Hellraiser
Arcane
INDEX
RUN 1
Day 1. Sankaku? More like Seppuku. (this post)
Day 2. Raiding the lost and found offices.
Day3. Chairman Yang approves.
The X-Com meets Deus Ex meets FTL game by Klei just got pre-released. By which I mean that people who got it in EA (like myself) can play it a week before official release on the 12th of May.
RUN 1
Day 1
Sankaku? More like Seppuku.
Let's do this.
NEIN, let's start fresh, so I can introduce you to zee various agents over multiple failed runs. Also they added new shit in the past 6 months.
Advanced campaign customization options are one of those new features. I picked experienced with 1 rewind (instead of 3). Did not notice the +1 KO time which is popamole. In the last EA build normal or whatever the middle difficulty was called had 2 turn KOs not 3 turn KOs. Also this lets you turn off the auto-incrementing alarm, which reduces tension and is for declinist popamole cowards. Real men play with the alarm on, as it makes the game really challenging.
Starting agents are Decker, boozehound and stealth enthusiast. Decker starts with a snazzy modded cloaking rig, which grants him cloak until the end of the turn (in the previous build this was just for 4 tiles of movement). He also gets an augment allowing him, uh, something. Just forgot what. But it was better and more useful than the EA build one. He also has a good old Neural Disrupter, the basic melee KO weapon.
Internationale is a proper hacker, her implant allows her to detect and reveal security nodes through walls as well as hack from range. Extremely useful.
As for incognita software loadout only PWR drip and Lockpick 1.0 are available at this point. PWR drip grants +1 PWR per turn passively, PWR is used to use software, you get it by hacking generic (mostly) unprotected terminals and compromising the local network. Lockpick 1.0 uses 2 PWR to break one level of firewalls. Every secured device has at least one level of firewall protecting it before you can use it or disable it.
As I complete or fail this run I will unlock more agents and starting software. However it is still possible to gain these agents and software during the run. Only with agents they start with no items but only their skills and augments (more on why later).
tl;dr version of the intro, Invisible Inc. HQ gets raided, the agency is on the run, resources are shit and some agents are MIA (probably captured). I need to hunt down those responsible and have 72 hours (can be set to more or less, but 72 is teh default value) to gather resources for the final mission.
And the RNG fucks me over and makes the mandatory executive terminals mission spawns 11 hours worth of stealth jet flight away.
Cyberpunk Makro Cash and Carry has an executive terminal in Nyu Yawk. The local executive is bound to forget to lock his terminal when going to snort coke, fuck the secretary or whatever it is upper management does instead of working.
Read: no looting of pistols, need to buy that shit or find non-genelocked guns.
In the EA build you arrived via elevator and had to leave by another different elevator, which did not make my sense. So now you DEEP STRIKE through one way teleporters and need to find an exit teleporter.
The job is simple, find the terminal, loot as much as possible, run to the teleporter and have scotty beam my agents up before shit gets hot.
The anti-camping alarm mechanic. Moving fast but stealthily makes things easier. Less guards to avoid, less firewalls to crack, less cameras to disable.
Internationale knocks out the first victim and loots stuff from him, the passcard will open red secure doors. KO'd guards wake up after 3 turns, you can pin guards by placing an agent on top of the KO'd guard pausing the wake up countdown. Dragging unconscious guards also acts as pinning.
Pardon for the lack of screenshots showing the tactical sitatuon up to this moment but if there is one thing I do not like in this game, it is that fraps does not work with it and screenshot captors suffers image capture delays of ~1-2 seconds.
Along the way a nanofab is located. These act as stores and need to be hacked to be used. I'll buy the shocktrap even if I can't use it because shock traps are ridiculously good. Not only do they ignore armor (allowing you to KO even energy shield security without hacking the shield out) but they also work on fucking drones. Shock traps are half the reason why Tony Xu is one of the better agents in the game (more on that later when I unlock or if I rescue the guy).
The cooker is a nice gun with 1 armor piercing. Now guns of course kill, but killing is something you really only use when desperate. For one it is expensive (needs charge packs to reload), it creates clean up cost penalties per every corpse (you lose cash) and most importantly it raises the alarm level due to guards having life sign monitors. It is sometimes unavoidable, but the game has a lot of incentives to not only go non-lethal but also to even avoid KOing guards.
Still, guns are probably the best way to get rid of drones.
Ok, since screenshots have been sparse so far let me explain what happened. Internationale and Decker split up, since this is a level 1 security mission and guards should be low. Raided a few safes, Internationale collected PWR of some terminals and KO'd that one guard so now he's investigating. This is why if possible, it is better to sneak past guards since they will just follow routine patrols or stand in one place (you can spend 1 AP to reveal their patrol route within your field of view). When investigating they become a bit unpredictable, you still know where they will walk next turn with observation, but it is harder to plan ahead.
Decker found the objective (guarded by on stationary guard), Internationale just found loot and a dead end.
Decker found the second most important thing on the map, the exit teleporter. There is still some loot in the north I did not have time to investigate so before I nap the objective it is best to raid that. Also one change since the EA build is that getting the main objective always triggers something (or someone) making shit harder. More on that in a moment.
Not sure where the other guard came from. Reinforcements should not arrive until alarm level 3 I think, or maybe they changed that.
They're both alert but the one guarding the objective is still chilling.
While Internationale was raiding the north, one of those pesky guard stumbled into the executive terminal room. You can now see his vision in red, if an agent steps into that, the guard goes into overwatch and will shoot the agent next turn. There is no HP, you get shot you die, unless you use some med item, but usually if you get into a situation where an agent gets shot another agent risks getting shot while doing the reviving.
The yellow squares indicate tiles hidden from the guard's sight despite being in his field of view. Basically cover and such. You can move between hiding squares without the guard spotting you. If an agents is getting locked-on in overwatch, you can escape from it if you move to a hidden square that is 1 tile away from the current position.
Now what I did was observe the movement on the guard, hide Decker, sneak in with internationale and KO both guards next turn.
Got the objective, it takes up one inventory slot.
I think now all executive terminals trigger patrol route scrambling. Hardly an issue, other mission types have worse things happening.
Beam me up Central.
New summary screen. This is very useful. I hacked devices spending 34 PWR and hacking everything (PWR does not carry over), pissed off nearly all guards, spent/lost 400 credits (shock trap). All in all an easy mission.
Now I need to upgrade the Anarchy skill (basically THIEVAN) for credits to use the shock trap. This will also allow internationale to pickpocket from guards. Lots of useful gadgets use anarchy.
Both Internationale and Decker also get a Strength upgrade. Strength now reduces guard dragging AP cost (was wondering why it was so high) and KO damage at max level. In addition to granting inventory slots which by itself is very useful, expecially during vault raiding missions (you need to place all those priceless ming vases somewhere!).
Which is bullshit as monst3r is not offering us anything at the moment. Sometimes he has an item to sell between missions, most of the time though those suck.
With the site map looted I know have access to more randomly generated sites. These differ by main objectives, corp that is being raided and of course difficulty and distance from our current location. The basic idea is to pick what you need the most considering the difficulty, enemy corp and the amount of time it will eat from those precious 72 hours. Pretty brilliant if you ask me, forces you to make meaningful strategic choices.
Cybernetics labs guarantee free augmentations OR free augmentation slots (you get to pick). There's always at least two operating bots. Compared to the early access build these no longer KO the agent upon use, however they added something a lot more FUN in the place of KOing your agents.
Snazzy loading screen.
Cyberpunk Makro will hate us.
Incognita view! Activated with SPESSS I mean space, this is from what you hack devices. There's a secondary server terminal here, another new addition in the release build. Basically this grants access to the B@z@@r and warez (incognita software, not a pirated copy of the game ). Everything is at level one firewalls since this is an easy mission. Later on or as the alarm progresses (or as shit gets triggered) devices gain firewall levels, which is bad.
I hacked the impassible laser fence's power and turned it off. There's a nosy guard around but he's alone and unarmored so not much of a threat.
Incoginita view also shows which safes have been looted so far. The guard is on a simple patrol route, I hack the nanofab and have Decker check out the goodies sold.
An improved neural disrupter. This will really be useful, more and better neural disrupters are a priority. For one if I ever get more agents they will need to be armed. Also these weapons have cooldown BUT you can have multiple on an agent which can allow you to get out of very bad scrapes.
The piercing scanner augment adds +1 to armor penetration of firearms of the agent. It is very useful if you already have a gun.
Internationale locates the surgery bots.
She immediately goes for them since I did not realise that they changed the "penalty" for using these as only new augment slots KO an agent now.
Holy shit this is useful, in general it is easier to find armor piercing lethal weaponry and some guards you really are better off dead (well for you any way) when the mission get tougher. 3 PWR is a small price to pay for not having a difficult situation escalating into even more difficult due to a shootout triggering an alarm.
Internationale beeing the 1337 h4x0r checks out the warez. Note that this screen has some nice catchy funky cracktro music to give you that non-removal from the inventory feeling.
BTW the main objective triggered A RESET FIREWALLS ON SHIT I ALREADY HACKED.
Lost a shitload of PWR on that and now I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel and have cameras to deal with.
Taurus is meh, it just moves daemons (nasty shit that triggers when you hack devices protected by it) to another device.
Ping however is very useful. I was hoping that maybe I'll get parasite, rapier or some power generating program like fusion (or even better, emergency power drip).
Decker gets caught with a guard in his hands, because of my stupidity. REWIND TIME. Rewind allows you to go back to the start of the previous turn. I set rewinds to one, it is basically an anti-derp or bad luck measure. One rewind is good to have if only to avoid runs going sour due to a misclick or something.
Even despite the rewind the situation was not ideal. I moved the KO'd guard into the corner and Decker got stuck in a very bad spot, one where he either had to wait, bait the guard into overwatch, duck behind a corner and then ambush the guard using his own overwatch. Which meant that the other guard would probably wake up before that happened.
However Decker has a great and now improved panic button, his "borrowed" cloaking rig. I use it to leave the room and rendezvous with Internationale ASAP (she found the elevator).
I stupidly hid Decker behind the terminal (did not matter as the guard would not notice Decker anyway). Did not realise he could now walk more than 4 tiles while cloaked.
Still there was only one guard and no cameras between him and internationale. Internationale Ko'd the guard...
...and the agents are extracted. But with only one Augment stolen and no Neural Disrupter II due to THE FUCKING FIREWALL RESET. Ah well, there needs to be some challenge.
Also is it me, or is there a hint of australian accent in Central' VO. I'll need to check that on wiki/imdb.
Could have ended up with more loot, but better safe than sorry.
I have credits, sell me stuff, don't care if you fucked M/Mallory Archer/Gladstone.
Corp prison, the place where misbehaving interns go. Kelfried and Odin should field more lethal shit (like automated turrets) or just more guards. Not sure.
If I am lucky I will get a 3rd agent. If I am unlucky I'll just rescue some intern or the kid of a competitors executive or something and I get cash. I prefer the agent. Having another agent to pin and haul loot and scout is already useful even if I have to gadgets to give him/her.
Of course saving the prisoner is not necessary, if he dies during extraction, well you miss out on cash or an agent.
The team splits up. Internationale find and KO's a guard.
There are more guards around than usual, luckily their patrol patterns make them easy to avoid. Decker finds the holding cells.
I got really lucky because normally the prison guards patrols the cells, this one however is stationary. And I got an agent, sadly not one I'd prefer (Banks or Tony Xu), but Nika a russianlesbian overgrown schoolgirl or Putin cheerleader.
Of course her occupation is a most lesbian one, security (seriously, if you find a straight woman working in security I'll buy you a beer, that's as unlikely as finding a male straight hairdresser).
She also has a maximum butch mode implant
Normally, once unlocked, her starting loadout has a volt disrupter, which is like a neural disrupter only without a cooldown but using PWR per attack. This lets her use those two attacks per turn, however PWR is better spent on hacking. Personally, out of the combat-oriented agents, I preferShalom Shalem 42. Maybe one of the 4 (IIRC) new agents is better.
Meanwhile Internationale heads north to rendezvous with Decker and Nika, as the closest path to the teleporter leads through secure doors. Luckily the guard has a card which Internationale can use. Also cash.
A nanofab is found. Chameleon Movement looks tempting and Decker could use it, however I need something for Nika.
This is great. It does not reveal the guards vision, but tagging a guard before you KO him lets you know where he's at. Not a neural disrupter, but beggars can't be choosers and I have cash to spend.
The last guard between the agents and the elevator is about to walk through a doorwar only to find Decker lurking beyond it, ready to strike.
Team got out just as new guards arrived.
Pretty clean job, cleaned out all the safes. Lots of jew gold.
Well, I am running out of sites so it is time to raid another executive terminal.
This time the corp is Sankaku, which is bad. They have already been really fucking annoying in the EA build, but they got even more obnoxious toys now.
To make things worse daemons are installed. I hack the very first thing with a daemon, a daemon database to know what nodes to avoid.
This is one of the worst daemons you can trigger. Especially at a Sankaku office, where I will need a lot of PWR to hack all the fucking drones.
In hindsight I should have rewinded.
And here is the first drone. Drones are immune to regular KO weapons, they can however be KO'd by EMP, which I do not have (one of the many reasons why Doc Tony Xu IS SO FUCKING GOOD, unless they nerfed him). You can loot power from their husks. The alternative is to hack them to gain control of them and KO them on the next turn.
Oh and they do sensor pings which can find agents behind cover. However you can safely sprint near them and they won't hear shit. Which matters little as most drone-heavy maps have a shitload of soundbugs precisely for that reason, to detect agents running so drones can find them.
Also the exec terminal is right next to the starting position, so now I just need some loot and to find the exit.
The best way to deal with drones, besides EMP, is to hack them and use them to kill other drones. This does not raise the alarm (drone wrecks being spotted however do). However that fucking rubiks daemon raised firewalls on everything, in a mission which is already a PWR sink.
Oh and there was a 2.0 Obake drone hidden around the corner. That fucker is armored and has one extra level of firewalls.
Oh, and you can also shoot cameras but to be honest the ammo is better spent on drones and cameras are best left for haxing. Since as I mentioned drones have limited ammo. It is best to use one to kill as many as possible.
With the north-west being a drone fest, I send the team to looks for loot and PWR. My captured drone got killed by the Obake 2.0 one. So AFAIK that's only one drone to worry about.
Well apart from the Obake 1.0 I just found here. Who just spotted Internationale.
Luckily there is cover around.
Which meant jack shit, as the drone still found her. REWIND!
I avoid the north-east room until the drone can be safely bypassed. Nika finds a nanofab I hack with a RIOT dart (shit due to no armor penetration and using ammo) and a buster III chip (ridiculously good). As later in the game firewalls will get really strong, you need some heavy tools to deal with them and conserve PWR. The chip works from melee range and saves me 8 PWR worth of firewalls, really good for safes, objectives and drones later in the game. Less so for cameras, but the saved up PWR lets you handle those.
I hack the exec's terminal, this time around I get something new, a choice! I pick the CFO suite, although the security dispatch was also a good choice. Security dispatches are armory raids, you get a guaranteed free hi-tech weapons. Such as say a once-per mission firing plasma pistol that uses no ammo and pierces two level of armor and other nifty things.
The CFO suite is a good source of cash and, most importantly, it always grants a vault access card. Vaults are high-yield loot storages that can be accessed only with such a card, they spawn as separate missions or sometimes in other offices.
Remeber that nasty Rubik's daemon? Well, it made it very fucking hard to hack cameras. And there are lots of those around, hence the alarm quickly grew to level 5 and the whole fucking place is crawling with guards. And I am out of rewinds. This shit is likely to go as foul as the Ganges river.
I am trying to get Decker out first as he's the best bet to find the exit given the high security, Nika and Internationale will get to the exit two or more turns later (the teleporter has a cooldown so it is best to leave as a whole team).
Of course he triggers more fucking cameras along the way. A guard teleports in next to his position.
Now Nika and Internationale have to avoid this drone, the guard in the doorwar and the Obake 2.0 which is closing in on their pinpointed position.
Here is how I barely got out of this mess. Decker looted one of the wrecked drones, drone wrecks drop PWR. The Obake 1.0 was already down by a firewall or two so what Decker looted was exactly what I need to hack it.
With the drone under my control Internationale could sneak by the door, close it and wait in ambush for the guard.
The 2.0 is derping far away, luckily. Now Decker has two guards in the elevator and he will surely get discovered, because the fucking camera drone sees him and is relaying his location. Still, he should be able to ambush one guard despite that.
One guard is down, the other guard has Decker in his sight ready to pull the trigger. However Decker uses his panic button...
.. and he's out safely.
It takes three turns before he can be joined by Nika and Internationale, who KO the two guards again.
Afterwards they get into the exit teleporter. This was too fucking close. Fucking rubiks daemon!
And this summary explain perfectly why the rubiks daemon was such a fucking pain. Ignoring the soundbugs (which are pointless to hack), I hacked 12 out of 22 useful devices. Well, not all drones had to be hacked so lower that to 20 or 19. That is despite looting all the PWR from all available terminals.
I am a bit surprised that Sankaku was sending guards instead of drones for reinforcements, they usually do the latter. Also all the drone killing left me with clean up costs.
Monst3r finally has something to sell, the cunt.
Oh, so you sell me a fucking vault access card AFTER I picked to have a CFO suite generated. Useless cunt...
...I buy it anyway, just in case the CFO mission goes sour or if it is too fucking far away. Probably still a bad choice.
The plot unfolds...
Well it is day 2 now. This map will probably change/get re-rolled when I continue this campaign.
RUN 1
Day 1. Sankaku? More like Seppuku. (this post)
Day 2. Raiding the lost and found offices.
Day3. Chairman Yang approves.
The X-Com meets Deus Ex meets FTL game by Klei just got pre-released. By which I mean that people who got it in EA (like myself) can play it a week before official release on the 12th of May.
RUN 1
Day 1
Sankaku? More like Seppuku.
Let's do this.
NEIN, let's start fresh, so I can introduce you to zee various agents over multiple failed runs. Also they added new shit in the past 6 months.
Advanced campaign customization options are one of those new features. I picked experienced with 1 rewind (instead of 3). Did not notice the +1 KO time which is popamole. In the last EA build normal or whatever the middle difficulty was called had 2 turn KOs not 3 turn KOs. Also this lets you turn off the auto-incrementing alarm, which reduces tension and is for declinist popamole cowards. Real men play with the alarm on, as it makes the game really challenging.
Starting agents are Decker, boozehound and stealth enthusiast. Decker starts with a snazzy modded cloaking rig, which grants him cloak until the end of the turn (in the previous build this was just for 4 tiles of movement). He also gets an augment allowing him, uh, something. Just forgot what. But it was better and more useful than the EA build one. He also has a good old Neural Disrupter, the basic melee KO weapon.
Internationale is a proper hacker, her implant allows her to detect and reveal security nodes through walls as well as hack from range. Extremely useful.
As for incognita software loadout only PWR drip and Lockpick 1.0 are available at this point. PWR drip grants +1 PWR per turn passively, PWR is used to use software, you get it by hacking generic (mostly) unprotected terminals and compromising the local network. Lockpick 1.0 uses 2 PWR to break one level of firewalls. Every secured device has at least one level of firewall protecting it before you can use it or disable it.
As I complete or fail this run I will unlock more agents and starting software. However it is still possible to gain these agents and software during the run. Only with agents they start with no items but only their skills and augments (more on why later).
tl;dr version of the intro, Invisible Inc. HQ gets raided, the agency is on the run, resources are shit and some agents are MIA (probably captured). I need to hunt down those responsible and have 72 hours (can be set to more or less, but 72 is teh default value) to gather resources for the final mission.
And the RNG fucks me over and makes the mandatory executive terminals mission spawns 11 hours worth of stealth jet flight away.
Cyberpunk Makro Cash and Carry has an executive terminal in Nyu Yawk. The local executive is bound to forget to lock his terminal when going to snort coke, fuck the secretary or whatever it is upper management does instead of working.
Read: no looting of pistols, need to buy that shit or find non-genelocked guns.
In the EA build you arrived via elevator and had to leave by another different elevator, which did not make my sense. So now you DEEP STRIKE through one way teleporters and need to find an exit teleporter.
The job is simple, find the terminal, loot as much as possible, run to the teleporter and have scotty beam my agents up before shit gets hot.
The anti-camping alarm mechanic. Moving fast but stealthily makes things easier. Less guards to avoid, less firewalls to crack, less cameras to disable.
Internationale knocks out the first victim and loots stuff from him, the passcard will open red secure doors. KO'd guards wake up after 3 turns, you can pin guards by placing an agent on top of the KO'd guard pausing the wake up countdown. Dragging unconscious guards also acts as pinning.
Pardon for the lack of screenshots showing the tactical sitatuon up to this moment but if there is one thing I do not like in this game, it is that fraps does not work with it and screenshot captors suffers image capture delays of ~1-2 seconds.
Along the way a nanofab is located. These act as stores and need to be hacked to be used. I'll buy the shocktrap even if I can't use it because shock traps are ridiculously good. Not only do they ignore armor (allowing you to KO even energy shield security without hacking the shield out) but they also work on fucking drones. Shock traps are half the reason why Tony Xu is one of the better agents in the game (more on that later when I unlock or if I rescue the guy).
The cooker is a nice gun with 1 armor piercing. Now guns of course kill, but killing is something you really only use when desperate. For one it is expensive (needs charge packs to reload), it creates clean up cost penalties per every corpse (you lose cash) and most importantly it raises the alarm level due to guards having life sign monitors. It is sometimes unavoidable, but the game has a lot of incentives to not only go non-lethal but also to even avoid KOing guards.
Still, guns are probably the best way to get rid of drones.
Ok, since screenshots have been sparse so far let me explain what happened. Internationale and Decker split up, since this is a level 1 security mission and guards should be low. Raided a few safes, Internationale collected PWR of some terminals and KO'd that one guard so now he's investigating. This is why if possible, it is better to sneak past guards since they will just follow routine patrols or stand in one place (you can spend 1 AP to reveal their patrol route within your field of view). When investigating they become a bit unpredictable, you still know where they will walk next turn with observation, but it is harder to plan ahead.
Decker found the objective (guarded by on stationary guard), Internationale just found loot and a dead end.
Decker found the second most important thing on the map, the exit teleporter. There is still some loot in the north I did not have time to investigate so before I nap the objective it is best to raid that. Also one change since the EA build is that getting the main objective always triggers something (or someone) making shit harder. More on that in a moment.
Not sure where the other guard came from. Reinforcements should not arrive until alarm level 3 I think, or maybe they changed that.
They're both alert but the one guarding the objective is still chilling.
While Internationale was raiding the north, one of those pesky guard stumbled into the executive terminal room. You can now see his vision in red, if an agent steps into that, the guard goes into overwatch and will shoot the agent next turn. There is no HP, you get shot you die, unless you use some med item, but usually if you get into a situation where an agent gets shot another agent risks getting shot while doing the reviving.
The yellow squares indicate tiles hidden from the guard's sight despite being in his field of view. Basically cover and such. You can move between hiding squares without the guard spotting you. If an agents is getting locked-on in overwatch, you can escape from it if you move to a hidden square that is 1 tile away from the current position.
Now what I did was observe the movement on the guard, hide Decker, sneak in with internationale and KO both guards next turn.
Got the objective, it takes up one inventory slot.
I think now all executive terminals trigger patrol route scrambling. Hardly an issue, other mission types have worse things happening.
Beam me up Central.
New summary screen. This is very useful. I hacked devices spending 34 PWR and hacking everything (PWR does not carry over), pissed off nearly all guards, spent/lost 400 credits (shock trap). All in all an easy mission.
Now I need to upgrade the Anarchy skill (basically THIEVAN) for credits to use the shock trap. This will also allow internationale to pickpocket from guards. Lots of useful gadgets use anarchy.
Both Internationale and Decker also get a Strength upgrade. Strength now reduces guard dragging AP cost (was wondering why it was so high) and KO damage at max level. In addition to granting inventory slots which by itself is very useful, expecially during vault raiding missions (you need to place all those priceless ming vases somewhere!).
Which is bullshit as monst3r is not offering us anything at the moment. Sometimes he has an item to sell between missions, most of the time though those suck.
With the site map looted I know have access to more randomly generated sites. These differ by main objectives, corp that is being raided and of course difficulty and distance from our current location. The basic idea is to pick what you need the most considering the difficulty, enemy corp and the amount of time it will eat from those precious 72 hours. Pretty brilliant if you ask me, forces you to make meaningful strategic choices.
Cybernetics labs guarantee free augmentations OR free augmentation slots (you get to pick). There's always at least two operating bots. Compared to the early access build these no longer KO the agent upon use, however they added something a lot more FUN in the place of KOing your agents.
Snazzy loading screen.
Cyberpunk Makro will hate us.
Incognita view! Activated with SPESSS I mean space, this is from what you hack devices. There's a secondary server terminal here, another new addition in the release build. Basically this grants access to the B@z@@r and warez (incognita software, not a pirated copy of the game ). Everything is at level one firewalls since this is an easy mission. Later on or as the alarm progresses (or as shit gets triggered) devices gain firewall levels, which is bad.
I hacked the impassible laser fence's power and turned it off. There's a nosy guard around but he's alone and unarmored so not much of a threat.
Incoginita view also shows which safes have been looted so far. The guard is on a simple patrol route, I hack the nanofab and have Decker check out the goodies sold.
An improved neural disrupter. This will really be useful, more and better neural disrupters are a priority. For one if I ever get more agents they will need to be armed. Also these weapons have cooldown BUT you can have multiple on an agent which can allow you to get out of very bad scrapes.
The piercing scanner augment adds +1 to armor penetration of firearms of the agent. It is very useful if you already have a gun.
Internationale locates the surgery bots.
She immediately goes for them since I did not realise that they changed the "penalty" for using these as only new augment slots KO an agent now.
Holy shit this is useful, in general it is easier to find armor piercing lethal weaponry and some guards you really are better off dead (well for you any way) when the mission get tougher. 3 PWR is a small price to pay for not having a difficult situation escalating into even more difficult due to a shootout triggering an alarm.
Internationale beeing the 1337 h4x0r checks out the warez. Note that this screen has some nice catchy funky cracktro music to give you that non-removal from the inventory feeling.
BTW the main objective triggered A RESET FIREWALLS ON SHIT I ALREADY HACKED.
Lost a shitload of PWR on that and now I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel and have cameras to deal with.
Taurus is meh, it just moves daemons (nasty shit that triggers when you hack devices protected by it) to another device.
Ping however is very useful. I was hoping that maybe I'll get parasite, rapier or some power generating program like fusion (or even better, emergency power drip).
Decker gets caught with a guard in his hands, because of my stupidity. REWIND TIME. Rewind allows you to go back to the start of the previous turn. I set rewinds to one, it is basically an anti-derp or bad luck measure. One rewind is good to have if only to avoid runs going sour due to a misclick or something.
Even despite the rewind the situation was not ideal. I moved the KO'd guard into the corner and Decker got stuck in a very bad spot, one where he either had to wait, bait the guard into overwatch, duck behind a corner and then ambush the guard using his own overwatch. Which meant that the other guard would probably wake up before that happened.
However Decker has a great and now improved panic button, his "borrowed" cloaking rig. I use it to leave the room and rendezvous with Internationale ASAP (she found the elevator).
I stupidly hid Decker behind the terminal (did not matter as the guard would not notice Decker anyway). Did not realise he could now walk more than 4 tiles while cloaked.
Still there was only one guard and no cameras between him and internationale. Internationale Ko'd the guard...
...and the agents are extracted. But with only one Augment stolen and no Neural Disrupter II due to THE FUCKING FIREWALL RESET. Ah well, there needs to be some challenge.
Also is it me, or is there a hint of australian accent in Central' VO. I'll need to check that on wiki/imdb.
Could have ended up with more loot, but better safe than sorry.
I have credits, sell me stuff, don't care if you fucked M/Mallory Archer/Gladstone.
Corp prison, the place where misbehaving interns go. Kelfried and Odin should field more lethal shit (like automated turrets) or just more guards. Not sure.
If I am lucky I will get a 3rd agent. If I am unlucky I'll just rescue some intern or the kid of a competitors executive or something and I get cash. I prefer the agent. Having another agent to pin and haul loot and scout is already useful even if I have to gadgets to give him/her.
Of course saving the prisoner is not necessary, if he dies during extraction, well you miss out on cash or an agent.
The team splits up. Internationale find and KO's a guard.
There are more guards around than usual, luckily their patrol patterns make them easy to avoid. Decker finds the holding cells.
I got really lucky because normally the prison guards patrols the cells, this one however is stationary. And I got an agent, sadly not one I'd prefer (Banks or Tony Xu), but Nika a russian
Of course her occupation is a most lesbian one, security (seriously, if you find a straight woman working in security I'll buy you a beer, that's as unlikely as finding a male straight hairdresser).
She also has a maximum butch mode implant
Normally, once unlocked, her starting loadout has a volt disrupter, which is like a neural disrupter only without a cooldown but using PWR per attack. This lets her use those two attacks per turn, however PWR is better spent on hacking. Personally, out of the combat-oriented agents, I prefer
Meanwhile Internationale heads north to rendezvous with Decker and Nika, as the closest path to the teleporter leads through secure doors. Luckily the guard has a card which Internationale can use. Also cash.
A nanofab is found. Chameleon Movement looks tempting and Decker could use it, however I need something for Nika.
This is great. It does not reveal the guards vision, but tagging a guard before you KO him lets you know where he's at. Not a neural disrupter, but beggars can't be choosers and I have cash to spend.
The last guard between the agents and the elevator is about to walk through a doorwar only to find Decker lurking beyond it, ready to strike.
Team got out just as new guards arrived.
Pretty clean job, cleaned out all the safes. Lots of jew gold.
Well, I am running out of sites so it is time to raid another executive terminal.
This time the corp is Sankaku, which is bad. They have already been really fucking annoying in the EA build, but they got even more obnoxious toys now.
To make things worse daemons are installed. I hack the very first thing with a daemon, a daemon database to know what nodes to avoid.
This is one of the worst daemons you can trigger. Especially at a Sankaku office, where I will need a lot of PWR to hack all the fucking drones.
In hindsight I should have rewinded.
And here is the first drone. Drones are immune to regular KO weapons, they can however be KO'd by EMP, which I do not have (one of the many reasons why Doc Tony Xu IS SO FUCKING GOOD, unless they nerfed him). You can loot power from their husks. The alternative is to hack them to gain control of them and KO them on the next turn.
Oh and they do sensor pings which can find agents behind cover. However you can safely sprint near them and they won't hear shit. Which matters little as most drone-heavy maps have a shitload of soundbugs precisely for that reason, to detect agents running so drones can find them.
Also the exec terminal is right next to the starting position, so now I just need some loot and to find the exit.
The best way to deal with drones, besides EMP, is to hack them and use them to kill other drones. This does not raise the alarm (drone wrecks being spotted however do). However that fucking rubiks daemon raised firewalls on everything, in a mission which is already a PWR sink.
Oh and there was a 2.0 Obake drone hidden around the corner. That fucker is armored and has one extra level of firewalls.
Oh, and you can also shoot cameras but to be honest the ammo is better spent on drones and cameras are best left for haxing. Since as I mentioned drones have limited ammo. It is best to use one to kill as many as possible.
With the north-west being a drone fest, I send the team to looks for loot and PWR. My captured drone got killed by the Obake 2.0 one. So AFAIK that's only one drone to worry about.
Well apart from the Obake 1.0 I just found here. Who just spotted Internationale.
Luckily there is cover around.
Which meant jack shit, as the drone still found her. REWIND!
I avoid the north-east room until the drone can be safely bypassed. Nika finds a nanofab I hack with a RIOT dart (shit due to no armor penetration and using ammo) and a buster III chip (ridiculously good). As later in the game firewalls will get really strong, you need some heavy tools to deal with them and conserve PWR. The chip works from melee range and saves me 8 PWR worth of firewalls, really good for safes, objectives and drones later in the game. Less so for cameras, but the saved up PWR lets you handle those.
I hack the exec's terminal, this time around I get something new, a choice! I pick the CFO suite, although the security dispatch was also a good choice. Security dispatches are armory raids, you get a guaranteed free hi-tech weapons. Such as say a once-per mission firing plasma pistol that uses no ammo and pierces two level of armor and other nifty things.
The CFO suite is a good source of cash and, most importantly, it always grants a vault access card. Vaults are high-yield loot storages that can be accessed only with such a card, they spawn as separate missions or sometimes in other offices.
Remeber that nasty Rubik's daemon? Well, it made it very fucking hard to hack cameras. And there are lots of those around, hence the alarm quickly grew to level 5 and the whole fucking place is crawling with guards. And I am out of rewinds. This shit is likely to go as foul as the Ganges river.
I am trying to get Decker out first as he's the best bet to find the exit given the high security, Nika and Internationale will get to the exit two or more turns later (the teleporter has a cooldown so it is best to leave as a whole team).
Of course he triggers more fucking cameras along the way. A guard teleports in next to his position.
Now Nika and Internationale have to avoid this drone, the guard in the doorwar and the Obake 2.0 which is closing in on their pinpointed position.
Here is how I barely got out of this mess. Decker looted one of the wrecked drones, drone wrecks drop PWR. The Obake 1.0 was already down by a firewall or two so what Decker looted was exactly what I need to hack it.
With the drone under my control Internationale could sneak by the door, close it and wait in ambush for the guard.
The 2.0 is derping far away, luckily. Now Decker has two guards in the elevator and he will surely get discovered, because the fucking camera drone sees him and is relaying his location. Still, he should be able to ambush one guard despite that.
One guard is down, the other guard has Decker in his sight ready to pull the trigger. However Decker uses his panic button...
.. and he's out safely.
It takes three turns before he can be joined by Nika and Internationale, who KO the two guards again.
Afterwards they get into the exit teleporter. This was too fucking close. Fucking rubiks daemon!
And this summary explain perfectly why the rubiks daemon was such a fucking pain. Ignoring the soundbugs (which are pointless to hack), I hacked 12 out of 22 useful devices. Well, not all drones had to be hacked so lower that to 20 or 19. That is despite looting all the PWR from all available terminals.
I am a bit surprised that Sankaku was sending guards instead of drones for reinforcements, they usually do the latter. Also all the drone killing left me with clean up costs.
Monst3r finally has something to sell, the cunt.
Oh, so you sell me a fucking vault access card AFTER I picked to have a CFO suite generated. Useless cunt...
...I buy it anyway, just in case the CFO mission goes sour or if it is too fucking far away. Probably still a bad choice.
The plot unfolds...
Well it is day 2 now. This map will probably change/get re-rolled when I continue this campaign.
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