Shin's DLC Adventure (Emperor Difficulty)

My experience and observations as I played Emperor mode for the first time after beating the game once, read about my strategies, mistakes and overall adventure in this fun difficulty mode.

Introduction

Hi everyone! Shin here.

Emperor mode gives you harsh resources penalties to both resources gained and resources needed. It also makes all facilities consume extra power and get invaded by the Chrull more often.

Enemies have more than double health (I think maybe its 250%?) and do an equal amount of bonus damage so choosing your skills and officers is key in this mode.

I made some mistakes along the way and I want you all to learn from them, if you care to do so.

As per usual game rules, I suggest you go with the trifacta: a tank, a dps and a healer.

If you own the precursor DLC, this mode will be tremendously easier as the precursor ship is a trifacta in itself, capable of using all skills and being upgradeable to be a monster of a ship.

In this guide, I will be using the precursor ship since I love it (and I also paid for it, on sale though) but believe you me, it's worth it, the fight against the behemoths are fun and sometimes stupidly hard but with its awesome rewards.

Also, the precursor ship can go up to T6 even before mid-game, before defeating the Chimera, you can only go up to Tier 3 ships with the exception of the Precursor Ship.

This guide is FULL of spoilers, you have been warned!

Well, lets get to it!

Off to a good start

Alright, some of the most important things in war are battlefield conditions and people.

Officers

As for people, you should choose to skip the prologue so you can customize your own officer.

I picked a Tactical officer to get the awesome epic power called Bait and Switch.
That power disables a ship for 5 rounds and you can even damage it on round 4, leaving you 4 rounds to use to destroy the other 2 ships as fast as you can, this disabling of ships also works on bosses! Needless to say, you want to use this on the highest tiered ship, if the other two ships are chumps, you can ignore them and focus fire on the disabled most dangerous one (the one that kills you in 2 hits).
Did I mention you can use this each combat, as opposed as each mission? its awesome.

Other great epic ability starters are Singularity which does awesome damage to all enemies, drone swarm and brace for impact.

Check out this guide for a complete explanation on epic powers, characters and skills, its a must read: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1084893340

As for my tactical officer, it was a tough choice between operative and strategist but strategist had his stat bonuses waaay at the end of his skill tree and I needed the stat bonuses in the early game and Focus Fire is awesome. I will miss meditation aura but if I really miss it, I can always get another of the officers to grab it.

So I picked Operative.

The first officer you pick will also be one of your main 3 until late in the game where you can replace him/her with a legendary one. So choose wisely. I wanted to go with a Mechanic which can heal and also has focus fire but the game gave me an inventor instead, so I picked another Operative, Ill get a Mechanic once the Academy is up.

The battlefield

This is one of the most important things in an Emperor run, having enough good planets for resources, you need at least 7 material planets and 7 dark matter planets. In a perfect sector, you would have 8 of each but in a bad one, you can be stuck with only 6 of each.

Planets being close to your station is a bonus but not necessary, you only save fuel to go pick resources until you can drone all planets, so this disadvantage goes away later.

Also remember that: Going back to the station using the return button does not use fuel

Here was my starting sector, or most of it. (I had two more dark matter planets up top)

Now, the status of each system/planet (is it alive or dead) is set at the start, so its useless to reload to roll again to prevent the four of your nearest material planets being offline, you would need to restart the game but its really not that big of a problem, Im bringing this up in case you want to explore your neighborhood, note which planets are dead ends and which ones have battles on them, then reload a save to make most of your fuel and XP to be gained, for example, waiting until all 3 of your officers are ready to go into that planet battle to prevent the XP being wasted on the greenshirts or not going to that far away cluster of planets if the only colony alive over there is useless. Fuel will be a problem in the early game before setting up drones.

I'll tell you what you CAN use reload for an advantage, enemy fleets.
You can reload enemy fleets and you will get different ones each time they spawn.
So if you are just starting out and you have an enemy fleet of 3 T1s, you can reload to an earlier save for a more favourable outcome.

But really though, who doesnt like the challenge of seeing your officers explode in all their glory, there is a reason we have an option to make all new officers start out at different improved levels and even the clone facility, expect your officers and ships to be eliminated often.

That said, the first Chrull raid will happen around Day 16 and the first Pirate attack around Day 20, so get your fleet ready! I personally ignored the precursor ship for now in favor of getting officers and nearby colonies up and ready but you might want to focus on that cool ship instead, your choice.

Once you build the precursor ships, behemoths will start to spawn around your systems, these behemoths do not destroy colonies but they attack ships that go near them.

But its greatest asset is a source of XP, artifacts to upgrade your precursor ship and morale.

When you encounter the mega big one, you should retreat, killing it will only make harder behemoths spawn and you really should farm them now while the only threats are T1 Chrulls and T1 Pirate ships. I saved around 300 artifacts until I moved on so I could upgrade my precursor ship to T4 like it was nothing.

The early game Grind

Luckily this game does not rush you, although it says the Chrull invasion gets more intense in Emperor mode I was doing fine so far..

Here I am on almost Day 200, all systems with drones and upgrades, my fleet Tier 3 (including precursor) and still on going.

Why am I stalling? well, two reasons.

1) I want to upgrade my precursor ship as much as possible before enemies get to ships T3.
2) Im grinding achievements.

There is an achievement to kill 100 precursor baby celestial behemoths, Im still not sure how the game counts behemoths as babies since it doesnt always count, Ive read in forum threads that once you flee your first mega behemoth, the counter stops. I was able to do the achievement by killing the first baby behemoth that shows up, 100 times.. took me around an hour or so.

The other achievement is to grind colony rescues, this one is also bugged.
Seems it gets broken after a while, I was able to get it by doing the same thing as above.
Saw the the first colony raid, saved, fought it and won it, reloaded but I think the achievement breaks when you destroy the first spawn pit, maybe.. hmm..

As you might know or not know, the requirement to be able to get higher tiered ships is for one of your officers to hit the level milestone. 4,7,10,13. Although T4 and T5 ships do not unlock until you've beaten the huge raid on your base after you defeat the spire.

Its important to grind combat XP and have the XP bonus activated in the Academy as high as you can.

The hardest part was surviving the raids while I had only T1 or T2 ships, but once you get T3, its all smooth sailing.

I did rush the pirate alliance so I could focus on defending from Chrull raids and behemoths but I feel it was a mistake and I should have let them raid me too for the extra XP and materials, in your run, try to get them to raid you if you can handle it.

So right now, the enemies dont seem to go beyond the rare T2 ship.
I'll grind this spot until I feel comfortable to go ahead.

Tier 3 fleets appear (Day 217)

Around Day 200, T2 Chrull Fleets started appearing, I had my main officers at level 9 and the XP grind got slow, so I went ahead and beat the spawn pit to unlock new Terra and the Legendary officer that comes after the rescue, I wanted another bait and switch, with that, I could potentially stun a boss for 10 turns or two ships for 5 turns per combat, upgrading my survivability.

After I got the officer, a few days later, the Spire came into play and I knew I was in trouble.
I haven't updated my base yet so I couldnt trigger the siege and T3 Chrull fleets started appearing.

I dont know if the T3 fleets came because I advanced the main storyline or because I spent several weeks with my own T3 fleet.

Anyway, I had to focus on upgrading my base and prepare for the Chimera siege.

So, I upgraded the base except for the really expensive upgrades, I wanted to have enough resources to upgrade my other two ships to T5 as soon as I could, so I needed at least 20k resources of both materials and dark matter.

I was happily farming everything, the spire raids were no big deal, I could handle T3 fleets now without problems using two bait and switches and my precursor ship damage upgrades really made short work of those 9k HP ships.

But then this happened:

Two spires?!

Ok, the game was telling me to hurry it up, I mean, I suppose I could just take all the attacks without problems but the grind would be insane and for some reason the "save colonies" achievement got broken, even though I saved more than 30 colonies by now.. Im not sure what counts as a colony, maybe its just an early game counter and it stops somewhere? hmm..

Attacking the Spires and The Chimera

Anyway, I was ready for the Chimera, so i went ahead to attack the spires.. oh boy.. I didnt know what I was getting into..

The space fights were easy but the fights INSIDE the spire, the ground combat.. harsh.. enemies sent me to Death's Door with one or two hits and if they attacked the same guy one after the another it was elimination for that poor official.


Let's talk about Death mechanics, if you havent noticed, unless its an overkill, you cannot die from a single hit as long as you have more than 1HP.

This mechanic applies in both space and ground combat.

I call being at 1HP "Death's Door" (taken from Darkest Dungeon) and its a mechanic you should exploit during your Emperor run.

Make sure you can always heal up after an attack and beware bleeding attacks that can kill you once a round ends. Engines Down, Stuns and Sensors Offline help prevent those deadly two-hits in a row that can potentially kill you.

Always check the turn order to be aware of those kind of threats.

After a few defeats, I figured out what to do, the key was my Biologist with his Battle Stims that speed up my whole crew, coupled with my two operatives Lasers which blinded enemies, I was able to evade and heal my way to victory.

The biologist support was essential, transfusion saved me from death's door state and if the officer was bitten or bleeding, the pills cured him to full health removing the bad status effects, mind you the pills can only be used 4 times per turn. I still needed lucky evades to survive.

After I removed the spires, the Chimera showed up, I used the next two weeks to upgrade my precursor ship as much as I could and get XP to unlock the final level of Focus Fire in both my Tactical Ship and my Precursor Ship.

So, the Chimera came and Im glad I upgraded my station Health, the thing was doing 37 damage per day, out of nowhere, the remaining Pirate Lord joined my crew (I killed all Pirates in my first run, so this was a surprise) I put him to work in the Dark Matter Generators ASAP.

Also, the supremacist geneticist alliance came forward with a fleet, taking one of the Chimera's fleet minions out, I checked the diplomacy level and it was at 75, neat! The Yabs were at 70 but they didnt send anything, hm.

I quickly took care of the remaining 3 minion fleets and went into the Chimera fight:

The fight was easier than I thought, the two side ships were taken care of in four rounds while the chimera slept from one of my bombs. But then the bastard used protective Chitin..and I didnt know how to remove that.

All the damage I dealt was reduced to 500 damage.. except Damage over Time, things like Hull Breach, Torture, Sabotage, all of those ignored the Chitin but I also had another tool in my arsenal.

Focus Fire, baby!~

I used both my ships with Focus Fire and was able to do around 5000 damage in a round, my science ship was doing support by healing and blinding the Chimera from time to time.

Because it was only one ship, the Death's Door mechanic did a super job in keeping me alive, evasion coupled with sensors offline also helped lots. The DoT was also doing its glorious work and the Chimera got blown away eventually.

The mid-game, ready for T5 Fleets!

So after the Chimera is gone, we enter the midgane, T4 and T5 ships are UNLOCKED!

I had saved thousands of resources for this moment, so I immediately got to work.

I also had to build Two new T3 reactors +100 Energy which set me back an additional 1500 materials.

Dont forget the ship costs!
So, lets do the numbers.

Facility = Material Cost / Dark matter Cost

T4 Ship Factory Research = 3000 / 3200
T4 Ship Factory = 2000 / 0
T5 Ship Factory Research = 6000 / 6400
T5 Ship Factory = 3000 / 0
Reactors = 1500 / 0
T5 Tactical Ship = 0 / 2869
T5 Science Ship = 0 / 2869

Grand Total

Material = 15500
Dark Matter = 15338
Crew = 503 (215+288)

I had almost double this, no sweat!
I used the remaining resources to fully upgrade the station and the T5 ship upgrades.

Oh boy, the game just got plain evil.

Are you kidding me?!

My Repair Bay got invaded by Chrulls.. Elder Chrulls with over a thousand HP each, I barely do MAYBE 100 damage to ONE.. and they one-shot my officers.. sigh.. this is like the Spire fights but double as bad.

Well, who needs the repair bay anyway!

Seriously, I had to reload until the fight involved just one of those things, I was able to kill it with my main team, thank you Doctor Shingles, your meds make the pain go away.

Anyway, the Voraash just attacked one of my colonies, Ive read a lot of info on them and the key here is to retreat from the battle then go into battle again until they talk to you. I wanted them as allies.

So I fought them once then retreated, nothing happened, then fought them again but this time I stunned two of their ships with bait and switch and destroyed one of them, I then escaped again.

That time they tried to speak to me, they are funny guys.


In any case, I reloaded and I confirmed you just need to retreat twice.
They will give you an offer, accept and you will get the achievement "Embrace the Suck"
Refuse and you will get "The Importance of Being Wormest"

If you dont talk to them, you will miss both achievements.

Anyway, I wanted more allies, so I accepted and did their quest.

The first big bad was coming and I needed those T5s fully upgraded so I focused on them while doing side quests for the other races and he finally arrived, lets do this!

At the same time, the strange signal finally came.
This was my opportunity to get my 3rd legendary.
The trick here is to pay attention to the signal, it gives you the final letters of the system name.

For me it was "...vo"

I only had one that ended with vo, it was Pavo, I sent a cadet in a T0 ship over there to check it out, nothing.. I sent him to the other planets that had "vo" in their name: Beta Pavonis, Alpha Volantis, Boomerang.. nothing.

I finally took 3 officers off from producing duties and got them to search every ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ system and after two weeks, nothing, the signal went down to 10 days time limit, I was about to lose this.

Then I took my main fleet to Pavo... and they got it in the first try.
A 2 day mission for my Lvl 14 science officer to decode the signal.
and then, behemoths attacked.. T5 behemoths.. oh boy.. this is what I get for destroying all those mega behemoths.

Im kidding, with my precursor ship damage upgrades, Im destroying everything on my path with ease, even these 20k+ HP behemoths.

Unfortunately, the new legendary recruit cant pilot a T5 ship since he starts at level 10.. so.. I spend the next couple of weeks fighting and getting him XP. I also build a T4 Science ship for him.

The 4 lieutenants

So, at this point of the game, the Chrull start attacking the other races and you can choose to either let them die or help them.

If you let them die, you dont have a time limit to get all four artifacts to summon the final boss, once a race goes extinct, you can still recover the artifact once you defeat the lieutenant.

But Im confident I can beat these chumps with my current firepower, so I fight.

Once you recover an artifact, you need to research it at the station bridge.
Once its research, you can build it, you will need energy so build another reactor to prepare, you will get 4 artifacts so you will need 4 empty spaces in your station plus any new reactors you might need.

Fighting the Marauder, I noticed something with Bait and Switch.
I knew the precursor's ship powers deactivated the stun, even though you hit someone else.
But what I didnt know was that, Damage Over Time effects do not deactivate the stun.

So: First round, put DoT attacks on boss, Torture, Overwhelm Core, Teleport Explosives, whatever you can. Second round, Stun. Now take care of the minions. Heal up and boost up while you wait for the boss. Hit him a couple of round, stack DoTs on it, Stun again. :3


Yeah, 52k HP. No problems! I had enough heals to last between attacks so the fight was long but easy. Death's Door mechanics are really something else.

Beat the other two without much problems.


I also found out that Focus Fire attacks do not remove the stun, its an awesome way to finish a boss.

So, got everything set up, ready to go for the Final Boss.
Everyone is my friend, they sent ships and officers!

But the final boss has 4 stages and I dont think the stun strategy I've had so far will work.. so I have to prepare.

♪It's the final showdown♫

I know it says countdown not showdown, bite me! :P

Ok, lets get ready for the final fight!
As for loadout, because the boss has chitin, we will go with DoT attacks.
Science ship will support with heals and sensor offline attacks.

The boss has three sections, the top section is immune to hull break and the lower section is immune to sensor offline and the middle section heals.

In the battle, you should prioritize taking out the middle section first, lower second and top third.

Remember to watch out for consecutive enemy attacks, they can take you out.

I also will need to look out for DoT attacks the enemy might give me, the drones and some healing skills cure those.

Ugh, that shield is annoying.

Here is the most important trick I can give you to beat the final boss.

You can retreat and the final boss wont reset its phase.

Use your mission/combat/heals/everything and when you are out of healies, just get out, restock and come back. The boss will heal to its initial HP but only for the phase its in.

Finally, the last phase of the boss WONT have any chitin or damage cap, have at it!

Goodbye, Mother.

Conclusion

It was fun!

Even the grind wasnt that bad, the music and the quick battles helped with the monotony.
You can turn off animations in the options to make it go faster.

I made a lot of mistakes and I hope you can learn from them.'

I found Emperor mode very forgiving at least with the precursor ship which dealt tons of damage.

The Death's door mechanic and the stuns with the bait and switch were the keys for the run.

Evasion played a role too, the enemy often missed me thanks to Sensors Offline attacks.

I dont think this strategy would have worked if the final boss regenerated to stage 1 when you retreated but it didnt, so it was a piece of cake.

I hope you all enjoyed reading my ramblings and that you also have fun!

Feel free to share your own tips and tricks for Emperor mode in the comment section so other people who are interested can also read!

Did I mention I unlocked 7 achievements in one go? It felt awesome :3

Until next time!

[Shindragan]

Gratz man! Not using the DLC ships takes ballz! Good work! Cross this game off your list, haha!

[Atomsk]

I BEAT IT. SCREW THIS GAME I WIN FOREVER!

Didn't have precursor DLC and had to use the allied alien ships to beat the final phase. Don't think the normal T5 ships can beat it otherwise. I can finally put this game down forever (:

[Shindragan]

Cool! Im glad the guide helps out! I really liked this game, Best of luck 貢啊丸!

[貢啊丸]

Congrats! I did all the achievement except the difficulty ones. This guide is really helpful. Thanks and wish me good luck then

[Shindragan]

Took me 3 days, so my estimation is around 25 hours.

[Jsethh]

How many hours did it take you to beat the game on emperor difficulty?

[Shindragan]

you cant get access to certain techs unless you pass certain story-linked nodes, so there is a limit of how many time it passes until enemies get a jump in difficulty, like I said before, the only problem you might have with enemies is in the early game when the enemies get better ships each dozen of turns (until they cap at level 3) while you need to rush to keep up.

If youre talking about tier 5 stuff, at that point of the game, save scumming is really *NOT* necessary, its only done if you either got a bad roll and rare T3 ships appear against your T1s or somehow you got delayed in upgrading your fleet and the T# ships start to appear everywhere.

[nymersic]

I haven't played this game in a half a year, but as I remember... (didn't re-read the guide) it's worth intentionally *NOT* advancing faster than you need to (the "save scum" question) -- as I remember I could easily have pure level 5-tier stuff, end-game stuff, when i'm 3, just by careful planning

[Shindragan]

I think they made the early game that hard on purpose, being the highest difficulty and I used save scumming just in case the game threw at me an enemy fleet my early game ships couldnt handle. If I remember correctly, I only had to use that twice.

Afteer you get going on resources and techs, save scumming is not really necessary, its only on those very bad rolls at the beginning that you might want to use it to avoid the pain.

Its really a good game overall and we are talking highest difficulty, its supposed to be unfair, haha.

[wcil]

Do we really need to reload cheese / save scum so we get a good fleet / cluster of enemies we can fight?

That just feels plain unfair design by the devs.