The game has a very unique (not necessarily in a good way) progression path. And on top of that very gimmicky rogue-like elements, wich more or less just surving a purpose of being a rogue-like (and for lore, kinda).
P.S. Some advices may be subjective and playstyle related, so if you are feeling, that you are enjoying the game with your own playstyle that’s very good.
Tips, Enemies and Bosses
Mostly Pre-Recollect and First Era Related
Leveling and Combat Related
The game is extremely punishes you for squad favouritism, with a sacrifice mechanic. In case you only just finished a tutorial and already checking guides(no blame for that in this game) , you will be faced with a sacrifice mechanic. Basically, you can only heal your squad unit by sacrificing another squad unit of the same level or higher. You maybe thought for a second, like: “Hmm, interesting stuff, makes a game more challenging, and demand a very strategic and smart play”. And well, you will be partially right, unfortunately it’s take very long time to level up, mainly because you can only do 1 mission with a character a day. So you can be in a situation, when you just won’t have time to level up sacrifice material. And it will just drop down to a pointless grind and self-restrictions on gameplay. Here is some tips regarding early gameplay.
- You should always prioritize equalising levels of “Daughters” in your pool (despite the fact, that you will get extremely fat stat boost for each level). You only have to complete 1 synapse a day, so use that to balance exp gain. Skip synapses if you don’t want to overlevel someone for example.
- You are loosing any excesive xp, when leveled up. So, it is sometimes better, to take easier synapse, when your squad is close to level-up, even if you can close harder synapse.
- Early it is better to spend your vitae for buying “Daughters”. Skill upgrades are too expensive at the start. When you have sufficient amount of squads to close as much synapses as you can (and not hurting level equalising), start to equip memories.
- You can face tank with 2 shieldbearers and gungirl. This will help you sustain life. Small guys deal almost 0 damage, and dungerous hunters can be bullied to death with a slam spam. For the boss – it is better to switch 1 shield for a gun.
- Enemies, that are about to spawn (you will see the hands on the ground), will only move closer to you on spawning, unless you are standing just in the next square. So you can camp spawn points at least 1 square away without fearing to take damage.
- If you don’t want to recollect more than you need, lookup boss tactics. Game is completly designed around absent knowledge (you will loose almost no matter what, if you fighting a boss with a wrong roster) and stat walls. Upon playing you will unlock extremely powerful buffs. Plus, you will be able to ressurect any Daughter of any level right from the start (or you can save them for boss).
- In combat you don’t really have to waste AP for moving to enemies. Just wait for them to come as close as possible and attack. Game penalizes you for exceeding AP really hard, so save your AP, unless going burst is absolutely necessary or just safe.
- I will hardly recommend you to recollect immediately after beating 1st boss. You will unlock ability for fresh Daughters start from level 4. You will save time on healing in a long terms.
- Definetly check in-game codex. Mainly enemies descriptions. There are descriptions for AI attack priorities. So you can be almost certain who will be attacked and by whom. Extremely helpful.
- Pay a really careful attention to a random events. Sometimes they can help, sometimes they don’t. This events will not affect bossfights in any way. Maybe there are specific events for bossfights, but mostly they are just affecting synapses.
- Talking about strategic play. You can’t choose order of actions even if 2 unit’s are in the same point in a timeline, which is strange and basically hinders most of the combo possibilities.
- Your skills only shows flat default damage. So you have to manually keep track on any additional damage, or status effects from your memories (I hope it’s gonna be patched).
- Quit-out the encounter (boss fights too), if you feel, like you screwed up badly, or got unlucky. After loading back you will start encounter from the start. Additionaly you can just abandon synapses from the menu (but all recieved damage and died “Daughters” will remain). Abandoning boss fight through menu is the same as loosing to him in fight.
Enemies Related
In the 1st era you will be faced mostly with 6 enemy types (excluding boss and his minions). Most of the tips just recycled codex information, so you can probably come up with them by yourself. But in case, you just like back sitting a little, here you go.
- Scavengers: small and fast guys. First scav will choose a furthest “Daughter”, while others gonna try to help him surround “Daughter”. If you are using shields, there are not too much of a tactic, just keep your gunner as far as possible and attack, simple is that. Scavs have 2-hit low damage attack, so your shields will recieve from 50 to 0 damage, depending on a level and luck.
- Plague doctors: just usual, relatively slow melee enemy. He will aim at the nearest Daughter, so check his move radius and come close to an edge (1 tile away from border) and attack on next turn. (But remember spawn rule I was talking above)
- Plague butchers: pretty much the same as doctors, they just a little bit slower, tankier, but deal lower damage.
- Pague guards: very tanky and slow. Can sometimes buff themselfs for armor. It’s almost pointless to attack him, while he has it (unless you have armor debuff bonuses). Just juke him, until armor wears off or slam spam him to death with shields (more realistic option).
- Curse therapists: arguably weaker than scavs. They will try to keep distance on the edge of thier attack radius. You can safely move 3-4 tiles close to them and attack on the next turn. (Sometimes they will flee and shoot you if you are 3 or less tiles close to them, but for most of the time 3 tiles is good enough). Their charged shot is very easy avoidable. Hover on their skill on a timeline and you will see squares, where you can break their charge. Usually it’s gonna be some cover, like a wall, or you can just come close to them, and this will break charge too. Plus, you can break charge and return back to your position, if you feel like you have good spot.
- Hunters: very scary, when you don’t know, what they do. And can pretty easy jump and kill your unprepared squad. But as I said before, all you need is at least 1 shield (2 if you are a bully) and 1 gun. Just move shiled closer to hunter and prepare interruption with a gunner. Hunter will jump on shield, gets interrupted and will cast aoe attack, which he is, unfortunately for him, won’t be able to finish, because of the slam spam of course. You only need 1 shield to fully disable hunter, I’m telling you that, because you will sometimes encounter 2 at the same time, but not more (unless it’s a survival mission, or pretty far into the game). So, 2 shields 1 gun, as usual.
First Boss
Some explanations if you didn’t fully understand, what was happening in the vid
Initial setup will determine your success, but it’s simple.
- First of all, if you afraid, that something will go wrong, just spam interruptions every turn, and you are pretty much safe. Boss minions have a really low priority for attacking you, unless you are close to the boss.
- Burst is more efficient, until only one minion remains. It’s efficient not nececeraly in terms of damage, but in terms of your move order.
- On the first turn:
-One of your “Daughters” should move closer and damage minion to the left. This way, you will determine who will maintain aggro on the boss.
-Other two should kill closest minion to the right. - Kill other minions, and slowly move with two “Daughters” behind the boss.
- Ideally, you want to finish last minion with last “Daughter” in move order. You need to have at least one interruption, when he switch phases.
In the vid, relatively 5 minutes in, you will see an example of something went wrong, but still pretty much manageable. The boss casts AOE, but I have only one prepared interruption left. So I’ve moved aggro gunner away from the AOE and the other one I moved so she would be further from the boss, than gunner, wich is keeping aggro. (I was counting tiles there, math is hard dude) After that, you just finishing him normally.
Second Era
I hope you recollected already. Remember the fancy face-tank tactic in the 1st era? Well, forget it. First era is basically a tutorial. Now we get to a real deal.
General Tips
- There will be much more enemies in a combat. So dealing high damage is better than trying to tank. Double blademaster setup with a gunlady is preferable or you can go with 2 guns and 1 blademaster (if you have armor debuff upgrades for skills).
- In the second era you will encounter 3 new enemies. 2 of them can buff themselfs or teammates for armor, to the point, that you will be unable to deal damage if you have low damage multi-hit attacks or no armor-debuff upgrades.
- Prepare to cycle your gunbabes really often. Their interruption skill is super powerful. It’s not specified in the description how much damage they deal, but it’s a lot, plus you can’t miss with this skill, and it’s interruption of course.
- Do not fall into hp abilities trap. Because they scarificing percentage of your max hp, most of the time it will be more efficient to just take the damage from enemy, than sacrifice a bunch of hp for half or something of damage reduction overall. And for the love of god, do not waste interception on scavengers if you paly with a shields. I am talking mostly about non-interruption abilities here.
Enemies Related
- Worms: not very dangerous and not really common enemies. They will teleport through the map to one of the “Daughters” and cast cross-shape charge attack. You can just side step it and pretty much ignore them. They are pretty tanky, so it may be worth to kill more accessible or more threatening enemies beforehand.
- Infected: extremely annoying enemies to deal with. They will try to keep distance and either buff teammates for a ton of armor, heal them or spit on your “Daughters” (spitting deals low damage, but reduces armor, your armor and enemy armor cannot go below 0). Important note: they and enemies down below have a non-skill reaction attack. That means, they can attack you for free, if you too close to them at the start of thier turn. Hardly suggest you to just v-check their attack abilities and range of that abilities. On itself infected are not really a threat.
- Larvas: even more annoying, when paired with infected (which happends little less, than always). They will run as far as possible and will cast a cross-map root ability. Some side note about their castable root ability. I am not sure if it’s bugged or I’m missing something, but sometimes you can just escape the tile, sometimes you will be locked in there, forcing you to recieve damage. Additionaly, they can do a reaction root ability, if you come in it’s range, you will be rooted, obviously. Thier favourite tactic is casting armor and try to cast root on someone. Your best bet is blademaster’s “Imbued blade” ability. So you can deal heavy 1-hit blow from a distance, so you won’t be counterattacked twice.
Second Boss
Prefight Note
When you are selecting “Daughters” for the fight, the first in slot “Daughter” will be separated from the others.
Boss Phases Explanation
So, the boss has two phases, wich he will be switching back and forth. At the start of a fight, he will be in “Defense” phase. In this phase he has 300 armor, average travel distance and gonna use 2 attacks. So, for your gunners he basically invincible. But, he has a second, more offensive phase, he will get big travel boost, bunch of attacks and looses all of his armor. So, when boss changes phases?
- If the boss cannot reach any “Daughter” on his turn in a “Defensive” phase. He will select the farthes “Daughter” from him as his attack priority and will root everyone else.
- After loosing 15% health he will switch phase to another. If your “Daughters” were rooted, he will unroot them.
- After killing someone in “Offensive” phase, he will go back to “Defensive”.
- If he cannot reach choosed “Daughter” in “Offensive phase”, he will deal massive damage to all rooted “Daughters” and will switch to “Defensive”.
- When 50% down on HP, boss will get additional abilities for each phase.
Some Very Interesting Way to Control The Fight
Ok, so, while you are waiting for a strat, I will share with you extremly curious thing about this boss and enemy AI in general. Tell me, do you like geometry? Me neither, but I like chess. And by combining this two things you will become trully powerful.
The main headache for me with this boss is his way of choosing target. As you know, in a “Defense” phase, he will go for nearest daughter, and the opposite for the other phase. Because of this you can’t rely on someone to keep aggro and stay close. Especially, when he changing phase after recieving damage. But, you actually kinda can. Down below I will show a screenshot and try to explain, why it is the way it is, and what benefits it gives. Take a closer look.
- As you can see, all gunners stay in the “knight” position (you know how knight moves in chess, right?). And my melee stays one tile diagonally away from the boss.
- So, technically, they all can be considered one tile away, but the shortest path will be different for gunners and blademaster in my example. Because of this, boss will always target diagonal unit upon switching to “Offense” phase.
- This setup beneficial in many ways:
- First of all, you don’t have to waste interruption on his push attack, when he will switch to offense.
- You have good amount of control regarding boss movement.
- You would always have sufficial interuptions no matter which gunner was attacked, while he is in “Defensive” phase.
- After 50% HP, when he will start casting big AOE, you will be inside of a safe-zone.
- And the teachers were right, when they said, that geometry will be usefull after school.
50% Boss HP and “Holy cross” Shenanigans
When the boss reaches 50% HP, he will cast “Holy cross” ability while in “Defensive” phase. On itsef it’s not too dangerous. It’s deals pretty small damage and pushes everyone in cross-shape away for 2-3 tiles. Cross activates, when boss is attacked. Well, the extreme problem is – this ability makes any positioning close to the boss borderline impossible. On top of that, directions of the cross-push fixed to the direction of an attack. So, it will always pushes: in the direction of recieved attack and straight perpendicular to the sides. Because of things said above, I have to waste additional interruption, to interrupt cross-push, wich is basically ruining everything.
It’s still possible to manipulate directions of the cross-attack, so nobody will be attacked with that, therefore saving interruption. I am currently working on how exactly you can do this. I will probably achive this with “Wrathful rain”, but I am still testing exactly how.
P.S. Despite this boss being the biggest pain in my so far, I think it’s mechanically very cool designed. The way, you have to position yourself and manipulate timeline hardly reminding me of a good MMO’s raid boss fights. I like that.
