Thank you Syken for this. It is very interesting in many ways. I am a fairly new player so I appreciate the fact that you are doin a vanilla run. You are giving great tips. By analyzing your way of thinking showing us how you approach each situations, you give us deep knowledge for the game. Top-tier
This episode felt like a trip to the infirmary and getting my fear of the chosen (in particular the Assassin) removed. Up until watching this I found her the only really annoying one. Warlock I tend to find just sits behind his horde of psi zombies, Hunter just grapples around and tracking shots most of the time... Assassin however hunts your squad down. Since watching this run, I've changed my approach to her and rather than being the hunted, I generally now take the approach of hunting her down instead utilising the information you provided regarding her mechanics. Well played Commander Syken :)
4:25 "Grenades reduce trees to half cover" Sectoid is literally full cover after grenading his tree... 😂Same with the Assassin later on. Also, why is there a turn ending yellow move to save a civilian at 12:25? Can you guarantee that's not another Faceless? Because if it is, that's GG right there. 16:30 "We are getting one less corpse with the explosion" What? It literally says Faceless corpse dropped, and it says you got 2 in the after mission debrief.
there is a in cover removal, sometimes it doesn’t work as intended. as for the faceless ones, there is typically one per mission at the beginning and in both cases it would mot have been „Gg“, quite the contrary finally corpses and explosions are not always working as intended. with smaller units they are always destroyed, beasts corpses on the other hand (which faceless ones are) can survive the explosion
@@SykenPlays How would it not have been gg if the Faceless activates, deconceals the Reaper and immediately attacks? It might not have been literally gg, but the flawless run would have been over with 75% certainty, unless you can somehow guarantee that the Reaper won't be attacked. Also, I'm fairly certain there are 2 Faceless on any Retal (including the 1st) that has no resistance operatives to help you. However, It is possible to win without activating even one of them if you defeat (or at least let the Chosen as the final enemy extract and get away) the other pods and the Chosen without having vision on any of the Faceless. I've save scummed the 1st Retal to confirm this.
I absolutely love the good ol classic XCom-2!! This is the way to learnnnn :D After watching purely your Royale playthrough I learnt enough to be able to withstand legendary most of the time (so far) and definitely withstand commander difficulty. Simply by watching your highly educating and motivating playthroughes! Love this!
when you are on a terror mission and no other pod shoots civilians, she starts to target them. also, once she is revealed, a reaper and the civilians make it hard for her to re-stealth.
17:20 I believe that the reason why Endors wasnt' shaken is because they require to be injured in order to actually get shaken. Now, I mightbe completely wrong, because it could also come from something else, but that's what makes most sense to me.
That's the case in vanilla XCOM 2, in WotC, Shaken is triggered by too much will loss (2/3rds total). Injury can add to will loss but in WotC there is a RNG element to it, which can result in lucky outcomes like sending in a Tired soldier to a long mission and it not even triggering Shaken., etc.
Why didn`t the faceless move or attack in the turn it got revealed? In my campaigns, the faceless always attacks if revealed in aliens turns. Great job with this challenge, Syken. Cheers from Brazil.
20:11 Nooooooo! The game me a grenadier again! Jimmy Vince is supposed to be a specialist/hacker! Do you have his preferred class set to specialist? I mean...so happy to be a part of the campaign...yayyyyy!
If I make him a specialist preference, that does not change the in game selection when he is a rookie. Matter of fact he might not even be in the starting lineup and only show up as a specialist reward.
Your advice on picking up bleeding out soldiers and EVAC is sound. If/when a soldier survives the Assassin's first attack, I would recommend to NOT revive it. Kill the normal foes and just let the Assassin pick the dazed soldier's mind and she will leave. I often do this on the first assassin meeting because it's riskier to revive and fight to the death. And I "think" that you always get corpses from grenaded/exploded foes (but no loot)?
civilians are not saved by a circle but rather a tiles that resemble a romb shape - circle there for illustration only - moreover sometimes a wall interferes with the saving and sometimes not.
Typically I am trying to use a combination of a donor and a receiver. Good donors: Specialist, Reaper, Grenadier (specifically with salvo) Good receivers: Snipers, Ranger, Templar (might just be me)
@@SykenPlays How is the reaper a good donor though? I find that one of the hardest parts of reaper is finding the sweet spot where I can do the most good with mines and rifle shots. Getting in a position where the reaper can throw the bomb, detonate it, and not get revealed is tricky. This is one of the reasons why I like giving teamwork points to the reaper. Around the colonel level I can give it the homing mine skill obviously, but the difficulty of the game is trvial by that stage so it doesn't matter.
So when the Assassin gets spotted out by the Reaper she then didn't try to move in and do her unlockable melee attack and I can't understand why? Is it because she got revealed or because of an AI quirk or something?
that happens when she has higher priority targets. There are two triggers for it. a) when no further pod is alive and civilians would be better targets b) when she cannot see any xcom targets and fails to restealth (she doesn’t know where the reaper is and all of the civilians spot her out as well)
@@SykenPlays ah, thank you I didn't know that, I thought she would be forced to always do her melee first similar to how the Warlock spams zombies and the Assassin his tracking shot.
hey syken, i dont know did anyone brought it up but if i'm not mistaken, if you mind control the enemy then you cannot get a flawless mission, is it true?
Nah, that is untrue. Damage and kills against mind controlled / haywired targets do not do anything. What will prevent you from having a flawless mission is damage to VIPs or other targets that you are trying to rescue though. Even spawned units should count (like the templar ghost).
i saw that the last mission had the resistance contact sitrep, is that ever worth to go for? apparently it gives u extra supplies, would be hard on this map tho.
Personally, if it works out I’d grab them, but I would not go above and beyond to risk anyone. supplies are cheap to get via the black market or simply by expanding, so as a resource it is nice to have but never worth risking a soldier for it.
Wow, is it possible for Assassin to just wander there unable to find any of your soldiers? I'm more used to her charging from across the whole map to find me on the other corner...
@@SykenPlays That's interesting, I've never seen any Chosen killing civilians, probably because they were too busy trying to capture/kill my soldiers :D
35:42 for years after watching Scarface inappropriate Murphy would randomly blurt out "say hello to my little friend" and then drop his pants in front of us. There's a reason why he can fit in such small, tight shorts...
Im so confused! Light Machine Gun, Scattergun? Are these mods? I thought this was Ironman. Are these from the Alien Ruler DLC? I haven’t gotten one because they have poor reviews unlike all the others.
Thank you Syken for this. It is very interesting in many ways. I am a fairly new player so I appreciate the fact that you are doin a vanilla run. You are giving great tips. By analyzing your way of thinking showing us how you approach each situations, you give us deep knowledge for the game. Top-tier
Glad to help!
Loving the vanilla challenge runs.
Glad you like it Zebra
Definitely did not know you could save civillians by ending your turn just next to the circle 😳 Learn something new every day.
only on the fields directly horizontally or vertically, not on the corners
Three the Magic Number
What a great series this is so far!
This episode felt like a trip to the infirmary and getting my fear of the chosen (in particular the Assassin) removed. Up until watching this I found her the only really annoying one. Warlock I tend to find just sits behind his horde of psi zombies, Hunter just grapples around and tracking shots most of the time... Assassin however hunts your squad down. Since watching this run, I've changed my approach to her and rather than being the hunted, I generally now take the approach of hunting her down instead utilising the information you provided regarding her mechanics. Well played Commander Syken :)
I've been missing the XCOM content, always great to see another run! You deserved some revenge after everything the Hive campaign put you through.
and revenge we shall get.
4:25 "Grenades reduce trees to half cover" Sectoid is literally full cover after grenading his tree... 😂Same with the Assassin later on.
Also, why is there a turn ending yellow move to save a civilian at 12:25? Can you guarantee that's not another Faceless? Because if it is, that's GG right there.
16:30 "We are getting one less corpse with the explosion" What? It literally says Faceless corpse dropped, and it says you got 2 in the after mission debrief.
there is a in cover removal, sometimes it doesn’t work as intended.
as for the faceless ones, there is typically one per mission at the beginning and in both cases it would mot have been „Gg“, quite the contrary
finally corpses and explosions are not always working as intended. with smaller units they are always destroyed, beasts corpses on the other hand (which faceless ones are) can survive the explosion
@@SykenPlays How would it not have been gg if the Faceless activates, deconceals the Reaper and immediately attacks? It might not have been literally gg, but the flawless run would have been over with 75% certainty, unless you can somehow guarantee that the Reaper won't be attacked.
Also, I'm fairly certain there are 2 Faceless on any Retal (including the 1st) that has no resistance operatives to help you.
However, It is possible to win without activating even one of them if you defeat (or at least let the Chosen as the final enemy extract and get away) the other pods and the Chosen without having vision on any of the Faceless. I've save scummed the 1st Retal to confirm this.
I absolutely love the good ol classic XCom-2!! This is the way to learnnnn :D After watching purely your Royale playthrough I learnt enough to be able to withstand legendary most of the time (so far) and definitely withstand commander difficulty. Simply by watching your highly educating and motivating playthroughes! Love this!
Glad you like it Ender!
Wonderful episode, solid xcom. Going well thus far and you’re getting some solid early breakthroughs
Glad that you like the run Paul!
Love how you played the assasin! Somehow my assasin is always mean to my guys, i just dont know how to treat her, I guess. :)
Keep it coming!
when you are on a terror mission and no other pod shoots civilians, she starts to target them. also, once she is revealed, a reaper and the civilians make it hard for her to re-stealth.
your channel is gold
Thanks ArbiterDan
@@SykenPlays I've seen TapCat's warm recommendation (on the Top5 I wish I knew...), and it did not disappoint.
Really loving this series so far. Super helpful to hear your strategy and it’s fun to watch !
Glad to hear it!
Thanks for great tips before I wasnt able to get pass gatecrasher to now going on deep runs with many flawless missions. Thank you very much. /salute
Great to hear that Hrdza, good luck on your runs!
17:20
I believe that the reason why Endors wasnt' shaken is because they require to be injured in order to actually get shaken.
Now, I mightbe completely wrong, because it could also come from something else, but that's what makes most sense to me.
Hmm, that is actually a very interesting point. Will test this theory in the future.
That's the case in vanilla XCOM 2, in WotC, Shaken is triggered by too much will loss (2/3rds total). Injury can add to will loss but in WotC there is a RNG element to it, which can result in lucky outcomes like sending in a Tired soldier to a long mission and it not even triggering Shaken., etc.
@@Carlos-M I didn't knew that. I kind of assumed that it had always worked like this.
Why didn`t the faceless move or attack in the turn it got revealed? In my campaigns, the faceless always attacks if revealed in aliens turns.
Great job with this challenge, Syken. Cheers from Brazil.
Faceless ones are tricky, they typically get revealed, but not always.
I have no 100% explanation other than - they want to stay in conceilment -.-
20:11 Nooooooo! The game me a grenadier again! Jimmy Vince is supposed to be a specialist/hacker! Do you have his preferred class set to specialist?
I mean...so happy to be a part of the campaign...yayyyyy!
If I make him a specialist preference, that does not change the in game selection when he is a rookie. Matter of fact he might not even be in the starting lineup and only show up as a specialist reward.
Bold move bursting into the transmitter room like that. In my experience the final pod is usually in there. How did you know they wouldn't be?
I don‘t remember the full details of this mission, but I think it was unlikely that it was directly there. It could happen, but not very likely
Still looking good.
Yep, the harder missions are just around the corner.
Your advice on picking up bleeding out soldiers and EVAC is sound. If/when a soldier survives the Assassin's first attack, I would recommend to NOT revive it. Kill the normal foes and just let the Assassin pick the dazed soldier's mind and she will leave.
I often do this on the first assassin meeting because it's riskier to revive and fight to the death.
And I "think" that you always get corpses from grenaded/exploded foes (but no loot)?
For your info, the chosen cannot kill with their attacks. The default is that you always bleed out. Unless you use mods.
@@SykenPlays Wow and I've been fretting about loosing soldiers all this time. heh
civilians are not saved by a circle but rather a tiles that resemble a romb shape - circle there for illustration only - moreover sometimes a wall interferes with the saving and sometimes not.
The wall part is important, that indeed - just like with picking up items - can mess with your success
Are there bond combinations that are particularly good (or less good)?
Typically I am trying to use a combination of a donor and a receiver.
Good donors: Specialist, Reaper, Grenadier (specifically with salvo)
Good receivers: Snipers, Ranger, Templar (might just be me)
@@SykenPlays How is the reaper a good donor though? I find that one of the hardest parts of reaper is finding the sweet spot where I can do the most good with mines and rifle shots. Getting in a position where the reaper can throw the bomb, detonate it, and not get revealed is tricky. This is one of the reasons why I like giving teamwork points to the reaper. Around the colonel level I can give it the homing mine skill obviously, but the difficulty of the game is trvial by that stage so it doesn't matter.
So when the Assassin gets spotted out by the Reaper she then didn't try to move in and do her unlockable melee attack and I can't understand why? Is it because she got revealed or because of an AI quirk or something?
that happens when she has higher priority targets. There are two triggers for it.
a) when no further pod is alive and civilians would be better targets
b) when she cannot see any xcom targets and fails to restealth (she doesn’t know where the reaper is and all of the civilians spot her out as well)
@@SykenPlays ah, thank you I didn't know that, I thought she would be forced to always do her melee first similar to how the Warlock spams zombies and the Assassin his tracking shot.
hey syken, i dont know did anyone brought it up but if i'm not mistaken, if you mind control the enemy then you cannot get a flawless mission, is it true?
Nah, that is untrue. Damage and kills against mind controlled / haywired targets do not do anything.
What will prevent you from having a flawless mission is damage to VIPs or other targets that you are trying to rescue though. Even spawned units should count (like the templar ghost).
@@SykenPlays thank you syken
for the algorithm
i saw that the last mission had the resistance contact sitrep, is that ever worth to go for? apparently it gives u extra supplies, would be hard on this map tho.
Personally, if it works out I’d grab them, but I would not go above and beyond to risk anyone. supplies are cheap to get via the black market or simply by expanding, so as a resource it is nice to have but never worth risking a soldier for it.
@@SykenPlays ya i'd never noticed the sitrep before lol
👍👍
Wow, is it possible for Assassin to just wander there unable to find any of your soldiers? I'm more used to her charging from across the whole map to find me on the other corner...
If she is the last one alive, she will prioritize killing civilians or will try to re-stealth, which the reaper prevented.
@@SykenPlays That's interesting, I've never seen any Chosen killing civilians, probably because they were too busy trying to capture/kill my soldiers :D
35:42 for years after watching Scarface inappropriate Murphy would randomly blurt out "say hello to my little friend" and then drop his pants in front of us.
There's a reason why he can fit in such small, tight shorts...
great story once again, I am having my notebook ready.
Im so confused! Light Machine Gun, Scattergun? Are these mods? I thought this was Ironman. Are these from the Alien Ruler DLC? I haven’t gotten one because they have poor reviews unlike all the others.
They are part of the Legacy DLC rewards, which is a nice little extra that you get on any of the runs.
This needs a Yaranx!
wait for it
@@SykenPlays :D
Remote start civilian losses 2/2 😬
Very unfortunate, but the option was too tempting.
where is xcom3 seriously ...I still enjoy game especially heavily moded... but still..
It has been almost 8 years now … it is about time!
They just released Marvel's Midnight Suns a year ago. It will probably be another 3 years for XCOM 3 at a minimum
i dont even know if they're working on it
Me neither, last I heard was lead developer leaving (eary this year, I think february or so) @@jerrychen2302