So you want to fly: a guide to farcom flighthack

This guide is an A-Z guide that details a very specific pathing and build that has enabled me to win many challenges and several endings. To use this guide properly, you will need to already have a basic understanding of earlygame combat and game mechanics. The guide is a living document, and may be changed without recourse or warning.

This particular strategy outlined is a flighthack path that hits high gear around -7, and is extremely hard to stop once it gets going.

Who I am and why you should listen to me

As is already obvious, I am a guy on the internet. More specifically, my steam IGN is TWTGWYTT (an acronym), but you can simply call me Gerald, just like those on the roguelike discord already do.

I have ~640 hours in cogmind as of writing this, having completed five of the nine endings. I've also tried almost every build you can think of, and genuinely believe farcom flighthack is one of the simplest, easiest and safest builds for players of all skill levels. I'm extremely comfortable with this build, and have used it to win challenges such as unstable mutation and inspector gadget (evolve only utility slots).

Cogmind is a very interesting game in that it is both quite poorly documented and extremely complicated. There are remarkably few guides here on steam and around the internet, so a single, good-quality guide could make all the difference in helping players new and old play the game or simply try a new build. Colossal thanks to Aoemica and his website https://noemica.github.io/cog-minder/about.html which has made my life, and the lives of tonnes of other players much, much easier.

This guide has a reasonably high level of detail, but assumes you already understand basic game mechanics like force moving, attatching and detatching parts, managing resources and movement.

This guide is mostly spoiler free, but the end results of a few midgame events may be revealed, as understanding game mechanics may reveal parts of the storyline. Rating: possible, Spoilers, but definitely not redacted.

This guide is currently edited for the current full release B10 (beta 10). I'll update it as best I can when B11 comes out; it's big news for this build with its changes to storage, flight propulsion, fabrication hacks, infowar and much, much more.

Don't be afraid to DM me or comment if I've gotten something in the guide wrong or I've explained it poorly. Enjoy!

Background and hacking essentials

Hacks in cogmind are simple, yet very, very complicated. Every hack is either listed (shows up on terminal or other machine hack list) or unlisted (hack is possible, but is not shown on the machine). Additionally, each hack has a fixed base chance to succeed, reduced by 15% if it is an indirect (unlisted) hack, with unlisted hacks having an additional penalty of not knowing their success chance until attempted. To initiate a hack, move up to the terminal or other machine's letter in its structure and click on it.
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Hacks are not case sensitive, as far as I know. Note that different types of machines have different hacks; you cannot go for terminal hacks on a garrison and vice versa. From there, you will see listed hacks, and I will inform you of (some) of the more important unlisted hacks, which have three categories:

Conventional: a hack which may sometimes be found as a listed hack, but is not present on this terminal. Examples of a conventional hack include access(main) [and other access hacks that help you move around the floor] layout(zone), and the schematic hacks.

Database: a subset of conventional hacks, part schematic, robot schematic and analysis hacks when done indirectly pull from the central database. There is an unknown chance of lockout whenever you do one of these indirect hacks; if this happens, you cannot get any more schematics or analyses via indrect hacks for the rest of the floor. You will know if this happens if you get the following message:


Trojans: intrusive third party hacks devised by your fellow derelicts, but are still available in gameplay use before you as a player are told about them. Such hacks include Trojan(broadcast), Trojan(botnet) and Trojan(siphon).

Force hacks: brute force hacks that increase alert level, lock you out of the machine you're using and also send an investigation squad to the machine (like reaching 100% tracing). These hacks often provide unique or potent effects at much higher chances than normal hacks, and so should only be used as last resorts or when you're about to lock the machine anyway. Some useful examples of hacks are the garrison force(jam) that shuts a garrison at a much higher likelihood than seal, or the scanalyzer force(extract) which gives access to additional random schematics.

A hack succeeds when it is selected (or typed in correctly, spelling is important) and is followed by green text in the /results/ box. A hack that fails instead tells you [failed X percentage] sometimes followed roughly by how much you failed by; including such responses as 'near success' 'fail' and 'catastrophic fail'.

Hack failure and detection rate are different, but loosely related. Hack failure rate is determined by the hack undertaken, with harder hacks having higher chances to fail (every hack either succeeds or fails). A failed hack may increase your detection rate if you are not detected, with more catastrophic fails increasing this chance more sharply.

Detection rate is the chance a hack is noticed by the system; successful hacks are detected almost as much as successful ones (but successful hacks do not usually increase the detection chance). Once detected, tracing begins. a hack while detected furthers tracing efforts, usually being 50% traced with a success or benign fail, and some amount more than that (often 80% or even higher) on some catastrophic hack fails. upon reaching 100% traced, the machine is indefinitely locked, and an investigation squad (usually consisting of 2-3 grunts or 1-2 hunters) is sent from a nearby garrison or floor exit over to the locked terminal, to look for hacking menaces like you. note that being partially traced is not of consequence.

The detection rate and base success/fail chances of hacks come down to several mechanics. Machine level- all machines have a level of 1 (yellow) 2 (orange) or 3 (red) with higher level machines being harder to hack having access to more direct hacks and/or more powerful features as listed below:

Terminals: higher level terminals have access to a much larger number of visible direct hacks and a larger trojan(track) range.
Repair stations: repair parts faster, and the refit hack gives access to higher rated parts (1 for level 1, 3 for level 2, 7 for level 3).
Fabricator: higher level fabricators produce robots and parts faster, and generally have access to more matter, enabling more parts/bots to be created before they run out.
Scanalyzers: High levels damage scanned parts less often, and have a much lower chance of requiring additional scans to gain a schematic for a scanned part.
Garrisons: (confirmation needed) will stop more dispatches if sealed and will spawn more powerful robots.
recyclers: have more parts/matter already in them when found (generally), scavenger bots will come from further to deposit in them.


Many of the more interesting hacks in the game are not told to the player until much later in the game, although they can be used immediately on their respective machines. Some of the important ones (and their uses) will be listed below:

List/index of most relevant hacks

You won't need to know all of these to play earlygame, or even a full, complete run. However, some of them can save you in a pinch, so knowing all of them and when to use them can prove an immensely useful skill. If you're merely here for the build/strategy, feel free to skip this section. At the request of @Ktur, here is a (mostly) complete list of hacks (and a basic description) sorted by machine, and then in order of conventional/trojan/force. This is a work in progress, put suggestions in the comments.

-Terminal-
Access(): In the brackets, type emergency (gives the locations of all nearby emergency access doors), branch (reveals ways off the map to different sub-floors) and main(tells you all the ways to the next primary floor)

alert(): in the brackets, type either 'check' or 'purge' to show the current alert level, or lower the alert by about 150. Alert(purge) becomes harder to do the more you do it.

analysis(botname) or analysis(class): on a success it provides an analysis to the named bot. if you named the class, it gives you the analysis to the highest tier of bot that terminal has access to. This is a database hack like the schematic hacks.

Index(): type in a machine name (any of the machines on this list) to get the locations of all of that machine type on the map, or 'machines' to reveal all machines (usually a much harder hack).

enumerate(squadname):

prototypes:

manifests:

-Fabricator-

-Garrison-

-Recycler-

-Repair station-

-Scanalyzer-
Trojan(researchers) : tells you where all researchers on the floor are (only has an effect on floors with researcher bots)
Force(extract): gives random schematics, anywhere from 1-14 usually. Sometimes absolutely awesome, can also be a total dud. Be ready either way

Airborne propulsion essentials

As this build relies so much on flight, it makes sense to discuss the nature of airborne propulsion. Unlike ground propulsion, airborne propulsion has two sets of costs; active upkeep (the energy and heat requirements to remain off the ground and receive your +5/+10 evasion boost) and normal movement cost (the energy and heat requirements to actually move in a certain direction). Additionally, like non-airborne propulsion, your speed is the average of all active flight units, with an additional speed bonus (usually +3) for every active piece of propulsion above the first.

The reason why this build needs prototype flight units is due to at least two stats: integrity and coverage. A normal flight unit has an integrity of 20 and a coverage of 30. Compare this to an imp. flight unit, which has an integrity of 40 (a 100% increase) and a coverage of 15 (a reduction of 50%). This means the improved unit collectively will last more than twice as long on average; this isn't even taking into account the +5 speed (enabling you to outrun swarmers) or the 50% more carrying capacity (4 against 6) without even having a higher per square or up keep cost.

Compared to other types of propulsion however, flight has the poorest ratio of power/heat costs to energy capacity. We can keep this two downsides in check with light reactors and using shieldings to protect propulsion and utilities. Luckily, once transitioned into, the build does not need to worry about the biggest sources of weight in others builds: weapons, combat utilities and armours. Even with those in mind, the power costs of flight can be extremely high late into the game as the effective power cost per turn of movement increases with speed, which itself is only increased by having more propulsion units. As an example, a single imp. flight unit gives the cogmind a speed of 35 (or about 285%), costing 1 energy per turn for upkeep, plus another 1 energy for every move; when moving, you pay the energy/move cost with every move (2.85 times per turn, in this case). Add a second imp. flight unit, your speed goes to 32 or about 305%, meaing that to power both, you need to pay 2 power every move, 3.05 times per turn, in addition to another 2 per turn to stay afloat. Each active flight units causes both current and previous flight units to require more power and output more heat.

Cooled (cld.) propulsion can take this a step further, increasing its carrying capacity by 50%, doubling the additional speed bonus (from +3 to +6) and sometimes putting out additional heat. It also has a 'burnout' rating, which is the chance in any action (or turn) with overload active, the propulsion has a 100-stability% chance to suffer a single point of damage; this damage cannot be prevented by energy defense or propulsion shielding. With common cld. propulsion units such as the cld. vtol module having only 60 health and 90% stability, a 10% chance to lose 1 integrity on every move is definitely something that cannot be sustained for long periods of time. I would only recommend overloading under one the following conditions:

1) There's lots of enemies hot on your heels and not overloading will make you take more damage via being slower and having a lower evasion chance against attacks
2) you unexpectedly lost a propulsion unit, and overload/s enable you to rebalance your weight budget again.

With such potent costs in mind, power consumption must be managed by the player. The easiest way to do this is to deactivate any flight units you do not need to hold your weight, turning them on only as you get heavier or you gain access to better power sources. If your build still has a negative power budget while moving even with the minimum number of flight units, turn off some of the flight units if you aren't being currently pursued to move much slower, but get a chance to regenerate your energy reserves.

-11/-10 materials

-11
Start out in scrapyard by equipping the heaviest engine, the storage unit and the treads. Pick up all 3 guns but equip them in this hierarchy: assault rifle>em pulse gun> lgt. assault rifle> med. laser > sml laser, putting it into your inventory.

Then kill the R-04 scavenger at the far end of the room and equip the storage unit or the tractor beam, if it has one.

-10

After moving up the staircase to -10 materials, you have several goals achieved mostly by roaming the floor, in two tiers (with all goals in the same tier being of roughly equal importance):

very Important:
1. Find 2 lrg. (or bigger) storage units to replace the small ones you got in scrapyard.
2. Find a terminal and type in trojan(operators)
2b. Kill those operators and pick up any hacking suites they drop
3. find a grenade or rocket launcher (do not equip it yet)
4. Find the mines floor, with the easiest way to do this is to look for a staircase surrounded by mining lasers or matter pods with distinct grey machines around them, such as in this image.

If none of these are present, go for the access(branch) hack on any spare terminals OR find a signal interpreter (from a watcher-class robot), equip it, and walk up to staircases to check if they are exits to mines or the next floor. DO NOT enter a staircase you are uncertain about, as it might take you to the wrong place.

less important:
4. find better kinetic or EM weapons to replace any lasers you found
5. find a datajack (possibly by killing the operators found by your trojan(operators) hack)
6. Acquire and store additional treads (you'll need them for -9 and -8)

Once all very important goals are achieved (or you're running low on health/ cannot fufill them due to really unlucky map generation) head through a mines staircase.

-10 mines

Welcome to mines! In your log, you may see in distinct blue text 'Something is scanning the area'
upon immediately entering the area; see image below if you're unsure.



If you do not see this, leave -10 mines as quickly as possible. If you see 'infestation detected, dispatching demolisher squad' equip your grenade/rocket launcher as you escape the floor; without a launcher, the assembled can rapidly overrun and kill almost any build that cannot outrun them.

If you did get the message, you're in luck! to find what you'll need for this build, move along the west and southern walls of the map, looking for a strange little hole/corner in the wall. Upon getting sufficiently close to said corner, the text 'no threat detected, you may enter' will appear, followed by a wall sliding away.


(corners like this are a good sign it's only a few tiles away)
If you cannot find it along the southern or western walls, try the corridors in the west half of the map. Go into this wall and enter the staircase, taking you to the next area, one critical for this build's success.

Exiles (both -10 and -9)

You've found the exiles. Move through the cave and through the hallway which is covered in several rigged engines. you will be cautiously greeted by 8R-AWN. If you have one (as outlined in the -10 section), unequip all your weapons to inventory and pull out your datajack. Use it on the bot that greets you in order to gain access to a large number of prototype IDs, some of which are unique to him.

Keep moving along the upper path and you'll find another bot (EX-BIN) who tells you about his new 'farcom' project. use your datajack on him too (proto ID) and then enter the farcom aligner.
Enter the square on the topright corner of the machine with the three forks sticking into it.
A short cutscene will play. He will then thank you and give you a code, which you may then use to open the vault at the end of the hallway.

Use your code on the vault terminal to enter, and carefully inspect what's in front of you. Use the terminal inside the vault (in the right corner, see image below)



to identify all the exile vault items.

As for what to take, I'd recommend items in the following tier list:

S tier: lightpack, longsword +1

A tier: PSU rigger, superbattery, trap reconfigurator, cloak of protection, field lobotomy kit, modified TNC

B tier: flying fortress, AWS thermal/gauss (with gauss being the marginally better of the two), supersonic drone bay, 0B10 alert chip

C tier: YOLO cannon/ firepult, deploy a sentry/s, guided plasma cannon, potential leg

D tier: AWS autocannon, skeleton box, army-in-a-box, XL autogun array, latent energy streamer

These are only my opinion, and in the context of going this build for the entire run. If there's an item you love and know how to use well, feel free to take it regardless of my recommendations. When going other builds, autocannon goes into A or even S tier, but it's simply too damn fat to be used with this build.

only take one item of item (but multiple identical items may be taken), otherwise a highly negative event string will begin a few floors later.

Then leave exiles by heading left. On your way out, interact with a nearby terminal 'exiles message board' and click on the first 3 entries from the top. This will tell you where zion (on the map log marked with a Z) is found. This will save us a tonne of time on -7. You may refuelling on matter or storage units if appropriate ones can be found near the exit.

-9/-8

Going from -10 to -9, evolve 1 propulsion, 1 utility
Going from -9 to -8 again evolve 2 utility, or maybe 1 propulsion, 1 utility if you've had very poor luck finding hackware thus far. The former option is better optimised, while the latter is a bit safer (equipping more treads for better aim, more coverage and more carrying capacity).


If you went to mines on -10 but did not get the appropriate dialogue, you will need to try again on -9. This is probably for the best though, as going to -10 exiles actually causes you to skip -9 completely, taking you straight to -8 materials from the proximity (return) mines. You also might find yourself stacking up on hacking suites; keep holding onto them, they're extremely important on -7. The imp. flight units. imp. Vtol modules are prototypes; they will appear white and be labelled 'prototype flight unit' when first seen; identify them as fast as you can by either scanalyzing them or attatching then unattatching them. Regardless of if you've done exiles or not, there's more objectives that need to be completed:

Very important:
Use trojan(operators) on another terminal, and kill more operators to obtain more hacking suites. Ideally leave -8 with at least three hackware (hacking suites or system shields), and ideally five or more.
Find an imp. flight unit and/or imp. Vtol module. Ideally leave -8 with at least 4 in some combination of those items.
Find at least one, and ideally both scanalyzers on -9 and later -8 if needed, to scanalyze hackware, and imp. flight units/imp vtol modles.. You can use a terminal with the hack index(scanalzyers) or find 'scanalyzer index' as a direct hack.
Get the schematic for imp. flight unit and/or imp. Vtol module.
Get the schematic for hacking suite; if you cannot find any imp. flight units/Vtol modules and/or hackware, use force(extract) on the scanalyzers as you leave the floor; you might get lucky and get the schematics out that way. You'll be able to use the schematics in -7 and up.
Look for a mines floor on -9 (like how you did on -10) IF you haven't found the exiles yet.

less important:
Maintain your current treads build! acquire treads, armours, kinetic/ EM weapons and possibly more storage units (if your current ones get damaged). Alternatively, you may try to repair your current items at repair stations.
Find a mni. grenade launcher (both for mines and build transition)
Find a melee weapon (for transition)
Find a datajack (if you haven't already)
Get the schematic for imp. propulsion shielding
Get the schematic for imp. utility shielding
Get the schematic for system shield

If you're struggling to get the items, try typing manifests and enumerate(transports) in terminals. The former command tells you what items haulers on the floor have (and how many of them there are) and the latter tells you the current location of all haulers and their escorts on the floor. These can make finding the prototype flight units a tonne easier. Haulers look like this:
and will drop their held items when destroyed. They are also a source of treads if yours become too badly damaged.

This is an extremely important phase in establishing the build, regardless of where the exiles are found. in an ideal world, you'll have the following items stored in your inventory as you leave the floor:
x5 pieces of hackware (and appropriate schematics)
x4 imp. flight units or Vtol modules + schematics (regular ones will not suffice as they lack integrity and have coverage that is much higher)
a melee datajack
an imp. propulsion shielding (or at least the schematic for one)
a melee weapon of some kind (for digging)
a mni. grenade launcher
An exile vault item.

You may not have all of these and that's okay. If you're really behind and only have a few of them, there might be another way out into an excellent midgame despite your setbacks- the storage floor.

Storage (-8 or -7)

Storage can also occasionally appear on -9 as well, but it should never be entered; if exiles was on -10, -9 was skipped completely. if exiles is on -9, you cannot head to storage and mines simultaneously, and exiles will always be more important. If you enter -7 storage, you might give up on a chance to meet dataminer. As a result, a -8 storage or a -7 storage on the same floor as zion is generally ideal.

This floor is optional, but I would recommend doing it if you sorely need more hackware, imp. flight units/vtol modules or fighting your way to another exit is too dangerous.

This floor is often packed with enemies compared to materials or factory, so you'll want to get what you need and be on your way. You will find several blue machines which when selected, will be labelled 'storage shell'. Break these with a weapon of sufficient power. if you cannot do so, you can force move into one to break it (and hopefully find a weapon capable of breaking them, because you will get corruption and/or parts will break whenever you slam into solid objects).
Storage shell items to keep a close eye for, in no particular order:

arm/adv treads (replacing current ones)
imp. assault rifles or enh. autoguns
imp./hvy. em shotguns
imp. flight units/ imp. Vtol modules
Hacking suites/system shields
adv. emp blasters


The other way to get items in storage is through the storage vaults. Place trojan(botnet)s on non-door terminals to considerably bolster entry chances. Note that if tracing hits 100% but the hack is successful, the door will still open. Lower chance doors generally contain better items. cld particle/ plasma cannons are awesome finds as their overload allows you to break the vault doors without needing to hack at all. Vaults contain a much larger variety of items compared to the storage shells, enabling potentially awesome finds or complete duds. items worth holding onto (or using immediately) include:

drone bays (equip only one but release all the drones onto the floor)
lgt. regenerative plating
cld. cannons
rocket arrays/ prc. grenade launchers
adv. emp blasters
imp. cesium ion thrusters
various forms of utility or propulsion shieldings

There is only a single exit off the floor Technically there's another, but we don't speak about him. While the floor itself is not very big, there are lots of thin corridors; finding the way out is of utmost importance; it will generally be in one of the corners of the map at the end of one of the main halls. Moving through the exit, you'll hit factory for either the first or second time.

-7 factory

moving from -8 to -7, evolve 2 utility slots.

If you've lived the dream, worked hard and put the pieces together as shown in the -9/-8 section, this is where things really take off. literally. You will have 1 power, 4 propulsion, 6 utility and 2 weapon slots. replace treads with flying propulsion, armour and storages with hackware/ shieldings and conventional weapons with some combination of melee, a datajack and a possibly an explosive weapon. An example (relatively ideal) build transition on -7 will go from this:

To this:




However, this is a best case scenario. Maybe you'll lack some of the flight units, or perhaps the hackware. Luckily, this is factory, and in factories, they build things. assuming you have at least 1 hackware (or can swiftly find one through killing more operators or simply on the floor), look for fabricators and terminals. Use fabricators to build whatever parts of your build are missing, using farcom to carefully wait out enemy patrols in inconvenient places.

critically important Objectives:

find or build hacking suites
find or build imp. flight units/imp. Vtol modules
prevent your build from degrading- replace or repair damaged flight units, power sources and shieldings
Think about where you need to head next (or rather, what choices you even have).

less important objectives:

Find or build spare build essentials
Find lower caves if zion is on -6
play around! Try recalling squads, reprogramming traps (both with terminals and your melee datajack) using trojans you haven't tried before and pull any remaining schematics you've missed


If you have neither of the core pieces in sufficient numbers. build the hackware first, as consecutive hackware will make succeeding on consecutive fabrication hacks much, much easier. If you lack the schematics to even began production, get the schematics in a similar way to the lower floors (finding the parts + a scanalyzer) OR you can instead find a terminal and try to schematic(hacking suite) or another part name. Use the trojan(prioritise) and trojan(siphon) hacks on fabricators if you have a system shield active, otherwise do not unless you're feeling lucky. These two hacks greatly improve your fabrication experience (making them faster and cheaper, respectively) but are additional hacks that may cause you to get detected when hacking into the fabricators; using them is a tradeoff that you must decide on yourself. Both hacks are more useful and more practical on level 1 fabricators as they are slower and may hold less matter to begin with. If you get central database and fabrication network lockouts before getting the sufficient parts, move on to storage (if possible), lower caves (if zion is on -6, as that will mean dataminer is on -7) or to -6 factory (if no other options exist).

Lower caves/DM (-7 or -6)

The lower caves are an option to escape the floor. As this build is quite greedy, the caves are generally a dangerous endeavour due to farcom not functioning; at this point, you likely do not have a terrain scanner or optical array. Also Due to having selected farcom, Z is generally not worth it due to imprint not being an option, combined with how dangerous it may be to reach. You learned where Z was in exiles; if it is on -7, avoid -7 lower caves. If it was found to be on -6, avoid -6 lower caves instead.

Lower caves/DM objectives

important:
prevent your build from taking too much damage
find and/or replace any melee weapons used for digging or ambushing lone enemies
Reach DM

less important:
move into scrap piles to reveal random items from an extremely large pool
collect derelict logs to gain intel about exits, machines, traps or stockpiles
Find random derelict-related events or stockpiles to get unique items or hacks

When traversing the caves, play very carefully, staying close to walls and being ready to outrun any enemies (especially swarmers and programmers) who chase after you. Generally avoid fights with everything except swarmers if you have explosives, If you're stuck in dead ends, feel free to use melee weapons or your mni grenade launcher to bust holes in walls to find other ways around.

However, the part of the lower caves where Z is not present instead contains a helpful fellow by the name of data miner. Upon leaving the second lower caves in the western exit (the eastern exit will instead lead back to factory; a total dud risking going into caves for no reason) You will encounter his cavern, where he greets you. If you have more than 5% corruption, leave your weapons at the exit, as a misfire could aggro him and his allies; an extremely bad idea. You may then move down the cavern to gain access to some cool lore, a large number of prototype IDs and several schematics for powerful mid-late game items. You may take all of the information without any negative consequence. If you leave the cave without harming DM or the cave, you then gain a buff for the rest of the run which has a small chance to divert assault or investigation squads sent by 0b10. Additionally, upon encountering enemies for the first time in the proximity caves, a single enhanced grunt will assist in combat; he's powerful enough to take down sentries or several grunts, but cannot overpower a behemoth or larger groups of enemies. You can also datajack dataminer to get the prototype IDs of his extremely powerful hackware without it 'harming' him. If you harm the cave or DM himself (not at all recommended), four powerful enhanced grunts are revealed from the top wall and will begin shooting you- they can easily down a build as fragile as this one in only 5-6 shots.

There is only one way out of DM's cave, which is the way you came. However, if you have access to the exiles field lobotomy kit (as a vault loot option, which I listed in A tier), you can use it on dataminer without alerting the grunts. Then take dataminer out with you through the exit, and kill him to get a chance at him dropping some of his very powerful hackware.

To move through -7/-6 caves:

lower caves -> lower caves (heading west) -> Z/DM (generally avoiding Z) -> proximity caves -> next factory floor (-6 or -5)

-6 factory

Welcome to -6!
moving from -7 to -6, evolve 1 utility 1 weapon (so you can have a mni. grenade launcher, datajack and melee weapon all simultaneously active) OR 2 utility (if you don't have the appropriate weapons)

You've hopefully transitioned to a build similar to the image seen in the -7 chapter. If not, you may have a chance to transition now if you've fabricated more items or borrowed some from storage (if you were able to go there this run). You also may have interacted with dataminer after a cave expedition that could've been anything from a fat build upgrade to very nearly dying. If you either don't plan on going to DM or have already gone, this floor is a bit of a breather to make sure your build is in order. If you've got everything you want, this may end up being a very short floor indeed.

If you want to engage in chute looping to build certain parts, this is often a good floor to do it. More on that in the wastes section. If you need to get more fabbing or schematic hacking done but get locked out, use a datajack on a worker robot to find a nearby chute trap, and partially power down your flight units (NEVER do this if you aren't a fast or extremely well-armed build) to strike the trap, making you fall into it.

important objectives:
Find an entrance to the lower caves if you both plan to meet dataminer and have not met him yet. If it spawned on this floor, you may also want to find extension and play the extension floor line.

Find or build new parts for your flighthack build, as necessary to fill your evolved slots.

Use your new hacking abilities to repair parts as needed

Get a datajack, melee weapon and explosive weapon (if you don't have them already)

Find a way to -5 factory (if you don't plan on finding/have already found DM)






less important:
Get better flight units. Biomechanical wings, imp. cesium ion thrusters and cld. vtol modules are all options here. Try to avoid non-prototypes as they have very little health and/or too much coverage.

Get your power in order. a lgt. fission core or mic. fission core are solid options, as is backup power VII (obtain it by having no power equipped at a security level 3 repair station, then succeeding on a refit hack).

Use your speed and farcom! If you can sense a yellow operator, you may be able to outrun him to the nearest terminal. If you can, go trojan(assimilate) to gain control of him, and gain a considerable boost to your hacking while he's alive and visible to you.

Use a level 2 terminal and schematic(adv. hacking suite) and schematic(adv. system shield). Alternatively, find them and scanalyze them. They are rating 6 and give 2 more hack defense/offense than the rating 5 imp. hacking suites/ imp system shields. However, practise common sense and take what you can get, and simply go for the advanced suites later on.

Kill haulers with a melee weapon (you might get lucky)

Wastes

The waste sublevel is found by falling into a chute trap. This may happen on accident by falling into a chute trap that hasn't been spotted, or you may do it intentionally to escape a horde of chasing enemies or to find a new factory floor (it generates a new one that's inaccessible and unaffected by the old one). You may want to do this in the event of fabrication or schematic lockout.

Regardless of how you got there, going into wastes considerably lowers the alert, but has a high (~70% chance) for a message reading 'Foreign system detected. Charging EMP' to play, which after 5-10 turns, considerably corrupts your systems (generally by 5-9%, but sometimes you can get unlucky). This may happen multiple times, but the flighthack build demonstrated in this guide is sufficiently to the point this is very unlikely.


You will see large, brown robots called C-40 crushers. they are slow (movespeed 180 or ~56% compared to your 35 - (3 x number of active flight units beyond the first) or 280+%) but extremely tanky, with a single very high damage melee attack you do not want to get hit by. They are two squares, so when they see you, kite to one side of the hallway (they're usually four wide) so that you can fly past without being adjacent to them. Make sure you are NEVER next to them for more than two consecutive moves, and ideally none at all. Here is an example map of a wastes floor, so you'll know how to path. (image must be found)

If you've fallen into wastes prior to build transition, the safest way to escape is to transition as much as you can (putting on all availible flight units and hack suites). Be careful when you do this to make sure they do not get fried by the EMP if they end up on the ground as you discard your storage units. However, if you have access to at least a heavy rocket launcher, rocket array or better (crushers take twice damage from explosives which already have very high base damage) you may be able to fight your way through them without transitioning. Try to aggro two or more of them from the same range (ideally edge of your farcom or sight range) so your explosives can deal full damage to both, saving you lots of matter as you blast your way through. Stay as far away from them for as long as you can if you're fighting your way through, but do not waste time moving backward; you need that time for unleashing more rockets.

If you're lucky no EMPs will happen, and no active compactors (some broken ones might be seen) will attack you. If this does, this is more or less a safe area, and you're free to explore around to fix your pre-transition build, or find parts to scanalyze if you're post transition.

Important objectives:
Escape without being crushed to death

Less important objectives:
Look for heavily damaged parts strewn around the map. Many of them could be many, many ratings higher than what you currently have access to.

Extension line

Anywhere on -6, -5 or -4, you may encounter a curious stairway labelled 'extension'. The way leading to extension is often guarded by a gate, which be open or closed (requiring a relatively easy hack to open). If you do not go here, skip this section.

This is a risky but potentially very useful path you can take. Unlike the lower or upper caves farcom mostly works in them, enabling you to navigate your way around the floor. However, many robots on this floor are in a (dark red) state called 'dormant' which farcom cannot detect. If you see a dormant robot upon opening a door you are not ready to fight, immediately head back out the door- it may not have woken up upon your entry. If it has, it will act like a normal hostile robot, and be visible in your farcom radii.

When you enter extension, you will be greeted by two pathways, one heading right, another heading top. Regardless of your build state, I will almost always recommend the top pathway As the right pathway leads straight into a large fight starring two sentries and 2 behemoths.

You will find door terminals next to thin, orange walls, loosely resembling those seen in storage. When opened, you will not receive items but instead a random derelict ally, who will assist to the best of their abilities until killed or you leave them behind. You may find a similar door terminal but with a much larger, cube-shaped wall. The hack to open this one is considerably harder, but when opened, a powerful bot by the name of A7 will pop out. He will thank you for rescuing him and also assist you.

Alternatively, you may find rooms with several green (disabled) robots and several dormant robots.I generally go through these with a datajack which can be used to reactivate them to fight the dormant robots as they wake up. Do this enough times and you should have quite a fighting force, even if you only have one combat weapon equipped.

Regardless of whether you get prison vaults or disabled bots, you should try to keep your allies alive as best you can with trojan(disrupt), disarming traps and using single, momentum-augmented (moving in the same direction toward the target before attacking) melee strikes.

At the end of the hall, you will find a 1-wide hall which leads downwards. if you have allies do not go down there, instead go back the way you came, waiting near where you spawned in for your allies (both revived and rescued) to catch up with you. then lead your new army into the big fight. if your army is large (more than 6-7 allies) wait in the back for your allies to win the fight with the help of A7. If your allies fall, swap out your noncombat weapons with theirs to contribute to the fight, picking up your noncombat weapons once the behemoths have been dealt with. If you have fewer allies, or your allies are all heavily damaged, instead use them as a distraction, flying past the behemoths down the hall; going up (through the other 1 wide hall) or continuing to fly further right are both equally viable options, maybe with the latter being marginally safer while the former may find more allies or give you more terminals to hack.

Regardless of which way you went, there are two exits at the end of the main tunnel (going up leads back down there). The top staircase (or left, as A7 puts it) leads to Cetus, while the other one simply leads back to factory. If you return to factory, skip past the rest of this section; you cannot find these floors again.

If you choose to go to the Cetus (I would strongly recommend not going if you don't have any allies left, as this flighthack build does not excel in forced fights), you will be greeted by four members of the cetus guard; relatively strong sentries each armed with a imp. KE penetrators and adv. variable charged gun. Keep a solid distance away and contribute to the fight with any gun/cannon you have with 16+ range (so they can't fire their charge guns, which have a range of 14). if you're unsure how much further to move up, toggle the V key to discover your volley range. After they go down, A7 gives you a code you may choose to plug into the Cetus manufacturing module, which is beyond a wide doorway to the right. Do not go upward, as another Cetus guard squad are there. If you do plug in the code, lots of allied enhanced grunts will spawn out of it, enabling you to easily finish the entire extension line on the back of their excellent tankiness and firepower. There is technically a reason you shouldn't do this, but that's beyond the scope of this guide (for now); no negative consequence will occur if do choose plug in the code.

If A7 is still alive, try to hack your way into the door just beyond the manufacturing module. If you do, special dialogue from A7 will play. keep him alive just a little longer. After travelling further right, you should find another door. This door leads into the next floor of the extension line- the archive.

Cetus objectives:
kill and/or outrun the cetus guard to the manufacturing module (don't let them kill the model itself, it has only 30 armour and 1 tile of its immense mass being destroyed causes it to become no longer function)
Interact with the manufacturing module (if A7 dies, you will find the code on his memory bank near his remains; if he is alive, he will tell it to you)
open the cetus mainframe door just beyond the manufacturing module. If A7 is still alive, he will tell you a unique code when you enter archive.

Upon immediately entering archive, there is a high chance a normal sentry bot (maybe a tier above the floors standard if extension spawned on -6) will spot either you and your allies, and begin firing. There are three more sentry bots at similar spots on equivalent corridoors; one below you, one to the right of you, and one on the opposite side of the main archive floor. They should be no threat for your horde of enhanced grunts, though.

Upon clearing the floor of the sentries (or getting a rare event which prevents them from spawning in the first place) you will notice four unique archive terminals. Once you're done interacting with them, you'll notice the floor has operators everywhere. Feel free to kill operators to acquire more hackware if you've lost some over the course of the extension chain. Once you're happy with the dropped hackware, move to the bottom left entrance to reach the final part, or take either of the other exits to return to factory.

Objectives for archive:

leave the way you want
Kill operators for hackware
Interact with terminals

Welcome to Hub_04_D. This is the final part of the extension line; congrats on getting this far into it with a flighthack build. This floor has lots of tight corridoors and doorways, creating a very mazelike shape. Use layout(zone) and access(main) on nearby terminals to help navigate your way out. You may also encounter double doors containing a very large machine which makes electrical cracking sounds. There are four of them on the floor. Be careful around them as one being destroyed will cause 4 squads of prototype hunters to begin roaming the floor; do not attempt to fight them due to their insane dodge and high damage. However, destroying these network cripples the complex for the rest of the run, reducing network defence (network detection chance and tracing progress) by 20% for the first one downed, another 10% on the second, 5% on the third and 2% on the fourth on all machines. As a hacking build, this is a colossal buff to have; killing even one gives you the equivalent of 2 system shields that don't take up any slots. Find the exit/s off the floor before taking one out, then take it out from as far away as your current weapons can manage (they also put out a considerable EM damage explosion when destroyed).

Objectives for the hub:

Use the terminals to find exits and layouts
Find ways off the floor
Terminate as many network hubs as you safely can, then BOOK IT off the floor.

-5 factory

From -5 to -6, evolve 1 utility, 1 power (bad power situation)
OR 1 utility, 1 propulsion (good power situation)


You're making good progress. The build should be getting increasingly stable now, with a much greater ability to find and build parts to replaced lost ones. This can potentially be an extremely important floor, but can also be a relatively quick and quiet one. The most important difference between -6 and this floor is that the lower caves are replaced by the upper caves, which means new end finds at the end of cave sections. Additionally, machines on average in -5 and up are generally higher levels than -6 and below. This is also where you will want to make an important choice that will impact you for the rest of the run. Do you want to win simply via escaping to the surface, or do you wish to go for an extended win? If you chose the former, going to the upper caves is optional, and potentially a risk not worth taking. If you chose the latter, They are close to mandatory with the perks that they provide; flying builds do not have access to much in the way of storage, and so the perks of the cave locations can greatly assist in the endgame gambit.

Once you have made your decision, you can formulate what you want to do on this floor.

important objectives (depending on where your build is):

Find a way to upper caves or -4 (depending on if you're going for the endgame gambit or a simple escape win).
Fix your power situation (acquire mic. fission cores or backup power VII, which is obtainable from a level 3 repair station).
Hack hack hack! Get yourself schematics for exp. propulsion shielding, exp terrain scanner and exp. terrain scan processor (you may have one or even both of these from dataminer or a lucky force(extract) on a scanalyzer).
Build or find adv. hacking suites and adv. system shields and have them begin to replace your lower tier hackware of the same type, or replaced lost ones.

less important:

find a garrison and use trojan(reprogram) and trojan(broadcast).
Build allies at fabricators using dataminer's bot schematics (I recommend slayers and sages, if you got them), or your own from hacks done across the run.
Get robot analyses with direct hacks or hacks such as analysis(swarmer) They increase your damage and accuracy against analysed bots, and analyzed bots have decreased accuracy against you, which will prove very helpful as the game progresses. Note that you will need to do more analyses as the game progresses as the complex deploys new grades of the robot classes.

Upper caves (-5 and -4)

Welcome to upper caves! Like the lower caves, move forward carefully being sure not to needless aggro enemies. Also like the lower caves, you need to move through two upper cave maps in order to find the 'special event' at the end, followed by doing a proximity caves on the way back to the next factory or first research floor. However, the upper caves generally are a lot less scary than lower caves despite higher enemy DPT (damage per turn) as there's a much better chance you'll have better chance to basic light armours and imp. propulsion shielding which is the cornerstone of why this build is so resilient. During the second upper caves, you may find a staircase weirdly close to where you spawned in

The reason why upper caves are mandatory for extended wins is because of the power of warlord (who may be found at the 'end' of the upper caves) at -5 or -4. Without him, you'll lack the power to properly infiltrate redacted (I wouldn't want to spoil it). The other thing you may find at -5 or -4 is Zhirov, who assists the player by providing several unique items (more on that in the zhirov chapter).
You may skip -4 upper caves if you've already found warlord on -5, and you may skip -5 upper caves if you know warlord is on -4 (because a derelict or log told you of the whereabouts).

Objectives:
get through to the end of the second upper cave level by heading west.
Returning to factory if things are too dangerous/ you don't think you can make it.

less important objectives:
pick up derelict logs! They will make your life easier by revealing stockpiles, emergency doors, traps, machine locations and entranaces/exits.
Find scrap piles and derelict stockpiles to repair and enhance your build.
Interact with various derelict cave events.

Zhirov

After a risky and possibly harrowing endeavour through the upper caves, you find yourself on the right side of a small, oval shaped cavern. If you have 5% or more corruption, drop all your weapons at the entrance (minus melee or datajacks, if you have them) so you don't accidentally discharge a shot, which will cause the bots present to aggro. Move left and there's a 90+% chance a bot by the name of zhirov will greet you. The rest of his compound consists of the following things:

Further left: two sets of terminals. The top set contains useful proto ID's, analyses for various OB10 bots, and schematics for items that are good, albeit will likely cannot be used in the scope of this build. The bottom three terminals are lore terminals, whose contents I will not spoil.

Down Into the main corridoor and left: an alien artifact that either permanently increases your cooling per turn OR permanently make you generate more power each turn.

Down into the main corridoor and right: Another alien artifact which I will not spoil what it does; use it in armory (a branch floor on -4 or -3, which you will not see every run) or when you're surrounded by enemies for best results.

Into the bottom room: Several broken down robots, three of the same prototype propulsion units that are never faulty prototypes (if you're lucky, they'll be flight units you can use to fill your prop slots or replace broken or damage flight units.) plus a random storage or utility (usually a particle accelerator, precision energy/matter filter or imp/advanced energy wells or matter compressors).

Objectives:
Apply the left alien artifact and get the right one into your inventory, ready to use in event of emergencies.

Interact with all the terminals to get valuable Intel, analyses and prototype IDs.

Use a melee weapon (or other non-launcher weapon if you have less than 5% corruption) on the broken down bots to refill matter reserves

Equip and unequip all the prototype propulsions and utilities to identiy them, keeping the ones you like, and leaving the ones you don't. I'd recommend keeping the energy well/matter compressor if one drops, but not other utilities. Equip prototype flight units if present (they're almost definitely better than whatever flight units you have now.

Listen to what zhirov has to say as you leave.

Leave the compound.

Warlord

Upon reaching the end of the second upper caves area, you may reach an area with strange orange stone. If this is the case, welcome to warlord's base! There's a timed event which will cause the area to be under attack after a few hundred turns, so do not waste too much time; as a flier, this likely will not be a concern unless you're dangerously overweight or extremely unlucky.

There is only a single entry into the base, through the quarantine array, near a set of opened blast doors. It will reduce your corruption to 0%, which is good because of how many traps are in and around the base.

Once you make it through the base, there is a lot to do and see; try to explore everything if you can. However, a few core things should be done before you leave.

Important objectives:
Find warlord himself. More specifically, a room with three doors all next to each other should be his primary chamber, where he will then greet you.
Open warlord's stash. There's an orange terminal in the corner of the room warlord is found in. Use the code data miner gave you to open it. If you did not go to dataminer this run, go to the entropic weapons lab and find a vortex spear, driver, rifle or cannon.

Find the entropic weapons lab. The weapons within are oftentimes heavy, but extremely powerful. The best ones are vortex catalyst activator (launcher) and vortex spear (piercing weapon). Equip them if your mass can handle it (and you have a spare weapon slot) otherwise toss 1-2 of them into your inventory. You can also many of the weapons found here to crack open warlord's stash without making him and his allies hostile (just don't use the catalyst activator for this).

Get out. This is very difficult and finnicky if you try and run out the way you came, possibly through a massive army of OB10 bots. Instead, try to look for the very far right top and bottom corners of inside the base; you'll find at one of them, the cave wall slides away, revealing a terminal to open a door to escape scott-free while needing to fight very few enemies.

Less important:
Explore around! You'll find cool lore terminals, terminals containing prototype IDs, armours, weapons (get replacement melee if you don't have one) and hackwares. The most useful things are the makeshift or better hackware, prop/util shieldings, light armours and melee weapons.

Find and rewire the disabled bots. They can assist you in escaping safely. If you need to rewire the bots but lack a datajack, make yourself overweight (by turning some of your flight units off) and then move into their squares. if you get the prompt "attempting to rewire X", you're doing it right.

[ktur]

4) If you want to fabricate adv. hacking suites/adv. system shields you can do this on -7 if you will use that saved slot and assimilate hack

I can suggest a list of essential hacks for such style:

Access
Index
Recall
Layout
Schematic
Purge
Traps
Manifest

Track
Disrupt
Operators
Assimilate
Botnet

Search



Siphon
Prioritize

Download



Watchers
Redirect

Jam

[ktur]

Guide is already very good, but I have some feedback:

1) hacks list is in bad state, it definitely should include index(), operators and assimilate - no way you can skip those

2) I have no idea why you will want launcher equipped together with datajack, seems like wasted slot

3) Why 4-prop? 3 slots are enough for storage and armor, 4 are pushing energy balance, and every possible utility slot is needed to pull schematics from 2 depths higher - and it is difference between transitioning on -6 to imp. cesium with need of replacement and transitioning on -6 to exp. cesium which can last until the end (I'm talking about w0/2/3 currently) with later fabs used for other things.

[T.W.T.G.W.Y.T.T.]

More chapters coming whenever possible. This build is capable of extended wins with the help of some cheeky transition maneuvering.