Incline Troubleshooter: Abandoned Children - isometric tactical Korean SRPG

[Sjukob]

So there's a mastery set for the witch class, which allows her to act as an automatic buff dispenser for allies and debuff for enemies, whenever she sees shit die.

I felt like farming Ryo for masteries, and on hard + challenging he turns into level 50 edgy boy

While the party was clearing out the way Albus received a buff via Anne, which I've never even seen before

With this buff he was able to take down Ryo in a single tornado slash...

Spoiler

I later learned that this buff did jack shit in that scenario and Albus pwned Ryo solely thanks to the masteries and gear he had equipped.

But that Anne thing is still hilarious. I've seen Sion recieve additional 500 ESP power from those buffs alone, he got discipline, rage and some other stuff I can't even remember. And Sion already AOE oneshots enemies through block without them, with those buffs he probably crashes the game with his attacks, I don't know what else would he need them for.

It can get even more hilarious when you send in some cop to act as a meatshield, so enemies gang up and start beating him up, and just when he's about to kick the bucket he rolls up immortality on Anne's slot machine.

 

[Sjukob]

So I actually cleared (killed everyone) magenta streets story mission, the one where you fight white tigers for the first time, on hard + challenging.

When it comes to killing Sion did the heavy lifting with his godlike AOE spam. Of course he wouldn't be able to do that without support of tanks and healers.

Taking out Kevin ASAP is very important, you can not allow that guy to do anything if you want to live. He has something like 100% chance to hit and tracer bullet individual mastery, which makes the character he shoots at 30% more likely to get hit, combined with large amount of enemies around and general stupidity of crit damage, leads to characters getting exploded before they can even act. Not to mention that Kevin himself deals enough damage to basically oneshot characters even without crits if they don't block his attacks. So stun him, freeze him, send him into AT hell, kill him, do not let him get a turn.

As I've said earlier, I find that melee guys are generally much scarier than gunners, because once they see your squishes they beeline straight after them and there's nothing you can do about it, aside from trying to keep your squishes far enough away. When it comes to ranged enemies it's generally enough for you to stand behind cover and may be add some smoke grenades on top.

I was surprised to see that there are only about 50 enemies in this mission, but because they attack you all at once it feels like you fight at least a hundred of them. In comprasion, the first violent case you unlock - magenta back-streets has 90+ enemies in it, but you don't choke on them, because they are more evenly spread out.

No special scene in the end for beating everyone though, not even an achievment in steam, bleh. And those impulse fields and second hearts start to annoy the fuck out of me.

 

[Zumbabul]

No special scene in the end for beating everyone though, not even an achievment in steam, bleh. And those impulse fields and second hearts start to annoy the fuck out of me.

There is an achievement in steam for rescuing everybody.

 

[Sykar]

Tried out a new company starting on Cruel right away. Calling that aggravating would be an understatement.

 

[Sjukob]

There is an achievement in steam for rescuing everybody.

Ok, but that's way easier than wiping out everyone, right?

Tried out a new company starting on Cruel right away. Calling that aggravating would be an understatement.

I've heard that cruel is significantly more difficult than hard, is it true? I've been playing on hard since the start and doing fine in general.

 

[Sykar]

Well my first company I started on normal and upgraded the difficulty when it became too much of a breeze. At 35+ Cruel was basically neccessary for me to keep the game challenging enough. At low levels though without masteries and equipment Cruel is flat out brutal. Since your team is small, 1-2 guys for the first 10 missions or so you have a high chance to get downed and instantly lose the mission though you can restart at the last checkpoint, though I still feel like crap when it happens.
To give you an idea, the first construction site mission where Irene has her special entrance and where you can decide if you want to rush in head first or cut off their escape, I had one of the swordsmen come up to Sion and he almost one shotted him from around 450 HP. That never happened on normal.
Granted I have also used the two advanced options for limiting my level growth to the mission level and the option where the enemy gets extra masteries when their level is adjusted. Not sure how much of a difference the latter makes here though. Berserk seems to be a common extra mastery they receive.

 

[Sjukob]

Sykar
I see. But since I started playing on hard from the very beggining I have already got used to non-tank characters getting one shot by melee enemies or just taking heavy damage from elite enemies in general. If a melee guy gets to attack Anne he's almost guranteed to kill her. At times I see Albus take a non-critical hit from enemy gunner that he fails to dodge/block, he loses 70% of his health, nice. And if he happens to take such a hit from an enraged melee mobster then it's just an instant KO, and on hard 99% of melee enemies use berserk mastery.

 

[Sykar]

Cruel upgrades ALL enemies to the next type. There are no normal enemies anymore. That alone is a huge difference to the other difficulties. This also means that they can take more punishment and starting from mission 5 or so even a flank is not a guarantee to bring down even the lowest types.
Albus has to be extra careful how far he advances since a single Spoonist martial artis can bring you down before your next turn comes thanks to the special mastery that grants them extra attacks from other Spoonists attacking.
Stuns are also more common since more enemies seem to have a knockback ability which makes fights in confined spaces with lots of obstacles to pushed into even more deadly for him. I am using him in melee far more sparingly and try to setup stuns of his own first before going in if it is possible.

 

[hello friend]

Sykar
I see. But since I started playing on hard from the very beggining I have already got used to non-tank characters getting one shot by melee enemies or just taking heavy damage from elite enemies in general. If a melee guy gets to attack Anne he's almost guranteed to kill her. At times I see Albus take a non-critical hit from enemy gunner that he fails to dodge/block, he loses 70% of his health, nice. And if he happens to take such a hit from an enraged melee mobster then it's just an instant KO, and on hard 99% of melee enemies use berserk mastery.

You'll be fine. I played on Cruel from the start iirc and I'm no egghead. All you need is fear of death; gradually you'll improve.

 

[Sykar]

Cruel is initially not available until a certain with your first company though you reach it fairly fast iirc.

 

[hello friend]

Turns out I didn't recall correctly.

I imagine I switched quite early because I can't remember anything else. I do remember I intentionally didn't do missions in Challenge mode tho, for predictability of mastery drops.

 

[Sykar]

For anyone who wants to try to start Cruel directly, do NOT activate "High Risk, High Reward". You will get murdered in the 5th mission where you recruit Sion. If you want that option start with a lower and adjust difficulty later. The HP bloat is insane and the mission is almost impossible to beat.

 

[Sykar]

I am surprised that an Albus ranged build can work that well.

 

[Sjukob]

Mobsters before Sion takes his turn

Mobsters after Sion is finished with his turn

Heixing prepares to open fire

Bang, you're dead

I've recruited Ray, well her kit doesn't seem so amazing now that Sion has reached Zeus level of power and Heixing can reliably snipe enemies in cover.

Also, she's falling behind party in levels quite a bit, I think that some of the characters are going to be level capped even before I finish the story. I'm thinking of speccing her into alchemist for now, for some reason Ashuram went with attack power alchemist, I don't know why though, at first glance it seems like it's an ESP class.

The slot and TP limitation per mastery group are getting more and more intense, look at Albus over here, guy literally can never get into overcharge state, because he has no roar of victory, nevermind that he also needs veteran/massiveness and mutant, and I can't give him any of that. Oh and thanks to bloodbath he often gets his turn immediately after killing someone, even before his abilties go off cooldown, so he gets a turn and then he can't even attack anyone, because even the basic attack has a cooldown of 1 turn and you can't get catharsis before you go into DLC, just what the fuck is this? It feels like almost all of the builds can't really get going before you unlock those engame masteries which add more slots to mastery groups, like ranger Heixing. It's plain impossible to build enough mastery sets to turn him into off turn attack specialist without those masteries, he simply doesn't not have enough mastery slots and points in each mastery group. And if you can beat end game bosses reliably, what's even the point of continuing to play? Just to see how more broken your characters can get?

Also, I am really starting to dislike itemization in this game. RNG on top of RNG, it's just plain tiresome.

Once again, fuck gearing in this game, it's Divinity Original Sin all over again. I already find it tiresome to manage gear of 6 characters and later on your party's size is going to double, damn.

I strongly dislike the idea of letting somebody stray far away from the team.

I gave up on this idea, because Irene can barely do anything without it, since she barely has any way to decrease her AT and her cast delay is so huge, without it she ends up standing in the middle of battlefield waiting forever for her turn, while enemies can act twice before she gets to move again. I am thinking of bonding her with Giselle once she joins, it seems that she has enough range to stay outside of Irene's vision and still be able to support her with gunfire.

You'll be fine. I played on Cruel from the start iirc and I'm no egghead. All you need is fear of death; gradually you'll improve.

Yeah I switched to cruel and so far it's not that different from hard.

 

[Sykar]

There are masteries that give you exp when a team member defeats an opponent. Those help Ray catching up. Also there is a difficulty raising advanded option that caps the max experience/level you can get to the level of the mission.

 

[Reinhardt]

Making Albus leader is what villain would do.

 

[Ein Axt]

So I spent three minutes to figure out how to install these drone sub-equipment. It's not on the modify drone window, not on its profile window, not on the mastery. Where the hell do you slot these in?

 

[Ein Axt]

^ Meant to say thirty minutes.

 

[Zumbabul]

So I spent three minutes to figure out how to install these drone sub-equipment. It's not on the modify drone window, not on its profile window, not on the mastery. Where the hell do you slot these in?

You need to first equip 'sub attack equipment' or 'sub support equipment' masteries to the drone's mastery board. After that, you will be able to add the corresponding equipment.

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd....378/7E8616D1D7EB928AB47CAE1D03C55CB97E499674/

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd....410/5131232FDE8EFD6F3C793448E5B3FC8C61FA8DB5/

 

[Sykar]

Fuck I totally forgot the absolutely most aggravating mission of this game, the one in the park where you have to prevent animals from escaping. Makes me wanna rage quit considering how one randomly slipped through animal fails the entire mission. Whoever wrote this shit should go without pay for a week.

 

[Pocgels]

Fuck I totally forgot the absolutely most aggravating mission of this game, the one in the park where you have to prevent animals from escaping. Makes me wanna rage quit considering how one randomly slipped through animal fails the entire mission. Whoever wrote this shit should go without pay for a week.

Isn't that the one you have to replay on each path to get the unique masteries?

 

[Sykar]

Well you do not HAVE to but yeah it is that one.

 

[Sjukob]

Fuck I totally forgot the absolutely most aggravating mission of this game, the one in the park where you have to prevent animals from escaping. Makes me wanna rage quit considering how one randomly slipped through animal fails the entire mission. Whoever wrote this shit should go without pay for a week.

Oh, I thought that one was very easy, however, I have yet to see something that can compare to this corridor of fun.

 

[Sykar]

I managed that one on my first try. I "failed" the animal control mission thrice so far. The whole shit is idiotic. You can lose wounded civilians and not immediatly lose a mission but one dumb dori escaping there and you have to replay the entire mission because the other checkpoint is usually so close to the turn where it escapes that you cannot reach it. Also you usually cannot even see where it ecaped and there are like 8 different exits.

 

[Efe]

I wish I could rate posts "do you even lift bro?"