1) Don't spend any psylevel points on path unlocks or abilities. Instead, dump them all into upgrading your psy.

2) Buy any psylink neuroformer ability that spends focus.

3) Watch as your pawn gains XP at a ridiculous rate due to the psyfocus gain multiplier. Continue to dump all upgrade points into psy stats.

4) For added hilarity, be sure to unlock natural meditation on all pawns (or a few dedicated meditation pawns). Neuroformers and empire ceremonies are enough to get your 'foot in the door', so to speak.

The obvious limitation of this strategy is that your abilities will be decided by RNG, but you could also see that as a bonus.

The best part is that raids seem to scale almost entirely off of wealth. Abilities known and psy stats don't seem to impact wealth at all.

Note that the anima tree ceremony gaurantees a level up, so you can have an army of natural focus pawns levelling slowly, and one or two super pawns with crazy high levels.

EDIT:

I haven't tested it yet, but Technomancer probably has amazing synergy with the above strategy.

Craft Psyring - Alter a piece of Eltex into a ring containing a psycast. Anyone wearing that ring can use that psycast as though trained.

If I'm reading that right, you could dedicate one pawn to learning abilities and crafting psyrings, while dedicating other pawns to have enormous psy stats. For the really good psycasts, you only need single ability, but can never have enough neural heat.

What I'm curious about but haven't tried yet: Does group meditation stack with other nearby sources of meditation foci? Can you, for example, unlock both nature and group meditation, then get even higher meditation speed with a big group of pawns around the other focus?

Originally posted by Lex_the_Grim:

What I'm curious about but haven't tried yet: Does group meditation stack with other nearby sources of meditation foci? Can you, for example, unlock both nature and group meditation, then get even higher meditation speed with a big group of pawns around the other focus?

Yes it does.

Psy Ring from Technomancer is even stronger than I thought. You can craft Psy Rings of Psy Ring.

1. Technomancer crafts a Psy Ring of Psy Ring.
2. Gives Psy Ring (Psy Ring) to Electropath.
3. Electropath makes Psy Ring of Ball Lightning.
4. Gives Psy Ring (Ball Lightning) to Technomancer.
5. Technomancer now has Ball Lightning.
6? Can the Technomancer now craft Psy Rings of Ball Lightning, despite not having unlocked the ability the traditional way? Could you have a "library" of every ability in the game, and have one Technomancer pumping out copies as needed?*


*(Until you run out of Eltex, of course. That stuff is quite rare.)

Originally posted by RedPine:

Can the Technomancer now craft Psy Rings of Ball Lightning, despite not having unlocked the ability the traditional way?

No.

Been playing a lot of Technomancer lately, it's a very busy tree, psyfocus is getting used up just about as fast as I can get it.

Reverse Engineer is great! I wasn't too sure about it at first but there's a lot of good usage out of it. One thing you can do is buy the products from technology that needs techprints and save a lot of money and searching. I bought a cataphract helmet for like 800 silver and got the tech for it. Normally that would cost like 4k silver total. I could see this as being incredibly good for an archonexus run since you could just bring stuff to Reverse Engineer with you.

Useful things to reverse engineer: biocoded weapons that you otherwise can't sell, tainted clothing and armor, advanced components, various drugs, packaged survival meals, power armor helmets, artificial body parts... there's a lot of possibilities.

You can also Reverse Engineer advanced components but not regular components unfortunately. Take note that Reverse Engineer consumes the ENTIRE stack, so separate out one go-juice or packaged survival meal or what ever before you reverse engineer.

You can Enchant Quality on furniture after it's been minified. Excellent quality beds for everyone! Massively increase the value of all the awful quality art your 0 art pawn pumps out!

If your steel construct army is milling about and opening doors to your freezer or just getting filth everywhere, you can draft them and put them in a room and then forbid the door and they'll stay in that room.

If you summon a construct from a piece of slag/rock that has damage, the construct will be summoned with permanent damage so target chunks that aren't damaged. Breaking a link to a construct always creates a 100% chunk though, even if the construct has damage.

Constructs can be tended (and even get infections which I assume is a bug) so make sure you set them to either no doctor care or care without medicine so you don't lose all your valuable medicine on them. On that note, they're great for training new doctors.

Steel Constructs can be sent on caravans even if the creating Psycaster isn't coming along. They still need at least one colonist though.

Rock Constructs will do basic jobs like flicking switches as well as cleaning and hauling. You can thus lock a construct into a room with a power switch or anything that you want to flick and have what is essentially remote control over that switch at all times.

Since leveling up your stats increases heat capacity, more stats = more constructs. I think in my year 3 colony right now I have 6 colonists, 8 rock constructs and 16 steel constructs and I'm not even at half my heat max yet.

Power can be used on multiple buildings and, more importantly, makes them work during solar flares. Never worry about your freezer getting warm ever again. Take turrets with your caravan, plop them down and give them the juice!

Originally posted by RedPine:

2) Buy any psylink neuroformer ability that spends focus.

3) Watch as your pawn gains XP at a ridiculous rate due to the psyfocus gain multiplier. Continue to dump all upgrade points into psy stats.

You can actually have pawns meditate for psyfocus even when at 100%! I couldn't tell if it was any slower, but even if it is it's been extremely useful for leveling my psycaster pawns without any micromanaging to spend psyfocus.

Not sure if this is required, but I set the desired psyfocus to 100%, which makes them automatically meditate a few hours each day due to the natural psyfocus drain. You can set 'Meditate' in schedule for even more meditation, and eventually have your pawn dedicate their entire day to meditation if the rest of the colony can manage their needs.

I'm tempted to get a pawn to level 100+ and raise psy stats to 100 to get the focus cost down to 0%. It would be one heck of a grind, but also kinda hilarious. By that point a non-sensitive pawn would have 15k heat, at which point focus is your only limiting resource.

I've just discovered that with a persona weapon that gives 20 focus per kill, I get 20 exp per kill. Combine that with my necromancer/main warrior who is rapidly gaining tons of heat cap from consuming bodies. He doesn't even really need to meditate anymore. Accidentally, hopelessly OP. Wasn't planning on cheering the mechanics for unbalanced gains, but I'm not upset about it.

I also plan to build an army of rock golem to clean and haul everything, with his enhanced heat cap

Mind Break has a very "Suffer me now!" Shadow of Mordor feel to it, like the quick path to getting slaves with circadian half-cyclers for round the clock cleaning and hauling. What's even better though... is that you can set thralls to meditate 24/7. Which means you can get the natural focus on your psycaster and then have your tribal thralls meditate at the anima tree constantly and farm the links on your psycaster. I was going to go for a dark cannibal cult of the damned but now I'm tempted to take the god-emperor meme since my pawn is amassing a retinue of mindless worshippers. And then I could take the group meditation focus and have them sit at the foot of her throne while she meditates...

Originally posted by Roxie:

Mind Break has a very "Suffer me now!" Shadow of Mordor feel to it, like the quick path to getting slaves with circadian half-cyclers for round the clock cleaning and hauling. What's even better though...

Throw in "More Than Capable" or one of it's variants to ignore the mood debuffs from doing disallowed work types.

This is one of the few exploits so evil that I personally don't plan on using it. There's "Pragmatic Cannibal Warlord" evil, and then there's "Immortal Mind Flayer" evil. Okay, sure, I do use Mindbreak on the occasional obnoxiously useless jerk, but, like, I promise not to make a habit of it! (#SlipperySlope)

Technomancer has the most exploits, hands down. By level 2-3 they are stronger than any other psycaster, and by level ~10 they can rush your tech level like nothing else.

Level 2-3: Increase the rate of gaining psyfocus by upgrading Awful art, thrones, and nature shrines to Excellent with Enchant Quality. Do the same to weapons and armor, including power armor, then use Mend to keep them in top condition. No research needed!

Level 3-6: Power stuff directly, bypassing the need for power generation and ignoring Solar Flares. The rest is meh.

Level 4-8: Cheap labor force for cleaning hauling, cheap combat fodder.

Level 5-9: Given a supply of Eltex, let any of your psycasters share any one ability with any other psycaster by making Psyrings of Psyring.

Level 6-10: Rush the research needed for immortality (biosculptor pods), bionics, or anything else your heart may desire.

Technomancers can share any psyability with any psycaster, increase the rate of gaining psyfocus, obtain and repair powerful weapons and armor, trivialize most wounds and disease, and rush the technology needed to obtain immortality and bionics.

Due to how useful golems are, once a Technomancer has unlocked their entire tree, I'd recommend dumping all future levels into psy stats. Each psystat supports another golem, and increases the rate at which the Technomancer can spam Enchant, Mend, and research abilities.

This isn't a caster that wants to dual class, since the Psyring ability already lets them do that. This lets them dump almost everything into psy stats!



Also consider picking up the Minimal (22% psyfocus from walls), Research (37% psyfocus from a simple research bench), and Flame (~30% psyfocus from a brazier+torches) focus types. But, if you want to cheese, nothing beats Natural (anima ceremony is an instant level up, ignoring EXP costs entirely).

@Redpine with the age magic there is no need for biosculptor pods. My main guy is now perpetually 16 lol