anus_pounder
Arcane
How many hours does one playthrough of the game usually take?
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Back to nature. We got a lot of greasing to do. [Shadowrun]
- Thread starter Damned Registrations
- Start date
GarfunkeL
Racism Expert
Looking good, though getting your corpse rescued from Corps-territory is 
Damned Registrations
Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
- Joined
- Feb 24, 2007
- Messages
- 15,011
There are in fact, 2 mages better than Trent. But since you can build anyone up with karma and gear, in the end only racial bonuses matter, and those are pretty insignificant in the long run.
Except maybe for trolls. Holy fuck are trolls strong.
As far as how long a playthrough takes, it's mostly dependent on how much you cheese the system. As you saw here, matrix runs are extremely safe and pay just as much (And later, many many times more) than a corps run. If you just grinded matrix runs for cash, hired the most expensive runners to do everything for you, and compensated for lack of karma with expensive gear, you could be done 3-5 times faster I'd expect. (Maybe in 10-20 hours if you were really rushing things.)
But if you're new and want to check everything out (or show it off for a LP) it's going to be a very long game. When I first played this game I probably spent 50 hours just in needlessly high end matrix runs, and gathering money for the best deck.
Except maybe for trolls. Holy fuck are trolls strong.
As far as how long a playthrough takes, it's mostly dependent on how much you cheese the system. As you saw here, matrix runs are extremely safe and pay just as much (And later, many many times more) than a corps run. If you just grinded matrix runs for cash, hired the most expensive runners to do everything for you, and compensated for lack of karma with expensive gear, you could be done 3-5 times faster I'd expect. (Maybe in 10-20 hours if you were really rushing things.)
But if you're new and want to check everything out (or show it off for a LP) it's going to be a very long game. When I first played this game I probably spent 50 hours just in needlessly high end matrix runs, and gathering money for the best deck.
Zomg
Arbiter
- Joined
- Oct 21, 2005
- Messages
- 6,984
The game really invites pointless grinding because the main quest is so bad, kinda like Darklands.
Feel like wandering around and mapping a pointlessly huge 16-bit forest and cave area for hours gettiing pounded by atactical random fights or do you want to do cyberpunk
Damned Registrations
Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
- Joined
- Feb 24, 2007
- Messages
- 15,011
Update 4: Cleaning the streets.
After our last run, Marrs is pretty pissed with us:
He's still willing to work though, as long as the price is right. We pick him up after doing an easy matrix run for some scratch.
He warms up to us again after a few easy runs:
We pick up Trent too, who's never been with us and therefore isn't pissed.
Trent's stats aren't exactly impressive:
And aside from the healing spell, he's actually got worse spells than Riki (Weaker fire spell, no stink or invis)
But in exchange, he's got a free inventory slot, no totem.
We take a ghoul run from Mr. Reed, but the ghoul den he sent us to in downtown seattle isn't so much a ghoul den...
As a fucking hellhound den.
After our third pack with no ghouls in sight, we buzz turbo before we become dog chow.
We run into some trouble on our way back:
We got the guns with us, lets check this out.
Time to crack some degenerate skulls!
Heh, pussy gang members.
Reed gives us ghoul runs in all the districts, including his:
Each district's building has it's own layout and enemy spawn probabilities. Penumbra seems like one of the easiest for some reason.
We find a nice corner to wait in and let the ghouls (and a couple vamps) come to us.
It's a massacre. We reconfig the lot of them and head back for our pay.
Killing enough ghouls nets us some bonus karma (Or maybe it's the vampires? Not all enemies give karma it seems) We find some credsticks too.
We head back to Redmond for a while and do some easy runs to build up our karma for some basic stat tweaks. Gunderson's runs offer barely any cash, but they're always local, so I can generally finish a run in less time than it takes to get Reed to give me a good one. Fucker's always trying to send me to council island.
Of course, this time the local gang isn't a problem.
We pump up our charisma and computer skills, along with intelligence.
And Marrs becomes our doctor, since lets face it, he's likely to be the last one standing in any given fight. We also cap out his willpower and intelligence (which aren't that high, given he's a troll) to improve his combat skills some. We don't touch his physical stats yet, because we can use karma to go over our caps if we have cyberware, but can't use cyberware to do the same if we hit the cap with karma. So we'll put off those upgrades until he's had some muscle replacements.
Trent gets various upgrades (in retrospect I should have upped his Body some, fucker folds like tissue) including becoming our electronics man. Electronics comes in handy during corp runs even with a decker along, since they can easily turn off alarms after they've happened, while a decker has to try fighting through a system already on high alert.
You might have noticed the different pistol icon by Joshua's frame. We picked up a nice Predator for him and have been accessorizing it, so we are far farm more effective in combat now. Our shots almost never miss or get absorbed by armor, and do about 3 times as much damage. We're pretty badass now.
But where do we get the money for hiring these guys and buying guns? Mostly from doing a few of these:
Along with a fair bit of this:
Yeah, sometimes those files don't sell for very much, especially a small file from a low end run.
On the other hand, a nicer datastore like this:
when raided:
Can lead to multiple files that sell for this:
With all our money, we hire and rehire Trent and Marrs for every ghoul or matrix run we're on until we're the best of bros:
Trent's contract is an even better steal:
2 lifers for under three grand, can't get much better than that. We also make some upgrades to our cyberdeck and shove a smartlink - smartgun system into Joshua's head and hand, so now he can just about shoot the wings off a fly, so long as you don't mind bug guts everywhere and an extra orifice in your skull.
There's even enoguh money in our bank accounts at one point to trade up our deck for something with some more flash.
This'll hold much better upgrades and perform better in and of itself anyways.
We find another mage in trouble just outside Roscoe's after a data selling trip:
So they want to party this time eh? We're 3 bros these street punks don't want to mess with though:
Poor Roscoe, what a mess on his doorstep.
We also keep running into this guy, and, frag it, we're sick of this shady ass dealer trying to sell us bombs.
You like people blowing other people up? Well here you go chummer!
Fragging punks everywhere trying to steal blood or sell weapons. We need a break from the city.
Reed sets us up with a nice relaxing run:
Of course, it's nto going to be a very profitable run:
But we get to enjoy the sweet smell of nature:
And there's no fucking gangs to screw with us,
just you know, gargoyles, hell hounds, the occasional invisible bandersnatch that rips your head off before you know it's there. That kind of pleasant relaxing thing.
We decide to see some sights since we spent an insane cab fare to get out here for a dinky 200 cred run anyways.
How heart warming and anti racist. What's that Marrs? You want to shoot things because you're the only troll npc in the game? Sure thing chum. Let's go somewhere else.
Is this a freaky voodoo hut?
Well damn, that's disappointingly normal.
The hospital here actually sells cyberware. All the different cyberware shops in the game offer different rates on different things, so you can save some creds shopping around. Council Island's best deal is on cybereyes, but it's still too rich for our blood.
Booze! Let's check it out.
Is that a slit? That we can recruit? Too good to be true.
She certainly does. Let's ask her about them.
I'm trying not to be racist here, but you're not making this easy. Just tell us something interesting.
What a sad, tragic story. I totally sympathize now and am not freaked out by your ugly, frightening appearance and mannerisms at all. Really. Let's fish for more info.
How about you tell us about shaman magic, since we didn't ask Ricky?
Bear sounds like true BRO. We'll refrain from metagaming and asking about the guy we shouldn't have the option of asking about yet, unlike when we were chatting up the hospital chick.
Yeah, you totally don't seem savage at all. Thanks for breaking our stereotyping of orcs there, lady.
Let's find out how much she wants to charge for a 'run'
Your place or my place baby, wherever is fine
Cockblockers. We could have had chicks in our party, now we're stuck with this sausagefest.
We go check out the building we walked past on our way in next:
We'd need a passport to get out into the wilderness proper, but we got no reason to go there yet. We'll ask about it anyways though.
We don't flee from justice, we ARE justice (alternately: justice flees from us.)
So we need to stone our rape victims? Gotcha.
If we encounter much more 'beauty' we're going to need some paper bags, I think.
We find the inn, which is pretty normal, and grab our parcel:
And then make use of the state of the art vid-phone to call a cab back downtown.
We do yet more matrix runs:
Which are pretty easy with our new skills and gear. The Sleaze program we picked up is the legal alternative to deception (though legal or illegal programs don't seem to matter really, the bronze never check your deck)
Instead of fooling the program into thinking you're legit and disarming itself,
You just slide by it. You can't fiddle with the nodes you've slid past this way, and you'll have to bypass them again if you need to return, but unlike deception, Sleaze can even work on Barrier ICE.
The map is already there and this next node is already identified because we were here on our last trip too. Normally this is only applicable if you have to exit a run and try again, but sometimes you just get the same system twice in a row from your Mr. Johnson.
We can see all the details of the node while fighting it as though we've used analyze.
A node like this is cake for us now.
It's also the wrong node, so we sleaze our way over to the CPU.
We try deception on it, since we actually want access to the CPU for shutting off alerts.
But Barrier ICE are immune, so it goes straight to combat mode.
I suppose now is a good time to talk about how the matrix combat is set up. First of all, a node is either in combat or not. Certain utilities (Deception and Sleaze) and the option of running away are only available when the node isn't in combat mode. When the node isn't in combat mode, it just sits there doing nothing, and you can analyze it, run away, swap programs, heal your persona, set up barriers, whatever.
The problem is, 3 things will make a node go into combat, attacking it (Derp), using an invalid program on it (Like deception against barrier ICE), and most aggravatingly, if you simply fail to activate your program. This can be mitigated by skill and program levels, but there's always a chance, and the higher level the node, the higher your chances of failure are. So spending a bunch of turns trying to analyze a node to see if it's safe to use deception on or setting up barriers can screw you if you fail an action and get put into combat wiht the wrong utilities.
The other aspect of a node's state is the alert level. The alert will either be none, passive or active. Passive and Active alerts raise the level of all nodes you are at by 1 and 2 ranks, respectively, which makes them a lot faster and more evasive. The other thing is, most nodes are set up with either an access or barrier ICE on the front, which put out signals periodically to raise alert levels. In any case, just about any node with 2 ICE in it will switch to the second ICE at active alert status. Since this one didn't (We're at active alert and the node is just a barrier ICE that can only raise the alert level, which is maxed out) it's a useless cunt of a node that can only sit there and dodge our attacks. So we'll show off analyze a bit, which usually isn't very practical:
It's too low level to succeed very often, but it's such a large program it's often not worth upgrading. I usually keep a level 1 version around because:
THAT is a tar pit ICE. You usually don't see these in low level systems, but it's on the CPU, which otherwise has no defenses. There is a lesser version, called Tar Baby, which only deletes the program from active memory. Tar Pits actually wipe the program utterly though. Analyze was only level 2, so we're not out much money, but if that had been our Attack porgram, we'd be out around 3k and have no way to finish the run.
Tar programs are one shot, and activate when you fail to run a program. They always sit behind another ICE, and when they activate, they automatically set the alert to active. It can be a good idea to carry around a few level one fodder programs for feeding to tar pits in high level runs, so as not to risk your offensive programs. It's also a reason to keep Slow around as well as Attack, in case your main offensive options dies. That said, since this node only had barrier and tar pit ice at it, it can't do anything now except sit there until we kill it.
If you fail to perform an action at a node (Or successfully perform one sometimes) the alert level can be raised, and if it's already at active, the system can crash, kicking you out. So finding the CPU and shutting down the alert ASAP is important on harder runs.
We find our target and finish the run before loading up on valuable files. Orange nodes reduce success levels of everything you do by 2, and the node itself is a higher level, and both these things seem to impact the average value of data you steal from them.
Lets see what Roscoe has for us.
As you can see data value vary massively, even from the same node.
But overall, we made out like bandits.
Maybe thats why Lone Star has a sudden interest with us:
I was fairly tempted to just open fire, but we're not that vindictive (or powerful). Yet. We'll put our charisma upgrades to good use instead:
We spend some of our cash on fodder programs and minor upgrades for our deck;
As well as one really major upgrade: Deck Response. This will let us fire off programs much, much faster. Between this and our intelligence upgrades, our combat bar probably moves 3 times faster in cyberspace now than it did when we first started decking.
I think it's time to move up in the world and stop shoveling ghoul guts around. Next update, we're moving on.
;
After our last run, Marrs is pretty pissed with us:
He's still willing to work though, as long as the price is right. We pick him up after doing an easy matrix run for some scratch.
He warms up to us again after a few easy runs:
We pick up Trent too, who's never been with us and therefore isn't pissed.
Trent's stats aren't exactly impressive:
And aside from the healing spell, he's actually got worse spells than Riki (Weaker fire spell, no stink or invis)
But in exchange, he's got a free inventory slot, no totem.
We take a ghoul run from Mr. Reed, but the ghoul den he sent us to in downtown seattle isn't so much a ghoul den...
As a fucking hellhound den.
After our third pack with no ghouls in sight, we buzz turbo before we become dog chow.
We run into some trouble on our way back:
We got the guns with us, lets check this out.
Time to crack some degenerate skulls!
Heh, pussy gang members.
Reed gives us ghoul runs in all the districts, including his:
Each district's building has it's own layout and enemy spawn probabilities. Penumbra seems like one of the easiest for some reason.
We find a nice corner to wait in and let the ghouls (and a couple vamps) come to us.
It's a massacre. We reconfig the lot of them and head back for our pay.
Killing enough ghouls nets us some bonus karma (Or maybe it's the vampires? Not all enemies give karma it seems) We find some credsticks too.
We head back to Redmond for a while and do some easy runs to build up our karma for some basic stat tweaks. Gunderson's runs offer barely any cash, but they're always local, so I can generally finish a run in less time than it takes to get Reed to give me a good one. Fucker's always trying to send me to council island.
Of course, this time the local gang isn't a problem.
We pump up our charisma and computer skills, along with intelligence.
And Marrs becomes our doctor, since lets face it, he's likely to be the last one standing in any given fight. We also cap out his willpower and intelligence (which aren't that high, given he's a troll) to improve his combat skills some. We don't touch his physical stats yet, because we can use karma to go over our caps if we have cyberware, but can't use cyberware to do the same if we hit the cap with karma. So we'll put off those upgrades until he's had some muscle replacements.
Trent gets various upgrades (in retrospect I should have upped his Body some, fucker folds like tissue) including becoming our electronics man. Electronics comes in handy during corp runs even with a decker along, since they can easily turn off alarms after they've happened, while a decker has to try fighting through a system already on high alert.
You might have noticed the different pistol icon by Joshua's frame. We picked up a nice Predator for him and have been accessorizing it, so we are far farm more effective in combat now. Our shots almost never miss or get absorbed by armor, and do about 3 times as much damage. We're pretty badass now.
But where do we get the money for hiring these guys and buying guns? Mostly from doing a few of these:
Along with a fair bit of this:
Yeah, sometimes those files don't sell for very much, especially a small file from a low end run.
On the other hand, a nicer datastore like this:
when raided:
Can lead to multiple files that sell for this:
With all our money, we hire and rehire Trent and Marrs for every ghoul or matrix run we're on until we're the best of bros:
Trent's contract is an even better steal:
2 lifers for under three grand, can't get much better than that. We also make some upgrades to our cyberdeck and shove a smartlink - smartgun system into Joshua's head and hand, so now he can just about shoot the wings off a fly, so long as you don't mind bug guts everywhere and an extra orifice in your skull.
There's even enoguh money in our bank accounts at one point to trade up our deck for something with some more flash.
This'll hold much better upgrades and perform better in and of itself anyways.
We find another mage in trouble just outside Roscoe's after a data selling trip:
So they want to party this time eh? We're 3 bros these street punks don't want to mess with though:
Poor Roscoe, what a mess on his doorstep.
We also keep running into this guy, and, frag it, we're sick of this shady ass dealer trying to sell us bombs.
You like people blowing other people up? Well here you go chummer!
Fragging punks everywhere trying to steal blood or sell weapons. We need a break from the city.
Reed sets us up with a nice relaxing run:
Of course, it's nto going to be a very profitable run:
But we get to enjoy the sweet smell of nature:
And there's no fucking gangs to screw with us,
just you know, gargoyles, hell hounds, the occasional invisible bandersnatch that rips your head off before you know it's there. That kind of pleasant relaxing thing.
We decide to see some sights since we spent an insane cab fare to get out here for a dinky 200 cred run anyways.
How heart warming and anti racist. What's that Marrs? You want to shoot things because you're the only troll npc in the game? Sure thing chum. Let's go somewhere else.
Is this a freaky voodoo hut?
Well damn, that's disappointingly normal.
The hospital here actually sells cyberware. All the different cyberware shops in the game offer different rates on different things, so you can save some creds shopping around. Council Island's best deal is on cybereyes, but it's still too rich for our blood.
Booze! Let's check it out.
Is that a slit? That we can recruit? Too good to be true.
She certainly does. Let's ask her about them.
I'm trying not to be racist here, but you're not making this easy. Just tell us something interesting.
What a sad, tragic story. I totally sympathize now and am not freaked out by your ugly, frightening appearance and mannerisms at all. Really. Let's fish for more info.
How about you tell us about shaman magic, since we didn't ask Ricky?
Bear sounds like true BRO. We'll refrain from metagaming and asking about the guy we shouldn't have the option of asking about yet, unlike when we were chatting up the hospital chick.
Yeah, you totally don't seem savage at all. Thanks for breaking our stereotyping of orcs there, lady.
Let's find out how much she wants to charge for a 'run'
Your place or my place baby, wherever is fine
Cockblockers. We could have had chicks in our party, now we're stuck with this sausagefest.
We go check out the building we walked past on our way in next:
We'd need a passport to get out into the wilderness proper, but we got no reason to go there yet. We'll ask about it anyways though.
We don't flee from justice, we ARE justice (alternately: justice flees from us.)
So we need to stone our rape victims? Gotcha.
If we encounter much more 'beauty' we're going to need some paper bags, I think.
We find the inn, which is pretty normal, and grab our parcel:
And then make use of the state of the art vid-phone to call a cab back downtown.
We do yet more matrix runs:
Which are pretty easy with our new skills and gear. The Sleaze program we picked up is the legal alternative to deception (though legal or illegal programs don't seem to matter really, the bronze never check your deck)
Instead of fooling the program into thinking you're legit and disarming itself,
You just slide by it. You can't fiddle with the nodes you've slid past this way, and you'll have to bypass them again if you need to return, but unlike deception, Sleaze can even work on Barrier ICE.
The map is already there and this next node is already identified because we were here on our last trip too. Normally this is only applicable if you have to exit a run and try again, but sometimes you just get the same system twice in a row from your Mr. Johnson.
We can see all the details of the node while fighting it as though we've used analyze.
A node like this is cake for us now.
It's also the wrong node, so we sleaze our way over to the CPU.
We try deception on it, since we actually want access to the CPU for shutting off alerts.
But Barrier ICE are immune, so it goes straight to combat mode.
I suppose now is a good time to talk about how the matrix combat is set up. First of all, a node is either in combat or not. Certain utilities (Deception and Sleaze) and the option of running away are only available when the node isn't in combat mode. When the node isn't in combat mode, it just sits there doing nothing, and you can analyze it, run away, swap programs, heal your persona, set up barriers, whatever.
The problem is, 3 things will make a node go into combat, attacking it (Derp), using an invalid program on it (Like deception against barrier ICE), and most aggravatingly, if you simply fail to activate your program. This can be mitigated by skill and program levels, but there's always a chance, and the higher level the node, the higher your chances of failure are. So spending a bunch of turns trying to analyze a node to see if it's safe to use deception on or setting up barriers can screw you if you fail an action and get put into combat wiht the wrong utilities.
The other aspect of a node's state is the alert level. The alert will either be none, passive or active. Passive and Active alerts raise the level of all nodes you are at by 1 and 2 ranks, respectively, which makes them a lot faster and more evasive. The other thing is, most nodes are set up with either an access or barrier ICE on the front, which put out signals periodically to raise alert levels. In any case, just about any node with 2 ICE in it will switch to the second ICE at active alert status. Since this one didn't (We're at active alert and the node is just a barrier ICE that can only raise the alert level, which is maxed out) it's a useless cunt of a node that can only sit there and dodge our attacks. So we'll show off analyze a bit, which usually isn't very practical:
It's too low level to succeed very often, but it's such a large program it's often not worth upgrading. I usually keep a level 1 version around because:
THAT is a tar pit ICE. You usually don't see these in low level systems, but it's on the CPU, which otherwise has no defenses. There is a lesser version, called Tar Baby, which only deletes the program from active memory. Tar Pits actually wipe the program utterly though. Analyze was only level 2, so we're not out much money, but if that had been our Attack porgram, we'd be out around 3k and have no way to finish the run.
Tar programs are one shot, and activate when you fail to run a program. They always sit behind another ICE, and when they activate, they automatically set the alert to active. It can be a good idea to carry around a few level one fodder programs for feeding to tar pits in high level runs, so as not to risk your offensive programs. It's also a reason to keep Slow around as well as Attack, in case your main offensive options dies. That said, since this node only had barrier and tar pit ice at it, it can't do anything now except sit there until we kill it.
If you fail to perform an action at a node (Or successfully perform one sometimes) the alert level can be raised, and if it's already at active, the system can crash, kicking you out. So finding the CPU and shutting down the alert ASAP is important on harder runs.
We find our target and finish the run before loading up on valuable files. Orange nodes reduce success levels of everything you do by 2, and the node itself is a higher level, and both these things seem to impact the average value of data you steal from them.
Lets see what Roscoe has for us.
As you can see data value vary massively, even from the same node.
But overall, we made out like bandits.
Maybe thats why Lone Star has a sudden interest with us:
I was fairly tempted to just open fire, but we're not that vindictive (or powerful). Yet. We'll put our charisma upgrades to good use instead:
We spend some of our cash on fodder programs and minor upgrades for our deck;
As well as one really major upgrade: Deck Response. This will let us fire off programs much, much faster. Between this and our intelligence upgrades, our combat bar probably moves 3 times faster in cyberspace now than it did when we first started decking.
I think it's time to move up in the world and stop shoveling ghoul guts around. Next update, we're moving on.
;
Aww, but shovelling ghoul guts seems like great fun. 
Nice and meaty update! Too bad about the female orc bear shammie. But I don't suppose there's any actual party banter or romance options.
Nice and meaty update! Too bad about the female orc bear shammie. But I don't suppose there's any actual party banter or romance options.
anus_pounder
Arcane
Didn't know about that cybernetics and karma thing though. Looks like I wasted my money. 
Drakron
Arcane
- Joined
- May 19, 2005
- Messages
- 6,326
Azira said:But I don't suppose there's any actual party banter or romance options.
According to wikipedia ... (Female Elf Mage) "Freya is flamboyant and seems somewhat attracted to Joshua."
Did I mention she have Invisibility and Heal Wounds?
Oh and you can dismiss a runner by picking "Dismiss Runner" option, it seems to have the same effect as failing a mission so if you want to re-hire then, it will cost more.
GarfunkeL
Racism Expert
Damned Registrations
Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
- Joined
- Feb 24, 2007
- Messages
- 15,011
Will post MOAR update later tonight.
anus_pounder
Arcane
Damned Registrations
Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
- Joined
- Feb 24, 2007
- Messages
- 15,011
Update 6: Moving up in the world.
Alright, first off, we got a bit of cash, lets cruise around a bit and pick up some info. First we head back to Redmond Barrens and look up Borris. His fees seem pretty small now.
Start talking.
Of course.
Don't worry, we don't let Marrs here handle our public affairs. Let's check out his wares first.
More dakka is always good.
An excellent price, but given our lack of skill with SMGs, it wouldn't do us much good right now. Lets see what info he's got for sale.
Fair enough.
Only one thing we're interested in right now.
You have got to be shitting me. Seriously? Lets go elsewhere before I start capping random civilians out of rage.
Let's head over to Puyallup barrens and try looking up the inn that letter came from.
This must be the place.
Well fuck, we're getting nowhere fast, aren't we?
Let's check out the bar we picked up that bodyguard client from before.
Little entrance fees like this are no big deal for us these days. So what's hiding in here anyways?
No runners... must be a Johnson.
Fuuuuuuuuu-
Fine. We'll go to that Vigore guy we met last time we were in Puyallup. He seemed pretty high end.
Damned straight. None of this ghoul hunting crap, gimme a real job.
So the 'little run' that shouldn't be so bad, that you're giving to a runner you've never worked with before, is the highest end matrix run you could possibly hand out? I think he's trolling us too.
That is a LOT of money for a run. But we're not ready just yet to have our decks melted and brains leak out our noses. We'll see if he has anything less extreme kicking around.
Seriously, from experts only matrix run to breaking into Renraku? Who the hell does he think we are?
And this is even more retarded of course: breaking into the most heavily guarded corp building in the game physically, pays significantly less than simply hacking a single file out of any of the major corp's systems.
Finally.
As you can see, Vigore offers a bit more for a moderate run than Reed did.
Moderate runs are well within our abilities now, and are no longer something that requires multiple attempts to pull off.
Lets check out some of the merchandise around here while we're in the neighbourhood.
Now that is some goddamned magick.
And a spell focus for it too. We'll hold off for now though, how about the crime mall?
More dakka baby. We're going to need some where we're going.
Thats some expensive dakka. Puts Borris' offer into perspective. We'll hold off on the guns for now...
But body armor with 'Great' gun protection is nigh irresistible. We pick up a couple sets for ourselves and Trent. Marrs' face is pretty much bulletproof to begin with.
Light combat armor is even nicer, but has a heavy price tag and will bring the bronze down on us.
Could come in handy, we'll pick one up when we start doing serious corp runs.
Or maybe we'll just pick up one of these babies. That is a scary price tag though.
We check out the decker gear next.
Most of this stuff is the same as what is sold in Renraku's store.
And half of what isn't is damned near useless crap anyways.
We pick up level one copies for tar pit fodder and move on to their hardware...
Oh, I'm not even going to show you the pricetag on the MORE expensive deck sitting there. We're not close to this shit yet. All the upgrades for sale are the same as the legal place.
We end up doing a lot of moderate matrix contracts for Vigore. He hands them out a lot more often than Reed did, and he pays better. Vigore's runs in general pay better in fact, but there's a catch: You're rewarded one less karma upon completing a run for him compared to what you'd receive for the same run from another johnson. Right now howwever, we're just trying to rack up the cash for our gear, and a steady stream of low karma matrix runs is better than a trickle of moderate karma matrix runs.
We run into a lot of nodes like this, but we're well prepared, so our losses are trivial.
This is a Trace and Burn ICE. The fireball there slowly tracks over to the right side of the screen and if it gets to the edge, we get disconnected. Oh, and it fries our hardware, forcing us to pay a hefty repair fee before we can jack in again. We destroy it with extreme prejudice.
Before long our credit balance is looking very healthy again, and we're able to continue making upgrades to our gear and deck.
However, we're still not the masters of cyberspace:
This bastard is Black ICE. Note our charming portrait where our avatar's face used to be. These things deal damage directly to our bodies. We've made enough upgrades to put up a serious fight-
But we're in over our heads.
Fortunately, we're not alone on this run, and our bros pick us up off the street and patch us right back up.
Black ICE have another nasty feature: even trying to Jackout to get away before they knock you out can fail, and whether it fails or not, it gets to take a potshot at you for some damage as you try to flee.
They're also immune to Deception programs, like Barrier ICE:
You can still Sleaze past them though.
But we didn't spend an extra 20k credits on our attack programs to use Sleaze, we want that fraggin' data.
That's it. Open up for daddy.
Oh yeah.
During the short period of time we spend walking around instead of being jacked in, this losers tries to screw with us:
We refrain from blowing his head off for daring to speak with us.
Looks like our mercy isn't going to be rewarded.
We let the bronze off this time... but next time we'll be better armed and less patient.
We use some of our loot to buy up more connections:
Gunderson had a decker lined up for us too, remember?
Small change for us, maybe she'll have some good advice. We check back with Borris while we're in the area:
But he's still got nothing for us. Either that or he's lying. Either way he's getting on my nerves.
GarfunkeL
Racism Expert
Ice him!
anus_pounder
Arcane
No no. Gunderson's contact has no use and sells useless cybernet stuff.
Also, 125000 Nuyen ? Even with Vigore's high end jobs, that sort of money seems like a lot of grind...
Also, 125000 Nuyen ? Even with Vigore's high end jobs, that sort of money seems like a lot of grind...
- Joined
- Dec 31, 2007
- Messages
- 11,085
Abandoned snes Shadowrun LP
Snes shadowrun has less skills and rpg elements in general. It has better story and has less copy-paste/filler stuff but it's much more linear. Snes doesn't have an actual cyberspace environment, but city environment exploration feels somewhat better. They're both good for what they are, especially if you're looking for some good cyberpunk experience.
If someone managed to combine the best of both games you'd get the ideal shadowrun game.
Snes shadowrun has less skills and rpg elements in general. It has better story and has less copy-paste/filler stuff but it's much more linear. Snes doesn't have an actual cyberspace environment, but city environment exploration feels somewhat better. They're both good for what they are, especially if you're looking for some good cyberpunk experience.
If someone managed to combine the best of both games you'd get the ideal shadowrun game.
spekkio
Arcane
- Joined
- Sep 16, 2009
- Messages
- 8,288
anus_pounder
Arcane
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