The Basics Guide and Gameplay Tips(+1 build)

EDIT: This guide is now possibly outdated and I won't be revisiting it in the future, read on with that in mind!

I took the time to write up some basics for the new players to get a hold of the game, while also trying to spoil as little as possible of the contents of the game.

Stats

Damage>Health>Luck>Energy is the order in which you should prioritize spending your credits. If you are not good at dodging yet, go for Health>Damage>Luck>Energy instead. Max slots before everything else.

• A good rule of thumb for me is to have your primary stat about 10-15 levels above your secondary and then Luck/Energy on the same level, about 15-20 behind your secondary.

Roles

So far, I have encountered 5 types of roles in the game.

1. Hacker: +10% speed; +20% energy;can open purple containers and use hacking consoles
   
2. Techie: +10% energy; -20% health; has a self-recharging, low dmg shield
   
3. Cyber Psycho: +20% health; +2 slots; does more melee dmg and chooses from 4 upgrades instead of 3 at a cyber upgrade station
   
4. Assassin: +20% crits[this is most likely a multiplier to weapon crit chance, or bonus crit dmg, you will NOT get 20% crit chance!]; +10% speed; auto-stealth in shadow, never triggers reinforcements
   
5. Corporate Soldier: +15% damage; -15% speed; has a riot shield that reduces damage you take from the front by 25%

The Hacker should be used for most of your first playthrough and possibly some of your second playthrough. The extra speed is the most significant stat bonus, being able to dodge better is vital for survival, although if you use specials a lot, the energy could possibly come in handy.

The extra money and weapons you get from purple chests(purple chests drop weapons) will help you power through to Overseer 1.0 much faster, and there are special rooms with upgrades, health stations and cyber upgrade stations that only the Hacker can access.

The drone is very helpful in the early game, especially against the shield-bearer enemies, and does acceptable damage once you get a few stat upgrades.(it scales with your damage stat) Even though it has low health, it is immune or resistant to most forms of explosive damage. Although once you run out of slots, you should replace it for something better. (you will keep your ability to hack stuff, that's tied to your role, thank god.) Tip: some enemies, especially the small spiderbots tend to target your drone. When this happens, make sure to kills those enemies off first, or you'll end up drone-less fairly quickly.


The Techie is the class you should use to get familiar with the game, I suggest only a run or two with them, as they are not very good for mid- to lategame. The stat bonuses are not very good. Energy in particular is not very useful since upgrading it is cheap and enemies drop it a lot, so unless you spam the crap out of your right click, you shouldn't run out. The health drop, however hurt much more than the energy helps. You will generally need a lot of hp during the lategame where the game starts turning into a bullet hell and the -20% means that every health upgrade you get will give you less health.

The shield is useful, although very limited. It cannot block any high dmg projectiles and explosives just rip right through. However it is great in the first few levels, making the game a little more forgiving until you learn the ropes


The Cyber Psycho is the best class in the game.(AFTER you have unlocked most of the items and have decent stats. Before this happens the Hacker is the best because it can access more upgrades and money.) The bonuses are absolutely massive. The Health will help even in the early game, and once you get some cyber upgrades and stack health, you will become a monster. It is easily possible to go over 1000 health, and I think 2000 should be reachable with 100/100 health and some upgrades. The +2 slots are amazing as well: More Upgrades = More Kickass.

When you reach a cyber upgrade station, the Psycho will have 4 options instead of 3. This might not seem much, but it quickly adds up over the course of a playthrough and you will be able to get to your desired build more quickly than with the other roles.

His melee dmg bonus is mediocre at best though, you should get rid of it in favor of another upgrade once you run out of slots. Melee is only really used for breaking walls anyways. (and in rare cases, for killing the small spiderbots)


The Assassin looks good on paper. More speed = better dodging; better critical hits. The stealth is a lot of fun as well, there are more areas you can go invisible in than you'd think. This is very helpful if you'd like to play slow. Tip: You will not become visible for a short while after leaving a shadow, use this to move to another shadow and stay invisible.

This role doesn't have anything too good or bad going on, but it has a very fun mechanic built into it, which is also useful for getting the achievements "Pacifist" and "Sneaky". You won't run into reinforcements either so you can spend all the time you want on a stage without risk. Aside from these though, you should either play a Hacker or Cyber Psycho most of the time. Only go for the assassin if you unlocked everything already and a Cyber Psycho is not available.


The Corporate Soldier is sort of a weird role. It seems like the sort of "hit hard, tank dmg" kind of class based on the stats but the Psycho does both of these things much better.

The Soldier is slow, which makes dodging really difficult. This should -in theory- be offset by his shield, but the damage reduction isn't really worth it, especially since it only works in front of you. It is possible to get some pretty good damage reduction when you combine the shield with certain upgrades though. All-in-all, I feel like the slowdown isn't worth the dmg reduction.

Building your character

This section could be a million pages long, but I don't want to waste your time with listing all the weapons and upgrade combinations one by one. Instead, I will give you some general directions.

AVOID:

• Ion weapons: these have really low base damage, making the useless against organic enemies, which make up most of the levels.
  
• Most of the Special(pink/purple) weapons: Only a few of the specials are usable. Ditch anything that shoots rockets or grenades, has stupidly short range, fires with the speed of a snail or insanely long reload times(The last 2 can be offset by cyber upgrades though)

SAY YES TO:

• Regular and Laser weapons: Regular weapons are balanced with high dmg and decent accuracy, while Laser weapons sacrifice a tiny bit of dmg for accuracy and faster reloads, sometimes better firerate and shorter delay before a reload is possible(this is only important in a special scenario which I will explain later) Good choices overall.
  
• Shotguns and Assault Rifles: These are the most reliable weapons in the game. Assault rifles are both damaging and accurate, shotguns are really easy to hit things with and have the highest base damage out of all non-special weapons(they are still good even in mid range battles and laser shotguns can be used effectively even long-range.)

IF NOTHING ELSE IS AVAILABLE:

• Certain Special(pink/purple) weapons: The Minigun, The Railgun and the Heavy Rifle can be used effectively. For the Minigun you need reload speed upgrades(and possibly more ammo/clip upgrades) and for the other 2 you need fire rate upgrades.(And good aim. Both of those weapons are very hard to hit while you're also trying to dodge a million projectiles flying your way)
  
• Plasma weapons: They lose way less dmg than ion weapons and can help you clear regular floors, but their slow firerate and lowered dmg can be a problem against bosses, as all of those enemies are robotic.
  
• Burst rifles and SMGs: These two are decent, and certainly usable if no assault rifle or shotgun is available. SMGs in particular have very quick reloads, resulting in low downtime. However, they have low dmg and the burst rifle is sort of awkward to use and difficult to aim.

CYBER UPGRADES:
I will not get into these in detail, you should experiment as you unlock them. However you should look for certain things for the best result.

• Health: Pretty straightforward. More health means more survival. Your most important stat.
  
• Firerate: Again, pretty straightforward. The faster you fire, the more damage you deal.(There is one exception, which I will get to in a second.)
  
• Healing: You are looking for any kind of upgrade that can heal you without healing stations, and if that"s not available, something that buffs your healing station heals.

Also be careful with stuff that deals with explosives, it's very easy to hurt yourself in this game. And make sure to pick up a cyber upgrade every time you have the option. Don't worry about running out of slots, you can remove and then replace the ones you don't need/want at another station by clicking on them.

Bonus: My Favourite(possibly overpowered) Build

WARNING: This part contains names and attributes of specific upgrades, so if you don't want to know anything about that, quit reading.

For this build to work, you need to use the preparation area above your stat upgrades to make sure you have a few things. For this to work properly, you also will need to have beaten the game at least once.

The first thing you want to do is make sure you have at least 2300 credits.(9800 if you have beaten the game 2 times already and want to make this even more op.)

Then you need to head over to the Enhancement console and purchase Armocore Explosive Bullets (the first round of your clip will explode on contact and deal massive dmg) and either Neurocore Reload Booster(+100% reload speed on manual reloads) OR ChipHow LoaderArt(+50% clipsize and +100% reload spead on ALL reloads). You can get both if you have 9800 credits and have beaten the game twice. If you only get one, pick up the other as soon as you can.

Finally, you go over to the weapons console and buy a Shotgun (preferably a Laser one, but regular works as well.)

This results in very quick reload speed, so what you want to to is hold down the fire button and spam reload. What happens is that you will fire just as fast, or even faster than your regular firerate, but every shot will also contain an explosive bullet, which bypasses shield-bearer shields, absolutely demolishes thin walls(useful for making space for yourself in tightly packed levels), and in general makes enemies cry.

Tips:

• I suggest that you change your reload button from r to either space (swap it with melee) or an unused mouse button. this will allow you to use this build while also still being able to dodge.
  
• If you have all 3 reload upgrades(there is another one that gives you +20% reload speed and +20% firerate called Neurocore Skillwire) it is possible to make shotguns have a firerate of an assault rifle. It's crazy. Make sure you get a Laser Shotgun though! I mentioned that they have shorter reload delay? Well that translates into straight up firerate here. Which translates into damage.
  
• When your reload reload speed buff are high and you start firing really fast, there is a rhythm in which you have to tap reload for optimal firing. Just spamming will make you fire much, much slower. So practice tapping a little, try to slow down first and pay attention to the reload circle around your cursor. Then gradually speed up until you have yourself a shutgun firing as fast as an assault rifle with infinite ammo(you reload all the time).

Thanks for reading all that!

If you're still awake and reading, I would like to thank you for chewing through this huge block of text. I hope you're enjoying the game as much as I am and that I helped you with understanding it a little better. If you have questions, leave a comment and I will do my best to answer.!

Now go raise some hell in Neon Chrome!

[puschit]

This guide must be outdated because the Techie is by far the best, ESPECIALLY in the later stages. Either something changes since 2017 or the author isn't aware that the power of the shield increases with the max energy. Later on you CAN tank explosives, railguns and so on. At some point you won't even need healing or high HP since you basically get free healing every time your shield recharges. Once you picked up the Camo upgrade you can run around a corner and reload your shield while enemies run past you.

[Zaskar78]

Building a survivor techie is absolutely incredible: huge shied, nothing can kill you, and with Rifle you have too much crits and accuracy. But its for overseer 2.0 minimum.

[Jamaicanhit]

I think the Techie is OP. With the upgrade that gives you +50% energy and the one that gives you hp and energy, I almost did not loose hp from floor 17.

[DJ]

No problem @skelton . Unfortunately I wasn't able to get to the game for the past months and it's entirely possible that I won't be able to update it for future patches or dlc-s, should they come out, which I'm sorry about. In any case, enjoy the game!

[Felgoblor]

This has really helped me pre-plan what i'm gonna do for my playthrough, thank you sincerely man

[kAnal Rytteren]

Thanks for the guide. Was nice with some insight to the classes/roles :)

[DJ]

Thanks for the suggestion, @escapedturkey . I'll try and add weapon stats over the week.

And about the smg thing: While you do have more control over where the explosive round is going, you are only firing one round. And no matter how fast you can reload, you won't be able to reach the fire rate of an smg, which means that you are wasting stats. With a shotgun however, you are actually gaining firerate.

About the shrapnels: This is personal taste so it depends on how you prefer to play, but I found that in some of the maps later on where you have to fight in indestructible corridors, the fact that you send out explosives that can hurt you as well just makes everything way harder than it should be.

[God's Ugliest Catgirl]

I've found that a laser smg works better than a shotgun. You have more control over where the explosive round lands, and you benefit from it's faster reload speed. Combine it with a simple marco, and you're blasting through everything. But if you have confidince in your ability to dodge, Armocore Submunitions; 30% to deploy additional explosives, actually works with the explosive bullets. But the spawned explosives send out shrapnel that can hurt you.

[Puppies]

Great guide! Any chance of a per weapon stat guide? When playing in a level, a weapon stat is given as a pop-up, for a swap, but unfortunately no such pop-up exists when deciding to purchase items in the unlocks section.

[DJ]

No problem, I'm gald I could help. I'll possibly update and expand it in the future, or make an entirely separate guide altogether for that, but at the moment I'm busy with school so I can't even play the game all that much.