Great tips thanks. I'm 5 hours in and I'm on my 3rd return trip to Dead Hills. My 1st deployment I was sh*tting myself ,learning the controls and mechanics of the game. 2nd deployment I got loads done with no casualties. Your right, it's about patience and planning. I love this game ☺️
I have restarted mid campaign from medium to nightmare difficulty. Without the practice from medium I would not have made it, but the one big thing I have learned is that stealth is key. Being stealthy keeps stress low and resource stacks high and Hive aggression as low as possible. Hive aggression is a key aspect in long deployments, because it effectively means the aliens push back. And on nightmare that pushback becomes hard to manage once it reaches medium. Once it reaches high on nightmare even a successful retreat and extraction become tense challenges. The game does an amazing job of letting you feel the pressure of an alien hive wanting you dead..
Love this Game. Currently at the last mission of the first map. Thanks for your guide, it is very helpful. Wishing all of you a happy christmas season.
A few things that have been invaluable for my survival: 1. When you're facing an ambush or a set piece that benefits from the use of turrets, make sure you have a flamethrower handy. Not because they deal good damage but because they will cause enemies to find a way around the fire which slows them down and can be used to direct them into a fatal funnel; 2. Dump mats into any attribute that will increase the accuracy of you're gunners, they will become your massive damage dealers; 3. If you can afford it in mats & attribute slots, give as many of your marines ammo pouches as possible and even better the attribute "Resourceful". You can never have too much ammo in this game but once you run out and have to rely on their side arms just to get to the extractions point, you'll wish you had the ability.
Even a flame wall for a singular choke point still softens them up when they choose to run through it. There was one room I was in during an aggressive hunt that only had one entrance but all the Xenos thought they could get in through a blocked hole in an adjacent room. So they kept going there to avoid the fire until the hunt expired.
Biggest issue that I see with streamers and youtubers playing this game is the lack of patience. They just run around like headless chickens and then get angry and frustrated when they constantly run into hiding/roaming xenos and end up being hunted constantly. Hitting those medium/hard aggros really fast.
Everything counts in this game! Unfortunately most of the players don't appreciate how amazing and cool is this game! I guess is the best Alien video game, even better than Alien Isolation in my opinion! Because it makes you a better player after you learn from your mistakes!
You can grind to level 10 on the first level. Do everything except the mines. Then just park your APC outside the nightclub and harvest XP through surviving waves and the level 2 xenos. You can get up to 5 XP per marine per mission (or 3 if the APC takes down the level 2's). You'll end up with a high infestation setting, but you'll get a bunch of marines to Level 10 and be rocking plasma rifles for your first encounter with a Queen. There's a single door room nearby which you can use to destress your marines until your sarge gets to the point he can shout at them to keep them level headed. Techs and their drones should be in your first run through of any level. Just go find somewhere safe and set up your turrets - then use the drones to map the entire area. That solves a lot of the jump scare problems.
this tip is invalid on nightmare, you will be long out of ammo, med kits before anywhere close to level 10. Level 5 is plenty to take out a Queen even on nightmare.
I'm playing for first time and I think I have three more missions to beat the game. I didn't know you could level up your marines to level 10 at first mission. After my deployment I took my first squad and finished all the objectives at first map then I just triggered the onslaught to get level 2 xino then after no more ammo, I extracted the squad. I deployed again with my second to beat the queen in the mine and triggered onslaught again until ran out ammo then extracted. I could only got one level up for my two squads so how could you get level 10 unless you kept redeploying the same map over and over but that would make the planet infestation level go up so crazy
Get a level 6 sergent and just hit reprimand whenever you are detected and you can go all day under 100% stress. If you never pass 100% stress you never get a trauma.
I’ve had a lot of success with two team mate deployments! I use a well built marksman with the silencer ability and a tecker by his side with mines and slowly work my way through. I play on hard so I’ve had to reload a lot but it helped me heal up my whole squad to full while they went and completed several missions! Not only is it easier to keep them concealed but with the motion trackers distraction feature they can slip through almost anything it feels like! They even killed a queen!
Damn that makes a lot of sense! I know the Recon once upgraded is a game changer with it’s silent shot capability. I never thought about pairing up two really beefy built Marines instead of bringing 4 pretty solid ones! Thanks for the tip.
@pixelatedthoughts thank you redemption is good to as well as smart ass if no teckers are you people but redemption is really great for people who are klypto or the one with things like trauma that can't be removed.
One thing I’d say is to have some of your marines not have their perks picked yet until they reach their class, that way you can have them get more specialized abilities instead of a couple or so, and 1 more ammo resource
@@pixelatedthoughts certainly does, but a more specialized sergeant or medic can be just as valuable, not being able to reassign a perk can make you plan ahead on what you’re wanting for your marines
I've finished the game on nightmare and now I'm going again with all the hardest config (+5 zeno damage etc, except the restricted saving option). I'm developing some hardcore strategies that might prove useful: 1 - Try as hard as you can to fulfil all objectives on the level, resting and collecting everything along the way, and using elevators as saving points. The infestation level really matters, and if you get a high level of infestation soon, it's pretty hard to handle the waves of zenos when detected; 2 - Spread motion trackers and mines strategically on the map. They reduce the risk of detection by displaying enemy location and maiming or killing patrolling zenos. Detection is juggling with death and increase threat level; 3 - Lose sentry guns but don't lose soldiers. Try to deploy with all 4 sentries or more if possible. Soldiers take too long to replace and abilities are expensive and valuable; 4 - Invest in arsenal upgrade ASAP, but always keep someone with a flamwthrower, a landmine, a grenade launcher and a shotgun on special equip; 5 - Techer drones can attrack alien attention and may save you. It's worth investing; 6 - Invest on removing the tired effect on level-up upgrades. I reuse high level marines as long as I can; 7 - Try always to return home stressless and healthy to avoid a long medic aisle stay; 8 - Snipers with silencers are also crucial to take hybernating or even patrolling zenos unnoticed;
Finished the game after trying different settings (loved it, the rest here may be spoilers so don't read if you're going to play) , I play mostly to have fun so I put their life on easy, the rest on medium except for how fast the hive gets angry that I put on hard. I'd say the game has a bit of a balancing issue, the xenomorphs in canon don't have that much health because the pulse rifles have explosive tipped bullets and rip them to shreds so I think they should actually make much bigger hoards. The xenomorph life should be something between easy and medium health for the medium campaign and the game should have bigger hoards when they attack to the point that when you piss off the hive completely, you will get overrun and you have no choice but to get out of there and redeploy later. For the category 2 xeno's, the life just go's too much down, it becomes too easy to take them down. That is the only real issue I saw aside from the bugs that they will fix and jesus I love hearing something dying from a mine. The game is like an Alien fans wet dream, Isolation is Alien and Dark Descent is Aliens. These are the best Alien games that have ever graced our lives.
To add on to the advice on shortcuts: I'd say one of the most important things to think about when traversing the map is whether you actually want to open a short cut. In early missions, the number of roaming hostiles is pretty low, especially as aliens seem to more frequently get stuck in ambush loops (constantly deciding to teleport to another vent instead of roaming), allowing relatively free roam. But at around the mid point in the game that stops (maybe it relates to Alien Infestation level, to be fair). A sometimes frustrating amount of hostiles roam the map, and they typically either respawn instantly upon death (and then their respawned AI just sprints to where they died...not sure if that's a bug or not but it is very annoying) or entropy will decide to have an alien respawn only when you walk through one with a spawn point, or when you are in a junction of rooms where avoiding detection is nearly impossible, if not outright so. At that point, having these pockets in the map with indestructible barriers (welded doors kinda suck at this and cost an important resource) becomes amazing. Because you can set up some motion sensors in the long winding paths that you 've chosen not to open up with short cuts and, when overloading them, really lock the mob of enemies in a maze. Which is doubly great because human enemies seem to cause traffic jams through some kinda funky collision detection. It isn't usually a stop to aliens, but it adds to the time where they are somewhere else. Generally, its good advice to set up a net of motion trackers purely for map awareness, but when you're just 'done' with a portion of the map (no objectives, no important resources to go back to), you also get the freedom to burn them to keep hostiles busy and roam relatively freely. Because killing them is a waste of time and, if you do it directly (triggering a hunt), pointlessly accrued stress. Remember: Fighting the aliens gives you nothing in xp. Overcoming the 'special' fights like the minibosses and onslaught waves gets you a miniscule amount of marine xp. Sometimes equipment kills do, too, but it's super inconsistent. The game *really* pushes you to try to ensure if a fight has to happen, that it happens through killing enemies with traps from equipment or Sentry turrets (sentry turrets shooting makes a lot of noise, but doesn't trigger a hunt). -- Separately a pretty important control tip that isn't mentioned in the game is that if multiple marines have the same equipment or special abilities, you can switch who uses them with a press of the 'Tab' key when aiming the ability. Also fun fact: A lot of people stop using shotguns when they unlock other special weapons, but one advantage of the shotgun is thay a marine can use it while sprinting. I'm pretty sure the marine who used it continued to sprint while readying the shot gun, but if not, then it was very fast swap.
I play like you. Stay hidden and fool the ai as much as possible. Every map turns into a motion tracker minefield in 10 minutes. You can also move the APC around to take out so many enemies on some maps to get resources for free. And open ground
Motion trackers are so important, as you are walking around place them around the map then if you need to clear a path of aliens just activate one to overload Also if you can, place them round an APC point you can attract aliens and humans to that point and watch the APC (which is indestructible do the rest) 🔥
I've seen gameplay that was a breeze vs mine that was complete chaos. Especially the queen fight. One guy beat the queen and things were mellow afterwards. I beat the queen had a mass outbreak happen shortly after
The balance part depends on playstyle tbh. The way I play, in a 4 man squad I generally run Sgt, Gunny, Gunny, Recon. My playstyle is heavily stealthy and caitous until the game forces your hand so I dont run into situations where I truly need a Medic or a Tech. Someone in the squad has the Smarta$$ perk so I can hack without a techy. I only use a techy once I let them sit in the training room going intense until they can get all the drone upgrades, and even then I only take one on heavy heavy xeno maps since they ignore the drone.
Good tips, man! I’m having a blast with this one too even getting my ass kicked more often than I’d like to admit lol. One thing I would add that I learned the hard way is that your squad/Marine’s experience basically stacks. So complete as many objectives as possible and don’t extract until the squad is combat ineffective basically. I was having trouble getting my “backup” Marines to rank up and it’s because I was playing it TOO safe and extracting much too frequently. Bonus is this also helps keep the Infestation timer lower.
Try this, it's my style: if you have a seargent, build a squad around the officer and use reprimand. Go to central locations and set up motion trackers. Snipe single enemies and small groups with scouts. When you contact the enemy fall back to safe zones and have them mined and sentried. Have sentry guns ready all the time. This style will keep stress super low, and you will not be detected by the enemy and can finish missions in one run. You can set up mined and sentried kill zones with your troops covering in an adjacent area - keep them hidden until you need them. Set the tracker to overcharge. The aliens run into the kill zone, you get samples and a cleared area with minimum resources expended and you have remained undetected.
at most i have managed to do is to get 10 objectives done with a single squad (mostly due to i found most of the ammo stashes so didn't wanna reset them to 4) overall they took only minor damage.. gotta say the APC is a god send against swarms when you are the ground floor (haven't gone outside the first mission yet)
I got a nice little bug/tip for ya bud. Xenos and cultists, every now and again will get stuck on something ((or sometimes they are locked inside a room, just make sure you can see them on your motion tracker for this to work)), which is a double edged bug in its self, it may get stuck in your way...but! There can only be a certain amount of enemies out on the field at any given time, so those stuck xenos in one area? Are 2 xenos that won't respawn in another area giving you smooth sailing to some objectives sometimes. Just a little heads up to use the borked AI against it.
Honestly Skip the tech, you can get the ability to unlock doors by using tools on any marine. Grab that then run the other 4 classes, the only thing you miss out on is the turret suppression which isn't really a big deal. If you take things slow and hunt for supplies and you can beat the game with 1 squad on hard. I tried to get all objs on one run (and did for most missions) though I only had 3 days till the nukes dropped, So I was cutting it very close.
Great video, a important topic use motion trackers and when trying to get pass a area and want to avoid combat ping the trackers the Aliens will go towards the sound giving you that brief window to pass a area undetected.
I keep hearing everyone saying I play on nightmare or hard and I'm sure it's hard but play on no one can hear you scream even on normal it's super hard you have to plan your strategy.
This game is brutal because the aliens are brutal. But the cool thing is that if you learn from your mistakes, the games becomes very rewarding. It feels very fair.
ressource is first get the bags 40% more ressource changes a lot of things! 7 or 8 med pack too. some buffs are better than others! you don't need the reload speed.. except on your gunner but if you get the 10% more ressource take that instead never tired one is really good in the long run 3 days max wounded too crit on sniper but take the bag first.. lol running faster you will get later with your recon and it's not additive with the perk it's all i could think of
Haven't beaten it yet, so mileage may vary going forward, but so far I've solved like 95% of my problems in this game with liberal use of turrets, suppressive fire, and flamethrowers.
Finished game on hard on first playthrough last night. Watching your video dealing with one single crusher on normal difficulty made me laugh my ass off.
@@pixelatedthoughts I got my ass handed to me plenty, no matter if i tried guns blazing or super stealthy, trust me. Great game, but it has balance and bug issues that stops it from being epic. Also, base building and squad management is rudimentary compared to x-com series. They will probably add more in a sequel, maybe. One of the biggest frustrations on some leves on higher difficulties is the fact that aliens just keep coming non-stop before, during and after massive onslaugh phase. You either get zerged-overrun or you run out of ammo and supplies to continue the level, or even make it out to APC extraction point. Oh and yeah, losing level 4-10 marine at some point of the game is a no-go, even if you save everybody on every mission and have plenty of recruits in the pool. As the game goes on you will be lucky to have Squad A with higher level, and Squad B that will have chance to level up and progress on missions where your main team will be out of action. On the last mission i had two 5 guys all maxed out lvl 10+ marines, and even with super careful+load-save retries had to extract them 3 times, with last effort team i had 4 veterans and one level 1 rookie doing the last mission lol, because everybody else was either tired-wounded or half insane :)
I'm really liking this game. Currently, I'm confused about something, because I haven't gotten far enough, yet. My marines were at 3 Trauma points and low health, at the end of a mission. I didn't want to take them back like that, so I rested in a room, until all the trauma was gone, and they were 100% health, again. It did not seem to affect their hospital stay. Many still needed 9 day in the med bay, and have a new bad trait added to them. a) Is that new trauma trait permenant? b) Is there a way to avoid this, later? c) do I just save the tools and med packs, and return to base, broken men?
People who just watch and haven't played this game dont really capture the dynamic suspense and difficulty of this game. This game is like the Dark Souls of turn based games. Its a BIG learning curb that introduces very unique and even new mechanics, its unforgiving and brutal. You cant just start playing this game blind and do well. Reading the map is a chore and requires careful observation and identifying lootable items is not shared by the tutorial. Understanding enemy behavior requires experiencing everything they are capable of (which means allot of damage taken). Just like understanding squad behavior. At first glance It looked allot like XCom-2 in real time, but its way more dynamic because you cant just bully or overpower the Aliens. The Aliens clearly dominate close combat in the early game. And there's allot of scripted surprise encounters that requires replaying and memorizing to play safe because they will pulverize the squad. The "rest"/Save mechanic is like Darkest Dungeon and Resident Evil, but more so it requires getting an item to be able to save (Like Kingdom Come Deliverance). The chemistry between difficult game mechanics is refreshing. People who watch this game without commentary or blind gameplay will not understand the scenarios. It look generic or repetitive, especially with the repetitive npc banter and the scanner noise. But when you are the one playing, that scanner noise is nerve wracking and the npc banter is muffled by the amount of thought put into playing. The game is bugged, some character models can be seen through walls when animations dont complete as intended. The cursor is abysmal on PC, its hard to track when distracted and sometimes the map moves without choosing to. Which is very bad for the gameplay where the most you can do is slow the frames. For an Alien game, its unexpectedly interesting. Alien Universe actually has way more going on than Xenomorphs or even Predators. There's hostile lifeforms of many variety the mega corporations either keep a secret or just dont know about. And the Xenomorph isn't the first hostile lifeform the colonial marines learned to fights. There's allot of others. There's a treasure trove of literature such as Dark Horse comics and the novels. Alien "Bug Hunt" is a very good novel that presents the background of marines from Alien 2 familiarizing with "bug hunting" much before their encounter with the xenomorph. Which is context vaguely shared in the movie. And the negative quirks the marines have is a reference to the board game and the concept that appearances can be deceiving and good guys are rare.
Do not spend your resources (tools) to weld random doors for whatever reason except for making a safe-room to regen/auto-save game progress. Check what is the progress of hunted bar, is any event coming during next hunt (onslaught or strong enemy spawn). If you're not ready for that - even the first hunt mobs can make a lot of problems for you in a bad spot. Onslaught will overrun marines. Keeping stress levels as low as possible is essential, not wasting tools to recover stress all the time is important as well. Sometimes you feel like you're in a good spot but difficulty spikes so hard and events happen, then smooth almost-all-done run becomes a clusterfuck where you get punished more and lose more than gain. You have to have at least two full squads ready to switch over. Best marines often go in as second team to finish the mission as they will have better chance. You should not get damaged much, something is wrong with tactics if you receive damage too often or too much.
*clears throat* That's X-Com, baby! Games like these sometimes put you in an oh shit corner, and one mistake means a teamwipe. Sometimes, it'll throw so much at you, but it's all doable. Save scumming is helpful.😂 Just play see what the game does, then reload and try something completely different. Also, tactical games sometimes it's better to take every area slow. Build up at least 2 or 3 teams don't just rely on 1 team otherwise you'll screw yourself over.
You could explain the death clock to newcomers and tell them about how after a certain point you only have 20-30 days to finish the game, I wish I'd known to set that to easiest setting before starting a hard run.
I'm at 72% campaign completion with 3 days left, and I already got the prompt to "hack" cerberus to extend the time by a whopping 2 days. Does the game ending because of the bombardment at least count as finishing the game? Or should I just start a new playthrough?
@@anderescobar4752 Honestly no clue brother, but it sounds like that will be game over, maaan. It's still an ending, but the "bad" ending? You're our guinee pig here, as I've been taking my time. I just rescued the guy from Tantalus and have 9(?) days left, so it doesn't seem possible for me, especially with losing a day between deployments (which really sucks, what's the point of having squad rotation if they can't get the APC ready within an hour? However, the next update's patch notes say they will be giving us an option to REMOVE the death clock, so if you plan on another playthrough I'd just wait a while. I personally plan on going again, hard, hard, hard and no death clock.
Actually you don't really need to balance your squad. Don't need a technician if you get the smart ass trait on another class for example. You just don't get the drone which is imo only useful to safely explore the map before moving. I'd just recommend having at least a medic since they are the only one that can revive a downed marine. 4 Sergeants + 1 Medic or 3 + 2 is what I like to go for
Like a dumbass, I got this game on PS4. Hey, I wanted to play it in comfort. I regret this decision. The game is almost unplayable on this hardware and looks like garbage, at times. I had countless game breaking, save scumming bugs. Regardless and despite all of its many many many many many flaws, on this hardware, I ended up loving the game. I only wish they would include a new game plus mode. Ultimately building up your marines, is pointless, and I hate that. I want to begin a harder difficulty but with badasses under my command. Also, the mid game time limit and planetary infestation mechanic need to not exist at all or only in higher difficulties or challenge modes. I for one hate racing against a clock and it sucked a lot of the fun out of the game for me.
Great tips thanks. I'm 5 hours in and I'm on my 3rd return trip to Dead Hills. My 1st deployment I was sh*tting myself ,learning the controls and mechanics of the game. 2nd deployment I got loads done with no casualties. Your right, it's about patience and planning. I love this game ☺️
I have restarted mid campaign from medium to nightmare difficulty.
Without the practice from medium I would not have made it, but the one big thing I have learned is that stealth is key.
Being stealthy keeps stress low and resource stacks high and Hive aggression as low as possible.
Hive aggression is a key aspect in long deployments, because it effectively means the aliens push back. And on nightmare that pushback becomes hard to manage once it reaches medium. Once it reaches high on nightmare even a successful retreat and extraction become tense challenges. The game does an amazing job of letting you feel the pressure of an alien hive wanting you dead..
Love this Game. Currently at the last mission of the first map. Thanks for your guide, it is very helpful. Wishing all of you a happy christmas season.
A few things that have been invaluable for my survival: 1. When you're facing an ambush or a set piece that benefits from the use of turrets, make sure you have a flamethrower handy. Not because they deal good damage but because they will cause enemies to find a way around the fire which slows them down and can be used to direct them into a fatal funnel; 2. Dump mats into any attribute that will increase the accuracy of you're gunners, they will become your massive damage dealers; 3. If you can afford it in mats & attribute slots, give as many of your marines ammo pouches as possible and even better the attribute "Resourceful". You can never have too much ammo in this game but once you run out and have to rely on their side arms just to get to the extractions point, you'll wish you had the ability.
All good pieces of advice!
Even a flame wall for a singular choke point still softens them up when they choose to run through it. There was one room I was in during an aggressive hunt that only had one entrance but all the Xenos thought they could get in through a blocked hole in an adjacent room. So they kept going there to avoid the fire until the hunt expired.
Biggest issue that I see with streamers and youtubers playing this game is the lack of patience. They just run around like headless chickens and then get angry and frustrated when they constantly run into hiding/roaming xenos and end up being hunted constantly. Hitting those medium/hard aggros really fast.
it's like that for any unique game that requires having a functioning brain
Everything counts in this game! Unfortunately most of the players don't appreciate how amazing and cool is this game! I guess is the best Alien video game, even better than Alien Isolation in my opinion! Because it makes you a better player after you learn from your mistakes!
You can grind to level 10 on the first level. Do everything except the mines. Then just park your APC outside the nightclub and harvest XP through surviving waves and the level 2 xenos. You can get up to 5 XP per marine per mission (or 3 if the APC takes down the level 2's). You'll end up with a high infestation setting, but you'll get a bunch of marines to Level 10 and be rocking plasma rifles for your first encounter with a Queen. There's a single door room nearby which you can use to destress your marines until your sarge gets to the point he can shout at them to keep them level headed.
Techs and their drones should be in your first run through of any level. Just go find somewhere safe and set up your turrets - then use the drones to map the entire area. That solves a lot of the jump scare problems.
this tip is invalid on nightmare, you will be long out of ammo, med kits before anywhere close to level 10. Level 5 is plenty to take out a Queen even on nightmare.
I listen to comedy while playing to defuse the tension.
I'm playing for first time and I think I have three more missions to beat the game. I didn't know you could level up your marines to level 10 at first mission. After my deployment I took my first squad and finished all the objectives at first map then I just triggered the onslaught to get level 2 xino then after no more ammo, I extracted the squad. I deployed again with my second to beat the queen in the mine and triggered onslaught again until ran out ammo then extracted. I could only got one level up for my two squads so how could you get level 10 unless you kept redeploying the same map over and over but that would make the planet infestation level go up so crazy
@@lot5953 thanks gang stalker
@@PhillipJermakian haha 🤣 my bad. Now I remember I responded to you before.. my short term memory here
Don't forget to use the flairs if you got time to set up. 10 bonus accuracy.
I should've used those more tbh
Dam I gotta start using them
Great advice. Didnt use them at all on my first playthrough. Awesome for kill box.
Get a level 6 sergent and just hit reprimand whenever you are detected and you can go all day under 100% stress. If you never pass 100% stress you never get a trauma.
I’ve had a lot of success with two team mate deployments! I use a well built marksman with the silencer ability and a tecker by his side with mines and slowly work my way through. I play on hard so I’ve had to reload a lot but it helped me heal up my whole squad to full while they went and completed several missions! Not only is it easier to keep them concealed but with the motion trackers distraction feature they can slip through almost anything it feels like! They even killed a queen!
Good idea, I think I'll apply that next. Cheers!
Damn that makes a lot of sense! I know the Recon once upgraded is a game changer with it’s silent shot capability. I never thought about pairing up two really beefy built Marines instead of bringing 4 pretty solid ones! Thanks for the tip.
You can choose how many Marines to deploy?
How? Or do they need to be exhausted etc?
Best tip for newbie make all marines first upgrades pouches nothing else first than aim for unbreakable will and mind of steel asap
Very good tips.
@pixelatedthoughts thank you redemption is good to as well as smart ass if no teckers are you people but redemption is really great for people who are klypto or the one with things like trauma that can't be removed.
One thing I’d say is to have some of your marines not have their perks picked yet until they reach their class, that way you can have them get more specialized abilities instead of a couple or so, and 1 more ammo resource
Having extra resources in general is HUGE.
@@pixelatedthoughts certainly does, but a more specialized sergeant or medic can be just as valuable, not being able to reassign a perk can make you plan ahead on what you’re wanting for your marines
I've finished the game on nightmare and now I'm going again with all the hardest config (+5 zeno damage etc, except the restricted saving option). I'm developing some hardcore strategies that might prove useful:
1 - Try as hard as you can to fulfil all objectives on the level, resting and collecting everything along the way, and using elevators as saving points. The infestation level really matters, and if you get a high level of infestation soon, it's pretty hard to handle the waves of zenos when detected;
2 - Spread motion trackers and mines strategically on the map. They reduce the risk of detection by displaying enemy location and maiming or killing patrolling zenos. Detection is juggling with death and increase threat level;
3 - Lose sentry guns but don't lose soldiers. Try to deploy with all 4 sentries or more if possible. Soldiers take too long to replace and abilities are expensive and valuable;
4 - Invest in arsenal upgrade ASAP, but always keep someone with a flamwthrower, a landmine, a grenade launcher and a shotgun on special equip;
5 - Techer drones can attrack alien attention and may save you. It's worth investing;
6 - Invest on removing the tired effect on level-up upgrades. I reuse high level marines as long as I can;
7 - Try always to return home stressless and healthy to avoid a long medic aisle stay;
8 - Snipers with silencers are also crucial to take hybernating or even patrolling zenos unnoticed;
Finished the game after trying different settings (loved it, the rest here may be spoilers so don't read if you're going to play) , I play mostly to have fun so I put their life on easy, the rest on medium except for how fast the hive gets angry that I put on hard. I'd say the game has a bit of a balancing issue, the xenomorphs in canon don't have that much health because the pulse rifles have explosive tipped bullets and rip them to shreds so I think they should actually make much bigger hoards. The xenomorph life should be something between easy and medium health for the medium campaign and the game should have bigger hoards when they attack to the point that when you piss off the hive completely, you will get overrun and you have no choice but to get out of there and redeploy later. For the category 2 xeno's, the life just go's too much down, it becomes too easy to take them down. That is the only real issue I saw aside from the bugs that they will fix and jesus I love hearing something dying from a mine.
The game is like an Alien fans wet dream, Isolation is Alien and Dark Descent is Aliens. These are the best Alien games that have ever graced our lives.
It's so much fun
The patches really sorted it out though.
A some point it probably makes more sense to start missions with the B-C teams to help them level. Then bring in the A-team for the boss fights.
To add on to the advice on shortcuts:
I'd say one of the most important things to think about when traversing the map is whether you actually want to open a short cut.
In early missions, the number of roaming hostiles is pretty low, especially as aliens seem to more frequently get stuck in ambush loops (constantly deciding to teleport to another vent instead of roaming), allowing relatively free roam.
But at around the mid point in the game that stops (maybe it relates to Alien Infestation level, to be fair). A sometimes frustrating amount of hostiles roam the map, and they typically either respawn instantly upon death (and then their respawned AI just sprints to where they died...not sure if that's a bug or not but it is very annoying) or entropy will decide to have an alien respawn only when you walk through one with a spawn point, or when you are in a junction of rooms where avoiding detection is nearly impossible, if not outright so.
At that point, having these pockets in the map with indestructible barriers (welded doors kinda suck at this and cost an important resource) becomes amazing. Because you can set up some motion sensors in the long winding paths that you 've chosen not to open up with short cuts and, when overloading them, really lock the mob of enemies in a maze. Which is doubly great because human enemies seem to cause traffic jams through some kinda funky collision detection. It isn't usually a stop to aliens, but it adds to the time where they are somewhere else.
Generally, its good advice to set up a net of motion trackers purely for map awareness, but when you're just 'done' with a portion of the map (no objectives, no important resources to go back to), you also get the freedom to burn them to keep hostiles busy and roam relatively freely. Because killing them is a waste of time and, if you do it directly (triggering a hunt), pointlessly accrued stress.
Remember: Fighting the aliens gives you nothing in xp. Overcoming the 'special' fights like the minibosses and onslaught waves gets you a miniscule amount of marine xp. Sometimes equipment kills do, too, but it's super inconsistent. The game *really* pushes you to try to ensure if a fight has to happen, that it happens through killing enemies with traps from equipment or Sentry turrets (sentry turrets shooting makes a lot of noise, but doesn't trigger a hunt).
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Separately a pretty important control tip that isn't mentioned in the game is that if multiple marines have the same equipment or special abilities, you can switch who uses them with a press of the 'Tab' key when aiming the ability.
Also fun fact: A lot of people stop using shotguns when they unlock other special weapons, but one advantage of the shotgun is thay a marine can use it while sprinting. I'm pretty sure the marine who used it continued to sprint while readying the shot gun, but if not, then it was very fast swap.
Great advice, appreciate the insight.
I play like you. Stay hidden and fool the ai as much as possible. Every map turns into a motion tracker minefield in 10 minutes. You can also move the APC around to take out so many enemies on some maps to get resources for free. And open ground
Love the game. One other thing that really helps is to learn the maps and how to get through them. Helps to complete the most difficult setting.
Motion trackers are so important, as you are walking around place them around the map then if you need to clear a path of aliens just activate one to overload
Also if you can, place them round an APC point you can attract aliens and humans to that point and watch the APC (which is indestructible do the rest) 🔥
I've seen gameplay that was a breeze vs mine that was complete chaos. Especially the queen fight. One guy beat the queen and things were mellow afterwards. I beat the queen had a mass outbreak happen shortly after
I remember beating a queen, barely surviving and then getting swarmed afterwards. I loved it.
Oh, so the massive ambush isn't intended to happen everytime?
I just killed the queen yesterday and it happened immediatly afterwards.
Im going to check this out for sure, Love the review and presentation. Keep up the videos!
Thanks for that, it's a really fun game.
The balance part depends on playstyle tbh. The way I play, in a 4 man squad I generally run Sgt, Gunny, Gunny, Recon. My playstyle is heavily stealthy and caitous until the game forces your hand so I dont run into situations where I truly need a Medic or a Tech. Someone in the squad has the Smarta$$ perk so I can hack without a techy.
I only use a techy once I let them sit in the training room going intense until they can get all the drone upgrades, and even then I only take one on heavy heavy xeno maps since they ignore the drone.
I struggled early on with balance, but then I made a few adjustments. I just love how the game teaches you by being absolutely brutal lol
Thank you my dude, first video of yours that I have watched. Really helpful 😊 love this game so far. Last alien game i loved this much was Isolation
Thanks for that. Dark Descent is a lot of fun.
Amazing video. Thank you.
Appreciate it!
Good tips, man! I’m having a blast with this one too even getting my ass kicked more often than I’d like to admit lol.
One thing I would add that I learned the hard way is that your squad/Marine’s experience basically stacks. So complete as many objectives as possible and don’t extract until the squad is combat ineffective basically. I was having trouble getting my “backup” Marines to rank up and it’s because I was playing it TOO safe and extracting much too frequently. Bonus is this also helps keep the Infestation timer lower.
Good advice, I think as soon as I was comfortable with letting my marines get worn out, I was trying to get as many objectives completed as possible
Try this, it's my style: if you have a seargent, build a squad around the officer and use reprimand. Go to central locations and set up motion trackers. Snipe single enemies and small groups with scouts. When you contact the enemy fall back to safe zones and have them mined and sentried. Have sentry guns ready all the time. This style will keep stress super low, and you will not be detected by the enemy and can finish missions in one run.
You can set up mined and sentried kill zones with your troops covering in an adjacent area - keep them hidden until you need them. Set the tracker to overcharge. The aliens run into the kill zone, you get samples and a cleared area with minimum resources expended and you have remained undetected.
One thing everyone overlooks is the ARC. If you drop motion tracker to lure aliens to ARC instead of turrets, then you loose NO resources at all
@@МайКузнецов many missions you don't have the arc in the area but you are right. 👍
at most i have managed to do is to get 10 objectives done with a single squad (mostly due to i found most of the ammo stashes so didn't wanna reset them to 4) overall they took only minor damage.. gotta say the APC is a god send against swarms when you are the ground floor (haven't gone outside the first mission yet)
The APC is awesome.
I got a nice little bug/tip for ya bud. Xenos and cultists, every now and again will get stuck on something ((or sometimes they are locked inside a room, just make sure you can see them on your motion tracker for this to work)), which is a double edged bug in its self, it may get stuck in your way...but! There can only be a certain amount of enemies out on the field at any given time, so those stuck xenos in one area? Are 2 xenos that won't respawn in another area giving you smooth sailing to some objectives sometimes. Just a little heads up to use the borked AI against it.
Honestly Skip the tech, you can get the ability to unlock doors by using tools on any marine. Grab that then run the other 4 classes, the only thing you miss out on is the turret suppression which isn't really a big deal.
If you take things slow and hunt for supplies and you can beat the game with 1 squad on hard. I tried to get all objs on one run (and did for most missions) though I only had 3 days till the nukes dropped, So I was cutting it very close.
Great video, a important topic use motion trackers and when trying to get pass a area and want to avoid combat ping the trackers the Aliens will go towards the sound giving you that brief window to pass a area undetected.
Thanks for the great tip! I really should use the motion trackers more.
I keep hearing everyone saying I play on nightmare or hard and I'm sure it's hard but play on no one can hear you scream even on normal it's super hard you have to plan your strategy.
This game is brutal because the aliens are brutal. But the cool thing is that if you learn from your mistakes, the games becomes very rewarding. It feels very fair.
Very good video ! thank you
ressource is first get the bags
40% more ressource changes a lot of things! 7 or 8 med pack too.
some buffs are better than others!
you don't need the reload speed.. except on your gunner
but if you get the 10% more ressource take that instead
never tired one is really good in the long run
3 days max wounded too
crit on sniper but take the bag first.. lol
running faster you will get later with your recon and it's not additive with the perk
it's all i could think of
I love this game 🔥
Haven't beaten it yet, so mileage may vary going forward, but so far I've solved like 95% of my problems in this game with liberal use of turrets, suppressive fire, and flamethrowers.
Finished game on hard on first playthrough last night.
Watching your video dealing with one single crusher on normal difficulty made me laugh my ass off.
I did not expect it to go that hard in the beginning lol
@@pixelatedthoughts I got my ass handed to me plenty, no matter if i tried guns blazing or super stealthy, trust me.
Great game, but it has balance and bug issues that stops it from being epic.
Also, base building and squad management is rudimentary compared to x-com series.
They will probably add more in a sequel, maybe.
One of the biggest frustrations on some leves on higher difficulties is the fact that aliens just keep coming non-stop before, during and after massive onslaugh phase.
You either get zerged-overrun or you run out of ammo and supplies to continue the level, or even make it out to APC extraction point.
Oh and yeah, losing level 4-10 marine at some point of the game is a no-go, even if you save everybody on every mission and have plenty of recruits in the pool. As the game goes on you will be lucky to have Squad A with higher level, and Squad B that will have chance to level up and progress on missions where your main team will be out of action.
On the last mission i had two 5 guys all maxed out lvl 10+ marines, and even with super careful+load-save retries had to extract them 3 times, with last effort team i had 4 veterans and one level 1 rookie doing the last mission lol, because everybody else was either tired-wounded or half insane :)
That Queen fight, I just set fire to EVERYTHING. I'm surprised how much damage it does when they have to walk through it.
I'm really liking this game.
Currently, I'm confused about something, because I haven't gotten far enough, yet.
My marines were at 3 Trauma points and low health, at the end of a mission.
I didn't want to take them back like that, so I rested in a room, until all the trauma was gone, and they were 100% health, again.
It did not seem to affect their hospital stay. Many still needed 9 day in the med bay, and have a new bad trait added to them.
a) Is that new trauma trait permenant?
b) Is there a way to avoid this, later?
c) do I just save the tools and med packs, and return to base, broken men?
People who just watch and haven't played this game dont really capture the dynamic suspense and difficulty of this game. This game is like the Dark Souls of turn based games. Its a BIG learning curb that introduces very unique and even new mechanics, its unforgiving and brutal. You cant just start playing this game blind and do well. Reading the map is a chore and requires careful observation and identifying lootable items is not shared by the tutorial. Understanding enemy behavior requires experiencing everything they are capable of (which means allot of damage taken). Just like understanding squad behavior. At first glance It looked allot like XCom-2 in real time, but its way more dynamic because you cant just bully or overpower the Aliens. The Aliens clearly dominate close combat in the early game. And there's allot of scripted surprise encounters that requires replaying and memorizing to play safe because they will pulverize the squad.
The "rest"/Save mechanic is like Darkest Dungeon and Resident Evil, but more so it requires getting an item to be able to save (Like Kingdom Come Deliverance). The chemistry between difficult game mechanics is refreshing. People who watch this game without commentary or blind gameplay will not understand the scenarios. It look generic or repetitive, especially with the repetitive npc banter and the scanner noise. But when you are the one playing, that scanner noise is nerve wracking and the npc banter is muffled by the amount of thought put into playing.
The game is bugged, some character models can be seen through walls when animations dont complete as intended. The cursor is abysmal on PC, its hard to track when distracted and sometimes the map moves without choosing to. Which is very bad for the gameplay where the most you can do is slow the frames. For an Alien game, its unexpectedly interesting. Alien Universe actually has way more going on than Xenomorphs or even Predators. There's hostile lifeforms of many variety the mega corporations either keep a secret or just dont know about. And the Xenomorph isn't the first hostile lifeform the colonial marines learned to fights. There's allot of others. There's a treasure trove of literature such as Dark Horse comics and the novels. Alien "Bug Hunt" is a very good novel that presents the background of marines from Alien 2 familiarizing with "bug hunting" much before their encounter with the xenomorph. Which is context vaguely shared in the movie. And the negative quirks the marines have is a reference to the board game and the concept that appearances can be deceiving and good guys are rare.
Walked into the mine with 4 guys and 2 sentry's walked out with 2 and left the sentry's ran like a mf
Hope they add a xenomorph campaign 😂
That would actually be kind of cool.
Do not spend your resources (tools) to weld random doors for whatever reason except for making a safe-room to regen/auto-save game progress.
Check what is the progress of hunted bar, is any event coming during next hunt (onslaught or strong enemy spawn). If you're not ready for that - even the first hunt mobs can make a lot of problems for you in a bad spot. Onslaught will overrun marines.
Keeping stress levels as low as possible is essential, not wasting tools to recover stress all the time is important as well.
Sometimes you feel like you're in a good spot but difficulty spikes so hard and events happen, then smooth almost-all-done run becomes a clusterfuck where you get punished more and lose more than gain.
You have to have at least two full squads ready to switch over. Best marines often go in as second team to finish the mission as they will have better chance.
You should not get damaged much, something is wrong with tactics if you receive damage too often or too much.
*clears throat* That's X-Com, baby! Games like these sometimes put you in an oh shit corner, and one mistake means a teamwipe. Sometimes, it'll throw so much at you, but it's all doable. Save scumming is helpful.😂 Just play see what the game does, then reload and try something completely different. Also, tactical games sometimes it's better to take every area slow. Build up at least 2 or 3 teams don't just rely on 1 team otherwise you'll screw yourself over.
You could explain the death clock to newcomers and tell them about how after a certain point you only have 20-30 days to finish the game, I wish I'd known to set that to easiest setting before starting a hard run.
I hadn't finished my run yet when I found that out. I was very surprised that you only had so much time.
I'm at 72% campaign completion with 3 days left, and I already got the prompt to "hack" cerberus to extend the time by a whopping 2 days. Does the game ending because of the bombardment at least count as finishing the game? Or should I just start a new playthrough?
@@anderescobar4752 Honestly no clue brother, but it sounds like that will be game over, maaan.
It's still an ending, but the "bad" ending? You're our guinee pig here, as I've been taking my time. I just rescued the guy from Tantalus and have 9(?) days left, so it doesn't seem possible for me, especially with losing a day between deployments (which really sucks, what's the point of having squad rotation if they can't get the APC ready within an hour?
However, the next update's patch notes say they will be giving us an option to REMOVE the death clock, so if you plan on another playthrough I'd just wait a while. I personally plan on going again, hard, hard, hard and no death clock.
Actually you don't really need to balance your squad. Don't need a technician if you get the smart ass trait on another class for example. You just don't get the drone which is imo only useful to safely explore the map before moving.
I'd just recommend having at least a medic since they are the only one that can revive a downed marine. 4 Sergeants + 1 Medic or 3 + 2 is what I like to go for
No one is saying how you can only use intensive training to get marines up to level four
Like a dumbass, I got this game on PS4. Hey, I wanted to play it in comfort. I regret this decision. The game is almost unplayable on this hardware and looks like garbage, at times. I had countless game breaking, save scumming bugs. Regardless and despite all of its many many many many many flaws, on this hardware, I ended up loving the game. I only wish they would include a new game plus mode. Ultimately building up your marines, is pointless, and I hate that. I want to begin a harder difficulty but with badasses under my command. Also, the mid game time limit and planetary infestation mechanic need to not exist at all or only in higher difficulties or challenge modes. I for one hate racing against a clock and it sucked a lot of the fun out of the game for me.
Midgame time limits always feel so restricting. It's a shame. But I also really enjoyed the game.
The six "P"s are important
I played on easy and still got wiped
Space safe for soldier in game?
Hehh...what next?
If you run from xenos on this game 🏃♀️ you die lol
anyone genius tips for easy/medium
This could be said in no more than a minute and a half. So much unnecessary talk, youtube is such a waste of time these days