warhammer 40,000: rogue trader

[hardy tinsel]

It's very good

[hardy tinsel]

holy fucking shit

Someone elevate the gunners of this thing to Sainthood

[frozen island]

I'm at Kiava Gamma and getting my ass kicked by 5 chaos small ships

I did janus first, but am I trying this planet too early

[hardy tinsel]

Don't worry I endured the same thing - legit, go and do Dragonus first

It's ||basically a freebie, and if you do, you get access to a Rank 2 colony project that gives you 5k Navy rep, which is HUGE and actually means you can buy gear from the stingy bastards, along with giving you a permanent NPC buddy in space battles going forward. Research that, then get your ship a level or two, kit it out, go back||

[jovial anvil]

I just did the fight with the two sylths yesterday and man that was a mess. My rogue trader went down without even taking a turn while argenta, cassia, and the unkillable Abelard ended up clutching and honestly they did extremely well

Character balance is all over the place, but honestly that fight is pretty unfair given how you are surrounded with no food cover spots. I want bounty hunter to work but anything is does arch militant does better

[tight flare]

Argenta is VERY NORMAL
Ballistic Skill: +14
3

UI-breaking power

I should give the rest of the crew credit tho
Adelard is broken in his own way, which is that he is an immortal being that cannot be stricken down
Jae and Cassia uh
Give Argenta extra turns
Pasqual and my PC are just happy to be here 🙂

[jovial anvil]

Jae as a tactician can give great momentum buffs that really help but that aren’t apparent if she isn’t down

[tight flare]

I find it very funny that if Argenta has arch militants heroic act up, and has gotten Wildire to 0 AP
Jae can use the 'give them a free turn with 0 AP to move around some' ability on her and she still gets to let off two multimelta blasts

[jovial anvil]

I’ve been using the exotic bolted I’ve found, is melta worth it?

[tight flare]

i'm using it mostly because I like meltaguns in concept
But I'm doing real good with em on Argenta
Point Blank and Concentrated Fire means the AOE blasts do loads of damage and the insane amount of armor pen on them means overpenetration is essentially a guarantee
Which means arch militant can alternate between blasts and single shots while still keeping the crowd control up
There are a few talents that are a must, though- the one that gives -2 AP to reload as well as the one that gives -1 AP to fire heavy weapons, because otherwise its 4 AP to reload (when you have a magazine size of 4 shots) and 3 AP to fire, at least for the multi melta

[jovial anvil]

I’d love a flamer for argenta but I missed the early game one

[tight flare]

A lot of them show up in early act 2

I eventually want to get the Focus Melta that the Drusians are offering, both because it does more damage than the multimelta, but also because its aoe fire is a line
Which seems fun with the overpen on the single shot
Just double tap through lines of dudes without worrying about hitting your pals

[jovial anvil]

Those are hand flamers though, I want a two hander

[tight flare]

Those are rarer, yeah
I've seen one or two though
If you come across the rumor that's about 'a band of pirates that aren't above trading with xenos', going to the place it mentions gets you a fight with a dude with a unique flamer

Can't remember the exact system or I'd just say that

Also: I just found Yrliet
This answer, somewhat amusingly, just blew me away
Like a slap in the face

[hardy tinsel]

Langrenn's Rest or something, iirc

[jovial anvil]

Into chapter 3

[jovial anvil]

Well that was a railroad

[ebon forge]

Truly the grandest strategist, covering entire sectors of space

[jovial anvil]

||the commissar is 100% a honey trap||

||I've rescued Argenta and Abelard, and since those are two of my strongest characters I should be fine for whatever upcoming combat that we have||

[jagged pine]

I was away doing an early Xmas, but heading back now. Can't wait to get back into this game soon

[tight flare]

Oh boy
The agriworld is turning out to be a big bundle of fun
Spoilers for a major zone in Act 2: ||Elf Illuminati Elf Illuminati||

[tight flare]

Oh my goddddddddddddd
ArJaenta 😳 😳 😳 😳

[bitter pollen]

Jae is right and she should say it

[jovial anvil]

That was such a good bit

Jae’s great

She just refuses to let the grim darkness get to her and instead keeps a positive attitude

I felt Janus was a bit of a mess personally

Wasn’t helped by Yrliet not spawning in

[tight flare]

That would be a problem
I quite liked it, mostly for the plotline there
And having some wide open fights was nice

[jovial anvil]

She didn’t slaw next to the gazebo like she was supposed to then just popped into existence for the final fight

I don’t know why ||she would defend a slaanesh worshipper|| either

I hope the dlc adds orks, it isn’t really 40k without orks

[twin anchor]

Tau would also be fun, I'd love to see a Human Helper or something companion just dealing with the 'Wait, the Imperium does what?'

[hardy tinsel]

Oh god. Oh fuck

very early Act 3 spoilers: ||Everybody quiet when da Solitaire rolls up||

[tight flare]

Huh, she ||didn't do that at all for me||
||Maybe its tied to dialogue flags you didn't get due to the bug||

[jovial anvil]

That was great

||even archons let them get away with things that would normally cause them to be flayed alive||

||I wonder when yrliet will show up again in act 3||

||I know marazai will be recruitable but I wish we had a more repentant and complicated drukhari instead of an unapologetic psychopath||

[tight flare]

Ohhh, a colony project just netted me a real cool hexrifle
Time to make Yrliet learn how to use the Naughty Guns

[wary topaz]

I'm having a lot of fun as a sniper operative

But I feel like militarum commanders was the wrong pick

Also is there like, a good wiki?

[tight flare]

Yeah, 'extra damage to adjacent targets for one round' has not been as impactful as I figured it would even as a melee char

[twin anchor]

I'm not sure why but I just can't get Operative. Like I know it's supposed to be good but for some reason I just can't get how it works.

[bitter pollen]

I'm never sure when it's more optimal to burn stacks or not so I just tend to heap them on folks

[tight flare]

And afaik I only see fextra
Which is uhhhh
Everyone here knows fextra

[wary topaz]

Yeah screw fextra

[bitter pollen]

Fextra is at least the less annoying between Fandom

But wiki in general having a dark era

[wary topaz]

I would actually rather have a maintained Fandom wiki over fextra's shovelware excuse fora rt wiki

Like fex had okay sekiro and d4, but eugh, the rt one is bad

[bitter pollen]

Fandom wikis are maintained? Everything i see is a Blitz of ads and inaccuracy

[twin anchor]

Hmm...is Operative or Soldier better for a sniper? Sniper seems to care a lot more about Autofire.

[tight flare]

Pasqual is not super useful and idira is, frankly, dead weight, but Yrliet seems to be a pretty decent op

[wary topaz]

So for operative, analyze, critical weakness and perfect spot are kinda made for sniping?

[twin anchor]

nods

[wary topaz]

I'm in act 1 still and I'm chunking 40-50 damage sometimes with single shots

[tight flare]

Yeah, and precise shot
Stack exploits then turn them into extra damage and acc
Which becomes extra crit chance after a point
And you can also crack armor which can be vital with high damage single hits, or that is to say, with operator

[bitter pollen]

Yeahh I enjoy Idira but the Operative/Psyker combo feels strange

[twin anchor]

I keep trying various things but can't quite find what works in a fun way for me. My favorite so far had been officer/psyker but Purge Soul doesn't work with Tactician's damage boost due to a bug.

(And I keep going 'Okay but I'm not the Navigator, am I?' when it comes to supernatural stuff.)

[tight flare]

(I really need to get a damaging navigator power OTHER than lidless gaze lol)
The only other one I've got is the AOE that makes dudes attack each other but that is not reliable

[twin anchor]

Lidless Eye just kinda evaporates every fight for me. I think I'm going to stop bringing her out of sheer 'she makes the fights less fun'. XD

[viscid berry]

perfect spot esp is really nice

[tight flare]

Lidless gaze is good but I often find myself stunning or outright killing vast swathes of my own side with it

[viscid berry]

theres also sniper talents (something about bonuses at range) that scale with perception, which you'll want as an operative anyway

[twin anchor]

I might try a sniper operative next, see if I can get a hang of how Operative works that way.

Won't be better than the Eldar at it but snipers being Single Target Removal makes it feel like they won't step on each other's toes too much as there's plenty of single targets.

[wary topaz]

I dont really understand what the synergies on psykers are yet tbh, and how power acquisition works, but lightning and shriek are useful so far

[twin anchor]

Psyker feels like it works best with Officer or Soldier. Soldier for 'MORE SHOOT' or Officer for 'MORE BUFFS'

[tight flare]

Respeccing a lot spooks me
As I'm told it eats profit factor after a point
I'm pretty satisfied with greataxe heavy armor '''assassin''' tho

[twin anchor]

....do Operatives stack exploits?

[hardy tinsel]

Yes

[twin anchor]

Oh, so having Multiple Operatives wouldn't be stepping on each other's toes, they'd be setting each other up.

[wary topaz]

Yes

Exploits do scale nonlinear though, iirc

[tight flare]

That may be a good niche for idira tbh
Invest everything in psi stuff, do not interact with your Archetype save to funnel exploits for Yrliet

[wary topaz]

Yeah her or Pasquale can do similarly

Aiui

[twin anchor]

Familiar Kickback seems like it would be a good talent for a fortress world sniper. Sniper rifles tend to hit hard so the minimal damage is pretty high.

[tight flare]

It's a bit harsher for pasqual because he doesn't have anything else going on really
Unless you mean idira setting up pasqual

[twin anchor]

I think part of the issue I have with Idira with operative stuff is she's...not very smart. So she doesn't teach you very well that the amount of exploits you get is based on int. XD

So for a long time I thought you got all of 1 exploit.

And pasqal made me go 'wait, operatives give a LOT of stacks?'

...man, you know I really wish the game had some more of the Variety of Odder Weapons in 40k.

Like 40k has Boltgun Sniper Rifles

But I've never seen a non-autofire boltgun in the game. XD

[wary topaz]

Yeah

The ttrpg rt had a mod for plasma weapons which made them cones

You couls put it on the plasma cannon

[twin anchor]

snrk
I get pondering this sniper and then realize that between this and not wanting to use our favorite navigator because she makes the game less fun I'm going to have...No Officers. Oh no! 😛

Can this game even be played with only one turn per round? I'm not sure.

[bitter pollen]

Soldiers can shoot enough that it's basically two turns, you'll be fiiine

[jovial anvil]

I got that one, ended up replacing it with a needle rifle I got from an event, which is a shame because I like drukhari weapons

[twin anchor]

I wonder what Background is best for a sniper. Astra Militarium seems like the default for a BS bonus, I suppose?

[jovial anvil]

The game gives you an amazing aeldari sniper rifle at the end of act 2

30-41 dmg

[jovial anvil]

Crime boss is what I have, but sniper bounty is honestly pretty weak compared to what arch militant is capable of

[jovial anvil]

Fextra has excellent fromsoft wikis

[twin anchor]

I ended up going crime boss for the silly reason of 'I like the outfit more than the others that look helpful'

[wary topaz]

I thought so as well, but none of the background talents seem to do... shit

[ebon forge]

Depends on what you're sniping with... None of them do much, but Forge World gives plasma weapons a big damage boost on the first shot, and my operative definitely likes that (and rarely finds her range too short).

But she does pair it with a sniper rifle or long-las (whichever has higher stats at the moment).

I have to admit though, so far, I'm really not impressed with most archetypes.

Operative is decent, officer is very strong, soldier is great. Second tier... Arch-Militant, if you can stack Versatility somehow, Grand Tactician is Officer+ – and everything else is kinda meh.

Bounty-Hunter doesn't really do much, Grand Strategist is neat (especially if you can properly set up Killzone Stratagem and hit a lot of not-quite-one-shots), Assassin really only works if you've stacked that dodge and even then, hitting the openings is hard to achieve...

[twin anchor]

Clearly what I need to do is to get that Narrow Line Meltagun and use that for sniping 😛

[hardy tinsel]

Assassin definitely wants either melee or the ability that generates an opening on a target

They can do some really fucking nasty damage though

Act 3: ||okay holy shit that space marine intro was badass||

[twin anchor]

'Never stop believing' turning your 'don't stop shooting' stacks from 0 to 1/2 WP is good if you've got a solid WP

Like even with 'just' a 40, that's keeping you at a baseline minimum of 20% chance to trigger Don't Stop Shooting each turn.

[wary topaz]

Operatives

[twin anchor]

You know, I think that guy might be Dead

[wary topaz]

There was a17% chance of them surviving

[twin anchor]

And an 83% chance of your bullet somehow bouncing between every single vital organ at least twice

[wary topaz]

Ah well, it's a longlas

so it just reduced them to ash

[twin anchor]

Bouncy Laser then 😛

[twin anchor]

This is such a minor thing but I love it every time I see it so I have to comment on it.

I love how your throne in the bridge is on a rotating platform.

So when officers come to speak to you, you rotate it to face them.

It's just this minor but so 'Yes, I do have unlimited money for stupid things' thing.

[twin anchor]

Argenta: "No, we can't do anything with xenos!"
Also Argenta: Mowing Down Things With A Splinter Cannon

[ebon forge]

It's SO cool. In a bit of a childish way, but... That's appropriate for 40k, imo. It's quite childish on some levels.

[jovial anvil]

Someone high up on the dev team really loved drukhari and it shows

[jovial anvil]

alright, got the drukhari. For some reason yrliet is being a super good sniper (got a 150 damage hit), while my girl is struggling to break 50

the aeldari sniper she has is part of it but it still feels a lot more than it should be

[tight flare]

The way 99% of talents have logos which are just their initials makes it hard to spot build differences
Like, sometimes Jae gives a 3rd AP with her Take Them Down
No clue why
I imagine its a talent she has which I missed

[tidal parcel]

It gives an extra ap but debuffs them if they use it

[wary topaz]

The whole ui is kind of a mess

And it makes grasping how archetypes are meant to work kind of a mess

[hardy tinsel]

Yeah it's very annoying

I wish the way they grouped or ordered talents had any kind of rhyme or reason

Or they displayed it differently

[wary topaz]

sometimes you can!

Filter talents by archetype, origin, warp

But only when you're granted a talent which doesn't have to be common

Afaict

[tight flare]

Argenta's power grows
Fun fact: My Adelard is a Bastion, focused on taunting dudes
He also has a talent that makes him immune to damage from allies attacks
He does not dodge them, he gets hit. He just takes no damage.
So Argenta and her multi melta, and all the dudes clumped up to beat on Adelard.......

[ebon forge]

Wowza

[jovial anvil]

Be great for stubber argenta

Especially with talents from vanguard and tactics/guns that reduce ally damage

[wary topaz]

So, how do people mitigate the doodoo accuracy and dispersion for burst fire? I feel like Argenta is my least effective member

[twin anchor]

Do you have Pasqal?

His innate ability heavily reduces the recoil on weapons of people it's used on.

Also: Are you still using her original bolter? Her original bolter is dogshit.

As in-universe it's basicly held together by hopes and duct tape.

[wary topaz]

I do have Pasqual, and I have upgraded her to a standard bolter

ANd I thought I'd been using the amchine spirit communion, but maybe I've been missing Argenta with it

ATM I'm just using arch militant's single attack spam

But it really feels lacking compared to Pasqual plasma spam or sniper MC

[twin anchor]

But yeah, between that and some BS boosts/the arch militant stacks from my experiance she turns into a complete buzzsaw.

[tight flare]

I uh
Go point blank, and only target groups
Using my Warriors to target single dudes instead of Argenta
Since the burst fire has a few 'tracks' of traectory its shots can go down, filling every one of them with dudes guarantees a hit unless they dodge

[wary topaz]

(I am early chapter 2 now, just got to janus)

[tight flare]

That said, its been a while since I've done burst fires with argenta, I went down the area shot road instead
So I don't know how well it scales into act 2

[wary topaz]

I mean burst fire is an area shot

[tight flare]

I mean stuff like flamers and meltas

[wary topaz]

AH yeah

No meltas for me yet

But yeah, Pasqual, grab BS and every talent that interacts with plasma and melta, and it fuckin rules

[tight flare]

I can direct you to one if desired 👀
No spoilers unless asked but you can get to one with 0 fighting after leaving footfall

[wary topaz]

Oh neat, yeah that'd be cool

[hardy tinsel]

once Arch-Militant gets a lot of the Officer synergy talents they really start fucking scything through things

[tight flare]

Its on ||Dargonus||, one of the three main planets alongside Janus
More specifically, ||inside your office at the palace, in a locked safe: its a multimelta, to be specific||
Bonus for Janus: ||An early fight in Janus' quest chain has an enemy with a regular Meltagun, which you can also loot||

[wary topaz]

Thanks!

[hardy tinsel]

Act 2 "guide", minor spoilers: ||Dargonus is literally a freebie colony and I def recommend going there first, for the Multi-Melta and some very important projects||

[tight flare]

I can atest that the multimelta utterly scythes through god damned anything in Argenta's hands, if you build for it

(*And she's an Arch-Militant, they get some key QOL Heavy Weapon talents and abilities)

[hardy tinsel]

I had to straight up stop using a Heavy Bolter on Argenta because it made things too easy

[wary topaz]

Unforch I'm already at ||Janus. I want the companion and food supply to footfall||

[tight flare]

Then the regular Melta should serve you well
Its in ||the first fight after you reach the jungles Yrliet offers to take you too||

[wary topaz]

Yknow as annoying as thr lack of a good wiki is, it does make me appreciate y'all

[hardy tinsel]

Mood

[wary topaz]

I kinda miss the days when Knowing Things was useful, rather than just accessing the repository

[hardy tinsel]

The problem is this is a massive CRPG where there are a ton of Things to Know :p

[wary topaz]

Yeah

[tight flare]

Yeah
All those star systems, so many of them with like
Bespoke dungeons with unique mechanics lmao

[wary topaz]

There's a certain amount I already (think I) know because of familiarity with the FF 40krpg systems

[tight flare]

Knowing this is based off an actual tabletop is a double edged sword
Because I play it and go 'this is cool! I should look into the tabletop'
But then I mouse over a single attack roll and see The Calculations that occured to make that 3 damage in a burst attack happen
And I Fear

Because a human had to do that with dice at some point

[wary topaz]

Hahaha, yeah there is a lot of stuff that's been tweaked because there's a computers capacity for mental load

Getting ready for bed last night I shower thought realised that weapons and damage worked completely differently. Does melee get str mod to damage?

[tight flare]

Melee gets STR bonus to damage yeah

Feels fairly minor when chainswords are doing like 17-23 damage but

[wary topaz]

Yeeah

I got Adelard a thunder hammer :3

[twin anchor]

Is Bounty Hunter or Assassin better for a sniper? Assassin seems like it would be tricky to get the directional shots off.

[tight flare]

One of the first abilities you can get is 'create an opening on the side of the target that's facing you'
And one of the first talents is 'your first assassin ability each turn costs 0 AP'

[twin anchor]

nods

[tight flare]

So it's not that hard
The ability is only 1 per turn but if you are building a sniper that's how often you want to shoot anyway
That said, bounty hunter also has tons of 'enhance next shot in X manner'
So it's really a matter of taste

[tight flare]

My adelard is still rocking a plain great sword 😔
Pasqual has the thunder hammer but frankly I should take it off him
Really want to find a two hand chain weapon tho

[twin anchor]

Killing Edge seems...scary.

[tight flare]

Lethality is an odd mechanic but yeah it's pretty cool

[wary topaz]

Not Sure! Seen advice both ways, so I'm running RT with Bhunter and Yrliet with assassin

Also jeeze, there are even iconoclast dialogues that have you summarily execute people

[tight flare]

If it's the one I'm thinking of it IS somewhat called for
||And going past it and continuing the dialogue leads to another iconoclast option with no executions||

[wary topaz]

Yeah

[viscid berry]

I mean I'm still fairly early act 2 and argenta has been lagging a little bit

mostly because she likes getting crit, terrible hobby

[tight flare]

My favorite opportunity for summary execution is on Dargonus
Where you can (or at least can propose) ||shooting up a crowd in an administratum office to.... skip in line||

[tight flare]

There's a set of gloves that let you parry with a gun using ballistic skill and that helped a lot for me

[safe surge]

I am going to imagine they parry by shooting the melee weapon so it doesn't hit them

[tight flare]

I personally was thinking that Argenta just smacks the sword aside with her like 50 pound multimelta

[wary topaz]

I think I've finally grokked that burst fire isn't a wide line, it's a very long cone, whjere the higher your accuracy the tighter the shots will conform to the median line of the cone, rather trhan flying wildly

[tight flare]

Yeah thats it
Shots trend towards the center

[jovial anvil]

don't worry, she'll quickly become the best

my least effective member is my own rogue trader, who is a poor sniper while Yrliet is an actually very scary one

[tight flare]

I've made my PC our melee damage dealer, to contrast Adelard, our melee tank

[jovial anvil]

Abelard is my team's melee damage and tank, which parry stance is really good for

[wary topaz]

Parry stance is absurd, especially when you get the really wide aoe cleaves

Just wade in

[tight flare]

Huh, what does parry stance do with cleaves?

[wary topaz]

Nothing, it just makes you safer diving into crowds

[tight flare]

Oh alright
For a second I thought there was like
A talent that made parry counters into Cleaves

[jovial anvil]

Vanguards are basically unkillable after few turns

[tight flare]

I don't think Adelard has gone down since the start of act 2
Outside of me clipping him with an infinity damage Lidless Gaze or Melta Blast anyway

God I hope the enemy comps do not start charopping as hard as we can

[jovial anvil]

he's literally not gone down for me since he became a vanguard. He's so tanky tat when I needed to reset a fight (the second room on the dark mechanicus space hulk) I tried to let him die only for him to just not. He got very close on one of my attempts at the palace fight with the navigators though (game crashed twice trying to do that one)

[hardy tinsel]

[viscid berry]

He didnt even go down for me in act 1 after maybe the first planet

and I was on daring

man is TANKY

I gave him the ceramite armor and some DR talents and he took about 3 bolter bursts to the face in the Act 1 finale

[jovial anvil]

I wish I could figure out what's going on with my rt adept/bounty hunter build yrliet does the job so much better, much better accuary and damage

[hardy tinsel]

Child of Asuryan gives some flat crit chance iirc

[wary topaz]

Bounty hunter is awkward and I'm not sure how to make best use of it

I feel like it's more meant to be run and gun midrange?

[jovial anvil]

part of it is that stupid good aeldari sniper that winterscale gives you (I have drukhari proficiency but not aeldari boo), as well as tide of excellence not working

[hardy tinsel]

I think BH more than anything wants a talent rework

They just have very few bangers

[jovial anvil]

and some poor stat choices at start

yeah, I think it's the weakest unfortunately

[hardy tinsel]

Arch Militant and Assassin talents pop off

[jovial anvil]

it has so much focus on on kill effect passaives but really doesn'tgive you enough tools to get there

[hardy tinsel]

BH does uh, not

Yeah

[twin anchor]

Oh,tide doesn't work?

[jovial anvil]

no, you can see all the stacks of stuff you get on the right next to your character, and you'll notice the telling absensce of it when you check

[tight flare]

Bounty Hunter is so sad
Because it doesn't actually get any advantage against prey, it just gets bonuses if it kills them
So often you are sandbagging so your BH can please, please engage with their classes mechanic

[jovial anvil]

actually most of their actives have bonuses against prey

but yeah, the class is too focused on what happens when you kill prey rather than what you are doing to accomplish that

a lot of bounty hunter talents really aren't that great

[tight flare]

I was aware of the bonuses tacked on to abilities, but even like
Extra armor pen or something just base on hunt prey would have been nice
Especially since you are encouraged to put it on bosses, so if you do proc the bonus the fight is uh
Already won

[jovial anvil]

yeah, prey isn't a super impactfull ability compared to versatility and vanguard stacks

[hardy tinsel]

or the Assassin weakspots

[twin anchor]

To be fair almost nothing is an impactful as versatility.

Being a psyker is a smaller deal. :p

[wary topaz]

Also I may have missed Jae as a companion

[tight flare]

How so?

[wary topaz]

The persona non grata quest is showing as failed

[tight flare]

Huh
Stop by the bar and see what's up I guess
If it hasn't been long I sincerely rec going back a bit, she's cool
Desperately needed extra iconoclast backup

[jovial anvil]

I like Jae

I need to actually get around to doing all the companions quests though, I've been focused on the msq

[sand crypt]

been playing for a few days now, and about halfway into the footfall quest. more or less loving the game. the dialogue writing in particular is kind of incredible.

especially taken with how they write the mechanicus. tech priests are somehow some of the funniest characters in the game.

[jovial anvil]

it's a mess but I love it

[sand crypt]

as for gameplay: running a pyromancer vanguard for my rogue trader. approaching level 20 now and it's already coming online fast. once I get her into range of enemies and start popping fire powers on her, enemies start dropping like flies.

[jovial anvil]

I jus wish my rt didn't feel like dead weight

[sand crypt]

I think the respec cost is one of my biggest gripes, specifically because of situations like that. the build complexity is so nuts it seems easy to make yourself useless.

half-debating installing the toybox mod at some point just for respeccing.

[hardy tinsel]

It's a good idea

It can also help get you out of soft locks

And other bugs

[sand crypt]

yeah, I've seen it recommended in a few places now. so at first inconvenience I'm probably just gonna install it.

[tight flare]

And a lot more human than most games present them
They put emphasis on the priest over the tech
The talk with pasqual about the adeptus mechanics and their beliefs in particular is real good

[sand crypt]

oh, absolutely yeah

they delve into a lot of the differences in how their faith manifests beyond 'we worship the shiny'

like. the ||electro-priests|| were kind of fascinating

[tight flare]

Him being like
Genuinely touched that you understand what his implants do and respect their function was great

[sand crypt]

yeah!! he gets so excitable and happy when you make an effort to respect his faith and inquire about his tech

like. he outright fanboy gushes over ||meeting the electro-priest praetor|| because it's such an incredibly rare honor to become one

definitely my favorite companion so far. idira is a close second, and argenta is just starting to open up and become interesting.

[jovial anvil]

yeah, I really like how the ad mesh are protrayed in this game

the party in general is pretty good

[tight flare]

Argenta is probably my fave
Both because lady in power armor with big gun, but also because she's one of the most pro little guy companions out there
Yrliet had a strong first impression but she has slid a little into vanilla snooty elf since

[sand crypt]

honestly yeah. even when they get on my nerves (adelard ||during the lower decks strike||) the party generally has enough depth to keep me interested in all of them. even heinrix has been intriguing and I normally hate his companion archetype.

[tight flare]

I liked the lower decks strike a lot honestly
Because you can challenge Adelards beliefs a lot and he like
Takes it to heart
Adelard: ||This is what we've done forever, this is what Theodora did, it works||
RT: ||Theodora is DEAD because of how she ran things MFer||
Adelard: .......

[sand crypt]

that's kind of precisely how I handled it, too. and I kind of love that he just.. goes quiet, clearly taking it in, and realizes he was wrong.

[jovial anvil]

abelard during that felt very complicated honestly, I wholeheartedly disagreed but he felt real in how he dealt with it. For iconoclast it's an important moment for you changing how things are, and making Abelard realize that things are different now

[sand crypt]

like it's very much a moment of him having to accept he's seneschal to a new rogue trader now, and you aren't theodora.

[jovial anvil]

so far the only companions not to convince me are the elves

[tight flare]

The writing in this game is a masterclass compared to most RPGs I've played and the lower decks are what really locked that opinion in for me

[sand crypt]

I'm loving it so far, yeah. doesn't really surprise me considering all I hear about their pathfinder games is that the writing especially is great.

[jovial anvil]

there's definetly some misses, I wasn't a fan of Janus and the|| trial at Cormoragh is a bit messy||, but I'm enjoying it a lot more than not

[tight flare]

WOTR is good, but in a more like
Marvel Movie way
Everyone is witty and cheeky and throws out funny quips

[jovial anvil]

Jae is like that, but she's also the only one like that while everyone else is peak warhammer and honestly it works by foiling the rest of the cast

[hardy tinsel]

I quite like Yrilet's writing

[tight flare]

Yeah she's good contrast
And also hits on Argenta all the time so I'm all here for it

[tight flare]

Her main story stuff is good but when she chips in during stuff not directly related to her she tends to fall into the whole 'guh, these dumb mon-keighs' thing

[jovial anvil]

I wonder how skeevy Jae would be if she was male

[tight flare]

Honestly it's not like she's Super Horny

[twin anchor]

Except for Argenta

[tight flare]

Even then she's more like
Flirty
The primary thing she compliments is her voice

[wary topaz]

Yup, looks like Jae is missable

Chest la vie

[jovial anvil]

huh, interesting

what causes the quest to be failed?

[tight flare]

I have finally gotten to Kiava Gamma
I am terrified that this will be a Puzzle Zone
I can practically see the 'hit switches to control the crane' or 'balance steam pressure levels' puzzles coming

[hardy tinsel]

Nah it's not, thankfully

[wary topaz]

I'm not sure, I think if you do a major quest after the initial footfall setup

[safe surge]

Has anyone tried the co-op?

[hardy tinsel]

Not yet

[gray flume]

I wonder if we'll get new origins in next dlcs

I wanna be mechanicus explorator

[bitter pollen]

||A'right, attempt three at this Herald of Tzeentch, tried to be nice but these people chose the wrong sewer to be in.||

[gray flume]

...I should play mechanicus again

[twin anchor]

I do really like the space combat. It's not the most complex thing but it's pretty fun.

[wary topaz]

I'm enjoying it as well, but I'm frustrated at the slow reputation advancement on the navy getting you new toys

[jovial anvil]

I hope so, but mechanics would require a lot of text rewriting

[jovial anvil]

I’d love to play as a navigator, but it’ll be axed for the same reasons

[tight flare]

Finished Kiava Gamma
||Argenta got the Melta Ultima and killed both Forgefiends before they got to take a turn with it lmao||

[twin anchor]

I'm not sure which of the colonies to visit first.

So I've mostly been bouncing around space mapping

[tight flare]

Dargonus would be my pick of the lot, then Janus and Kiava Gamma
That's the order I did them in :3

[hardy tinsel]

Dargonus is, not to put too fine a point on it, a freebie and also has a bunch of very useful projects

Including one that gives you a flat 5k navy rep

(it's one of the rank 2 capstone projects and you should literally never take the other one)

[tight flare]

It also gives you a permanent buddy in space battle
Which feels downright vital

[hardy tinsel]

Yeah that's the other thing

The frigate buddy isn't hugely impactful but it's a good distraction and has great range

[jovial anvil]

dang, I think I screwed up and locked myself out of getting the space wolf by accident

||I didn't have the option of here's part for a favor, so I clicked, here's parts for your monster then lost them without getting anything form it and now I don't have any since I lost both of the ones that I had||

[jovial anvil]

Looked up a guide and found one, then stumbled across another by complete accident

[tight flare]

Since Yrliet's quest is bugged and uses her (dogshit, unlevalable) persuasion for a vital check, I am installing toybox to set it to 200

[twin anchor]

'Yrliet, we have sent you for a makeover to avoid failing this quest'

[jovial anvil]

||is there a way to save the other humans stuck in cormoragh?||

[hardy tinsel]

Which one??

[tight flare]

||Convincing the Eldar that Chorda's dudes were hounding to accept help||
Turned out not to be as important as I thought but I assume it won me some Yrliet Points on the backend

Especially as she went into a dialogue with me next jump

[hardy tinsel]

Ah I haven't gotten there yet

But ugh

Owlcat pls

[jovial anvil]

||do you still go through act 3 if you don't have yrliet?||

[hardy tinsel]

||yes||

||The reason is happens is different, I'm sure, but it still happens||

[tight flare]

||You know Act 3 details but haven't done Yrliet's Act 2 quest?||

[hardy tinsel]

||??? Chorda isn't part of any of Yrilet's stuff in Act 2||

||I thought you meant something in Act 4?||

[tight flare]

||When your trying to rescue stranded Eldar in act 2, one of the groups in trouble is getting fired on by dudes from Chorda's navy||

||And you need to convince them to stop shooting that xenos ship||

[hardy tinsel]

||Oh, okay, I see||

[tight flare]

This project is desperately stupid but.... iconoclast points............

[hardy tinsel]

It's not that stupid

It's like a servitor repair bay rather than just discarding them

[tight flare]

Huh
I assumed that the tech priests would be all about repairing their tools

[twin anchor]

Eh, Servitors are an Expendable Resource to most of the imperium.

Like Imperial Guard.

[tight flare]

My first thought was like
Roomba hotel

[hardy tinsel]

Basic industrial servitors are very cheap to make but repairing them requires tecniques of both the flesh and machine

Straight up easier to just carve another convict's brain out and graft mass produced industrial implants on

[tight flare]

Is this decree just going up to every tech priest on the planet and saying 'oh so what your saying is that repairing servitors is too hard for you??' until they trip a breaker

[hardy tinsel]

yes

[wary topaz]

I think its a case of repair the metal, replace the meat for the ad mech

[jovial anvil]

I have forgotten to do everyone’s quests unfortunately and I hope I’m not locked out of them

[jovial anvil]

what do profit factor, people and complacency do?

I've mostly been doing the main quest and ignoring other things that aren't random planetary encounters

[tight flare]

Profit factor is money
People is a resource you can trade
IDK about complacency

[jovial anvil]

sorry, I meant efficiency

I don't like how you can 'spend' profit factor in situations though, why does my gdp drop when I hold a welcoming party?

[tight flare]

You are a rogue trader, and this is the imperium
If your welcoming party does not drive at least three minor noble houses to destitution you are doing a disservice to your guests

[jovial anvil]

I'd prefer if giant purchases were a temporary debuff on it that would have to reaccumulate over time

[twin anchor]

Look, those entries were made on a single world, each bite the work of an entire generation of artisans. Who were, of course, executed to avoid anyone else ever tasting them and making your party less exclusive.

[hardy tinsel]

You can generate a lot of profit factor, especially in Act 4, so losing some isn't a massive deal outside of the early game

[jovial anvil]

act 3 is a lot longer than I expected

it just, kinda keeps going

[twin anchor]

I'm still in act 2.

[tight flare]

Same here

[viscid berry]

now that I'm deeper in ACT 2

Grand Strat kinda goes hard

[twin anchor]

oh?

[viscid berry]

oh mb I got distracted for a sec

yeah the raw stats from the zones put in some work

Voidborn makes them scale x2 off Int

so even early on I'm seeing +20 to shooty stats for my backline, +20 armor and melee for my frontline

and the first turn absolutely locked in?

great with operative sniper

[tight flare]

My next playthrough is probably gonna be officer grand strategist with voidborn's int-to-fel yeah

[viscid berry]

Operative Tactical Knowledge goes crazy

[tight flare]

If only you could get the skill that lets you use int for the talky skills too 😭

[viscid berry]

the fact it stacks per operative is wild

[twin anchor]

I'm still pissy that the 'use fellowship for smarty skills' is NPC-only 😛

A minor thing: It would be really nice if your allies had more variety than 'Imperial World' for like 90% of them.

[tight flare]

Give us an inexplicable catachan

[hardy tinsel]

I'm surprised we didn't get a Guardsman character

I suppose Abelard fits the bill for your "imperial everyman" character, though

[tight flare]

I'm my own guardsman rep 😌

[twin anchor]

It's amusing because we do have a background for that and honestly it's a background that would be pretty nice to be able to just slot into a team.

1/battle 'can't hurt allies this round' is a nice bonus if you're hosing the area down with a billion bolter rounds

[hardy tinsel]

true!

[ebon forge]

oh man

I kinda want Argenta with Melta Ultima and Multi-Melta

but bolter is so iconic

[wary topaz]

Honestly, the multi melts isn't doing it for me

But I've picked up a heavy booter and precise volter from the drusians, so

[twin anchor]

I like flamers and meltaguns but I think the issue is that Burst Fire Is An AOE tag-wise.

So Burst Fire gets the 'boost AOE' and the 'Boost Burst Fire' stuff

[wary topaz]

Yeah

[twin anchor]

Which makes it really hard to compete with 'Just fill the area with bolter rounds'

[wary topaz]

And also just, rapid fire weapons scale in a way which isn't commensurate with the damage they do

Also, this run is so cursed

I've lost Tlass and Heinrix

I bricked his quest by accident

[twin anchor]

On the plus side: I got my sniper rogue trader to finally get all their tricks off at once and hit 180 damage.

That Blue Horror didn't know what hit it.

[wary topaz]

Yeah I just finished the force world in act 2

||Two daemon engines and a magos!!||

[hardy tinsel]

Argenta is fine, folks

||The actual dark secret is this is one round of a burst||

[twin anchor]

Heinrix said, without any sense of irony.

[hardy tinsel]

hmmmmm

[hardy tinsel]

breakdown of this btw

oh no.
act 4 sidequest spoilers:

[twin anchor]

These are Entirely Fair and Reasonable Numbers.

[hardy tinsel]

[hardy tinsel]

Concentrated Fire's interaction with Arch-Militant is extremely fucking stupid

[twin anchor]

'Good news, your damage scales with the number of attacks you make and your number of attacks scales with the number of attacks you make'

[hardy tinsel]

this is fair and balanced

[hardy tinsel]

||I assume you know what this is, then? :p||

[twin anchor]

YEARP

[hardy tinsel]

||I would love to see how many folks unfamiliar with the source material whack this on with no second thought and get the inevitable You Are Turbo Fucked extra ending slide||

[twin anchor]

||Hahahah, nice. What's the ending slide say?||

[hardy tinsel]

||Oh, no idea, but the Device's effects are long term so I imagine there has to be something chronicling your Decline Into Superhuman Madness||

[twin anchor]

||Nice||

||Does it stop you putting it on any of your allies instead?||

[hardy tinsel]

||Yup, you and you alone||

[twin anchor]

||But Dem Stat Bonuses.||

This game is making me really want to play the Rogue Trader Tabletop Game. Sadly my last two attempts both ended up stillborn. Which is a pity, I liked my PCs for that.

[hardy tinsel]

I also want to play RT

[twin anchor]

The last time I tried I played a very out of theme character, deliberately. One of the expansion PDFs they put out was for Tau.

I played a Former Gue'vesa...who was basicly 'What if a Star Fleet Officer Got Stuck In 40k' for this being their first Imperial Ship they'd ever been on.

[hardy tinsel]

I've read it, it's great

Ooooh

Solid idea, tbh

[twin anchor]

The rogue trader had to personally intervene to stop his first officer getting executed in the very first sesion because her responce to 'This system isn't working' was to clamber under the bench and pull it apart to see what the problem was.

The character from the game before that (Which also sadly died) was an Unsanctioned Psyker Arch Militant.

Who was dangerously close to falling to Slannesh.

Not due to drugs or rock and roll or sex.

But because she was obsessed with the perfect sword fight.

[hardy tinsel]

Dangerous!

[twin anchor]

The Rogue Trader for that game was fun. ID played her and she was...well...you can't prove she wasn't a Rogue Trader.

She has a warrant.

And the name she's going by is on that warrant.

||She was part of a scavenger team who found a rogue trader ship that had had an accident and died, then claimed she was the most recent heir to that family since the rest had all died out.||

Went for the absolute maximum ship points, absolute lowest starting profit factor to represent that.

[hardy tinsel]

love that

[twin anchor]

God, I just had 5 poxwalkers run at my team and all keel over from Keep Your Distance.

[twin anchor]

God, the fight against the ||Occluding Sphere|| is a meat grinder

[twin anchor]

I also Himbo-ified my Inquisitional Agent.

'Wait, I have better xenos and warp knowledge than him'

[twin anchor]

Oh, I almost feel sorry

[jovial anvil]

Man, the deadeye splinter rifle is absurd, it’s a nonbo with my sniper build yet the strongest I’ve ever been

[jovial anvil]

Shredding through the pox Lakers was fun

[frozen island]

any idea how to deal with drukhari

the second fight with them is just they burst fire you for 17 damage a shot

[jovial anvil]

They’re like their tabletop equivalents, extreme damage but not particularly durable

Keep an eye on initiatives and kill those that haven’t acted this turn

[frozen island]

I feel like they're decently tough? know they take almost double warp damage but maybe my items are too weak

The comp is arch militant rogue trader, idira, argenta, abelard, yvriel, and pasqal

[tight flare]

Double Warp damage reads 'cassia' to me
But hm, I dunno
I haven't used a lot of those chars much

[frozen island]

I'm also playing on daring

[tight flare]

That would do it

[jovial anvil]

They’re tougher than humans but honestly everyone but my rt had theirs builds going and could handle themselves

They do hit very hard though

[tight flare]

Yeah I hit Vheabos and Argenta and Cassia kind of just
Handled Them

[eternal agate]

what a fun game this is turning out to be

i'm currently treading a path somewhere in between naive idealist and Harry Flashman

i think it's an absolutely splendid touch that i've only had to introduce myself about twice through the whole game, abelard is doing a wonderful job of that and he seems so happy about it

[twin anchor]

I do find it funny that in the reactor you can ask Pasqal to Introduce You.

And he seems genuinely shocked that it's his job now

[viscid berry]

I generally introduce myself but I let Pasqal do it that time lmao

[eternal agate]

the writers also understand the subject matter well enough to have a bit of fun with it

i don't know if it should be winning, like, literary awards or anything but i think i'd struggle to expect a much better 40k narrative from anyone

[tight flare]

I introduced myself the first few times and then it felt odd to have adelard do it therafter
My snooty grand strategist playthrough I'm planning on ABSOLUTELY is gonna have him on introduction duty

[jovial anvil]

It’s kinda nice to have a game were the cast isn’t nine teenagers and the middle aged man

[twin anchor]

I think everyone except Cassia is at least 30.

Heinrix is somewhere in his 60s-70s according to some text.

He's just a Biomancer and 'Fuck You Aging' is like the first trick Biomancers tend to learn.

[thorn dirge]

also the "basic" (for People of Means) medical care means even normal people can live fairly long lives

like Abelard has to be at least 60+ given his prior naval career and how long he served Theodora

[twin anchor]

Yeah. Life extension in the IoM if you're important enough can break a thousand years, even ruling out weird cases like biomancers

[sand crypt]

yeah, I think life expectancy in the imperium is generally just "however old the writer needs a character to be" because there's so many nonsense in-canon ways to cheat aging

[twin anchor]

Life Expectancy(Poor): No
Life Expectancy(Rich): Yes

[sand crypt]

basically. yes

a no-name foundry worker or promethium miner is probably not going to have access to rejuvenat treatments.

[hardy tinsel]

The sources I've seen cite 300-350 as the absolute upper limit for a standard mortal, and that's usually involving methods more exoteric than Rejuvenat

[twin anchor]

Hmm...I'll have to check, I swear I recall a couple of the high lords cracking 1000.

But eh, it's 40k. Consistency is not a thing it cares about.

[hardy tinsel]

Lmao yeah exactly

[sand crypt]

the like vague consensus (barring one-off freak cases) is that around 400-500 you start needing more extensive augmetic or arcane support because the body will just start failing outright, I think.

[wary topaz]

Dante, chapter master of the blood angels is 1100

Also I have a lot of Perception in my party, so drukhari get their dodge rate tanked

[thorn dirge]

oh space marine ages get nonsense

[hardy tinsel]

Yeah I said standard mortal for a reason, Marines are functionally biologically immortal

[thorn dirge]

and actually, he's been chapter master for 1100 years, he was born in 447.M40 (40,447 AD) so he's ~1565

(the most recent significant dated events are all 012.M42, besides the publication dates for in-universe books mentioned in some of the Cain novels)

[sand crypt]

yeah if we're including things like marines or tech priests, the number jumps to 'technically immortal'

[wary topaz]

Also just like

Temporal displacement from warp travel

[sand crypt]

that's kind of delving into splitting hairs on chronological age vs biological age, I'd think. because the person isn't aging faster or slower while in the warp, they're just displaced from the regular timeline.

[thorn dirge]

sayt means sometimes warp travel does a little time travel, for funsies

[sand crypt]

right

I'm just kind of asserting that it doesn't functionally change how old someone is, biologically

[thorn dirge]

yeah

[twin anchor]

arrives on Janus for the first time

God, I can't go anywhere without people immediately starting a riot, can I?

[sand crypt]

it's starting to seem like no matter where the player goes, civil unrest kicks off the moment you hit planetfall

[tight flare]

You can just say 'oh man I can't believe theodora fucked up this bad' and absolve yourself of all guilt 😌

[wary topaz]

I mean sometimes the journey through the warp takes longer than the passage of time in the physical world between translations

[tight flare]

Their point is that it doesn't actually make them live a longer lifespan
They just skip some realspace time

[sand crypt]

basically, that. no matter what the person is aging at a normal pace. their actual lifespan isn't changing. they're just aging asynchronously or whatever to the actual main timeline.

[wary topaz]

Yeah, sure

[sand crypt]

now people's chronological lifespans? sure, prone to absolute mayhem. no wonder the administratum has so many resources to it.

like keeping track of office birthdays when warp travel is a factor must be just. an absolute nightmare. John McImperium is 21 biologically but his birthdate passed several times while he was warp-travelling for a company retreat so now he's biologically 21 but chronologically like. 30.

[wary topaz]

...wtf i just gained like 17 njavigator's insight

[hardy tinsel]

How 👀

[tight flare]

The route to a planet for Yrliets quest did not appear so I gotta use the Deadly createaroute 😔

Wait I have toybox

[wary topaz]

I don't know!

Oh, actually

I did resolve a step in Cassia's questline

Maybe it was that?

[twin anchor]

||Oh no, Eldar! Single Headshot Later Oh right, Eldar Guardian Armour's kinda mediocre.||

[tight flare]

This on counterattack vanguard Adelard 👀

[wary topaz]

God, the damage previews is just... a fuckin lie sometimes, huh?

Point heavy bolter at an enemy '1-3 damage'
Fire: 1 hit of 22, 6 hits of 8

[twin anchor]

God, my inability to find a good heavy bolter is driving me crazy. I keep having to give Argenta Xenos weapons because they're some of the best Burst Fire weapons I have.

[wary topaz]

You can get a heavy bolter from the drusians, as well as a precise bolter, I think?

[tight flare]

Its said you can hear her crying every night from her bunkroom

For the lack of the holy bolter

[wary topaz]

One of these numbers is not like the others:

Assassin GOOD

[twin anchor]

I don't have the Profit Factor yet ;-;

[hardy tinsel]

What colonies have you been to?

[twin anchor]

I'm at my very first one in the Garden World

[hardy tinsel]

Ah cool

Yeah the colony projects are by far your biggest PF sources

Have you been to Foulstone yet?

[wary topaz]

Yeah

[twin anchor]

I have not

[hardy tinsel]

Mild but very helpful spoilers: ||Going to Foulstone and resolving the event chain there with occupying it for yourself turns it into a freebie colony. Dargonus, in a similar vein, is also basically free||

[twin anchor]

Also man ||The battle where they start you off on top of the building surrounded by rebels was fucking hillarious for Sniper Rogue Trader + Yrielet||

[wary topaz]

Also I had I think what was a glitcvh where buying from vendors didn't subtract my PF

[twin anchor]

Nah, PF doesn't go down from 'buying things'.

That's silly 😛

PF is basicly 'I am rich enough to claim things of this value with no loss in wealth'

[wary topaz]

Yeah

but sometimes PF is a thing that is expended

[twin anchor]

As an aside: I find it funny that when the non-computer Rogue trader first came out, you got all these talks about how the three things you couldn't put in a Rogue Trader team were:

[hardy tinsel]

||Getting these two jumps starts your PF and gear acquisition a ton, especially with Navy rep from Dargonus||

[twin anchor]

Xenos - You'd get shot by the Imperium
Inquisitoral Stuff - Rogue Traders are too untrustworthy.
Ministorum Stuff - They'd stop you doing all the fun untrustworthy stuff.

Stares at the Rogue Trader CRPG party

[tight flare]

I just got out of sincerely one of the most mystifying planet encounters I've seen yet
Land on a planet, go through some ruins, meet a priest
aaaa! The priest is a genestealer cultist! Genestealers!!
The genestealer that spawns for the fight..... runs away
We follow it, kill it easily, a second one spawns from its corpse, we kill it before it can act
A third one spawns a room away, we go over, it takes its turn to run away
We follow it
When we enter the room its in, a cutscene plays of every party member going into the room in file, fade to black, and..... we get booted out to the Warp map????
Cursed game

[hardy tinsel]

Huh

That's very cursed

[hardy tinsel]

Wait, the FFG TTRPG?

[twin anchor]

Yep! Before the book came out with Ork and Kroot rules there was a LOT of people going 'If you're homebrewing xenos rules you're playing the game wrong'

Because Xenos have no role on the ship

[tight flare]

I thought one of the highlights of Rogue Trader (the system) was that yeah, RTs got to break the rules so you could have mixed parties

[hardy tinsel]

I deem them all Fucking Cowards

[tight flare]

Man a kroot party member would be cool

[hardy tinsel]

Encountering Kroot in general would be

They even have their own unique ship!

[twin anchor]

Yep. Then the RPG put out Kroot and Ork and eventually Tau rules.

Never Eldar but Eldar sorta suffer from the RPG having some...mechanical issues it tried to square badly.

[hardy tinsel]

Although a Kroot Warsphere would probably be way beyond our ability to handle, alas

[hardy tinsel]

Actually, they did!

Not Aeldari, but Drukhari :P

I can send you that supplement when I get home, real devil to try and find

[twin anchor]

Huh, that one I missed

I remember the Tau one and the Tau having the most bullshit (In-universe but not really that game breaking) ability.

If you're a Techie Tau you can...Improve Things

With your ability to go 'hmm...I think I will pull this apart, work out which bits could be better and improve them'

An ability that Techpriests are incapable of.

[hardy tinsel]

Yeah that was extremely funny

The Tau weapons in general were also just cracked

[twin anchor]

Yeah. It's sorta when I made that human helper I went with 'Eh, basic pulse rifle and focus more on support stuff' than going the 'I WANNA PILOT A CRISIS SUIT!' side.

That said: Support Stuff for Tau is likely their coolest area. They're basicly a D&D 4e Warlord if they build for it.

[tight flare]

👀

[hardy tinsel]

Yeah it's rad as hell

[tight flare]

As an aside back towards the actual game- does anyone know what exactly increments colony projects? Actual time, warp jumps, encounters?

Trying to get a chainaxe from a project on Vheabos VI for my melee captain

[twin anchor]

Not a clue, I've not really got a functional colony yet.

I'm busy de-xenosing this one

[twin anchor]

It was pretty cool

Though I think my favorite of the Tau talents was basicly 'Oh god, help me friends'

[hardy tinsel]

All of the above, but warp jumps increment time the most

Afaik

[jovial anvil]

just finished ch.3 and man did was a perfect representation of my problems I'm having with the gameplay. My sniper RT has been easily the weakest link of the party, and the few times Yrliet is with me she completely overshadows me in that niche. They only became good after getting their hands on the deadshot splinter rifle, an ar with more damage than the average sniper who's auto burst turned her into one of the party's best damage dealers despite being a total nonbo with the rest of my build. Yet come the final boss of ch.3 the RT, Yrliet and Jae went down extremely quickly due to the large number of extremely powerful enemies. Yet Cassia and Abelard were so good and unkillable that with the support of the assasin and his invisibility move they took out everyone with quite minimal effort, it wasn't even a tactical challenge, they just had enough brute force from their build to smash through everything. Even on a higher difficulty, I doubt it would've been much different, it didn't feel like a tactical challenge, just a stat check

[hardy tinsel]

How have you built your RT?

You keep saying Yrilet is overshadowing you, I'm just curious how you've built out in that case

[jovial anvil]

from a few levels ago but it's not like it's gotten magically better, except on the back of a single super good gun

she's significantly more accurate and usually hits significantly harder and I don't know why

[hardy tinsel]

Does she have the same archetypes?

[tight flare]

Upgrade acquired 😌
Been rocking that twohander since act 1

[jovial anvil]

Exactly the same, which is why it’s so apparent

She still isn’t as good as Cassia, Abelard or Argenta though

[hardy tinsel]

Yrilet has Children of Asuryan, which I believe gives a significant crit bonus and to-hit buff, along with the Voidborn origin's Fortune passive

You should be able to see that in her talents

Children of Asuryan is a pretty significant buff

[twin anchor]

God, Argenta vs Daemonette fights are just two people laughing crazily until one falls down

[tight flare]

Okay the chainaxe has vastly changed my RT's effectiveness
She is now Argenta levels

[wary topaz]

Yrliet has a lot of agility and a racial bonus to dodge, which means she gets more lethality stacks than your RT can easily get

[twin anchor]

Oh hey, I wasn't aware that Prince Charles got a Cameo in Rogue Trader.

[jovial anvil]

where'd you get that?

[twin anchor]

There we go, I 'saved' the colony.
||Every notable character is dead.||

[tight flare]

Tier 3 project for Vheabos VI

[wary topaz]

Ohh, I see. Maybe I got those extra navigator insights because I ahve to chart brand new, and then render safe, new routes

for like 6 insight

[twin anchor]

...man, I have no clue how to build my colonies.

[hardy tinsel]

In what sense? I can help

[twin anchor]

I'm noticing that some lock others off and I'm not sure if there's particular stats or things I should be building for other than 'Delicious Profit Factor'

[hardy tinsel]

For some it's personal preference - for others I think there are objectively better grabs

Can you show me which ones you're looking at particular?

[twin anchor]

Sorry, was just dealing with my crew being horny for my Eldar crew member.

[wary topaz]

The most important factor is the one that gives +5k navy rep

[twin anchor]

I'm looking at various things and they seem to lock each other off. Like the Mag-lev vs the Cemetary etc.

[hardy tinsel]

Yeup

Generally I prioritise efficiency over other stats, then complacency, then security, and stats to all colonies over everything else

[twin anchor]

nods

What's Security do?

The others give concrete numbers

But security goes 'Makes them more able to handle trouble'

And that's basicly just it

[hardy tinsel]

It says it influences the ability of the colony to handle events itself but I haven't seen it be a factor in anything but one event

So

Also, some projects give you replenishing items. Some are okay, others are amazing

[wary topaz]

Maybe it reduces the chances of negative events?

I've had one or two

[hardy tinsel]

There's a project I believe on Janus that gives you Chirurgeon Medkits, that can heal traumas

[wary topaz]

'Techpriests can't be innovative' False!!

[hardy tinsel]

That and the Dargonus Navy Dock are the only two mandatory projects imo

The Medkits are really useful in general and will be lifesavers later

[twin anchor]

I think I've got a bug with my colonies there.

The names/effects seem to be transposed here.

[hardy tinsel]

Huh

Woops

[twin anchor]

I do find it really funny how often Yrielt and Argenta agree on a thing.

They might hate each other but they hate Chaos more

[tight flare]

Just found uh
This
What in gods fucking name
70% armor reduction???

Why does this hit harder than a multimelta

Its been struck with the bug that makes it so Yrliet can't use it so its going on Jae

[twin anchor]

Oh yeah, that's a Dark Eldar Anti-Tank PIstol

And part of it is sorta...it's something that the game doesn't quite represent.

Multi-meltas are in-universe a 2 shot weapon with range comparable to a boltgun.

[tight flare]

Gweh?????? Bwuh???? Gah????
Why did we just get such an insane loot spike

[twin anchor]

https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/skmUhKtJnBbltuWm.jpg

[hardy tinsel]

Welcome to Drukhari Bullshit

[twin anchor]

...on the other hand: If Multimeltas did have Burst Fire (2 Shots) and bolter range, can you imagine the unlimited power that Argenta would have?

[tight flare]

And in the same fight we have a two handed weapons whose max damage is only 2 points over that daggers min
This game is kind of uhhhh
Scuffed
Very fun tho

[twin anchor]

https://spikeybits.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/4b4c98a5-9th-edition-melta-rules-2.jpg

Melta weapons generally scale in range rather than damage with size.

But to be fair, going from 'I can throw a knife this far' to 'Full on rifle' is a good range increase 😛

[tight flare]

Inferno pistols are funny because like, they're super rare but to employ them its like
'hide under some rubble and hope' type tank hunting madness

[twin anchor]

Yeah, there's a reason the main people who use them are Seraphim.

Who have Jump Packs

The Seraphim Anti-Tank Method is 'Jump Pack onto a tank, clamp it with melta charges, hose it down with inferno pistols and then jump away'

[wary topaz]

damnit, I have a plasma weapon that can't be equipped

[hardy tinsel]

Hmm?

[wary topaz]

I have a plasma rifle called the dark marchessa that I can't equip

Seriously considering replacing adelard with a master tactician offer psyker

Spam resolve gain from word of the emperor, turn that into buffs

[wary topaz]

Particularly sad because it never overheats

[hardy tinsel]

Huh

That's bizarre

[tight flare]

I am greatly afeared that my run may be dead due to a bug
I cannot interact with the ||webway gate at the end of act 2||
Saved just before it and will reload in the morning, see if it agrees with me then

[wary topaz]

Also when you report to opticon22 for exploration profit factor, you have to spam it until he greys it out to get all of it

[ebon forge]

Yeah, and there's no indication that that's what's happening, so I stopped after a bit because I worried it was a bug -.-

Since the text is identical each time.

[eternal agate]

i assume this is intentional although i don't know what happens if you waste all of your insight on making existing routes safe

[twin anchor]

I'll admit, I've been using my insight making links between my colonies.

So I can 1 jump to each of them from each of them

[ebon forge]

Meanwhile, I've been trying to get safe routes for as cheap as possible - but I want one safe route from footfall to all my colonies, since that's surely good for trade.

(I know it doesn't do anything, but I also prefer to have calm warp travel ^^)

[twin anchor]

Yeah, that was sorta my logic for spending on my colonies.

[ebon forge]

Other routes can be yellow, possibly orange, but there needs to be one green line.

[twin anchor]

'Making all my colonies 1 safe jump for each other must be good for them'

[jagged pine]

... my big fella has over 300 weapon/ballistic skill, and near 200% armor reduction.

I think I am pivoting my strat to "give the big fella as many turns as possible" which is incredibly perfect and lore accurate

oh, I guess I don't need to be vague, he's in the loading screens. SPEHSS MEHREEN

And thanks to the power of bugs, I even have two!

[hardy tinsel]

[twin anchor]

||OH GOD WHY ARE THERE 4 HEAVY BOLTER TURRETS WITH 100% ARMOUR?||

[hardy tinsel]

||I did warn you about this area :p||

[twin anchor]

||I'm real fucking glad my main character is a sniper right now. I dragged off 50% armour with exploit/expose weakness and everyone just piled on them one at a time||

[hardy tinsel]

||Thank god, good stuff||

[twin anchor]

||Man, they really make you feel how scary a heavy bolter is in this game||

[wary topaz]

oh my god

With enough wilffire stacks

It becomes free

So you can use it on turns you "move move move" on Argenta

[twin anchor]

Yep!

And you can also use her heroic action attacks too.

As Arch Militant's free attack each round can be used then too.

I love arch militant but it really needs a hit with a nerf hammer 😛

[hardy tinsel]

Yup

They gotta cap the stack or something

[wary topaz]

There is a hard limit of 11 attacks per round, IIRC

[twin anchor]

And likely make Move Move Move actively deny actions, even 0 AP actions.

It's for Moving People About, not going 'I have 2 sources of 0 AP attacks, 2 bonus turns for me' 😛

[wary topaz]

yeah

Honestly? The biggest problem with Cassia is that all her cool navigator stuff is competing for build space with her cool officer stuff

[twin anchor]

Yep

Both are Very Action Hungry and don't align with stats...at all.

So her navigator stuff kinda has to be Super Cracked to make up for it.

Like Unnatural Allure. +5 (+1 per navigator talent) Fellowship. Why yes, I would like to instantly get the most fellowship in the entire team with a single talent

[wary topaz]

Honestly they should have made payker/navigator be their own archetypes

[twin anchor]

I can sorta see why they made them backgrounds. At least, Psyker.

As you've got a big distinction between 'I throw lightning' and 'I am a melee guy with a force sword'

But Navigator could have genuinely been both her background and her Archtype and Cassia would still be fucking cracked

[wary topaz]

As it is I run her as a straight navigator who gives out turns to fuel her own stats

Which is

A choice

Master of time is so gd cracked

Definitely going to pick up move for her on third tier

[hardy tinsel]

I don't use Cassia because she'd be too fucked up if I did I think

Lol

[bitter pollen]

The move bonus thing also seems to apply to bonus turns, I have abelard able to let people shift a few spaces but she gets like 24

[twin anchor]

I replaced her with Jae.

[hardy tinsel]

I'm already an officer and I'd prefer to keep it at one

Multiple ones gets stupid

[twin anchor]

Okay so a thing I just had happen I really like?

||When you encounter Tarzuz's Mechanicus stuff and it very clearly turns into a brawl but not like...a war. It's classic 'The Imperium's laws go exactly as far as you can get everyone to agree they go' + 'All imperial stuff is some amount of Big Dick Context'||

[wary topaz]

Hehehe

the eldar topedos you get from a world project are amazing

Ton of damage, very maneuverable, can fire them every round

[hardy tinsel]

what

that last one is...huge

and isn't said on the tooltip!!!

:(

[twin anchor]

https://mediaproxy.snopes.com/width/1200/https://media.snopes.com/2019/07/homeless.jpg

[hardy tinsel]

It's so fucked (postive) how there's a lot of cheap projects that are very good and also deeply morally wrong

The game actually does the satire part of 40k well

[twin anchor]

Yeah, like that is objectively a fantastic project, trading 2 of a very plentiful resource for +30% to all production of resources.

But like...

Oh god

[hardy tinsel]

It's horrific, but oh boy is it efficient

[ebon forge]

Holy shit instead of waiting in line I can just ||open fire on the crowd?!||

whew lad, that's a bit much no?

(I didn't pick that option, but still)

[hardy tinsel]

Welcome to 40k lmao

[twin anchor]

Literal Bloodletter: "BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD-"
Pascal: "Engaging Keep Your Distance. Boop."
Bloodletter Faceplants

Meanwhile the Sniper Pair of the Eldar and the Rogue Trader have discovered the perfect counter to a World Eater Berseker.

A Balcony

In other news: HOLY FUCK HALF A DOZEN BLOODLETTERS AND A WORLD EATER. THE FUCK WARP ENCOUNTERS?

[wary topaz]

Okay, the arp travel encounters where they end the combat before a new wave? Rude

I guess it resets your health, but it also resets all your tempo

[twin anchor]

||Oh god I just used an Inquisitorial Rosette to skip the line in the Administratum||

[sand crypt]

honestly? yeah. I figured out quick they had a good pulse on the satire when I saw some of the more noble-y dialogue options. you can be a right fucking dickhead in a way that fits perfect with the setting.

[tidal parcel]

Honestly I just took all navigator powers and my own character is the officer

[wary topaz]

I've mostly been doing without an officer so far, barring Cassia

But also, oh boy is chapter 3 presenting some.... challenges

[jovial anvil]

All navigator cassia is really good

[tidal parcel]

Cassia is peak master tact

She never loses the damage bonus from press the advantage when using her powers

So she will scale infinitely in combat as long as you keep generating momentum

[jovial anvil]

The fact that she can get common talents as strong as class talent is also really good. She has it will not die and swift movement but I give those to everyone

[tidal parcel]

Yeah it will not die is like

Imo a poorly designed talent

Its just a tax

[jovial anvil]

Same with swift movements, both are too good not to take

[ebon forge]

Huh. I haven't taken either of those on anyone.

Though I have a talent or something that gave everyone extra wounds based on my RT, iirc.

[tidal parcel]

It will not die gives scaling wounds

Equal to half your level

[ebon forge]

Yeah, I know. I haven't seen the need to take it over stuff that gives more damage output so far.

Especially after I got something that I don't remember in detail that boosted everyone's wounds.

Abelard and Heinrix could occasionally use the extra MP from Swift Movement, but not often enough to make me take it either, and everyone else barely has to move ever.

[jovial anvil]

Movement is always a god stat

[ebon forge]

That really hasn't been my experience. I've only once had to move a somewhat significant distance with a character, and for that I used the blitz stratagem, which let them move into that area from 11 squares away for free.

Everything else is well covered by moving 0-4 squares and having guns... (Again, except for Abelard and Heinrix, but a 5-square charge helps a lot even then.)

[viscid berry]

I had trouble in Act 1 with movement, but it was mostly my builds

respecing to make sure I had longer range options fixed that issue

[eternal agate]

i just put movespeed on everyone, even though cassia can probably reach escape velocity across the course of one of her turns

melee operators seem to struggle the most, poor pasqal desperately waddling up to the front line

[tight flare]

Cassia has a navigator talent that basically gives her infinite MP when she uses a power
Very useful for lining up Gaze

[bitter pollen]

Do folks have any feelings for Heavy armor? Dodge seems sort of.. better, but I might not have seen decent stuff yet

[tight flare]

It's nice against gun users
Since they tend to burst fire
And you get both percentage damage reduction and flat damage reduction
So very often a burst from a lasgun does 0 Damage

And for melee dudes you can lean on parry in addition to your DR

[bitter pollen]

It feels arbitrary that it can't be worn without a talent

Isn't power armor dangit

[tight flare]

My adelard has pumped parry wicked high and wears heavy armor and he's practically invincible

[shadow storm]

The strongest heavy armor I found also (act 4 spoilers) ||adds something like 10% of your Coercion to your Deflection||

Which is wild

[eternal agate]

yeah i feel like dodge is not reliable enough for someone who you know is gonna get punched a lot

there are some high accuracy and damage hits out there

the act 3 ||pain engine managed to slap both adelard and pasqal to death when it wasn’t even its turn||

[bitter pollen]

Adelard can be downed? N-no

[eternal agate]

he just got tired for a minute and needed a little sit down

actually i think he’s been downed twice, the other time he would have been fine if the “friendly” reinforcements hadn’t accidentally gunned him down

[tight flare]

In my game he's only gone down to friendly fire
Melta Blasts from argenta or Tactical Superiority enhanced Cassia with Lidless Gaze

[tight flare]

Okay, fortunately the soft lock I was afraid of turned out to be nothing
I reloaded the save I made last night and the gate let me interact with it again

[viscid berry]

opposite for me

theres an acceleration talent for pasqal specifically

that gives huge mp

[bitter pollen]

I have a Forge World melee character with the Mobility System and it's proving lovely

[viscid berry]

I’ve slapped mine in Heavy Armor and then gone into talents / gear to boost his damage

its realy funny to see him unload 4 attacks, then take a burst to the face and only take 3

[tight flare]

The mobility protocol for Pasqual is a necessity if your buildin him melee yeah

[tight flare]

My rogue trader is our melee damage gal so I've built him more into pure tank
Counterattack Stance, with the cape that makes you autododge the next attack after landing an AoO
So he parries and ripostes every attack and auto dodges the ones he can't parry

[viscid berry]

I’m still kinda early in Act 2

but I found that ring that reduces wounds and gives toughness scaling crit chance

its very fun with him

[jovial anvil]

It’s only good if you’re expecting the wearer to be standing out in the open soaking up gunfire, (aka, melee) otherwise dodge is better if you want to rely on cover to be safe

[jovial anvil]

Did the same to me, that boss is insane and vanguards can go down surprisingly fast on early turns were it doesn’t have stacks yet

[stray hinge]

if heavy armor doesn't get pauldrons i ain't buying it

and they better be big ones too

shoulders the size of a condo

[tight flare]

I think I am switching my RT from heavy armor to light armor
Because dodge reduction seems mad hard to build up compared to Dodge and Assassin is so sad without good lethality

[wary topaz]

Mm, unfortunately mine is heavily invested in int/per/bs, so I don't have a huge amount of base agi.

[tight flare]

Okay yeah this is much better
I have 110% dodge which means these always proc

And these two seem great for chunking through high armor enemies

And also uhhhhhhhhhhh
Permanent 21 damage dot that ignores armor and stacks with bleed

(Its also a Good DOT that procs at turn start and not turn end)

[jovial anvil]

I think lethality might overflow though, would explain why the above 100% dodge companion has poor lethality damage

[tight flare]

Mine is 110 and all the ability readouts here seem to be saying the correct amount of damage
Will test it out but

[safe surge]

Why do they say what lethality is but not how it is used in the ability?

[wary topaz]

Because it does nothing on its own, I think?

[tight flare]

Lethality doesn't do anything by itself, it only does stuff when an ability specifically says it does
Notably a lot of the numbers in Orange are the 'calculated' total of an equation that originally had (Lethality%) in there

So like, the 11 here was originally (Lethality/10), because my Lethality is 110

[safe surge]

oooh, ok that makes more sense

[tight flare]

Oh jesus
Doing the ceremony on dargonus and I see this is another agonizing, owlcat mandated 'you can only use your own PC's stats' section

[tight flare]

Hm
I have finally met the other Rogue Traders
Am gonna go ahead and guess Winterscale ||Is gonna be our Khorne rep, the other three have gotten plenty of play already||

[eternal agate]

why does cassia have 200 persuasion all of a sudden

and 125% dodge, and 116 wounds when friggin abelard only has 78

is she secretly the main character?

[twin anchor]

Yes

You are at best, secondary to Cassia

[tight flare]

It really is funny
All her origin talents have cracked effects and then her navigator powers are just
Better warp powers that also don't cause peril

[wary topaz]

I'm past the opening of chapter 3.

Yrliet best girl.

By which I mean that her dialogue actually provoked an emotional response out of me

[tight flare]

I'm nearing it myself, very excited
I have heard Things

[tight flare]

Alright I am now in Act 3
Many Impossible Checks
Much Fun

Appropriate, I suppose!

[wary topaz]

yeah it's a lot, pick your battles and/or savescum

[tight flare]

Oh my goodness, Jae
(Chapter 3) ||Giving someone their cancer back does sound like the kind of prank a Drukhari would make||

[wary topaz]

Jezus

Also, I have acquired The Big Boi

[hardy tinsel]

I'd like Big Boi better if he wasn't so buggy

[wary topaz]

....man he just has generic death world origin talents?

[hardy tinsel]

yeah

[tight flare]

Hey they're pretty good tho
+10 crit chance on axes!
Its what I picked for my RT

[wary topaz]

Oh?

[hardy tinsel]

I find his charge craps out a lot

Like I use it and either he doesn't attack, or he moves...away from the target

[tight flare]

I've managed to fix weird fuckups like that sometimes by switching weapon sets
Which uh
Exploits a separate bug where you can swap weapon sets mid action and that cancels said actoon

I just got him myself, by the by
Arch Militant 👀

[wary topaz]

Huh I haven't used his charge yet

wildfire go brr

Also, longshoit splinter rifle

It's a sniper and a burst gun

cuz why not

[twin anchor]

You know what would have been cool with boltguns? If they let you play with ammo types

As boltguns are famous for loads of ammo types

[wary topaz]

That could be fun

IDK if thats a thing on the non astartes one?

Also, combi weapons

Gimmie combis

[tight flare]

Combi weapons would be cool
And also seem very possible given how the game implements weapons
Each one is a bundle of attack templates, and as noted earlier they can get kind of weird with it it like the splinter rifle with both burst and deadeye shot
So something that's, say, bolter burst and melta single shot seems very possible

[wary topaz]

...hm, Well, that a novel big boi bug:

[jagged pine]

The Big Boi is an unkillable beast that saved my ass in this last fight for chapter 3. Rough fight if not for him!

I also got double big boi bug there heh

[tight flare]

INTENSELY ominous to see right after ||recruiting Marezhai||
||TBH I had planned to double backstab him and just slash his throat after the fight was over but that's not an option yet, surprisingly||

OH FUCK
||Argenta and Ulfar have Fucked Off||

Alright ||Marezai either escaped our attempted jumping or he died off screen||

||Also we are now a Comorragh ganglord?||

Also..............
(More chapter 3 spoilers, on a different track:) ||Someone here said a few days ago that they were surprised there was no Guardsman rep||
||Turns out that's not necessarily true with what I've learned about Jae 👀 ||

[hardy tinsel]

||Oh worm?||

[tight flare]

👀

[hardy tinsel]

||I've already been through ch3 without her, what's she say?||

[tight flare]

Major spoilers for her plot: ||Its revealed that her neck implants are actually a full respiratory system replacement.... meant to treat her lung cancer from a childhood in an imperial mine. She was never a princess, she was a commoner who wound up in the Imperial Guard, picked up writing piecemeal over the years, got some criminal connections, and eventually deserted||

[hardy tinsel]

||oh thats wild as hell||

[tight flare]

We find this out because ||the surgeon dude pulls her augments out and grows some cancer lungs to put back into her because he thinks her original 'mutation' is interesting, and we have to convince him to swap them back||

[hardy tinsel]

[ebon forge]

Am I reading this right?
I have a 75% chance of success on the original test, but the reroll fails because it's mysteriously set to 0% chance?

[hardy tinsel]

huh

Yeah I guess??

[tight flare]

Rogue Traders roll system is a dark mystery and I am glad it's all automated

[ebon forge]

Alright, bug reported xD

Because that can't be intended for a "reroll".

[wary topaz]

Okay the act 3 boss is horseshit

How does she have fuckin 800 wounds on normal?

And ||TWO FUCKIN HP BARS||

[hardy tinsel]

||Yeah she really sucks - my biggest tip is to kill all the Incubi first because triggering her phase change basically just kills you if they're alive||

[wary topaz]

I mean she ||invariably just kills a character first round with her goddamn pistol||

[hardy tinsel]

||It also triggers the two turrets in the back of the arena which will 100% take you off guard if you don't know about it||

[hardy tinsel]

||Do you have any taunts or heavy damage reduction abilities like Wall of Rockcrete?||

[ebon forge]

Is there any way to get Assassin Pasqal to use his gun for his abilities?

[hardy tinsel]

as of rn no, afaik

which is very annoying

[wary topaz]

Not onlyt do I not, she usually acts first

[ebon forge]

Oh, now I saw again the thing that's been boosting my wounds.
On Foulstone, I built the Thousand-Faced Relic project, which gives everyone in my party Lore(Imperium)/15 wounds.

Right now, that's +5 wounds on everyone, which so far has been plenty.

[wary topaz]

Also I am becoming a big marazhai hater

[ebon forge]

oh? I'm playing mostly dogmatic for my first run, and had enough Coercion to maximally piss him off in the first encounter (only one so far) which has been good fun xD

[wary topaz]

I mean he's a dark eldar

He's got all of Yrliet's superiority, but he's also just a deeply unpleasant sadist

That took a lot of savescumming, jesus

Slightly worried I haven't found cassia

Oh No

[hardy tinsel]

what happened

[wary topaz]

I may have left Cassia behind.

This is the most fucking scuffed run, it's great

[hardy tinsel]

Oh dearrrr

[wary topaz]

Ī can seemingly still navigate tho

[twin anchor]

I'm away from home for Christmas/Still in Act 2. Sounds like Act 3 is a fucking trip.

[wary topaz]

It is!

Aha!

if you lose your navigator you get to make a new one

oh shit you get to MAKE a new one

[hardy tinsel]

wait

for real??

[wary topaz]

Yeah!

[hardy tinsel]

damn that rules

[wary topaz]

There are like, subclasses

You get to pick between less friendly fire, more power crit chance, or resistance tests against nav powers are penalised

So you get to choose your blaster/debuff/AOE build

...arch militant laserface

mayhap....

nay, I'm already running two of them

[ebon forge]

oh WOW

that's cool

[wary topaz]

presumably you also do it if you hand Cassia ||over to her family in her personal quest||

Oh shit you get to chapter 4 and then suddenly theres a new tier of planetary dev and reputation score

[ebon forge]

Not in act 3? Dang.

All my colonies are maxed out on what they can build, and I have all systems explored...

I was hoping act 3 would add some stuff, but I suppose it explains how I've been breezing through encounters so far.

[wary topaz]

I mean act 3 is pretty self contained

[gray flume]

Y'all should I ||Bomb rykar or save the people?||

Heart tells me save

But Then again

Chaos

I feel like I'm doing it the easy way

Going dogmatic

Ok I chose dog

[jovial anvil]

Yeah I just brute forced that fight unfortunately

[jovial anvil]

Shame you can’t play as one

Navigators are super broken though

But that’s kinda just how you have to beat the game given what is throws at you

[tight flare]

Yeah
I do not have a great deal of fear because even if a Really Hard Fight occurs and the whole rest of my team goes down Argenta and Cassia are still gonna make it

[tight flare]

Softlocked again, the door to the Shrieker's Den has disappeared
Thank heavens for Toybox

Oh my god the game is coming apart at the seams in act 3
I'm now in the narrative sequence where ||the winged assassin tries to kill me||, and all the skill check readouts are just
Complete lies

[jovial anvil]

Yeah, I lost half my time in the first two turns of the act 3 boss yet Abelard and Cassia were so strong that they carried it with help from the assassin you pick up

I honestly wish the game was more low power so I felt like I had to be more tactical and strategic

[jovial anvil]

I’m going to take a break to avoid burnout after 60 hours, especially since I’ve heard acts 4/5 are extremely rough, but I know that the combat that’s growing increasingly uninteresting to me won’t change

[jagged pine]

This was the worst of the narrative sequences for me as well. Had to savescum like five times. All the other narrative things have been wonderful

[eternal agate]

dying like a chump in a cutscene for having the wrong skills is just sad

[tight flare]

On the upswing-
My assassin build is working out alright

[eternal agate]

yeah, there was a sudden turning point where my crime lord sniper went from wet noodle to god obliterator

which remarkably coincided with obtaining elf gun proficiency

[tight flare]

Yeah I'm actually like, pretty comfortable with my entire crew's performance now
Jae can nuke vast swathes of the enemy with her dual Elite Blast Pistols, Cassia has her God Lazers as usual, Argenta throws out melta blasts like candy, my RT crits for a trillion direct damage, and Ulfar is Argenta's kid brother and therefore still very useful

(Also he pulls all the aggro and takes no damage due to his power armor)

[jagged pine]

Now that I'm in act 4, I might just have three officers all yelling at th Big Boi to murder everything

[tight flare]

Also I find it very funny that Iconoclast for some reason lets you translate ||Clownese||

[jovial anvil]

The gun that Winterscale gives you?

Yeah that’s one of the best in the game

I’m currently using the deadshot splinter rifle which is super good but an AR and not a sniper. The damage is higher than most snipers though on top of auto bursts

I haven’t heard anyone talk about it either

I wish you could upgrade guns to make your own custom killing machine, id love to be a character with a hex or needle rifle

[jovial anvil]

I try that with Jae but she doesn’t seem to ever hit anything

[tight flare]

I've been investing in her ballistic skill with ability and talents, rather than the ones that plug into her archetype
Because he archetype is essentially only really there for extra turns and pumping the damage on her gunshots to ridiculous levels
Las expertise also means that dodge essentially does not matter for the blast pistols

(And neither does armor!)

Fucked up that they put a pistol with 70% armor pen in the 'beats dodge' weapon group

[eternal agate]

dual wield blast pistols is pretty horrifying

really helps with the trash clearing that operatives and assassins sort of struggle with too

[ebon forge]

So at the Magna Accessio there's a statue of a "guardian of Humanity".
That's just ||Ciaphas Cain, HERO OF THE IMPERIUM||, right?

[ebon forge]

Bwahahahaha ||Marazhai getting killed unceremoniously because I resisted his little illusion|| is amazing.

Feels great.

[jovial anvil]

||I only spared him since I knew he could be a party member||

||would’ve executed Idira and Yrliet if they hadn’t been as well||

[tight flare]

I'm sad that's so hard to do
It takes, what? Willpower and Carouse? Who has both of those?

[eternal agate]

Rogue Trader Harrier Du Bois von Valancius, presumably