 1 extra CP and dealing twice the damage. It's still risky, given that it can deal only a single point, but it can just as likely wreck face for 20 damage. The AoE isn't improved at all, but at the tsage where you have access to the Heavy Arc, it's probably only going to be relevant for finishing off Necrons that happen to be downed near the target rather than dealing any significant damage. Still watch for friendly fire.

Ranged Weapon Stats (continued)

Cognis Flamer
Slot: Ranged Weapon
CP Cost: 2
Range: 8m
Damage: 4-6 Physical
Machine Spirit: 2 uses to charge, +1 damage
Aug Slots: 1
Special: Hits all targets in a 30 degree arc out to maximum range, can be used in melee, targets hit are set on fire and lose 2 HP every turn for 3 turns

This is probably the first area effect weapon you get, and it's actually a solid but not terribly overpowered weapon. The arc is narrow enough that you need to be mindful of your positioning but not so wide that you ignite entire maps on fire. Friendly fire is a major concern because this thing HURTS. The damage from being on fire ignores armour, although it doesn't stack (so no lighting a target a bunch of times to stack the damage), and isn't hugely relevant since many fights will be over before the damage has a chance to tick more than once. The range bonus for the Dominus increases the length of the arc, which means this weapon benefits disproportionately compared to other weapons. It's also usable in melee, which means a no-melee dominus can use it even while boxed in.



Incendine Combustor
Slot: Ranged Weapon
CP Cost: 4
Range: 5m
Damage: 8-10 Physical
Machine Spirit: 2 uses to charge, +2 damage
Aug Slots: 2
Special: Hits all targets in a 90 degree arc out to maximum range, can be used in melee, targets hit are set on fire and lose 2 HP every turn for 3 turns

Don't let the reduced range fool you, this weapon is a beast. It deals the same burning damage and can be used in melee like the Cognis, but the range is shorter and the arc is much wider. Combined with the range bonus from Dominus, this weapon is one of the first truly overpowered items you'll find. The advice for the Cognis all applies to this one as well.


Plasma Caliver
Slot: Ranged Weapon
CP Cost: 3
Range: 12m
Damage: 7-9 Energy
Machine Spirit: 2 uses to charge, increase armour shred to 2/2
Aug Slots: 2
Special: shreds 1 Energy Armour to all targets hit, hits all targets in a line out to maximum range or striking a wall

Plasma Culverin
Slot: Ranged Weapon
CP Cost: 4
Range: 10m
Damage: 10-12
Machine Spirit: 2 uses to charge, increase armour shred to 3/3
Aug Slots: 3
Special: shreds 1 Energy Armour to all targets hit, hits all targets in a line out to maximum range or striking a wall

The Plasma Caliver, Plasma Culverin, Eradication Ray, and Solar Atomizer are all very similar weapons. They fire a single beam out to maximum range, that hits all targets that it intersects with (including allies). For single-target damage they're generally a bit on the overpriced side compared to other options, but hitting two or more targets with the same line very much makes up for that. they have good range, making them useful for fast sniper types that can run along the outskirts of an engagement looking for a good angle to shoot through multiple targets for maximum damage. The Plasma weapons have the added benefit that they permanently destroy some of the target's Energy Armour, and every third shot destroys a bigger chunk of both armour types, which allows them to synergize very well with other characters. The Culverin is nearly identical to the Caliver but with slightly more damage and armour shred but at the price of more aug slots, slightly shorter range and higher CP cost.



Volkite Blaster
Slot: Ranged Weapon
CP Cost: 3
Range: 15m
Damage: 9-11 Energy
Machine Spirit: 3 uses to charge, no CP cost for the next shot
Aug Slots: 2
Special: None

The Volkite Blaster is in an odd place. It does a fair bit more damage than the Phosphor Serpenta, but doesn't scan the target, and has no other real benefit to it. However, by the time you obtain it, you'll usually also be getting the Plasma weapons and the Eradication Ray at the same time, all of which outshine it in one way or another, particularly since the Volkite is limited to a single target while the plasma guns and eradication hit all targets in a line. So really, you'll only use the Volkite if you somehow have it and don't have any of the obviously superior alternatives. Even so, it's a powerful weapon and a big upgrade from the other tier 1 weapons, it would just be more meaningful if you got it earlier than the other, better tier 2 weapons rather than shuffled in randomly.


Eradication Ray
Slot: Ranged Weapon
CP Cost: 4
Range: 15m
Damage: 9-13 Energy
Machine Spirit: 3 uses to charge, no CP cost for the next shot
Aug Slots: 2
Special: Hits all targets in a line out to maximum range or striking a wall

Basicalyl all of the advice for the Plasma Caliver and Culverin above will apply here, except that the Eradication Ray doesn't shred armour and does slightly more damage. It actually costs a bit less CP than the Plasma weapons in the long run because every 4th shot has no CP cost, but in practice that will trigger very rarely even in missions with multiple combat encounters.



Solar Atomizer
Slot: Ranged Weapon
CP Cost: 5
Range: 20m
Damage: 12-16 Energy
Machine Spirit: 3 uses to charge, +6 damage
Aug Slots: 3
Special: Hits all targets in a line out to maximum range, passes through walls

The Solar Atomizer is one of the most powerful weapons in the game. It functions a lot like the plasma weapons and the eradication ray, but is significantly easier to get several targets lined up with given that it has the longest range of any weapon in the game, and can pass through walls. It also has the highest base damage of any weapon, and while the large blast radius weapons can outperform it in total damage dealt, the Solar Atomizer is the most powerful for one-shotting bosses.



Torsion Cannon
Slot: Ranged Weapon
CP Cost: 5
Range: 10m
Damage: 11-14 Energy
Machine Spirit: 3 uses to charge, +6 damage
Aug Slots: 3
Special: 8 metre blast radius, blast passes through walls

Holy heck this thing is beyond busted. The torsion cannon is actually rather difficult to use properly because you really have to be standing at maximum range in order to fire it without hitting yourself and the blast radius is huge and passes through walls making friendly fire a real issue. It has the second highest base damage in the game as well, and you'll easily be clearing entire rooms with it as soon as you get it. Strangely the torsion cannon that the Kataphron Battle Servitor gets is much more reasonable (though still overpowered), and doesn't have nearly as ridiculous of a blast radius.



Heavy Grav Cannon
Slot: Ranged Weapon
CP Cost: 5
Range: 20m
Damage: 7-13 Energy
Machine Spirit: 3 uses to charge, +3 damage
Aug Slots: 3
Special: 8 metre blast radius, blast passes through walls, shot can pass through some energy barriers

The HGC is almost as crazy as the Torsion Cannon, but much easier to use because you can fire it from a safer distance. Total damage is somewhat less, but the same tactics apply. If you field even a couple Torsion Cannons or Heavy Gravs, all semblance of challenge totally leaves the game, but it does allow you to push through encounters very fast.

Subsystem Stats

There are two different types of subsystems - backpack items and mechadendrites. On the Tech screen aboard the Caestus Metalican, the Mechadendrites are all sorted under weapons, even though only the Infestus is actually a weapon, while the backpack items are sorted under their own page. but under the Cohort screen where you actually equip them, the Mechadendrites are mixed in with backpack systems instead of weapons.

What matters is that you have two backpack slots at the top (above your TechPriest) and two Mechadendrite slots (below your TechPriest), and the items are not interchangeable.

Up first: Mechadendrites



Curatio Mechadendrite 1
Aug Slots: 1
CP cost: 0
Cooldown: 3
Effect: Heal self or adjacent unit 2 HP

Curatio Mechadendrite 2
Aug Slots: 2
CP cost: 0
Cooldown: 3
Effect: Heal self or adjacent unit 4 HP

Curatio Mechadendrite 3
Aug Slots: 3
CP cost: 0
Cooldown: 3
Effect: Heal self or adjacent unit 6 HP

The Curatio Mechadendrites have a longer cooldown than the Curatio Claws, heal a smaller amount, and don't benefit from the EnginSeer's skill that improves Curatio Claws only. However, they don't cost any CP either, so they're a useful item to have here and there for spot-healing early in the game. By mid-game they've largely been replaced with better options.



Cognition Mechadendrite 1
Aug Slots: 1
CP cost: 0
Cooldown: 2
Effect: Use on an ajacent enemy or console to gain 1 CP

Cognition Mechadendrite 2
Aug Slots: 1
CP cost: 0
Cooldown: 2
Effect: Use on an ajacent enemy or console to gain 2 CP

Cognition Mechadendrite 3
Aug Slots: 1
CP cost: 0
Cooldown: 2
Effect: Use on an ajacent enemy or console to gain 3 CP

Dataspikes are mildly useful early on but rapidly become more important than Curatio Mechadendrites. It's generally a good idea to have one of these on every TechPriest if you can, and you'll want even more of them as the game goes on to feed your constantly growing arsenal that guzzles CP.



Infestus Mechadendrite 1-3

Thse are written up under Melee Weapons because that's what they are. Useful to have a few of them here and there to push enemies away or finish off downed Necrons without wasting a better weapon.



All of the rest of these go in your Backpack slots instead.


Spot Light 1
Aug Slots: 1
CP cost: 1
Cooldown: 2
Effect: Gain +1/+1 Armour for one turn, all enemies within 5 metres are compelled to prefer you as a target

Spot Light 2
Aug Slots: 2
CP cost: 1
Cooldown: 2
Effect: Gain +2/+2 Armour for one turn, all enemies within 5 metres are compelled to prefer you as a target

Spot Light 3
Aug Slots: 3
CP cost: 1
Cooldown: 2
Effect: Gain +3/+3 Armour for one turn, all enemies within 5 metres are compelled to prefer you as a target

The Spot Light is your main tank item in the game, because it forces most enemies to attack you instead of anything else, as well as giving you a short-term boost to armour. Great for keeping a wounded TechPriest alive. However, Flayed Ones and Lychguard both have behaviours that override the taunt effect, though they can be encouraged to attack something else with clever tactics as well.



Curatio Claw 1
Aug Slots: 1
CP cost: 1
Cooldown: 2
Effect: Heal self or adjacent unit 4-6 HP

Curatio Claw 2
Aug Slots: 2
CP cost: 1
Cooldown: 2
Effect: Heal self or adjacent unit 6-8 HP

Curatio Claw 3
Aug Slots: 3
CP cost: 1
Cooldown: 2
Effect: Heal self or adjacent unit 8-10 HP

Curatio Claws are best combined with the EnginSeer skill path to give them an additional +2 HP and effectively remove the cooldown. Without that, they're only slightly better than Curatio Mechadendrites. Healing is most important furing the early game before you can afford the EnginSeer advances, however, and once you can field an EnginSeer with Enhanced Repair and two Curatio Claws, you're probably getting to the point where healing is being supplanted with more area damage anyway.



Scanner 1
Aug Slots: 1
CP cost: 0
Cooldown: 3
Effect: Gather 1 CP from a target within 10m

Scanner 2
Aug Slots: 2
CP cost: 0
Cooldown: 3
Effect: Gather 2 CP from a target within 10m

Scanner 3
Aug Slots: 3
CP cost: 0
Cooldown: 2
Effect: Gather 2 CP from a target within 10m

Scanners are an item that really becomes outmoded before you can make much use of them. A scanner gathers a CP from an eligible target in the same way as a Servo-Skull, which typically means from downed enemies or archives. However, the range is actually rather short, the cooldown is too long, and it's usually a better option to just buy the Extraction Protocol from the Lexmechanic path. The top tier scanner can still only pull 2 CP at a time, although the cooldown is reduced to 2. Lexmechanic removes the cooldown entirely with Sacred Scanners, but in order to have that, you already have Extraction Protocol and you're spending 3 aug slots on pulling CP slightly faster that is probably better going toward dealing damage.



Omnispex 1
Aug Slots: 1
CP cost: 1
Cooldown: 2
Effect: Target enemy gains a 50% miss chance on attacks for 1 round

Omnispex 2
Aug Slots: 2
CP cost: 1
Cooldown: 2
Effect: Target enemy gains a 75% miss chance on attacks for 1 round

Omnispex 3
Aug Slots: 3
CP cost: 1
Cooldown: 2
Effect: Target enemy gains a 100% miss chance on attacks for 1 round

Useful as a tanking item, but outmoded before it really becomes relevant. It's nice to be able to reduce the incoming damage from a Necron Destroyer, but for the aug slots you're better off just removing the damage permanently by killing the destroyer rather than just disabling its weapons for a turn.



Sanctus Canister 1
Aug Slots: 1
CP cost: 1
Cooldown: 3
Effect: You gain +1 damage, +3 movement, and +10% critical chance, which lasts until you attack a target

Sanctus Canister 2
Aug Slots: 1
CP cost: 2
Cooldown: 3
Effect: You or target TechPriest gains +1 damage, +3 movement, and +10% critical chance, which lasts until you attack a target

Sanctus Canister 3
Aug Slots: 1
CP cost: 3
Cooldown: 3
Effect: All TechPriests gain +2 damage, +3 movement, and +10% critical chance, which lasts until they attack a target

A useful buff for helping to get a TechPriest into position more than for dealing damage. The first tier is a decent upgrade in the early game, but the second tier is usually less useful than just equipping two first tiers because it costs 2 CP to put the same buff on anyone instead of only yourself. The third tier buffs all of your TechPriests and would be a great item, except that it comes a little too late in the game and costs 3 CP to trigger, when the movement bonus is less important and Power Field Generators and Energeia Enhancers are a greater damage boost. Interestingly, Sanctus Canisters do last until you attack, so if there's some strange circumstance where you can trigger a Sanctus then wait for the cooldown and trigger it again, they do stack.

Subsystem stats (continued)

Refractor Field Generator 1
Aug Slots: 1
CP cost: 1
Cooldown: 3
Effect: Projects a bubble roughly 3m across that blocks 5 damage against allies within that bubble

Refractor Field Generator 2
Aug Slots: 2
CP cost: 1
Cooldown: 3
Effect: Projects a bubble roughly 5m across that blocks 8 damage against allies within that bubble

Refractor Field Generator 3
Aug Slots: 3
CP cost: 1
Cooldown: 3
Effect: Projects a bubble roughly 7m across that blocks 10 damage against allies within that bubble

When you turn on the ability, it projects a bubble that stays centred on that TechPriest for one turn. Any attack that targets a TechPriest within that bubble will take HP from the bubble first, and the bubble will disappear when those temporary HP are depleted. Unfortunately, there's no way to see how much HP the bubble has remaining, so you just have to estimate how much damage an enemy does. This is a great tanking item, especially when combined with a Spot Light to compel enemies into wasting their attacks against your enhanced armour and temporary HP. Unfortunately, damage output eventually trumps survivability, so by the time the tier 2 Refractor becomes available, you'll already be sliding more toward weapons.



Cognitive Canister 1
Aug Slots: 1
CP cost: 1
Cooldown: 2
Effect: Target troop within 10m gains +1 damage, +25% critical chance until their next attack.

Cognitive Canister 2
Aug Slots: 2
CP cost: 1
Cooldown: 2
Effect: Target troop within 10m gains +2 damage, +50% critical chance until their next attack.

Cognitive Canister 3
Aug Slots: 3
CP cost: 1
Cooldown: 2
Effect: Target troop within 10m gains +3 damage, +100% critical chance until their next attack.

This is naturally the primary item for the Secutor build. If you're specifically going for a run that focuses on using troops, then this is a great thing to have, but troops fall behind in usefulness very quickly as TechPriests gain more and more weapons and skills. Like the sanctus canister, these stack, and you can potentially make a single skitarii hit like a truck if you're willing to skew it that direction, but that's more of a gimmick than anything.



Noise Reductor 1
Aug Slots: 1
CP cost: 0
Cooldown: 3
Effect: Scans all enemies within a 1.5m radius circle (3x3m), revealing their stats

Noise Reductor 2
Aug Slots: 2
CP cost: 0
Cooldown: 3
Effect: Scans all enemies within a 3m radius circle (actually about 7m diameter), revealing their stats

Noise Reductor 3
Aug Slots: 3
CP cost: 0
Cooldown: 3
Effect: Scans all enemies within a 5m radius circle (actually about a 11m diameter), revealing their stats

This is an alernative to using servo skulls to reveal enemy stats, which is useful in the early game to help putting the correct damage type onto enemies to avoid their best armour. However, damage currently scales up much faster than enemy HP and armour, so the Noise Reductor quickly becomes outmoded in favour of more damage. In a challenge run where you don't have high-damage weapons, these items are far more useful.



Energeia Enhancer 1
Aug Slots: 1
CP cost: 0
Cooldown: 3
Effect: You gain +2 damage to Energy weapon attacks for the remainder of this turn

Energeia Enhancer 2
Aug Slots: 2
CP cost: 0
Cooldown: 3
Effect: You gain +3 damage to Energy weapon attacks for the remainder of this turn

Energeia Enhancer 3
Aug Slots: 3
CP cost: 0
Cooldown: 3
Effect: You gain +4 damage to Energy weapon attacks for the remainder of this turn

Power Field Generator 1
Aug Slots: 1
CP cost: 0
Cooldown: 3
Effect: You gain +2 damage to Physical weapon attacks for the remainder of this turn

Power Field Generator 2
Aug Slots: 2
CP cost: 0
Cooldown: 3
Effect: You gain +3 damage to Physical weapon attacks for the remainder of this turn

Power Field Generator 3
Aug Slots: 3
CP cost: 0
Cooldown: 3
Effect: You gain +4 damage to Physical weapon attacks for the remainder of this turn

Energeia Enhancers and Power Field Generators are effectively the same item, just for different weapon options. Because they only buff one type of damage, this encourages a Dominus to mount only energy weapons or an Explorator to mount only physical weapons, but ultimately, these tend to be the most sought after items when trying to make a TechPriest more effective, and one of the first things discarded when you realize that the damage that TechPriests can do is way overpowered and try your first challenge run.

I don't know it it's intentional, but both Power Field Generators and Energeia Enhancers show that they cost 1 CP to use them on the loadout screen, but cost nothing in actual combat. No word on whether this is a bug or a typo, but for now, they're free during combat.

Troops

To be completed later

Servitor T1
Servitor T2
Servitor T3

Skitarii Vanguard T1
Skitarii Vanguard T2
Skitarii Vanguard T3

Skitarii Vanguard Alpha T1
Skitarii Vanguard Alpha T2
Skitarii Vanguard Alpha T3

Skitarii Ranger T1
Skitarii Ranger T2
Skitarii Ranger T3

Skitarii Ranger Alpha T1
Skitarii Ranger Alpha T2
Skitarii Ranger Alpha T3

Kataphron Battle Servitor T1
Kataphron Battle Servitor T2
Kataphron Battle Servitor T3

Kastelan Robot T1
Kastelan Robot T2
Kastelan Robot T3

Canticles

To be completed later

Litany of Life - regain 5/10/15 HP on the active unit
Cant of the Craft - the next Physical attack will deal +3/6/9 damage
Benediction of Omniscience - the next Energy attack will deal +3/6/9 damage
Canticle of the Iron Soul - the next attack will deal +6/12/18 damage
Litany of the Electromancer - the next 2/4/6 attacks will ignore all armour
Chant of the Remorseless Fist - the next attack will break 2/4/6 Physical armour
Shroudpsalm - the next attack will break 2/4/6 Energy armour
Prayer of Titanium - +3/6/9 Energy armour for one round
Prayer of Plasteel - +3/6/9 Physical armour for one round
Tutelage of Momentum - +5/10/15 movement for one round
Blessings of the Omnissiah - Gain 3/6/9 CP
Taming of the Machine Spirit - Max the Machine Spirit of all weapons
??? Unknown Canticle ???

Enemy Stats

To be completed later

Troops:
Canoptek Scarab Swarm
Canoptek Acanthrite
Canoptek Spyder
Canoptek Wraith
Warrior
Deathmark
Flayed One
Immortal
Destroyer
Heavy Destroyer
Triarch Praetorian
Lychguard
Vargard
Cryptek
Lord

Shield Generator
Turrets
Consoles

Bosses:
Void Admiral Agrolekh
Lord Astronomer Ekropis
Lord Ubjao
Vizier Mhelob
Grand Architect Neftusk
Overlord Szaregon

Challenge Runs

To be completed later

Achievements

To be completed later

[Daedalus Cain]

This guide hasn't been updated since Patch 1.06, so lots of specific numbers will be wrong, but the basic logic remains the same. I haven't played Mechanicus in years and there's only a brief resurgence because of the Mechanicus 2 announcement, so there's very little reason to bother updating this guide.

[Tech-Priest]

The Phosphor serpenta deals 4-6 energy, not 6-8. Per This part in "Equipment": "Good early-game weapons include the following:
- Phosphor Serpenta: 6-8 energy damage for only 2 CP"

[yaguero]

Late game: go for the explorator and dominus machine spirit dmg, spirit machine canticle and one full explorator tree to and one full lexmech tree. Put two arc melee rifles on the explorator. Use lex mech to pop up machine spirit 2 cognition points ability and cast machine spirit. Your explorator now can attack twice for free. All basic DD guns get + 4 DD + 1-2 gun SD+ 2dd X previous TP prayer (close to 19 direct damage 0 cog points cost).
Avoid secutor unless you want to play with less efficient troops

[yaguero]

Mid: go down the lex to get the prayer and the ranger lvl 3 for no opportunity attacks
At this point you get the lex eng +2 armour + body phy+ 1dominus legs + lex +1 phy = +2/+2 armour and + 6 movement.
Delay turns as you are hidden with the camouflage device. Once enemies are passed their turn use your crazy movement and cognition needles to move around and position yourself. Pop the prayer (select +2 direct damage, it stacks) and when your last TP get to shoot with the tiny 1-2 gun, it will do +2 xTP direct damage (17-18 direct fdamage with a 4 TP cohort).

[yaguero]

I'm late here, but just couple of tips:
To be able to do all missions go to difficulty settings and increase the combats per mission. This way most of the missions would be doable at 0%.
Item priority should be the camouflage device and cognition needle. It will allow you to delay turns until only your tps remains. Careful with heretek priest with flamethrowers.
Ability trees: it has changed. The op way now for general build:
Early game: dominus, tex, tech, xeno and seer lelv 1.

[Daedalus Cain]

There, first edit done in several years - no more 3% minimum awakening as of a couple patches ago, and mission count is 57 instead of 46 after the DLC.

[Rephath]

Excellent guide, well-done and I learned a lot and also got confirmation that a lot of the strategies I'm using are the good ones.

One thing: you said that you can't get less than 3% awakening per mission. I'm at 39% awakening with 22 deployments. I probably finished a third to half my missions with 0 awakening (I wasn't paying attention to how that affected the awakening meter). I've also done three boss fights with 4-5% awakening, simply because there's no way to avoid it, and a lot of my earlier missions had 1-3% awakening. I'm not on the highest difficulty, but am on the second-highest if that matters.

[ElJayGee]

The part describing the most powerful combination to start from as a character build, does that pertain to each tech priest? Like is it your recommendation I do this with both TP from the beginning?

[Kwic]

Great guide ! Even if everything cant be updated, I think you should update this :"you cannot gain less than 3% Awakening upon completing a mission, even if your Awakening count was zero during that mission." at least because it is a MAJOR change.
I stard this game few days ago, and Thaught I could not save any awakening below 3%. In some cases I let the timer go because of that and it could have been avoided.

Great job anyway !

[ROHAN]

reading this in the year of our omnisiah 2022 . maybe outdated , but still super great to read as someone about to tackle the game first time . thank u