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Hey! Also doing an Endless Plus run right now. And to answer your question, I've picked up Internationale from a Detention Center. Apparently, you can't pick up the archieved version of agents from detention centers, and I assume neither Central nor Monst3r. I'm not sure about Olivia and Derek (The younger DLC versions of Central and Monst3r.) I'm pretty sure Rush and Draco can appear. I'm currently on Day 11. Around Day 7 or so, I belatedly realized I i didn't need to carefully hoard money in this mode like I did in my campaign games, and started to send Draco on stim-fuelled flurry gun shooting sprees; the high point was depopulating an entire level on turn 1. Now, the guards are starting to be armored enough that AP4 doesn't cut it anymore for all of them, and things have gotten more interesting again. I'm really curious what the further changes are going to be, since the difficulty scales all the way up to 20, and I intend to go the full distance. Here's my trip report so far: I started with Draco and Archive Decker for some cheap early game kills and stat boosts. I was a bit worried about finding more efficient lethal weaponry to keep boosting Draco, but as it turns out, all you need to max his stats in a single mission is a hacked lethal laser beam barrier and some patience; the enforcers that spawn on alert level 5 and 6 keep respawning if they die. I had him maxed out by the middle of day 2. I was lucky with my Detention Center missions and picked up Internationale and Sharp. My starting programs were Seed and Mercenary. Seed still is a mainstay, and Mercenary did a fine enough job in the beginning. I picked up Wrench 2, Parasite and Ping early on. Ping provides a great safety net, but I replaced it with Wisp when I found that. Wisp is fantastic for keeping tabs on alerted guards, but I eventually realized I either killed guards outright, or had so many AP on my agents that I could observe them the old-fashioned way. Now that the guards are armored up, I think it would be useful again, but I've picked up a TAG pistol instead for now. Parasite proved to be a great supplement for Wrench programs, and when I found Wrench 4, I got rid of Mercenary. I did decide to lose the Parasite when I eventually found Data Blast. Data Blast is probably the best hacking program in the game, and it works even better with Wrenches than Parasite. It's even more fantastic when you've got Internationale scoping out targets through walls for you. The other pillar of my hacking is that I've picked up four Buster Chip IIIs. Eventually, starting firewalls got high enough that I lost the Wrench 2. I've recently picked up Oracle, which is another keeper for Endless mode, since it doesn't care about how many firewalls are on the cameras. The sixth program I picked up was Hunter. It's really nice if you've got the daemons on the level identified, but the cooldown means there's way more daemons around than you can kill, and daemon databases usually aren't a high priority hack if they're even in the level at all.. Definitely satisfying to use against knocked-out Modded guards though. I picked up Bless instead, and that's just much more convenient as general purpose daemon protection. My latest acquisition is Aces, which reduces the armor of tagged guards for a turn. I haven't gotten to use it yet, but I hope it gives me some breathing room in the armor/AP race. Equipment-wise, you're suprisingly much at the mercy of the RNG, even in Endless. I've seen a grand total of two Neural Disruptor IIIs, and only one Portable Server III. What has been great for my power management, apart from the buster chips, are two Accelerator Chip IIIs. They give you +4 power whenever you use a console, and they have very fast cooldown. There's a lot of unimpressive tier IV items in the nanofabs, but I do appreciate Paralyzer IVs. I really wish you had a bigger storage in your base, which would encourage you to try out different items more. As I mentioned earlier Draco is specced for ranged kills, and you really don't need more than one flurry gun and a bunch of stims to clear out enough of a level to loot everything at your leisure. I'd like more +AP Ventricular Lances, I only have one of these either. One cloak, a couple of shock traps, an EMP pack etc. For implants, you definitely seem to need to go all in on armor-piercing, if you want to keep using it reliably. I have given both Decker and Sharp implants for +AP and extended duration on takedowns, but it seems that with Paralyzer IVs, holding out for more armor-piercing might have been better. One of the things I'm currently doing is raiding executives for vault keycards, and then doing Augment missions hoping to find Augment Drills so I can replace my early-game implants. Draco has one ranged AP implant, and the one that prevents alarm increases on kills. What's probably the most valuable general purpose implant is Torque Injectors, which reduces cooldowns on your items. Fantastic for buster and accelerator chips, and pretty much everything else too. Two of my agents also have the implant that gives you +2 action points when you hack a device, up to +6 each turn. I haven't really tried any of the other augments that boost action points, but this one seems like it's the best of those. Arguably, you can do well enough with Torque Injectors and Stim IIIs, since you have plenty of action points anyway at Speed 5. Draco has been fantastic at carrying my team through the early game, and even once you've maxed him out, the random boosts you get for scanning dead or KO'd guards are neat. Archive Decker's implant, on the other hand, has barely made an impression. Internationale is fantastic for scouting the level; I prefer not to use her remote console-hacking since the accelerator chips give bigger returns, but even so, some times it's just more convenient to do a remote hack and move on. Sharp is a beast, but I should have specializing him more for armor-piercing from the start. One thing I really liked is that they've recorded some dialogue specifically for Endless mode; but I think that only goes up to Day 7. I haven't heard anything new since then. Hannibal Rex fucked around with this message at 23:01 on Jun 16, 2016 |
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Jun 16, 2016 22:45
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Jun 16, 2016 22:53
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Apart from the somewhat tedious method of knocking out enforcers and dropping them into lethal laser fences, you can reliably get kills for Draco simply by hacking K&O turrets and Sankaku drones, without any specialized gear. Or, if you find Hunter early, you can kill Plastech's Modded guards by killing their daemon form. You do have to avoid scanning people while they're unconscious, since you're then no longer able to scan their corpses. As for programs, barely any of the power generating ones scale well enough for late Endless; Compared to having multiple remote servers that give you 2 power each turn, or accelerator chips than can give you 4 power once per turn with torque injectors, if you can chain hack the consoles, only Seed really matches up. Faust too, if you're taking Gladstone as a starting agent. The real way to save power is to have efficient breakers, and that means having a 1:1 break:cost ratio or better. I'd argue even Lockpick 2.0's general purpose 2 for 3 isn't quite good enough in late Endless. Wrench 4 has been very good, but now that I've got Oracle for cameras, and Data Blast and Buster Chips for everything else, I've considered dropping it too. Once you hit 3 things with Data Blast, it's basically just as efficient, and it's not uncommon to have 4, 5 or even 6 targets in the AoE. But yeah, the Wrench 2, Wrench 4, Parasite breaker suite worked surprisingly well for a time. Hannibal Rex fucked around with this message at 23:57 on Jun 16, 2016 |
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Jun 16, 2016 23:44
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Squeezing out as many easy missions out of your days is still a good idea in the early game, but now that I'm pretty much completely kitted out, I've started picking mission on how far away they are instead. My main interest right now is to see how the security scales up, and reaching day 20 in as few missions as possible. Also, while you definitely want to squeeze as much money out of each mission as you can in the campaign, you *will* hit the point where money is no longer an issue in Endless. Saving vault cards for augment missions rather than vaults is definitely the right choice, even if you may not find an augment vault right away.
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Jun 17, 2016 04:58
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The more you know: Did my usual flurry gun spree on an executive mission. As it turns out, Anatomy Analysis (no alarm increase on kills for 3 power) also works on non-lethal guns. Also, the description doesn't mention it, but apart from the larger AoE, EMP IVs also knock out devices for a turn longer. Of course, that's a bit of a double-edged sword.
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Jun 17, 2016 23:11
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Day 20 Report: Ok, here's some info about what you can expect from difficulty 20 missions, if you bother to play that far: Guards start with +3 Armor and KO protection, and get a fourth point in either as the alarm levels increase. Having AP4 is enough for weaker guards like the Plastech guys and Harbingers, but having more increases the amount of guards you can clear out, obviously. Most firewalls are either 5 or 10. I haven't used shock traps much at the end, but the KO reduction seems to mean they can get up again before your turn starts - at least, that happened the last time I used one, but it may have been a bit of a glitch since it happened the same turn that the KO protection went up one level; either way, shock traps aren't quite reliable. Holocircuit Overloaders, on the other hand, still work neatly. I had 4 AP implants on Sharp, but that was a bit overkill. But it's not a bad idea to have a Thermal Disruptor IV in reserve on your melee guy(s). Bless is really your best blanket protection against most demons. Oracle is great, but it's unreliable when a particular camera is holding up your exploration. One mainstay I had was to send in a cloaked agent with buster chips, but if you're about to kill people, triggering a camera will let you know where the closest enemies are, for merely raising the alarm level one point. Aces is another way to increase your AP. I had a tag gun on my shooter, and with a stim IV, you can simply tag people to reduce their armor, and then shoot them with your flurry gun. You need to switch to Incognita view and back to get the armor reduction to trigger. It increases the power consumption, obviously, and it doesn't work if an armored guard is already aiming at you. I never found Wrench 5, which would definitely be a keeper, but I did pick up Parasite 2.0 near the end. I didn't use it much, but it's quite efficient if you're not hitting a Portcullis 2.0 at the mission start. I kept emptying out the nanofabricators for useful stuff, and then selling it back, or leaving it behind. Paralyzer IVs are great. But all said, I wasn't that impressed by the late game difficulty increases. The interesting parts of Endless are when the exit starts requiring a seperate access card, and when you start getting a 2.0 daemon installed at mission start. Beyond that, the difficulty increases aren't exciting. Around day 14, the scan grenade of enforcers get an upgrade that lets them see through cloak or Prism's holo-field, but pretty much the only time I saw enforcers at that point was when I hit a Validate demon, or if I was scanning an executive. If you plan on doing it for the achievement, definitely try to hit missions that are 12 hours apart, which will let you hit day 20 faster. Do plan your implants carefully. I never found enough Implant Drills to respec all my guys. Hannibal Rex fucked around with this message at 19:42 on Jun 23, 2016 |
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Jun 23, 2016 19:37
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There's a minium of 1 turn KO. What happened at the time was that the alarm went to level four (Watchdog) just after I had knocked out two guards with a shock trap, so that probably was it. They should still work ok under most circumstances. I should mention, I definitely regretted selling Monst3r's DART once the armor increases got out of hand. Having a backup gun with higher AP definitely would have made sense at that point. I did find the non-lethal AP4 rail gun in the last few levels, but I only used it twice.
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Jun 23, 2016 21:02
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All you need to max Draco is a lethal (K&o) laser barrier. Dump unconscious enforcers in there and turn it on. They'll respawn. If you haven't played it yet, try the Expert Plus campaign or Time Attack mode. Endless just gets boring after you've maxed your agents.
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Jun 26, 2016 01:36
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I thought I had broken this game over my knee, but Time Attack mode has taught me new respect. Three failed runs in a row so far. One of them was at the final mission, when there was a bottle-neck flooded with guards, and I didn't manage to get enough AP weapons beforehand.
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Jul 7, 2016 18:30
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Time Attack mode done. I decided to do it without the DLC content, to get it done in fewer missions. Here's my report: After failing three times, with various constellations of my lesser used agents and programs, I got back to power-gaming on my fourth attempt. I took Central, as well as Faust/Brimstone. I settled on that because I wanted to give Archive Prism another try, and her special ability is very power-hungry. It's also pretty drat awesome to go strolling through rooms full of guards and cameras without having a care. That said, it wasn't all smooth sailing. Prism went down on mission 3 or so, which lead to a string of missions of solo Central, which went surprisingly well. I picked up a great selection of implants for her - Predictive Brawling, Torque Injectors and a Penetration Scanner to top it off. At the end, she had every ability at max, except hacking, since I had all the power I needed. Close to the end, I did manage to find a detention mission and sprung Prism again, with the help of a cloak mk3. Hacking was interesting; Brimstone is more useful for its passive than as an actual breaker, but I also found Wrench 5 early - which didn't do much good, until I also picked up Wildfire, which allowed me to raise the firewalls until my Wrench could break them. And in the final stages, it definitely made life a lot easier. The last program I picked up was Ping, which I didn't use much, but which also was a critical help in keeping the guards off of Monst3r during the final hack. The last level was fairly easy this time, with the two rooms being close to each other. Between Prism's holo-projector and Central's cloak, my main agents could move through the level fairly easily, it only took some patience to get Monst3r to the hack room. Still love the game, but I think it's finally time to give it a rest, now that I've got all the achievements. But Klei is definitely a developer to watch.
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Jul 8, 2016 17:30
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I haven't played Shank, and Don't Starve doesn't really look like my thing, but Mark of the Ninja was also excellent. Those missions are still very randomized, but by day 3, you really should have some way to deal with or distract armored guards. Also, has anyone playing with the DLC ever found a courier as a side objective? I only saw one for the first time in my last game, but that was without the DLC. Hannibal Rex fucked around with this message at 20:43 on Jul 9, 2016 |
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Jul 9, 2016 20:40
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 09:09 |
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Archive Prism has a neat ability, even just for simple things like being able to open a door without alerting a guard that's looking at it. She probably should have a partner with some sort of energy boosting ability.
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Sep 19, 2016 17:09
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