Ongoing Game Guide

This guide is being put together as the game is completed. It will cover some basics, tips/tactics learned, and eventually a complete game guide which will start with standard difficulty and move up from there.

Introduction

Introduction

This will serve as a general guide to Chaos Gate: Demonhunters, detailing some basics, tips, tricks, and strategies as I complete the game and learn more. This guide will be frequently updated as I move through the game, adding what I have learned as I go along. Eventually, it will cover moving through harder difficulties as I complete more of the game.

Current Status: - Standard Mode. Game Complete. Working on next difficulty.

Basics

Basics

This section is intended to cover some game basics along with tips for accelerating your performance in game. This will be the culmination of basic knowledge I have accrued about the game as I learn more.

Overview

This is an "XCOM-like" game, but in my opinion, improves upon the XCOM formula quite a bit with many mechanics streamlined. For example, you no longer have hit or miss chances, and cover is simply a mechanic of either reduce damage by 1/2 or full. Simple. Armor is simply regenerating HP each turn.

The game takes place as you follow a story line about a Nurgle infestation in a sector which you are attempting to stop. The gameplay goes from mission to mission, with the majority of the time you are completing 1 out of 4 basic mission types with a team of up to 4 Grey Knights at your disposal.

The game is won by defeating the Reapers and completing the story before the sector is entirely lost to the Morbus, which happens if you let areas on the map become fully corrupted.You will start with 4 basic Grey Knights, 1 of each of the starter classes, and from there, you will level up your Knights, gather new equipment for them, recruit new knights, and generally get more powerful while also the enemies that you face generally get more powerful.

I play with Iron Man (Grand Master Mode) enabled, meaning no save scumming. I do this both to create more interest/skill in my decisions but also it forces you to learn good behavior and tips to interact with the game.

Game Parts

So far the game is split up into what I classify as 3 "Acts".

Act I: Pre-Craftworld
When you start the game, you will travel a small map of the systems, completing bloom missions and collecting Green bloom seeds. You will typically fight the weaker enemies (cultists with stubbers) and plague-style zombies. As you research the bloom seeds, you will eventually unlock a special mission on an old Eldar Craftworld where the full story of the Reapers unfolds. After that, it's on to Act II.

Act II: Reapers
Here, you will now have a larger map of the sector with more bloom seed gathering missions, this time of different colors, against progressively harder enemies, whereupon you need to collect and research the different colors to unlock the "Boss" Reaper for each color. Kill three bosses, and Kadex again to move onto the 3rd act.

Act III: Draigo Story
You side track from the reapers down a rabbit hole to summon Draigo to end the bloom only to have to go save him. (For those who aren't steeped in Lore, Draigo is important because he and Mortarion, the Deathguard Primarch, have some old beef!)

Grey Knights
There are 8 classes in the game. ALL of them are useful in their own way. Some lend themselves to min-maxing more than others. I will cover them in a different section.

Injuries
There's a formula here that I can't figure out that is about your knights taking HP damage during a mission translating to a "wounded" state. There's no rhyme or reason to it that I can tell except "don't get that hurt and you won't get wounded".... which is basically how I recommend playing!

Various degrees of wounding give you a negative HP modifier for a length of time till they heal.

Critical Injuries
If your guy drops during a mission, he gets a critical wound. First time he comes back (after a while), he gets an augment and is OK. After that, things can go downhill. 3 times and you dead! Short story, don't get critically wounded, don't need to find out what happens! (Although you are going to get critically wounded every now and then... things do go bad... especially on bosses).

Requisition
This resource is easy to go unnoticed at first, but it is vital to your overall power level! Each time you finish a mission, you get some "requisition" from it. You use that at the end of each mission to purchase requisition from Titam and Grand Master Kai, which ultimately is how you unlock all your sweet gear!

Also, each time you do a mission, you can opt to do the "challenge" to earn more requisition. I highly recommend you do the challenges you know you can do! Easy ones are:

• Complete mission by getting X kills with Y Weapons (grenades, melee, ranged)
  
• Complete mission with crits disabled
  
• Complete mission without using master crafted armor (there's a weapons one too but this is a PITA)
  
• Collect X Seeds. (This is trivial once you have the servitor skull and 2 for 1 seed techs)
  
• There are more easy/good ones, I will note as I see them again.

Here's the ones I DO NOT DO BECAUSE THEY ARE FRUSTRATING OR NOT WORTH IT:

• Do before you take X damage. So frustrating and easy to fail. Skip it.
  
• Master Crafted Weapons nix. I don't like this because many knights NEED their wargear to function well as a class.

You want to collect as much of this as you can get, especially when the Missions in Act I are so easy, with easier enemies.

Grand Master Report
After some story, you get offered to purchase upgrades to your "random equipment draws at the end of each mission" during the Grand Master report, which occurs regularly throughout the game as time passes.

There are 5 categories,ranged and melee weapons, armor, knights, and wargear. ALL of them are good! Each time during a Grand master Report you can upgrade each section 1 time at a cost of 2 Requisition (this is why it's good to have a lot of requisition!) Each level increases the odds of finding better equipment or having better knights to recruit at the end of a mission.

**NOTE: Upgrading Kinghts is what unlocks a more steady access to the game's "other 4 classes" like Libby's, Chappie, and Paladins. (Although you can get from events too). They are still very rare, though.

You want to ABU (always be upgrading). Gear can turn mediocre knights into real powerhouses. Many of the classes don't really 'shine" until you get "good gear". ALL the gear is important.

Basics Cont.

Ship Systems

I will update with "correct" names next time I'm on the ship. :P

As you progress in the game, you can receive Servitors through mission rewards. You can use those servitors to upgrade your ship. There are many systems, and here's what they do along with thoughts on upgrade order.

Reactor - Does nothing except cause you to spend servitors to unlock more upgrades.

Augmentation - Starts out making a few servitors at a rate that never gets very useful. What IS useful is the +50% construction speed bonus! HIGHLY recommend you tech this one up early and fast to roll out those ship upgrades. It's usually first or second priority for me.

Prognosticators - You can build upgrades to unlock prognosticators. (More on this later). This allows you to create zones on the map where you get nice bonuses during missions.

Libris - Increases research speed granted by Grimoires (random other mission rewards you get). I actually don't care so much about research speed early in the game, but later, it's very useful.

Guns and Shields - Guns make bad guy plague marine ships go BOOM, which less risk to you when those encounters happen. Recommend upgrading as you have time. Shields give you more HP... more importantly TOP LEVEL SHIELDS PROTECT YOU FROM THE WARP STORMS. Very useful!

Barracks Recruit moar knights. Actually, if you are "doing this right" you don't actually need more than 1-2 upgrades of this up. More on this later!

Warp Drive Get to that next mission faster. This is actually critical! Recommend high upgrade priority because missions you can't get to, you just lose out, increase corruption, eventually die to the Morbus, etc.

Exterminatus Actually never used this yet. So don't know what it does, lol. I will try it some day and update you.

Repairs Restore your HPs. Obviously if the ship blows up, game is probably over? Never tried it so yeah...

Apothecary First 2 levels are all about providing bonuses to your knight AFTER they get a critical injury. Next 2 levels are more interesting as they reduce heal times! However, as noted in the comments, the 2nd level (at least) also gives you a huge recovery time boost too which is NOT listed on the ability. Confirmed.

Meditation Chamber - This grants bonus XP gain to your knights in missions. Recommend this is top priority along with Augmentation. You want this early and about 3 levels so you can level up Knights much faster!


Mission Types

There are 4 basics mission types, 3 specialty missions, and some boss fights. (I haven't done all the Reapers yet, but will update as I do them!)... that I know about so far.

The specialty missions are the Eldar Craftworld between Act I and II. I will talk more about this along with boss fights re: Kadex. There's also the one mission much later where you have to get the Inquisitor over to the altar to summon Draigo.

The 4 basic types you run into all revolve around bloom seeds and are as follows:

• Kill Everything - You only see this one in Act I before you get going on the whole bloom collection routine. Easier enemies, lots of cultists, wipe them out, try to collect a seed once that becomes available.
  
• Collect the Seeds - 1+ enemies on the board are carrying bloom seeds. Extract or kill. Mission always ends with large reinforcements coming in and you needing to survive for 2 more turns.
  
• Kill the Bloomspawn - Bloomspawn comes in "flavors". There's the cultist who does a ritual to become a herald if you don't stop him in time, flavor. There's the annoying bloom spawn + plant turrets which fire bombs at you and do a lot of damage. There's the funky tree looking thing that buffs nearby enemies and does damage at close range. Kill the stuff, you win. Seeds will be on enemies or on special melee zones.
  
• Kill the Spreader - There is a "spreader" bloomspawn type on the map. You have about 8 turns to kill it. There's little melee icons throughout the map that if you hit, gives you more turns. Map will also have bloomspawns on it. All you need to do is kill the spreader to win. Seeds will be on enemies or on special melee zones.

Seeds
There are 5 types of bloom seeds in the game of different colors. Nothing special here except different seeds are used to pay different resource costs. Seeds are used as follows in the game:

• Pay for research unlocks
  
• Pay for purity seals on wargear (unlocks bonuses on wargear you see early on but don't know how the hell to get it)
  
• Pay other random event costs

Getting seeds early is a PITA because you have to body target CRIT (meaning stun them first, a seed carrying enemy to extract it. . Later, however, you pick up a Seed Servitor Skull through the research tree (B-LINE STRAIGHT FOR THIS TECH).... which has 5 uses in a round (enough for all seeds) and costs 0 AP to use with a decent no Line of Sight requirements range... easy button for seed collection.

Also get the tech early that gives you 2 seeds per 1 extraction. After that, seed problem is solved.

Mission Rewards

Each mission you embark on has multiple reward mechanisms. This is not EASY TO SPOT at first... so here's the tips:

• Some requisition is granted
  
• It tells you what flavor of seeds are on that mission
  
• Reduces corruption in the system (prevents being lost to the Morbus)
  
• A list of the gear you will have a random shot at AND it's level (based on Grand master report upgrades) that will be available in that mission. THIS IS A BIG DEAL IF YOU ARE FISHING FOR CERTAIN WEAPONS OR ARMOR OR KNIGHTS OR WARGEAR.
  
• Some extra challenge you can do for more requisition which you should also do the easy ones.

Grey Knights

This section is specially on the various classes and tips/tricks I've learned. ALL the classes are "good"... some are obviously better than others in certain compositions. Some seem "not so good" until you score some SWEET wargear or weapons... and suddenly they go from Zeroes to Heroes.

Yes, Justicars are good and hilarious in large groups. *yawn*. Here's some tips on what I have learned about each class. (Saw someone say Purgators aren't very good was like... the hell?)

General

AP is king. Willpower is queen. Anything that gives you more AP makes you a LOT stronger. There are many ways to get "free ap".

• Justicar grants AP to other knights. This is IMBA/broken. Yes, it's good. Auto take.
  
• Reload for free 50% of the time. Justicar and Purgator get this. It's amazing.
  
• 50% chance to get AP on crit... Interceptors turn into meat grinders with this.
  
• Other chance for free AP, etc.

Willpower is Queen because you can't use your cool abilities without it!

Rule of Willpower
It's better to get the bonus WP nodes on a character than it is to unlock "insert rando ability here" that you will basically never use. Get more WP to power the abilities you do use!

What Makes an Ability Good?
Some abilities at face value are good. Like Justicar's AP grant. Purifiers Flames. Hammerhand. Astral Aim.

Some abilities don't seem good till you realize there's a piece of wargear or a class combination that make them sick! I'm still learning about what all the combinations are, and I will list them with each Class as I figure some out.

Rule of Chaplain
The Chaplain makes everything good, lol. But he can't but make one area good at a time. He can grant 50% chance on will power returns. He can grant FREE AP on melee crits. He can do a lot. Sometimes, some other class or ability goes from *yawn" to AMAZING if you toss in a Chappie.

Classes

Justicar
Solid, all-rounder with broken AP granting ability. Good to have in a party. Good in multiples to abuse Honor the Chapter.

• Terminator Armor, with upgrades, and Aegis shield boosts can get pretty hilarious with a Warding Stave with 100% guaranteed end of turn Aegis.
  
• Yes, the AP granting Honor the Chapter ability is IMBA and is a go to. It's crazy broken in bunches. Hilarious with Purgators, Interceptors. It gives up to 3 freakin' AP, and the knight himself still has 2 to spare. If you stack multiple justicars you can have up to over 15 ap in one turn from this alone, not counting bonus AP generated by abilities.
  
• I like psycannons actually, because of the AoE damage. It's really good in Act I and will carry a team.
  
• Has access to hammerhand for guaranteed melee crits. Not that cool but helps get seeds in Act I.
  
• Gets access to ability to auto-reload when out of ammo. This ability is SWEET. Free AP.

Preferred Kit:
Hammerhand (just the ability), Honor the Chapter (max out). Bonus WP. Psycannon. Reload 50% of the time. Sometimes like Rend the Unclean, sometimes more Aegis point. Terminator Armor. Give him a decent melee and best Psycannon you can find.


Apothecary
This is actually my least favorite class! That being said, it does have some utilities that can make it useful.

• Narthecium is hard to find a "good one". However, there are ones that cause Biomancies to last longer and other effects. So, try to find one!
  
• Does have ability to collect seeds on hit, but who cares, because Hammerhand early and later Servitor Skull for extraction.
  
• Heals is GUD. Especially on some boss fights. Won't deny that. But, you still get wounded even if you heal back up.
  
• The Warp Speed biomancy is the bread and butter here by virtue of it force multiplying the Interceptor. So, it will give him an additional +4 crit dmg which is huge.

Purgator
Purgators are amazing because of Psilencers and Astral Aim. Never leave home without a Purgator. Sometimes I take 2! They mess up bosses. They make otherwise difficult encounters trivial. They are baller.

• Psilencer is the weapon of choice. Why? LONG RANGE. They can fire WAY outside the range of bosses and normal enemies. Specialty psilencers make this even grosser as does wargear.
  
• Astral Aim is the god like ability here. Fully max it. Why? Because Astral Aim guarantees a CRIT which also allows you to do body part targeting. This means, you open a fight, first thing that comes out is the Purgator to SHUT DOWN most enemies in the game with one shot. I will have a special section below dedicated to this ability and weapon it is SO GOOD.
  
• 50% chance to reload. SO GOOD.
  
• You can go grenades if you like. Some of the Tier 2/3 wargear grenades are GROSS.
  
• MOAR willpower to dish out MOAR astral aim.
  
• Up ranged crit with Psilencer, etc. Gross damage with wargear and astral aim.

Preferred Kit
Psilencer. Wargear that ups Crit damage/%. Some kind of armor to add an additional passive slot (or 2) for more wargear to get more Crit.

An interlude on Psiliencers
You can't understand the Purgator until you understand the magnificent weapon known as the Psilencer.

It has SUPER LONG RANGE. That's basically it. It's so long, you out range most enemies in the game. This also means your Purgator can hang WAY back, completely out of danger and lob Astral Aim and Psilencer shots with impunity.

But wait, there's more. Requisitioned Silencers I have seen thus far:
- IGNORES ARMOR. This will one shot hulks. Make mince meat out of most enemies.
- Up to 10 damage from Crits and the weapon itself.
- Just bonus damage and clips.

Here's how this works. You start the fight. You pick the one dude in the enemy pack (or boss) that has something that annoys you... like....
- The Plague Shield... hilarious one shot it's gone. Totally neutered this guy.
- The plasma pistol on the plague champs. One shot gone.
- The breath of a herald or his stupid stick.
- The hulks. Take them out. One shot.
- Every boss so far. Has something you can blow off or disable. Astral aim. Pew pew. Cool story.

Astral Aim ends most fights before they start. Just like that. You remove the threat and mop up. Half the time, the damn AI doesn't even know what to do once you blow off their gun arm. Just stands there like "how do I melee again?"

Interceptor
Choppy, rogue-like goodness. SO GOOD with right wargear. This guy can dish out close combat damage. Pair him up with a Chappie, and it's like an 80's slasher flick.

• Teleport. Get to wherever with 1 AP. Take the RANGE upgrade. You NEED it.
  
• Teleport and attack at the same time. Even better.
  
• Take all the upgrades to Crit for Melee in the tree.
  
• Load this guy down with the Crit wargear (+% crit and crit damage from wargear)
  
• Then, take some Falchions. You will find MC Falchions that give a LOT of bonus crit, or crit % on Warp Charge. I have a pair of falchions right now that do +30% base crit, +40% crit from warp charge, and when you combine that with passives from the ability tree, I have 100% crit per warp charge per attack. Every. Single. Time. This means lot of damage and body part targeting.
  
• Then... take the ability that gives AP 50% of the time on crit....
  
• Then... combine with a Chappie for MOAR AP...
  
• Then... combine with a Justicar for MOAR AP...
  
• Destroy the world in a blaze of choppiness.

Preferred Kit
Falchions with lots of crit. Some kind of armor with more gear slots for more wargear to give more crit. All the crit. Crit for AP. Teleport and range. Profit.

Grey Knights Cont.

Librarian
Utility and Damage in one.

• You can do this 2 ways really. Support Libby or Offensive libby.
  
• Gate of Infinity with Squad is awesome. You can finish a Spreader mission in no time. This will also get you out of bad spots you end up with, and on some bosses, makes them easy.
  
• I like AoE damage in general at range... so like the blast attacks and smite (because smite can ignore armor on warp charge)
  
• Take the Aegis upgrades... then take a Warding Staff. 25% base from class, 50-75% chance for Aegis on the staves (there's even one that gives 100%)... and yeah, lots and lots of armor.'
  
• Granting armor or sanctuary are great support.
  
• You need to focus on what you want your Libby to do so you can take the WP nodes.

Preferred Kit
Good terminator armor with bonus WP if applicable, Aegis bonus, or just straight armor/wargear. Focus on what you want. You want support or damage? Gate is great! If you go support, take a sick storm bolter (you get these... more on wargear later).

Purifier
Wargear dependent and sometimes hard to use, but these guys can be GOOD. (A lot of folks think they are red-headed step children... but far from it)

• First off, you want armor that gives you more wargear. Take the +Ammo wargear.
  
• Get an incinerator that does 1 damage per 1 ammo spent. (See where this is going??)
  
• Purifying Flames is greater with Infinite burn. Fire and run away. Let enemy chase you and kite to death.
  
• Flame spread on the ground will actually MESS WITH THE AI. Sometimes, enemies will just stand there instead of crossing it.
  
• I like AoE damage in this game to clear packs fast.
  
• Once you go the Incinerator tree on lock down and purifying flames, take grenades. Some of the Tier 2/3 grenades are hilariously good.

Preferred Kit
Incinerator abilities. Purifying flames. Grenades.

Chaplain
The Force Multiplier class.

• Chappie can't buff everyone all the time. Decide who you want a certain chappie to buff up and then use that chappie in conjunction with that "crew". e.g. Take the AP Melee granting Chappie with a Crit Interceptor and a Justciar. Or, take the WP generating Chappie if you are going Warp Charge heavy with ranged attacks (or the interceptor again).
  
• I swap out the Crozius all the time for a different weapon because I struggle to find a good version of it (this is 40K heresey!!!!! but whatever... )
  
• Find a good, high end storm bolter to round Chappie out as a squad member. Chappie gets good armor bonuses too, making him front line worthy.
  
• Chappie gets way more functional as a stand-alone crew member with a good storm bolter.
  
• The ability to taunt and better, craze, enemies in a blast zone can carry battles for you when things get dicey. This is an enormously useful ability. You can make the enemy hit each other instead of your vulnerable knights while you get into position or use it to come out of cover for more damage.

Preferred Kit
Terminator with more WP. Chappie's need a lot of WP because their litanies DO drain WP over time. Find him a sick storm bolter. Pair him up purposefully with gear and abilities with a certain combo of other knights for max advantage. Get a 2nd chappie for different strategies.

Paladin
Front line, tough as nails. Actually, utility wise, probably midling, but they can do some things other knights can't.

• Find a warding stave that grants 100% chance to cast aegis. Combine with Storm Sheild and defense wall. perks... and you have a guy with around 15 armor / turn FOR FREE. Front line bullet catcher.
  
• Ancients is a very powerful AoE attack with warp charge. Recommend it.
  
• Psycannon always good until you can make the storm shield work with defense wall better.
  
• Can grant WP too which is good when combined with WP burners like Interceptors or Purgators or Purifiers.

Preferred Kit
My latest paladin kit of choice at the moment is 100% Aegis Warding Stave + Storm Shield. Rolling with 15 armor and front line all the way. Hit stuff and draw their attention. Ancients when they close. Meanwhile, Psycannon and otherwise, he's like a Justicar w/o the imba AP granter.

My Personal Optimal Knights Configuration

This section is just listing what I personally believe is optimal knight of each class. Will update as I form more opinions on other classes. I will list them in priority order.

Justicar

I personally prefer ranged with Justicar and leave melee to Interceptors.

• Terminator, straight to Psycannon, and 50% chance to reload. (will finish this later)
  
• All leadership discipline nodes (Honour the Chapter nodes)
  
• Hammerhand, Upgrade Crit, Will Power (doing this for the will power) (this will also cause you to get all core discipline nodes...)
  
• Rend the Unclean, Willpower (doing this for the will power)
  
• All Ranged Weapon Upgrades
  
• 1 point for armor (because you have one left)

Purgator

• Astral Aim
  
• Straight to Psilencer upgrade range and ignore cover.
  
• South from ranged dsicipline to Rapid Reload (on psycannon tree), do not get return fire.
  
• Finish Astral Aim.
  
• Crit Damage on Psilencer + Will power node from core discpline.
  
• 2 left over points for whatever, usually dump into Return Fire and Support Fire.

Interceptor

• Straight to Teleport and teleport range (also gets WP node from core discpline)
  
• Go right to Hammer hand then straight north to get all melee discipline.
  
• Teleport Boost -> Teleport Strike
  
• Willpower node on far right. Move south and get extra wargear slot.

Apothecary

• Terminator
  
• Move straight to Apothecarion Skull
  
• Move straight to warp speed + upgrade crit.
  
• Servo Ammo
  
• Move from Warp Speed to Surgial Adept (picking up Iron Arm)
  
• Will power to the far right.
  
• Couple points left over

Chaplain

Chaplains

Bestiary

This section covers the types of enemies I have seen thus far and tips for them. **I will try to get proper names as I play the game and update them**... till then stuck with loose descriptors.

It is worth noting that "regular" enemies come in varieties depending on mission difficulty. Usually this means more HP and/or Armor.

Cultist
Dude with a crap gun. Overwatches incessantly. Also fires annoying pinning grenades which reduce AP. This is where AoE ranged attacks like Psycannon, Grenades, etc. can really wreck, especially at fight starts.

I'm finding in Ruthless+ difficulty that since things are slower to kill, you will often find yourself in a mess of Overwatch between cultists and Plague Marines. Watch out for it.

Cultist w/ Heavy Stubber
This guy is more dangerous than he seems. Very long range so always hard to close with and kill. What makes him dangerous are Suppression (which can lock you in place) and he also has an attack that can destroy your cover. If he goes early in a round, destroy your knight's cover, that leaves you vulnerable to getting lit up by all the other baddies that haven't gone yet.

Astral Aim quickly if you can get a chance to. Stick to full cover.

Zombies
Melee attack. Summon lesser zombies from corpses. This is yard trash. Easy to kill. Nothing exciting.

Cultist Leader
Has an armor ignoring attack that you need full cover to avoid. It is shorter range. Will also call up the Warp meter to 100% after a channel. Usually take him out first thing with Purgator as fight opens.

Explodey Zombie
Blows himself up or in your face when you kill him. You can disable the explosion with crit targeting. However, easy button here is just shoot it.

Plague Marine
Gun is only good if you are not in cover. Otherwise, it barely tickles. They overwatch constantly and will run away to heal themselves when damaged. 3+ armor. These guys are actually very annoying. However, one astral aim shot to remove the gun neuters them. Otherwise, it's just a slog. They can't really hurt you if you stick to cover and you work your way through them.

Now, there's a variant with a plague spreader weapon. These guys maintain distance and mess up the ground with plague. Since plague bypasses armor, this will wound your knights. These guys are more of a threat and I typically Astral Aim the gun off immediately. Otherwise, you can outrange them with any gun. Just annoying to kill.

Plague Champion
These guys have a Plasma Pistol and Power Fist. However, I've never seen one actually engage in melee (AI busted maybe?). Anyways, the Plasma Pistol HURTS. It will also destroy cover, which is VERY BAD if he goes first, knocks out your cover, and then your knight gets hosed down by all the other baddies. Otherwise, this guy runs around buffing enemies with mutations.

Astral Aim the gun off. And.... done.

Maw Cannon Robot Thingy
Robot with a big mouth and a huge damaging, cover destroying gun. Blows up too when it dies. Lots of armor. Very low HP. Don't mess with these guys. They will wreck you with that gun. Astral Aim/ignores armor or anything which ignores armor and take this guy out at range. High priority.

Hellbrute
Looks like a dreadnought! (Should have been a Chaos Dreadnought instead... would have been SWEET!) OK, lots and lots of armor. Lots of HP. He's like a mini-boss. When he lights up with the aura area around him, what that does is if you walk in it, he grabs your knight.

So... kill this guy at range. More Purgators with ignores armor or other ignores armor like smite, bolters etc. Otherwise, focus fire and take him out. They only seem to come as one.

Plague Terminator
Such classic 40K! A terminator with an autocannon!

That cannon actually huts, A LOT. And, you can't blow it off. Further, these guys will chuck grenades at you. What's more, if you try to melee them, they will get a first strike on you, and they HURT.

Trick here is to stick to full cover and range them down. Ignores armor Psilencers always good for yard trash and will make mince meat here.

Plague Shield Guy
Dude with a huge shield. Does lots of melee damage. Plague Shield aura means if you walk near him he lunges to hurt you.

100% disclosure. I don't know what these guys actually do! Soon as I see one, Astral Aim away the shield... and yeah. Shoot him, and he dies.

Demons of Nurgle
Melee. Slow. Run around getting mutation buffs till they get close enough to hit you. Shoot them. Easy. Remove their weapon with crit targeting, and they can't do anything at all. Keep in mind that they have a 50% chance to block first incoming melee hit. So, storm bolter them away. They are slow as well so can't cover a lot of ground AND hit you. So, let them close and shoot them in the face is always a plus.

Herald of Nurgle
Plague demon with a staff and a boat load of HPs. Fire longs range, conical breath attack that hurts and does negatives. Once again, prime Astral Aim bait to remove the breath. Otherwise, the dude's a chump. Beat him up.

Foetid Bloat Drone
These guys are very dangerous, and I recommend alpha strike at first sight. The reason for danger is they have a lot of armor pierce abilities with guns and blast attack. It seems all of the "machine" based enemies are just flat high on the danger meter. They aren't that hard to kill though for a Purgator with a decent kit.

Chaos Spawn
Cool looking concept for this! Way cooler than the actual 40K model is (maybe was, haven't played in a long time haha). Has ability to regenerate and melee attack outright kills a knight after holding him for one turn. Big HP tank. Fortunately, you don't see these guys till late game when you have gear to take them out at range. Like almost everything here, Purgators can eliminate it in a round.

Combat Tips and Tricks

This is just a collection of basic tips and tricks for engaging in combat at large. I will continue to update it as I learn new techniques.

End the Fight Before it Starts
Astral Aim and other abilities which guarantee body part targeting can end most fights before they get interesting. Blow off the right body part, and you can completely castrate an enemy.

Further, since most "enemy packs" come with one big guy and a bunch of little guys, you can just neuter the big guy right out of the gate, and the fight becomes trivial. This is why I love Purgators and Astral Aim so much.... also works on bosses to.

Cover
Cover works like this. 1/2 cover = 1/2 damage (rounded down). Full cover = no damage at all.

Stick to cover!

Howitzer style AoE attacks
Some enemies chuck howitzer style attacks at you, especially plague spawns and spreaders. The way this works with cover is there is a Primary Target of the attack, but it is also AoE so can hit multiple knights. Knee jerk here would be to "spread out" but you don't have to. If the primary target is in full cover, and the other guys are in full cover relative, nobody takes any damage. The primary HAS TO BE in full cover though for this to work, otherwise other guys will take damage even if they have cover or not.

Melee vs. Ranged

Yes, melee is satisfying, typically does more damage, and Interceptors all geared up with Ap production and crit can dominate entire fights.

However, ranged fights work just as well with the proper ranged gear. There is wargear for bolters that make them SICK. I have bolters that give +4 damage on warp charge, bolters that are +2 damage and ignores armor on warp charge, bolters with 6 base damage, and so on. Psycannons are the same as is Psilencers and Incinerators. Pay attention to your wargear, and you will see that Ranged is just as deadly and works just fine.

Aoe Attacks
I like anything that does AOE attack. Librarian powers, psycannons, grenades, incinerators. All of it. Being able to hit multiple enemies with a single AP is a prime tactic. This is especially true against weaker enemies like zombies, cultists, and even plague marines.

Use the Environment
They put all these cool environment effects for you to use. So, use them. They are always very strong, do AoE, and can change a fight quickly. So, pay attention and use them.


Out of Combat Movement/Fight Triggering
Move together. Don't let your guys string out. If they do, correct it and waste a turn if you have to.

What you want is for your next enemy pack to start with all your knights already there in striking distance. So, move up AS A SQUAD. And then choose one guy to trigger the event. Everyone gets back their FULL AP at the fight start so you can Alpha Strike the enemy away.

THIS IS THE WAY. This is how you will keep from getting injuries or losing HPs unnecessarily. Trigger fights when you are ready to alpha strike... and then alpha strike.

The trick is, get a FEEL for the range at which fights trigger. You can already see where the packs are as you get close to them on your screen.

Movement Path
I didn't realize this at first, but you can set a movement path by clicking on the ground to set a point and then clicking again somewhere else, repeatedly, to set a path for your movement. This consumes the total amount of AP that would get consumed by the total distance, not the individual moves. This is also how you can move along a certain path to engage in melee without incurring an extra AP cost of. The usefulness here is to be able to walk around hazards or around overwatch cones to get to where you need to go.

The Warp Meter
When I first started playing, I sweated the warp meter a lot. Was so thankful for prognosticators, which by the way, serve to reduce its charge up AND... give you free WP each time it triggers if you got the resesearch.

However, as I got more seasoned in the game, I just stopped paying attention to this. It goes up. Stuff "happens". Generally the stuff is negligible. "-1 HP for rest of combat". Big whoop. Some mutations on dudes I'm going to kill anyways. A hazard zone added ot the map. It's really whatever. You don't need to sweat the Warp Meter. It happens and you deal.

Servo Skulls
Servo Skulls do not use AP, even the ones that do attacks and other stuff. That's what makes them good and why you might want to have an Apothecary with them.

Best Servo Skull in the Game??!!
Scored the Disruptor Servo Skull on my Ruthless playthrough. Holy smokes this thing is baller! 4 dmg at Range 10, IGNORES ARMOR. Better? It disrupts! Why is this so good? Because servo's cost 0 ap and don't trigger auto's. This is bad boy can fly out, for free, on a guy who is overwatched to hell and back and disrupt the overwatch with no penalty!

Fall Damage
Fall Damage is a thing in this case as a result of being knocked back or blasted. So, you can knock enemies off the stage for an instant kill. Also, you can knock them off varying degrees of height and get bonus damage on the attack.

Cover Destruction
There are several things which can destroy enemy cover, very useful to know sometimes if you need to clear heavy cover from around an enemy to get good shots at it. Grenades work. Psilerncer spread attack also destroys cover. Overlaod on the Psycannon does as well.

Wargear

Wargear deserves its own section as much of the wargear in the game can completely change your life... or the lives of your knights.

It's "semi-random" meaning you randomly get wargear, but the wargear available is the "same" across games. It just depends on if you see it or not.

The correct wargear can make bland classes become monsters. You don't need to rely on Justicar gimmick squads anymore. You can actually have fun with all the classes with the right war gear.

I'm not going to list all the wargear here. Pointless since you randomly get it anyways. What you are looking for is IDEAS so when you see it, you know what to do!

Open to more ideas in the comments, and I will update them here.

Wargear

Requsition

Read the section in basics on requisition. You need to be constantly upgrading your requisition to get access to new gear. Always save requisition for this. Don't just randomly buy every piece of gear. Most of the gear actually sucks. So, save your requisition to find the good stuff and otherwise upgrade.

Wargear, wargear
The ACTUAL wargear is game changing. Don't neglect this requisition area. There's a lot of it, and it's random. But if can change your life.

Everything from +% crit chance bonuses, extra ammunition, specialty grenades, increased Aegis effect, resistance effects, extra WP.... this is the stuff that can make a Knight into a powerhouse.

E.g. Stack a bunch of +Crit on a Psilencers (already has a lot of +crit from purgator...) and you get a sick, sick gun toting bad ass. Same goes for Interceptor.

Purity Seals
After you unlock the seed types in Act II, you will get access to purity seals. Purity seals allow you to spend seeds you have collected to upgrade armor and weapons. You see those slots that say "Grants +1 armor" or whatever... that's where you need to upgrade with a purity seal!

Some stuff goes from zero to hero with purity seals. Pay attention to them. READ CAREFULLY. Some of the sickest pieces of gear comes because of purity seals.

e.g. Storm bolters suddenly ignores armor on warp charge. Warding Stave gets +50% to cast aegis. +Armor on gear. Huge crit increases with warp charge. And so on.

Weapon and Armor Stats
I missed this at first, but it is very important. Each piece of armor and weapon has BASE STATS. It's on the screen above the special abilities of the weapon. There's a base stat for damage, range, ammo capacity, and basic modifiers.

Here's the thing. It is easy to assume all Storm Bolters do 4 damage at range 10. THIS IS NOT THE CASE! Some do 5 or even 6... some have greater or lesser range... some have additional abilities. Some have more or less ammo.

You need to understand base stats to consider it with your purity seal options to determine what gear can do, and also, consider how class abilities with interact with it. Once you factor in all these into a single package, you end up with glorious results.

Let me give a good example.

I just picked up a new Psycannon. It only has 1 AMMO. Sad face. :( However, it has a whopping 8 base damage.... wow if only it had more bullets.... oh WAIT. There's wargear that gives +Ammo! Suddenly, I've got a Justicar now running around blowing the hell out of everything he sees with his god-like Psycannon and reloading for free, 50% of the time..

See how that works?

Amazing Wargear

Hammer of the Righteous - Crozius Arcanum. 5 Damage Base. Chappie does not pay WP to maintain litany. Purity Seal: +1 damage. Purity Seal: +2 WP. Force Strike +1 damage. 25% for vulnerable.

Scholar's Devation - Terminator Armor. 2 armor. +3 WP. No knockbacks. Purity Seal: +2 Armor. Purity Seal: +2 WP. Purity Seal: Immune to Drained.

Dire Strike - Storm Bolter. 5 dmg, Rng 10. Force Strike +2 dmg, ignores armor. 10% crit.

Deathmaker - Storm Bolter. 5 Dmg. Rng 10. Force is +4 dmg! 25% to recoup WP.

Warpbane - Storm Bolter. 5 dmg. Rng 10. +2 to demons. Force +1 dmg affflicts Pinned at 100%.

Elrin's Oath - Pyscannon. Dmg 8. Rng 10. Activate for 6 dmg blast. 15% crit. +2 crit dmg.

Empyrean's Thunder - Psilencer. 7 dmg dmg. +1 crit. 3 Ammo.. Rng 14.

Revelation - Psilencer. 4 dmg. Ignores armor. +2 crit. 4 ammo.

Conviction - Falchions. 30% base crit. Force - +40% crit. 5 dmg.

Rod of the Ancients - Warding Stave. 5 dmg. 100% chance of Aegis. +2 aegis armor.

Rod of Heracus - Warding Stave. 4 dmg. 75% chance of Aegis.

Keeper of the Flame - Terminator. 4 armor. +1 Grenades and AoE.

Most things that grant a passive equipment slot - Allows you to equip another piece of gear for more enhanced crit, move, armor, etc.

Ogen's Edict - Falchions. 35% crit base. +40% crit on warp charge. 6 dmg.

Boss Fights

Boss fights are great in this game! Add a layer of excitement. I haven't completed all the reapers yet, still working on it, but I will update as I finish them.

Kadex - Craftworld

This is the first boss fight of the game on the Craftworld at the end.

First time I was going through the game, I failed to kill him before Draigo showed up. Turns out, it doesn't matter if you kill him or not. 2nd time I did this, and I smoked his butt in 4 turns.

Abilities
I'm sure he has a lot of abilities. I don't find out about them because I use Astral Aim to NOT find out about them.

The only 2 I noticed really is he has annoyance of first time you hit him, he splits into 3 and teleports around the area. Only 1 of the 3 is the real Kadex. Otherwise, he has an annoying ability to teleport one of your Knights to obscure corners of the map.

Defeated Him
Blew him away with 2 x Purgators with Psilencers 2nd time I fought him. Because Psilnecers have long range it is easy to target out when he splits up to eliminate sources. Otherwise, Astral Aim from 2 sources shuts him down, and then it was just a matter of pounding on him when I had the opportunity to with my Justicars.

Great Unclean One

This fight was fun! So, this big boy spawns a few Plague Demons every now and then, and a HORDE of nurglings. He wanders the map and does decent melee damage. Otherwise, he has a big AoE attack that is easy to avoid.

Strategy
So, first off, there are 4 nurgling spawners that you must destroy in the corners of the map. These spawn more and more nurglings. So, dedicate your Knights at first to just run ti the corners and whack them.

Nurglings will attack you if you are nearby. They do 1 damage that ignores armor. :( So, you are on a timer on this fight.

Secondly, you can't shoot the Great Unclean One until the nurglings around him are cleared out.

So, game plan is, destroy the nurgling creators, avoid the Plague Demons (easy to do since they are slow and barely functional) and converge on the boss to obliterate him.

Squad I used
Chappie with Litany to restore WP.
Purgator with obligatory psilencer. Actually had a low grade psilencer here due to "reason beyond my control".
Interceptor set to 100% crit, AP generating ginsu mode.
Justicar with psycannon, and AP restore.

So, fight wasn't bad. Killed the spawns. Took some damage. Ultimately, once I got rid of the nurglings with storm bolter fire and psycannon AoE around him, Astral Aim to start picking off key abilities, and the Interceptor goes to town, turning him into goo.

Once you start landing the body targeting crits, you just take away everything and load him down with disabilities. 2-3 rounds of pounding and he was out.

Yellow Reaper (demon on that chaos crab looking walker thing... name will get sooner or later)

So, defeated him on first try, but I had to learn a lot of lessons. First off, the turrets around the map that it says he will fire at you are a red herring. He'll only fire them at you if you are close to one. So, shut it down when you are close to one. you don't need to mess with the rest.

Second, you can't shoot this guy at first. I thought "great, my Purgator is useless". No, actually, he's got a gimmick.

Here's what to do.

Run up and melee him. Ninja Interceptor comes up right away since you can load down so much free ap with attacks. Beat him down till he is stunned. As soon as he is stunned in melee, body part targetting starts. Right away, you can now remove his big damage abilities, melee, and disable the big cannon. Also, NOW, you can Astral Aim his ass and blow off his gun blocking claws. Once you drop one claw, it's Astral Aim time, EVERY SINGLE TURN.

Stick with him rather than spreading out. Yes, you will take some damage, but what you want to do is to get him at the mercy of Astral Aim and Crit Monster Interceptor to just shut him down and load him with disabilities. Then you basically kick his ass, and he doesn't do that much damage when he's all messed up.

Stage Destruction
At various points of the fight, he starts destroying the stage in areas he is on. Now, HE gets a free move to run away before it falls. You will too, but you MUST use it. If the stage drops out, your knight dies right there. So, run, then reconverge back on him, starting with Astral Aims.

When he gets VERY low, he will destroy the WHOLE stage at once. So, you have exactly 1 Turn to finish him.

Keep your Interceptor with enough WP. Chappie helped me here. And bring it down.

Squad I Used
Chappie - Set to restore WP for my crit interceptor.
Purgator - Psilencer/Astral Aim.
Interceptor - Ginsu 100/% crit, ap restoration mode
Paladin - 100% aegis stave. (Poor guy fell of the stage right at the start before I understood exactly how long range the stage falls... so I had to complete the boss with 3 guys. :( )

Malathian the Harvester

Another great unclean one with more tricks it seems. Thing is, I'm not really sure what the boss does because my Purgator annihilated this fool, Mr. T style lol!

So, the boss itself has some heavy damage hits, but I noticed right away, shorter range. Opened the fight with Astral Aim, and dropped some rando-ability. At this point consider Purgator is crit for like 10 damage ~40% of the time. Also, Purgator gets 50% AP each crit. Tag teamed with Justicar. Psilencer IGNORES ARMOR... which is a big deal since I noticed this big guy gets a LOT of armor... from whatever this idol mechanic he does.

I split Chappie off for one idol and sent Justicar after another. The idols start to appear as you damage the boss. He pauses to summon and summons 2 plague demons with them. He gets some kind of bonuses from the idol and from the plague demons based on their number.

Purgator stood right where he started and Astral Aim + Opened fire on the guy every turn. Spent one round with Ginsu-Ceptor on him, but realized right at the start... I forgot to equip his weapons. DOH! So, he ran off after almost dying to the relation. I feel like if I had not done this stupid mistake, I would have practically 2 round killed the boss between Ginsu-Ceptor and Purgator.

Over in 5 turns. Purgator just melted his face. Never even moved once.

Kadex Round 2

This fight was fun. You start with just Vakir and Knights come in as reinforcements, slowly. Early on, I stayed safe utilizing Crazed power on Inquisitor, which is a great power. Chappie came in first, so even more Crazed going around. Eventually Purgators showed up and just started cleaning up the mess. Kadex himself was easy. Didn't do much. Astral Aimed away anything useful and just shot him occasionally till he dropped.

Boss Fights Cont.

Munificus

Giant chaos spawn! Cool! I didn't fully understand the mechanic that was going on before I killed him, as once again, Purgators just make things way easy. Happened to have 2 Purgators this go round, Ginsu-Ceptor (who always seems good for bosses and he was here too!0 and Chappie to keep everyone in the WP game. That seems to be my "boss team".

So, from what I could gather, he's got 2 Forms, I'll call them Normal Form and Crazy Form. The gimmick here is that the only way you can hurt this guy is through body part crit targeting, by blowing off chunks of him. That's it. The confusing part is that Normal Form only has about 3 body parts to blow off. And you seemingly have to either "wait patiently" for him to transition to Crazy Form at start of his turn for more body parts to blow off, or it would appear that stunning him causes him to open up in Crazy Form for more body part targeting.

However, once you crit him one and blow off a chunk, he not only leaps away but immediately transitions back to Normal Form.

So, it went down like this. Purgators never really moved. Astral Aim'ed off body parts in normal form, easy button. Burned ammunition afterwards either clearing the bloom spawn he kept spawning that were too close to me or just shooting him till he got stunned. Inter-shinobi then teleported over to whack him a good one to clear off another part. Then, he jumped really far away, which was annoying. After that, I just waited till he transitioned to Crazy Form at start of his turn, Astral Aim off another body part, and otherwise just killed all the bloom spawn around me. Eventually blew off enough body parts and down he went.

Mortarion

This fight is SOOOOO long... buckle up for at least 1.5 hours of one fight lol.

So, to prepare you, you will be asked to create 2 squads. One is the Vanguard. One is the Rearguard. The Vanguard fights with Draigo to kill Mortarion. The Rear Guard has to fight a horde of Deathguard when Mortartion loses some HP. You will have to do this 4 times. The goal of the Rear Guard is to kill as much stuff as you can to no let it get past you. Anything that gets past you and into the warp gate goes into the same fight with the Vanguard (behind you).

So, Mortarion. Honestly, kind of a chump. He's fast, sure. His Melee attack does quite a bit of damage, but actually during this fight, my Chappie just straight up tanked most of his hits. The reason why you won't find out about his other high damage abilities is because you've read this whole guide and by this point have gotten the point that Astral Aim makes boss fights easy... so you took at least 1 Purgator in the Vanguard to blow off Mortarions other attacks.

I took 2 Purgators in the Vanguard, but I feel like this was probably a mistake as I didn't have a 3rd to go in the rear guard, but I digress.

The Vanguard Fight
So, Draigo. You get him, but he's useless. One, he's just not that awesome. Like a 'suped up Paladin. Second, by this point, your Purgators and Interceptors, and well, everyone, does LOTS of damage. So, you are going to drop Morty's HPs like it's hot, which is going to trigger his Bloom Idol mechanic. This makes him invulnerable until as such time that Draigo can run across the entire stage to shut it down. And he's slow. So, Dragio does nothing but run around. Knights pound Morty everytime you can pound him, and otherwise stand there like ding-bats until Dragio's slow butt gets over to the next statue to disable it.

And that's really it, in a nutshell! lol. Tips: Start Draigo running towards the next idol while you are pounding on Morty. It'll go back of the room, front of the room, then the 2 middle of the rooms always across from each other. Maximum "Draigo running around" distance possible!

I took 2 Purgators, 1 Ginsu-Ceptor, and Chappie to this fight. I'm glad I took 2 Purgators, in all honesty, because between the two of them, they did all the damage to Morty. Ginsu-Ceptor of course chipped in, but the one thing you can't disable on Morty is his melee attack so it wasn't long before Ginsu-Ceptor was getting slapped around and had to retreat. Preferred squad would have been: Paladin to face tank Morty and deposit his WP to Purgators as needed. All other ranged attacks. Honestly, 3 Purgators would have been amazing. Both for Morty but also for any baddies who make it past the Rear Guard.

The Rear Guard Fight(s)-- 4 of them.
And this is where I messed up not knowing what I was doing. I put my TANKS in the Rear Guard. Paladin, 2 x Justicars, and one Shinobi.

Pro Tip: The AI programs the bad guys who come at you in a horde to mostly run right past you towards the exit. They generally don't shoot or hit you and just run, by except for the incessant Overwatch from the Plague Marines.

Therefore, what you want in the Rear Guard is as much DPS as possible. All the 'Ceptors go here for maximum carnage, would be a great strategy. A Chappie might be nice to keep them full of APs,. Justy for APs maybe?. Purgators for damage would also be good, but recommend they got after Morty. Anything DPS or there to fuel DPS, and lots and lots and lots of it. That way you can cut the horde down as they try to run by.

Only other thing is there's like at least 6-9 Plague Marines in each wave. So, someone is going to get Eleventy Million Overwatches put on them. So, 'Ceptors are great here to teleport out of that hot mess.

General Game Strategy

This sections covers what I believe is coalescing as my general game strategy around several key areas. This section will hopefully provide some general game plan advice for making your plans for success.

Ship Management

When it comes to upgrading the Edict, this is the general scheme of priority/importance I currently place on systems and why.

Right Away:
- Reactor upgrades you need to unlock the rest of this stuff.
- Augment / Exp Gains - Swap these two to get servitors, construction bonus going but also to get early access to bonus Exp for knights. Equal parts. You want Knights to be getting bonus Exp fast so they level up.
- 1 level of Barracks either after the above or inbetween.
- Ship Engines 1-2 levels, BEFORE you complete Act I: Craftworld.

Secondaries
- Prognosticators (start leveling up as you can)
- Finish engines
- Barracks 1 more level. (2 is all you need for a long, long time)

Tertiaries
- Start on apothecary to reduce wounded time.
- 1-2 levels on Libris for faster research.

Whenever
Shields and guns. Shield are more important by a country mile but only if you are going to go all the way to Gellar Field at the end. You don't need guns till you start running into Deathguard Ships, and even when they start appearing they are very easy to avoid.


Note on Strategy

You want to spend some time in Act I. Don't rush to the Craftworld. Take it easy. Take some time to research strategems, prognisticator bonuses etc. You don't relaly need prognosticator upgrades on your ship tilll you have unlocked the useful tech for them.

You don't need a lot of barracks room because you should strive to really just "not get wounded" in the first place to have to let folks heal. Also, really, -3 or -6 HP? Big deal. So, use your knights anyways.

What IS important is getting valuable Exps for knights so you get stronger, faster than the increasing enemy curve. The augment upgrade for construction speed, the first +50% is critical to stay ahead of the curve.

Engines are also critical so you can get to more bloom missions early and don't start wracking up large corruption debt.

You don't need apothecary very early if you just play well don't get wounded.

You also don't really need research speed that much because it will happen "eventually" and there is no tech you get that is so AMAZING, you need it to win.

Research Priorities

Get the Bloom Seed extractor skull and 2:1 bloom seeds early so you never have to worry about seed management.

Then sprinkle in prognosticator upgrades, some strategems here or there, whichever. You really don't need to tech up that much or that fast. Exp and Gear is for more important tech. Take your time in Act I.

Squad Management

If you don't get wounded that much, you don't have a hard time with just a "few" knights (reduced barracks size) and with keeping them in the fight for leveling.

Not getting wounded usually means, sticking to FULL cover and relying heavily on Ranged Weapons to do the work. Fights will take longer than charging in, but you will reap the benefits of proper health management later.

There will be many special events that occur that will put a handful of knights out of pocket for sometimes, a very long time. This means, you need to have backup squads out there earning exp's too.

Duplicate Rule - If a knight is worth having in a squad, it's worth having a backup knight of the same class.

Unfortunately, the only way to Respec knights is by getting them critically wounded and going to the repsec option. This really sucks because.... when you get new knights through Mission Requisition, they already have skills/levels assigned that you can't easily correct. :(

Therefore, I recommend early in the game to go ahead and recruit Purgators and Interceptors in duplicate at low levels so you can fully control their growth. Same for Justicars.

Weapon Swapping - You very well can share gear between two guys. While one is off a mission, you can re-assign his gear to another guy who is on mission. This allows you to swap between guys as they get wounded or to put some levels on lower guys. Exp Gainer ship upgrades are key to this.

Very Useful Classes

For better or worse, some classes are just more generally powerful/useful than others. Therefore, I recommend the following:

- Have multiple Purgators
- Have multiple Interceptors
- Multiple Chaplains (if this is even possible)
- Multiple Justicars.

Everybody else is "fun to use" but you won't be pining for them. Libbies, Apothecaries, Purifiers, etc.

Ruthless Difficulty

Status: Act I Completed. Working Act II.

Differences from Standard

A couple of key notes that are different than standard. Obviously, the game tells you that enemies have more HP, things take longer to build/research and so on. The impact of that though gets felt strategically in the following ways:

More Enemy HP
Because enemies have more HP, they don't die as fast (duh). However, the battle impact of this is significant. Yes, fights take longer. However, because you aren't clearing as many enemies with alpha strikes, that means you are more subject to enemy fire and abilities overtime, doing more overall damage to your knights and causing you to take more wounds.

Overwatch also gets unmanageable sometime due to the fact that more enemies stay on the screen longer. The incessant overwatching from cultists and plague guard gets very bad sometimes, locking a knight in a compromised position. So, you need to strategically stay a bit more spread out as this can become a very real concern when overwatch gets overlapped 4+ times.

The high threat machine enemies also have "just enough" HP that a purgator usually can't down it in one astral aim early in the game. That means you have to commit more resources.

I spent a lot more time in Act I than usual, farming a bit, but also making sure I was ready to roll for Act II. This was caused by slow tech/builds as I don't like to go to Act II w/o upgraded engines, upgrade exp gainers, and upgraded construction speed. I want to be unlocking Prognosticators right away in Act II as the map opens up so I can position them correctly. There is exactly one "best fit" prognosticator layout which only leave 3 systems uncovered. (Google it for images or look at one of the other steam guides, there's some posted).

Slower Build/Tech

Means I spent more time in Act I than usual, waiting on builds to get to where I think they need to be before Act II.

Failed My First Mission Ever
Naturally, it was a Spreader mission, as those are about the only ones you really can fail unless you really blunder into a squad wipe. So, two things here. First, I wasn't paying attention and attempted the mission without a Purgator. That cost me.

Secondly, though, the reason for failure was I ran out of time. The increased HP combined with this game me struggling to find good wargear, causes fights to go much slower. An inopportune amount of reinforcements due to warp meter came in while I was traversing the stage, and that was all it took. Makes a good case for wanting to take Gate of Infinity as a strategem.

[Karsk]

Hey do you still like to have the justicar go ranged?

[Gunn]

I had stopped playing the game because I didn't understand how to manage my teams. Thank you for this guide which allows me to fully enjoy the game!

[TimSimsalabim]

Awesome guide, helped me a lot, thanks man!
As for the crosius, I found one that removes WP cost to maintain litanies, which I find extremely useful. I still mainly do dmg with ranged or with executions, so it's just for the WP :)

Also, I took charge on the Justicar, VERY fun, and occasionally handy. Can swap out the rend the unclean for instance, which I found a more versatile build

[JohnsonOnDuty]

I think its funny how basically entire Beastiary section boils down to:is that a threat? Astral Aim the weapon away!

[Gr3ndl3r]

I'm sure it's a great game, but I can't get it to do anything. I'm on the very first mission and I do what the tutorial says, but after I move the first time, I can't do anything else. I have no idea what's wrong, but if I can't figure it out, I'm not messing with it. I have other games that I can play.

[LordLancelot]

This is by far the best guide for the game on steam! Keep up the good work.

[Bursacio]

This guide is big and superficial in many categories.

[Iced_Delulu]

I have a tip for a stratagem: the teleportation stratagem is amazing, you can use a chappie to buff shields, have everyone shield up then (note that somebody needs 2(!) AP left over) you use the group teleport stratagem to jump in as close to the unrevealed pod as possible. Curiously enough this makes the enemies actually not jump into cover and you get to use 1 action before getting all your AP back and getting another turn. This will allow you to absolutely devastate most enemy pods. Couple this with the extra stratagem uses you get and you'll be happy (notably, only use this stratagem until you've used up all the extra stratagem uses).
This can absolutely trivialize missions, as you can just yeet your troops around the map very quickly. Sadly, once you don't have Vakir anymore, you'll need a psyker to do this kinda stuff, and with him and interceptor enemies tend to position themselves properly if you initiate

[Iced_Delulu]

Thank you for this guide, helped me a lot

[Iced_Delulu]

Return fire and fire support feel quite bad until you realise that there's a psilencer with +40% crit and +4 damage against daemons. This works on supporting fire