XCOM 2 Catch-All

That’s cool. Great story.

What does skulljacking do after you’ve completed the requirement to do one in an early mission?

Skulljacking is a story thing but skullmining is a different skill that also uses the item called skulljack. It can backfire dealing damage to xcom operative but is still insta-kill for the enemy.

I’ve only just started the game myself so someone else can probably explain it better as we seem to be at about the same place in the story.

John Caboose wrote:

Skulljacking is a story thing but skullmining is a different skill that also uses the item called skulljack. It can backfire dealing damage to xcom operative but is still insta-kill for the enemy.

It also gives you a hacking chance, so you can get bonus stuff if you're lucky.

It also increases your hack skill by 10 (once skull mining has been researched). Worth the time to research.

Nice save!

Man, losing a campaign on the strategic level always feels random to me. Sometimes the avatar project suddenly gains like 5 pips in a few days and there's little you can do to counter it unless you've already got a plan in place. I try to make sure I always have an available facility to raid if necessary. You would never know to do this until you've played through the campaign once or twice. I'm glad you worked around it! What a frustrating way to lose.

I lost one my second wotc campaign through a combination of bugs, early bad luck, and an early avenger assault. Instant fail state. It was rough.

Localgod54 wrote:

Man, losing a campaign on the strategic level always feels random to me. Sometimes the avatar project suddenly gains like 5 pips in a few days and there's little you can do to counter it unless you've already got a plan in place. I try to make sure I always have an available facility to raid if necessary. You would never know to do this until you've played through the campaign once or twice. I'm glad you worked around it! What a frustrating way to lose.

I lost one my second wotc campaign through a combination of bugs, early bad luck, and an early avenger assault. Instant fail state. It was rough.

It’s a tough game. Had I been playing on Ironman, I would have lost my last Avenger assault mission. The Warlock attacked my base when I had the Lost Swarm event up. Luckily, I had the Lost instant kill card.

Every pod except two had multiple Spectres. Explosions called Swarms more quickly.

So, between the exploding Psi Zombies, turrets exploding, the cannon exploding, enemy explosives, and my own desperate attempts to stop shadows and mind controls... I wound up killing over 130 enemies. Every single soldier had been wounded multiple times, most had been revived or stabilized, and there were so many Lost summoned that they started using a default XCOM skin zombie skin and animation.

Demosthenes wrote:
Bfgp wrote:

You want to take out the Chosen early anyway because their weapons turn the relevant soldiers carrying them into devastating arms platforms.

True story. Don't have the Hunter's stuff yet, but the Assassin's and Warlock's stuff was pretty good (though sad there's not like a Warlock Psyamp to use.

I would give up the other two for the Hunter weapons. Your sniper is become death, the destroyer of worlds.
The Assassin weapons are pretty good as well. Warlock is kinda meh.

Time to slay some Chosen!

Yeah, the assault rifle is good but not shockingly good as the pistol/rifle and katana/shotty. The pistol is out of this world (literally, although the same could be said of all Chosen weapons). The assault rifle works well on a Covering Fire/Guardian Specialist (huge magazine clip, extra aim, so you can trigger it over and over to your enemy's chagrin).

The weapon (rifle?) I received from slaying the assassins is amazing with its large clip. Saved my squad’s butt on more than one occasion when a large number the lost were seemingly in a support role of the Advent.

chooka1 wrote:

The weapon (rifle?) I received from slaying the assassins is amazing with its large clip. Saved my squad’s butt on more than one occasion when a large number the lost were seemingly in a support role of the Advent.

Technically shotgun.

First Chosen down!

I forget the name (Hunter/Assassin?) – it’s the one with a sword.

Spoiler:

The mission was amazing. Maybe my team was OP for it, but it felt like it literally couldn’t have gone better. The phase 1 part was mostly a cakewalk by virtue of the fact that the map was made up of discrete rooms, which lets you tackle each pod individually, then skip several turns to let the timers on your abilities recharge. Think I might have taken a single hit during the whole thing.

The actual Chosen battle was thrilling, largely because I didn’t know what to expect, and I felt like a tactical wizard throughout. My team didn’t miss a single shot (because of my tactical wizadry, natch). I took the Chosen out (both times) on the turn it appeared. Took out the sarcophagus way before healing was an issue. This screenshot is a good indicator of how well things went, given that this Chosen was vulnerable to Reapers. 100% flank shot FTW!

IMAGE( https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/875248189072786045/6433CF6FACAAA84916CAC31AE9297678404390B9/)

Jonman wrote:

First Chosen down!

I forget the name (Hunter/Assassin?) – it’s the one with a sword.

Spoiler:

The mission was amazing. Maybe my team was OP for it, but it felt like it literally couldn’t have gone better. The phase 1 part was mostly a cakewalk by virtue of the fact that the map was made up of discrete rooms, which lets you tackle each pod individually, then skip several turns to let the timers on your abilities recharge. Think I might have taken a single hit during the whole thing.

The actual Chosen battle was thrilling, largely because I didn’t know what to expect, and I felt like a tactical wizard throughout. My team didn’t miss a single shot (because of my tactical wizadry, natch). I took the Chosen out (both times) on the turn it appeared. Took out the sarcophagus way before healing was an issue. This screenshot is a good indicator of how well things went, given that this Chosen was vulnerable to Reapers. 100% flank shot FTW!

IMAGE( https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/875248189072786045/6433CF6FACAAA84916CAC31AE9297678404390B9/)

FYI. Reapers get to be godlike once a mission with Banish. Make sure they have a fully loaded superior mag and go crazy. If you can slap a superior repeater on there... well, I have yet to not execute a Chosen or Ruler with Banish and a repeater.

Yep, Reaper is first candidate for the Superior Magazine and either AP/blue screen ammo and armour shredding perk. Equip a Superior Repeater for potentially 6-7 (15-20%) attempts to proc instant kill. Although not many things can survive Banish anyway.

Anger management therapy session. Today:

1. Have your squad in a high place
2. Have a Sectoid mind-control one of your guys, think "I'll get that alien next turn, so my guys will take at most one hit".
3. Have said mind-controlled soldier blow up himself + 2 others, and kill all three with the additional falling damage.

So I rage-quit.

I was with you til the rage-quit. That's Xcom baby!

/smarm

Localgod54 wrote:

I was with you til the rage-quit. That's Xcom baby!

/smarm

Smarmosaur

Once they start carrying grenades and those mechanised units start showing up...probably don't want to cluster your squad very closely.

I’m in on XBox.

I have so much catching up to do.

Also: I have no idea how hosed I am with War of the Chosen, other than it looks fun. I just got to the escort mission with the Reaper. I haven't lost a soldier yet, though most are wounded. It's been so long since I played a XCom game, I had forgotten the fact that actual planning matters.

Still having a lot of fun. I cannot wait for the railroad to stop so I can actually start doing things.

athros wrote:

Still having a lot of fun. I cannot wait for the railroad to stop so I can actually start doing things.

That mission is the last bit of tutorial - you'll be on your own to screw up any way you want after that.

Today I learned not to be greedy.

In a supply raid with Advent and Lost, I ran for a supply chest about to be picked up by Advent. On the way, I managed to activate _all_ pods of that mission.
Learned from my last screw-up and just noped out of there in a fashion that seems to have turned defeat into victory:

I placed the escape marker between two supply chests, sent my soldiers there, marked the chests, and airlifted everybody out except for the unlucky bastard who activated all those pods. And my reaper.

So the reaper stayed hidden for a round and waited until the three marked supply chests were airlifted. The soldier who uncovered all pods was immediately

Spoiler:

shadowbound.

The reaper stayed hidden a bit longer and watched Advent and Lost beat each other up. When there were no more lost, she called in a few more of them with the claymore.

Tired of waiting I airlifted her out of there, too.

Mission status: flawless, 28 enemies killed (only one of them by the claymore, the rest beat each other up), all soldiers survived, none of them was injured.

How the unconscious soldier managed to beam himself into the airlift is a mystery I'm sill trying to solve.

Had a bear of a faction mission last night. I’ll admit to save-scumming the hell out of it, but largely because while attempting to set up an ambush from concealment, I’d continually activate the pod (plus the other two pods who were off in the fog), despite the UI telling me that I wouldn’t.

Like, moving up to an adjacent-to a third floor window, with full cover, in concealment, overlooking a pod at ground level (Sectopod, flamer, MEC). Nope, sectopod magically sees you.

Eventually, I ended up pulling back, and setting up a defensive position in a single room while pod after pod and endless Lost just kept coming.

But man, the LOS code is BS-as-hell. Reminds me why I don’t play on Ironman.

I have a question about missions where The Lost just seem to keep coming.

I complete all the objectives except for "Eliminate all enemy units" and seem to have wave after wave of The Lost showing up. I decide there is no end to this but get a poor rating and everyone seems upset despite doing what we came to do and often no one is even injured.

Should I be waiting? Is there a likely end to Lost waves? Or is that just how those missions go?

Bruce wrote:

Should I be waiting? Is there a likely end to Lost waves? Or is that just how those missions go?

I think the end gets triggered when (a) all lost spawned at the start are dead and (b) no other lost spawned along the way are still around. If you go looking for a dumb lost that hasn't noticed there's a battle going on and kill it, that should finish the mission.

MikeSands wrote:
Bruce wrote:

Should I be waiting? Is there a likely end to Lost waves? Or is that just how those missions go?

I think the end gets triggered when (a) all lost spawned at the start are dead and (b) no other lost spawned along the way are still around. If you go looking for a dumb lost that hasn't noticed there's a battle going on and kill it, that should finish the mission.

Yes, I've heard of this issue happening to people on reddit. You basically have to comb the map for unactivated lost, which is a pain since there's no way to distinguish them from the waves that keep spawning. A reaper would be good for this, as the short range detection makes up for accidentally triggering line of sight.

I have a new favorite moment from the game.

My first encounter with the Warlock at a retaliation site.

We deal with the regular mobs pretty easily and then turn our attention to the purple guy. I can only get one person to target him in the first instant, one of my grenadiers, so she lays down some supression fire.
On his turn, he moves, the reaction shot goes off and he is ... EXECUTED!!

Localgod54 wrote:
MikeSands wrote:
Bruce wrote:

Should I be waiting? Is there a likely end to Lost waves? Or is that just how those missions go?

I think the end gets triggered when (a) all lost spawned at the start are dead and (b) no other lost spawned along the way are still around. If you go looking for a dumb lost that hasn't noticed there's a battle going on and kill it, that should finish the mission.

Yes, I've heard of this issue happening to people on reddit. You basically have to comb the map for unactivated lost, which is a pain since there's no way to distinguish them from the waves that keep spawning. A reaper would be good for this, as the short range detection makes up for accidentally triggering line of sight.

Bladestorm squaddies also perfect for Lost missions.

I picked up WotC a few weeks ago and played relentlessly for two weeks straight, but I wanted to read through this thread a bit before posting here. WotC undoubtedly made a ton of fantastic improvements to XCOM.

This might go down as my favorite overall year for game releases ever, yet aside from possibly Prey, no game caused me to lose sleep due to "one more turn" syndrome more than WotC this year. I don't think I really realized how much love I have for XCOM as a series until finishing WotC. What a fantastic expansion.

Also, Kexx, you rock. I honestly don't think I would have enjoyed WotC as much as I did without some of your character mods. I made heavy use of the Starcraft 2 and Mass Effect 2 character mods in particular. I've never been big on modeling my characters after my friends, community members, etc., but these models (and corresponding voice packs, including one Bob Ross voiced troop just for kicks) for characters I know and love caused me to become invested in my troops in a way that I had not before. I lost some good troops along the way, but Zerg overlord psi-ops Kerrigan, grenadier extraordinaire Wrex, specialized specialist Tali, and crack-shot sniper Garrus carried me through to the end.