In Progress X-Piratez! Ironman! No spoilers! Oldschool X-COM Total Conversion with mutant amazon pirates. Death to the star gods!

[Damned Registrations]

Manatee is obviously the rook, she's tanky and less mobile than Lenneth, like a castle.

Gotcha! Was just a waspite, apparently. Scared the crap outta me. These clowns are toast.

The fact there are only a pair of small doors ahead is encouraging- no sectopods will come stomping after us. But since I'm sure there are plenty of dangerous infantry and don't want to be eaten by a chryssalid or something, we'll pull back for now.

We're pulling the catgirl back too. I still want a safe person as a last resort. I didn't think we could lose one so easily with what few enemies remained out there. No more heading into the cavern.

Hell, I'll move her even further down the tunnel. I wonder what's down here- WHAT THE FUCK. I can't believe I missed this.

Well, things are certainly moving fast again now. They'll have to, if we're going to win with so few units left. It's fine! Checkmate with a knight, a rook and a queen should be easy.

The item on the floor was a slice of cake. Not of much use now, but it could have kept one of our barely wounded units alive a lot longer.

Seems to be nothing behind the marked wall though? A one tile hole?

Lenneth finishes off the operative on the floor with a throwing star. Weird that it didn't die to the sword.

Manatee had some nice beauty sleep will under enemy control. Lots of health now.

The room on her side is similar, but even more lightly guarded, just a guardian and a fart bag.

We left her at the doorway, but she can't be zombified and almost certainly can't be killed, even by a swordsman.

Busting into the next room, we find soft targets! I bet these fuckers do psi attacks too, taking them out should help a lot.

Once I remembered to turn the lights back on, I realized the passage behind the cake did lead to a small hole. Nothing here though.

Time to bring Luka into the game. We've got a solid objective we can head directly towards now. We'll probably need backup to handle whatever is beyond.

Show us what you've got!

Turns out they've got a new enemy!

Seems important, and probably has amazing psi attacks.

Alas, it also has amazing evasion. I think we landed a single hit, but couldn't pierce the shields. Not having our full TUs back each turn due to low freshness isn't helping.

The passage over here does go a bit further actually, but...

It just leads to the same giant cave as the hole in the train. Maybe this was a safer/better entry point? Or some alternate route if you do the mission another way or something?

Huh, this is a strange place for metal block walls. Maybe there's a secret behind them? I'll try dig towards them.

Lenneth busts into a similar room with an operator. We're low on TUs though, I'll let them come to me.

Things are looking up! We're definitely down to the wire, but that Chancellor has got to be guarding something important, and he's mincemeat sooner or later. Lenneth should easily clear her room too if it's got similar guards.

Well, I kinda saw that coming. Psi attacks work even better at close range. Doesn't get closer than melee. We'll get a good turn eventually though.

...not this turn apparently. Where the fuck did this waspite come from? What a crock of shit. Luka down. Probably not getting back up.

Hey guys. Remember when we got the hero armour, and I made a point that, since Lenneth still has full, ~150 frontal armour, that it'd take a 375 damage plasma attack to even hurt her? And with 150 health behind that, it'd take like 750 to one shot her? Well, she's dead. This killed her. I think it MIGHT have had to slash twice. I'm not sure. It was very fast. I'm honestly surprised I caught the screen cap.

This is it. Lone catto is the whole team now. Fat chance of winning this. Even if Manatee is under our control again, that purifier (I'm assuming; they're described as the owners of the scythes) can probably kill her easily.

 

[Andnjord]

Oh shit.

 

[lightbane]

They're overdoing it with the final mission indeed. How did my unit die again?

 

[Damned Registrations]

Really, it was obvious it would end this way.

Well, fuck it, we came this far. May as well try the last resort plan of 'wait with a single unit and hope the demon can solo everything for us.' Maybe we'll get some lucky rolls.

Well, it seems starting your turn with half your TUs surrounded by enemies that didn't need to shoot anything last turn makes it pretty hard to avoid being reaction fired into the dirt.

Arguably, this is a good thing. Now we can't be mind controlled, since we wake up on OUR turn. As long as they deal stun faster than we lose it, we should avoid dying... unless that purifier shows up and one shots us.

Shockingly, we've still got a bit of freshness left somehow. Morale is taking a shit kicking though. Which is a big chunk of our already shaky voodoo defense. I really should have spent an extra few months training her, at least until voodoo school was done. I dunno her skill cap, but we definitely hadn't reached it yet.

We're on our feet again! And the chancellor is close. If we can take it down with a lucky strike, maybe they'll go back to whiffing 95% of their psi attacks? It'd be a big morale boost too...

Lol nope we get like one step closer. It even lit us on fire, somehow.

Actually, we went down for a couple turns. We got full TUs again! Well, minus the 28 to grab our items...

No chancellor in sight. It must have wandered away. We just need one string of lucky rolls to get through that room. If the boss is there, we might be able to win. Though it was probably behind the one guarded by the purifier. Maybe they connect in the back?

We actually managed to cut down the scientist along the way (more to have fewer psi attacks than anything else) but we start eating reaction fire here.

This is fine. All according to cake.

We're actually back to full morale!

We managed to get back to here, and took out the operative too.

They had to cast a lot more at least, presumably due to extra distance and morale.

Holy fuck, Luka lives! I actually only noticed because I didn't take her turn and she got shot at.

Which sucks extra hard because she went berserk the next turn after eating that damage. Fuck.

But, she seems to have distracted the SGs. We got fewer psi attacks this time, and managed to regain control, we're into the room beyond! Doesn't look promising, I expect something more unique leading to the final boss. Or fucking exit tile, as the case might be.

We're way back in the corner though. Can't be much left in our way if it's back here.

Well, I expected this part.

Amazingly, we actually get back up, with some TUs no less! Must be hitting us with mind attacks we're nearly immune to...

It's a major TU cost, but I think the jacket is important, it's an extra 3 energy per turn. It's slim odds, but MAYBE Luka can take down the purifier and Chancellor. She's nigh immune to mind, and has awesome melee skills. Shame she's out of throwing stars, I'd take them over melee with that thing any day.

We're back on our feet, but we're obviously not going to get to that turret with 30% TUs left. We'll need to spend a turn waiting around the corner.

Scary as shit, considering we could get mind controlled way back out of here again.

Fuck. That wasn't part of the plan. I think Manatee going down over and over without any other high ranking people alive is destroying her morale. Shame we can't get the cake to her. At least she's immune to wounds and regenerates health slowly.

Not full TUs, but I'd rather take the fall than risk being controlled again.

Welp. Almost. This is within the plan!

Meanwhile, my autistic digging to find secrets has revealed... nothing. Honestly I'm a little worried the game will maphack her location and send the purifier to kill her.

Luka gets a turn again, and we manage to find and slay another operative! Not exactly swinging the tide to us, but it'll help.

Manatee must have got hit real hard, she never stays down for more than one turn. This is actually great news- she can recover two turns worth of TUs while asleep without a chance of mind control. If she had an inventory I'd be cooking grenades in her pockets.

Turn 39. Man, even this section ended up being a giant slog, huh? At least I don't have to manage many units now.

Can't ask for a better chance than this.

Hell yeah! It's a one tile turret, so it's subject to evasion! The fucking thing can't hit us!

We, uh, ran out of TUs though. Wait, is this actually really bad?

Guess we're about to find out.

It whiffs all it's shots again. But the real question is, did we get mind raped?

No! WE LIVE. It took a couple more slashes to kill, and gave us fuck all morale though.

Shit, not much point opening the door with 33 TUs. Seems we have another terrifying wait.

Speaking of which, I pulled Luka back into the tunnel here. I don't want to go down the elevator and get backstabbed. This should make whatever is out there walk into melee range and get got.

Or I fucked up the positioning. I don't even know what killed her. Some kind of electric or EMP attack happened, but I never saw the attacker. Goodbye Luka. You tried your best!

The silver lining is, it seems Luka distracted the enemies, as we once again had few psi attacks, and survived through them!

This twisty hallway is trapped with weird blue explosion mines.

They barely seem to affect us though. We took 4 health from that one, and I think a few damage to the under armour?

More doors. Almost there. This sort of last minute trap makes me sure this is the target.

Just Manatee and the catgirl now.

By some miracle we resist more psi attacks. I think the traps are draining our TUs, it took us a bit to get here. We'll need to chop the door down, so I'll save TUs for one more turn, so we have enough to attack whatever is past them.

One last good roll...

Yeah, they started chaining them.

And when they finally failed after a few turns- we went berserk instead. Our morale is thrashed, and with it, both our voodoo defense AND chances of taking a real turn.

When we next see where she is, Manatee is all the way out here again. Still, if we get some good rolls, maybe we can sprint back inside. Hell, maybe she'll wander back that way on her own?

Yeah, not so much.

Let me spare you a couple dozen turns and screenshots of those turns trying to keep track of how often we gain control- we don't. Next time we see Manatee, over a dozen turns later, she's over here. She dropped her items on this tile. She's near where Lenneth died, at room we haven't broken through yet. Even if we do regain control, now we need to not just run back to the goal, but run back here first to get weapons. But I have a plan. A daring, retarded plan. If I bring the hammer and the cake through an incredibly long tunnel all the way to the room we were at, we might be able to bust through the floor and drop into there with the catgirl and finish the run!

Well. Shit.

Strangely, despite having fuck all rank, Catgirl's morale is still pristine. I'm assuming some combination of suit, 130 bravery, titles and racial traits (the theban clones have something regarding bravery I'm sure) have made her immune to morale issues. Not all the catgirls were like this, but this one was. She's not even one of the good ones, she's lacking a lot of stats, mere warrior rank, not even a hero yet.

Well, we're clearly never getting Manatee back. It's been over 30 turns without a single instance of control + TUs. They can't even knock her down so she can wake up on our side, because she's recovered too much health to be stunned now. Maybe we could attack her ourselves to fix that? But how would we survive the enemies nearby? We wouldn't. And so, the final attempt shall be made. I was scared shitless coming back to this part of the map, I'm worried the purifier would be waiting around here or along the way.

Well, time to end this, one way or the other. I think this might come in handy.

Possibly this as well.

Turn 81, here we go!

After tediously dragging the BFG (it makes us overweight, I needed to drop it each turn) down the tunnel, I waited for full TUs and energy. Then I waited for this to happen. This is our chance- next turn the enemies will treat Manatee as an enemy and attack her, spending a bunch of TUs.

This yellow dot here? That's Manatee. The room between the elevators is where her gear is. Right of the elevators is the room we need to get to. Having Manatee win ain't happening.

But she can draw fire for a precious moment. Side note: there were several turns where the enemies were clearly going berserk, which I found hilarious. Seems they aren't having fun with an unkillable infinitely regenerating demon.

This is it. We're either going to win or lose in the next few turns. No more waiting for good RNG.

Even with full TUs and energy, we don't get all that far. If only we'd saved the hero catgirl instead of this one.

But we're in! And we didn't see enemies nearby on the way in. Or anywhere, for that matter. Which doesn't mean too much- the Operatives have INVIS and I suspect the purifier is even stealthier. We might have walked right past either.

No big deal, just 2 years of LP in the balance.

Another turn. We don't get much farther, but it IS farther in. Nothing attacked us. If Manatee hadn't cleared the way we'd already be dead by now.

I'm hoping for last minute assistance from her, but no such luck. Not even as a distraction.

Two more turns gets us here. I'm not even looking back, as it'd waste the TUs. Now we get to find out if the traps here are lethal to catgirls.

No traps! If they WERE lethal, Manatee disarmed them by stomping through!

We pass a turn and get enough TUs to open the door- but do I cut it open now? If there's a bigass turret in there or the boss is mobile and dangerous, we won't have a chance with half TUs. Part of why I brought the BFG here is in case we need to back up and fire it so the AoE blast can hit an enemy without us being in direct LoS. One more turn. The chances the enemy is following us and kills us in this one turn are surely lower than the chance whatever is behind this door kills us if we open it with 50% TUs.

92 damned turns. This'll be the last one, I expect.

Last minute distraction!

Holy shit, she's right outside the room. And she ran past the purifier! They ARE following us! Others might even be closer...

Slayer of Lenneth.

Ah, I recall researching this thing. Explains why it didn't just mincemeat Manatee with the scythe. Probably would have killed Lenneth with this even if we saw it coming- mind bypasses red shields and armour.

We're in! Is that it? That's gotta be the governor. Was kinda expecting an actual unit. Do we shoot or approach and slash? There could still be guards in there. If we shoot and it doesn't kill it, we'll have low TUs and might trigger reaction fire. If they're invisible and right next to the door, stepping forward might trigger melee and kill us instantly. I figure sword is the better option. Here goes!

Checkmate. With a pawn.

Wait, so Earth is basically still fucked? What an ending. My headcanon is that Manatee kept randomly breaking free and they never managed to kill her, so she just kept roaming Mars killing the bastards for eternity.

I'm with Farnsworth. Fuck earth. We're free baby!

No normal mission screen, sadly. I did have a backup before the mission, we can at least compare total kills/hostages from then to this to get a kill count. Totally going to do some epilogue updates where we read a bunch of spoilers, discuss them, and try some of the missions I missed or failed, now that the run has properly ended. BTW, thanks to everyone for not spoiling shit for me! Being able to do this whole crazy thing blind really made it special to me. Easily the best playthrough I've done in my life. High stakes, lots of surprises, and way, way too many close calls. Would have been so much more boring if I went in knowing exactly what to expect and what to bring.

So, which codex next?

 

[Damned Registrations]

They're overdoing it with the final mission indeed. How did my unit die again?

You got mind controlled in the residential section. Eventually you broke free, but on the top floors in the middle of a bunch of enemies. RIP.

 

[Arrowgrab]

Wow. Thanks for being the conductor on this amazing ride! Loot and pillage those space lanes forever.

I don't know how many endings there are right now, but AFAIK there's at least one which is better for Earth, which involves

Nazis

not getting the help of the Shadowmasters, and helping the less insane faction of the Humanists defeat the more insane ones, with involvement from Gudrun.

 

[Gumsmith]

Congratulations. Incredibly fortunate considering there was a 1 in 3 chance that that room would have held the brain.

Earth was never important to our eternal glory but I feel bad for all the crew left behind, I hope there was time to pick them up otherwise the solar governor's vessel is going to be quite empty.

 

[lightbane]

Holy cow, you won, somehow, against all odds! And Earth is fucked by the Shadow Gods who ate a lot of people or something like that but not everyone? Oops. Perhaps there's a point to not choosing a Codex.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Incredibly fortunate considering there was a 1 in 3 chance that that room would have held the brain.

I had no idea and would have lost my shit if the room was empty. It was the only one we could reach anyways, being adjacent to the map edge we could tunnel through.

I feel bad for all the crew left behind, I hope there was time to pick them up otherwise the solar governor's vessel is going to be quite empty.

I'm assuming the entire crew for the final mission was a suicide squad, and it was more members from Earth (we had like 200 crew in the bases still, plus all the runts and brainers and slaves...) that stole the governor's ship (Hah, what was left of it! We trashed that thing.) after we killed the brain and the whole system went to shit at once. Maybe I'm reading things wrong though.

And Earth is fucked by the Shadow Gods who ate a lot of people or something like that but not everyone?

It's fine, they just ate the bad guys! Probably. That guy that likes skulls might have gone a bit overboard. Best not to ask.

 

[Average Manatee]

Bless the unnamed catgirl. I wonder if having taken a different recruiting option path would have changed the ending? Obviously it assumes you're uber-focused in that epilogue, so maybe a catgirl path would have something to do with the neko empire? Obviously a codexless end probably has the earth not destroyed, I wonder if the codex saint path has an ending with you aligning with the shadow gods?

Note to self: If you're gonna make a Chort, make sure it has the best psi stats possible.

It seems like the difficulty of the final mission is a little self-inflicted by the lack of healing items. Especially when your codex allows for the savior armor. But then a 5 mission grindfest is also unexpected if you weren't forewarned. At least parts 1, 3 and 4 all seemed pretty easy in comparison to part 2, and part 5 would probably be a cinch if you came in without the casualties you did. All you needed was a few more nukes to clear the first room.

 

[Andnjord]

He did it! The madman fucking did it!

It is fitting that in a run plagued by endless casualties it came down to the unnamed cat girl in the end.


Absolutely fantastic ending and LP overall. This is the kind of LP that makes the Codex a truly special place.

 

[Gumsmith]

I feel bad for all the crew left behind, I hope there was time to pick them up otherwise the solar governor's vessel is going to be quite empty.

I'm assuming the entire crew for the final mission was a suicide squad, and it was more members from Earth (we had like 200 crew in the bases still, plus all the runts and brainers and slaves...) that stole the governor's ship (Hah, what was left of it! We trashed that thing.) after we killed the brain and the whole system went to shit at once. Maybe I'm reading things wrong though.

That would be much more heroic but there's only one Conqueror and it's a long journey to Mars. It might just be one of those things where the details aren't important.

 

[Damned Registrations]

It seems like the difficulty of the final mission is a little self-inflicted by the lack of healing items.

Not to mention my boneheaded decision to bring a bunch of people without exo-suits. I brought a gnome in a box instead of potentially 4 more catgirls. Gandalf showed up without a weapon. 3 people in bog standard space suits instead of armour. I had a refresher that could have solved the freshness issue for the most part, and left it behind. But yeah, healing items was another big part. Stings especially because I still had a bunch in the second level, but I left them behind, foolishly assuming the 3rd level would be the last one, and a tiny short one at that. Even a single extra liquid cool would have restored 60 freshness.

It is fitting that in a run plagued by endless casualties it came down to the unnamed cat girl in the end.

I know right? I'm so happy it ended the way it did. Even right down to the last couple turns I wasn't sure I was really going to win. The best victories are the closest ones. The only other mission we had that felt this good was the mansion after I burnt the stairs down. Lost a ton of good crew there as well.

It might just be one of those things where the details aren't important.

Yeah, probably best not to think about it too hard. I mean, how would we even get back out of the tram system? Why wouldn't the conqueror get shot to bits as soon as the fighting started? Did we just leave it sitting there on the surface? Fuck it, rule of cool- cut to black and then we're all back on the ship sailing away. Something something voodoo and wizards!

 

[Average Manatee]

Complain to Dioxine and ask for the ending to be better written . The ending that probably like 20 people have actually seen legitly.

The governor's ship probably qualifies as a fully fledged base with all the amenities needed to resurrect our characters so we all survived.

Also the first part took like 10 turns or so? If we guess that its 10 seconds per turn then that's under two minutes to clear the LZ. So the conquerer could have survived and by the time we're in the actual base there's no use calling in an airstrike on it.

 

[Jaedar]

Checkmate. With a pawn.

Amazing. I assume the blue explosions are emp mines.

There's 3 identical sections, two of them house a hologram of the brain instead of the real thing. So you got quite lucky with this final push, managing to get a chort to clear the mines and then sneak the catgirl in to finish.

Congratulations on finishing the run, and the LP.

Wait, so Earth is basically still fucked?

Yup, pretty much. Maybe the nekomimi can move in and make it a protectorate? But earth seems to basically be ruled by the new brain marssec patched together so...

that stole the governor's ship (Hah, what was left of it! We trashed that thing.)

Different ship, the B'ruh in the hangar was not 2km long. The ship you steal is an offscreen ship that is never mentioned before.

Bless the unnamed catgirl. I wonder if having taken a different recruiting option path would have changed the ending? Obviously it assumes you're uber-focused in that epilogue, so maybe a catgirl path would have something to do with the neko empire? Obviously a codexless end probably has the earth not destroyed, I wonder if the codex saint path has an ending with you aligning with the shadow gods?

Pretty sure the ending is the same as long as this is your final mission. I know of two other endings.

Damned Registrations is the restriction on spoilers over now?

The governor's ship probably qualifies as a fully fledged base with all the amenities needed to resurrect our characters so we all survived.

Except most of the corpses were irrecoverable, so everyone survives as ghosts. A haunted pirate space ship. Pretty fitting for the aesthetics.

 

[Damned Registrations]

@Damned Registrations is the restriction on spoilers over now?

Yeah it's all fair game now. I'll probably reload the pre-final mission save and try the nazi base or something, but I'm not concerned with spoilers at this point. I'll just be fucking around for a bit, and tomorrow I'm planning on opening up the tech viewer and wiki and such to see all the roads not taken, so to speak. While I like the idea of doing another playthrough with a different codex or something in theory, it'll be years before I feel up to that, and it'll probably be on a higher difficulty instead of ironman and blind to change the kind of challenges I'm dealing with significantly.

For anyone interested, the next LP I'm planning is going to be a Wiz 7 blind LP, but abusing the hell out of save scumming rather than an ironman attempt.

Different ship, the B'ruh in the hangar was not 2km long. The ship you steal is an offscreen ship that is never mentioned before.

Ah, that makes more sense.

xcept most of the corpses were irrecoverable, so everyone survives as ghosts. A haunted pirate space ship. Pretty fitting for the aesthetics.

Not to mention they probably got eaten by demons, exploded as we blew up the base, etc. The idea that our catgirl somehow backtracked out of the giant cave (past a very angry purifier and chancellor) through the tram system, and hauled even Manatee, let alone all the other bodies back to the conqueror is... a bit much. Maybe if there's some way the ship got brought closer to where the tram took us?

On the bright side, all the ghosts can be turned into Chorts! Well, the female ones anyways. RIP boys.

As far as spoilers go, I'm particularly curious about other ways the final mission can play out. Is it possible to encounter/kill the B'Ruh before getting here, so it's not in the hangar? What if you never built the conqueror, does it just skip that final ending slide or are there other major changes to the mission structure? What about the whole 'empower the mutants' thing we did, given the governments access to reticulan fusion engines and shit?

 

[Azira]

For anyone interested, the next LP I'm planning is going to be a Wiz 7 blind LP, but abusing the hell out of save scumming rather than an ironman attempt.

Ah, I see you're not beneath save-scumming in LPs either.

This has definitely been a ride. Personally, I'd have difficulty accepting defeat after sinking so many hours into it, if it were my own LP.
I just finished my first Honor Mode run of BG3, and the bullshit mechanics of the very last fight (platforms that disappear at the end of each turn, possibly all of them) had me win by the skin of my teeth. My very last attack before all platforms were eliminated managed to shave the last HP off the boss.
I'd have been pretty miffed if I'd wasted those 70+ hours..

 

[Jaedar]

As far as spoilers go, I'm particularly curious about other ways the final mission can play out. Is it possible to encounter/kill the B'Ruh before getting here, so it's not in the hangar? What if you never built the conqueror, does it just skip that final ending slide or are there other major changes to the mission structure? What about the whole 'empower the mutants' thing we did, given the governments access to reticulan fusion engines and shit?

Afaik, the engine doesn't really support that kind of thing. I think you can't ever encounter the B'ruh except here. I think the cutscene engine and scripting is too primitive to allow for alternate text as well.

There are two alternate endings (as far as I can tell), one for the gudrun questline (which you started but failed to complete) and one for joining aurora (which got added in the most recent patch). If you want to check out the aurora path, the string to search for in tech viewer is "Red-Eyed Ultimatum". It seems this path starts after you take out the first orbiting shadowtech. I think at least one more ending is planned (red mage path).
I will also note that the other questlines end with two-part missions, and not a 5 mission slog. Potentially this ending is intended to be the hardest as it's the only one where you stand alone?

Empowering the mutants makes them spawn ships that are not hostile to you, and which give you infamy if they don't get shot down (and stops some pogroms from spawning). Fusing human and reticulan tech makes the normal gov and reticulan ships stop appearing, in favor of new hybrid ships.

 

[lightbane]

It seems like the difficulty of the final mission is a little self-inflicted by the lack of healing items. Especially when your codex allows for the savior armor. But then a 5 mission grindfest is also unexpected if you weren't forewarned. At least parts 1, 3 and 4 all seemed pretty easy in comparison to part 2, and part 5 would probably be a cinch if you came in without the casualties you did. All you needed was a few more nukes to clear the first room.

I found odd that D wasn't using healing items, that's why.

Complain to Dioxine and ask for the ending to be better written . The ending that probably like 20 people have actually seen legitly.

Eh, the game is known by like 100 people so it checks out.

Yup, pretty much. Maybe the nekomimi can move in and make it a protectorate? But earth seems to basically be ruled by the new brain marssec patched together so...

It would be cool if being Codexless gave you a slightly better ending. What triggers the appearance of shadowgods? Investigating the 'Gates? Can you do a codex path and still get a better ending?

Empowering the mutants makes them spawn ships that are not hostile to you, and which give you infamy if they don't get shot down (and stops some pogroms from spawning). Fusing human and reticulan tech makes the normal gov and reticulan ships stop appearing, in favor of new hybrid ships.

It also makes you able to stop being skullfucked by the Syndicate if you were foolish enough to accept their deal, as it locks you in a series of missions that take a lot of infamy and removes even more if you refuse IIRC, as they pressure you on doing their dirty work.
As for the endigns, the one against the humanists is supposedly very difficult. I hope in five years the mod is fully complete... Or at least all endings are done.

 

[Luka-boy]

Goodbye Luka. You tried your best!

Hey, glory to the last one to die, right?

Congratulations, man. One hell of a LP and the ending was top-tier!

Imagine if you dropped it a year ago when you thought you couldn't recover from those setbacks.

 

[Arrowgrab]

For anyone interested, the next LP I'm planning is going to be a Wiz 7 blind LP, but abusing the hell out of save scumming rather than an ironman attempt.

One vote for single-character Fairy Alchemist -> Ninja playthrough!
(Not really, if you're playing blind, you should take a full party.)

 

[Jaedar]

As for the endigns, the one against the humanists is supposedly very difficult. I hope in five years the mod is fully complete... Or at least all endings are done.

Yeah, seems like there's... 5 or so more missions after the humanist hq. I doubt all of them are harder, but I also doubt the hq is the hardest.

While I like the idea of doing another playthrough with a different codex or something in theory, it'll be years before I feel up to that, and it'll probably be on a higher difficulty instead of ironman and blind to change the kind of challenges I'm dealing with significantly.

Going from 3rd to 4th difficulty isn't a big bump. And 5th is.... more of a troll than anything else. I guess it could be fun as a "see how long you can go before game overing" type of deal.

 

[Damned Registrations]

I guess it could be fun as a "see how long you can go before game overing" type of deal.

Hence the abuse of spoilers and savescumming. The way I see it there's two kinds of challenge in a game generally- figuring out the system on your own via context, educated guesses and experiments; or optimizing your play via knowledge of that system. While I generally prefer a mix of the two, there's something to be said for maximizing the latter type of challenge, by giving yourself all the info and seeing if you can take the system to it's limits. As an example, I'd put decent odds I could beat the entire final mission with a single character now that I know where all the the stuff is. It'd involve a lot of digging tunnels and such, but with all the best items collected on a single character, and being able to just sprint to the exit tiles, you could do some crazy shit. Savescumming would also allow keeping characters alive for the entire game. As crazy as our best characters were, they could have been significantly stronger if they'd been alive for the entire game. Like, what does a character with 250 throwing skill look like? We'd have 0-1000 damage laser stars. It'd take scoring 20 kills with a hundred different weapons, but I reckon that's doable with savescumming and intent. Good luck killing a character that does that kind of damage, hiding in a tunnel with 200 reactions or some shit.

Ah, I see you're not beneath save-scumming in LPs either.

It's actually because I got in an argument with someone here about how it trivializes challenges. They argued it wouldn't make a game like Wiz 7 easy. I intend to prove my point. Should be an interesting run regardless.

 

[Jaedar]

Hence the abuse of spoilers and savescumming.

I'm honestly not sure that's enough. Have you tried the 5th difficulty before? Although I guess it depends on how much time you're willing to savescum perfection. You could reroll every month 500 times until you get the perfect combo of events and missions.

 

[Average Manatee]

Going from 3rd to 4th difficulty isn't a big bump. And 5th is.... more of a troll than anything else. I guess it could be fun as a "see how long you can go before game overing" type of deal.

As long as you spam half your base full of defenses against missiles and base assaults you should be close to immune to losing. Once your bases are untouchable the only way to lose is either points or failing the final mission, both of which should be pretty avoidable. It's gonna be an economic/tech rush to base defenses but it doesn't seem quite impossible. Base defenses aren't too expensive as long as you're aware of when the missiles start coming, have them researched, and finish them up with enough firepower ahead of time. The danger is being only half-ready in which case you still lose a ton of economic structures and have barely rebuilt by the next time a strike comes.

And if you're fine with savescumming then you could do with far fewer defenses and just savescum the missile defense rolls.