Gameplay tips + Worthwhile parasites / upgrades / weapons

[Valkirye22]

double-posted by accident, below is the entire post

Edited May 4, 2021 by Valkirye22
double-post

[Valkirye22]

There's now more than few various topics on the Retrunal forum but I can't find one on the general tips of the game and the items that are available.

Also, at least in my case, there are more than a few mechanics I didn't know until long into the game (or even after finishing Act 2). Keep in mind this is not a perfect 'guide' or a strategy but it worked for me and got the through the game with no major issues. Feel free to add any extra tips if you got them

 

So in short:

 

• Astronaut figurine gives you the extra life (others also have positive effects and are described what they do) but this one is worth 250 Obs in the 'store' hub
• You can sleep in Helios (the ship, bunk aft) to regain health during a run
• Blade upgrade (Blade balancer?) allows you to break golden/yellow barriers
• Keep 6 ether on you for the reconstruction machine, it will only work on the current biome so use it in the biome before a boss you are struggling
• FINISH ACT TWO it will allow you to effortlessly move through red/lava/tentacled pools, enter water, grapple and fully explore. To make each run counts towards gathering as many survey collectibles and also make you neigh-unkillable after an hour

 

Best weapon:

 

• Tachy-something Carbine - this is personal preference of course but the carbine (smg/assault) is the perfect jack of all trades weapon. It has a high 'ammo' count, automatic fire, RNG upgrades to destroy shields, increase protection and even leech health off enemies. I think leech has chance of 5% or such but with the amount of fire you'll be putting down this gets noticable and really useful especially on bosses. Most importantly for most of you it will allow to keep your trigger down and output damage from any range while remaining mobile and focusing on avoiding enemy bullets - which is the most important part
• Other weapons usually just do something better for the price in another field. I.e. pistol is just a weaker carbine, shotgun has higher damage but lower ammo and you need to be close which is tricky with some bosses and when around lots of enemies, pylon gun is good against ground targets but long range and with flying/highly-mobile enemies it suffers, rocket launcher and 'grenade' (rotlauncher) have high damage and splash damage but you need to be more precise and your ammo is limited - ok for some bosses. The LMG type of gun hollow-something (sorry the names are really hard to remember) has a high rate of fire, decent accuracy, but less damage and you need to lead your shots a bit - if you cannot find something better it is the best choice among everything else to go for from a pistol. The crossbow was for me gimmicky with the fire/return system and only three shots so I generally stay clear. There is another launcher but in 20 hours I only had it drop once and it was worse than my gun so I haven't used it yet.

 

Parasites - some are really useful but most are just too crippling for the bonus. In general the core of this game is mobility - you don't want to take anything that increases your dash recharge (usually pretty steeply 3 or 5s) or even alt-fire on your weapon.

 

• Revive parasite - as it suggests it will let you survive a killing blow at the cost of two malfunctions. During early-mid game or generally if you're low or are saving ether for other things considering the alternative (dying and starting over) it is worth it and if you have a consumable that clears malfunctions it is a free 2nd life.
• For the rest parasites come in different shapes and forms but it's all about considering the risk and impact they will have on your run - some are more worthwhile or have minimal impact.

 

Below are some worthwhile parasite trades for things like - higher protection, suit self-repair on low health, higher suit integrity, 1hit shield on resin pick-up, increasing other parasite bonuses etc.

 

• Take damage when using keys - you really don't use keys that much and damage is relatively minor as soon as you have some integrity upgrades
• Obolites disappear 1 or 1,5 seconds faster, it's still enough to gather enough obolites from defeated enemies - especially in exchange for really useful parasite effects
• Malfunctions have higher requirements - you want to stay away from malignant items and chests so if you avoid them this is a free buff
• Depending on the trade or if you are deep into your run you will have enough integrity and maybe even other parasites that you can trade -10% protection for a useful buff elsewhere.

 

Malignant items/chests/artifacts:

 

• I avoid them for 99% of the time. More often than not the requirements are too crippling and given the game RNG it can be horrible. For example I had to use a key to remove a malfunction that removed my ability to use Overload-reload I took me 3 biomes to find a key while clearing every room... Another time is was a 5 sec dash recharge in exchange for finding and artifact - there was none for 20 mins before I died.
• If you have ether to spare or the malfunction clearing consumable on you - go right ahead for important things. Maybe you desperately need health, or are stuck with a horrible gun, or you need the key to reach behind a locked side-path. 

 

Consumables:

 

• All of them have positive effects but in case you are overwhelmed with them prioritize the most useful ones
• Health (small and big) you can always but a big vial for 150 or 175 from the store 'hub' it's smart to keep one on you for emergencies
• Malfunction removal sphere, if you find one consider the next to malfunctions free - go nuts on the malignant items or chests and when you get two malfunctions use the sphere to clear them. As mentioned before you can also keep it on if you have a revival parasite to remove the two it will cause if you get 'killed'.
• Translocation sphere - this one you can use as soon as you find it, it works similar to hidden fall-down doors. You will get teleported to a separate room where you'll usually have change to collect Obs, find items, chests BUT there may also be a tough enemy. The enemy usually drops a decent weapon but if you are low on health, prepped for a boss with good weapons and items - you might not want to take the risk.
• Various damage consumables - cause damage on jumping is mostly useless, spikes are ok if you have space and can come in handy against close-range enemies, disable turrets consumable can be useful but later on you'll be strong enough to shake off any minor damage and you'd want to have more important ones
• On par with damage consumables are those that make obolites heal you, turn enemy fire into obolites, create a small temporary friendly orb that damages enemies etc.
• FInally there's a nanite-swarm-like consumable which leeches health of nearby enemies for 30 sec, it can be useful and if you can't find resin to heal you
• Shield - super useful, you can save it for the boss or use it immediately to clear room and have the next hit do no damage
• Adrenaline restore - if you have space can be useful to keep if you get hit by the boss and want to restore your levels

 

Items/upgrades - again all are useful and provide some sort of buff but some are more useful than others and worth spending for first:

 

• Suit integrity goes without saying, upgrade at least once or twice or less if you have parasites to deal with it
• 5% health leach from damage done per enemy level - it will basically heal you on any bigger engagement and on the boss run if you can keep your adrenaline high
• 5% damage increase on adrenaline level - similar to above
• Integrity and weapon damage increases
• Chance for a weapon to break shields (red shielded enemies)
• Increased stagger chance on enemies to give you breathing room when you get swarmed by flying jellyfish or homing bullet flying robots

 

 

[Elegy]

I haven't unlocked all the gun perks to definitively say what the best gun is but right now I think the Electropylon Driver is the strongest from my play time so far.  It has infinite range, does enormous damage over time and you can kill multiple enemies at once pretty easily with it.  It is very easy to focus on avoiding damage with this weapon and staying at adrenaline 5.0 is pretty easy with it.  Very useful in the 6th biome against the enemies that spam projectiles since you can fire off a bunch of pylons at them and then hide.

I also like the Spitmaw with narrow maw to tighten up the spread and it absolutely destroys enemies.  Hollowseeker with serrated rounds is also pretty good.  Tachyomatic Rifle and Thermogenic Launcher are also pretty good.  I find it difficult to do well if I try to use the Rotgland Lobber, Coilspine Shredder or the Dreadbound though.  Rotgland and Coilspine might be pretty good with an overdrive focused setup but I personally don't feel they do enough damage to warrant their low ammo counts and slow rate of fire.  Dreadbound seems like it needs to be buffed to me.  If I miss something and have to wait for my bullet to return to me it absolutely kills my dps.  It doesn't really do that great of damage unless you're really close so you can spray it really fast against an enemy but I don't see the point since the Spitmaw will shred things faster at that range.

Parasites can be really useful if you get the artifact that doubles their effectiveness.  I think the one that gives a chance to reuse consumables is extremely good.. especially if you stack it with the artifact that gives you 30% chance not to use a consumable.  I was able to spam consumable heals or malfunction removers without losing my items a good deal of the time.  You pretty much just have to weigh your options with parasites, but if you've got that artifact that buffs them then most of the time its worth it.  I do agree that you never want to increase your dash recharge time, but alt-fire is pointless sometimes.  If you use the pylon gun you will never need the alt fire and if you get the lackluster shieldbreaker alt fire then you may as well just never use that.  It is easy enough to just melee shields or get an artifact that lets you shoot through them.  The shockstream is also not that great because it requires channeling the fire and your mobility drops to almost zero while doing that.  It is basically just asking to get hit if you try to use it.

I generally like to focus my builds toward healing efficiency/protection/suit integrity with the adrenaline life leech artifact, chance to heal after enemies killed artifact, and anything that increases suit integrity or heals when receiving or fixing malfunctions.  It is really difficult to fail if you can manage to get a lot of healing efficiency and artifacts that heal from various circumstances.  There is also an artifact that lets you take 2 hits before adrenaline falls off which is great if you combine it with life leech for adrenaline stacks artifact.  I also like the artifact that gives random abilities whenever getting or fixing malfunctions.  Finally.. the artifact that gives protection for having a lot of Ethers on hand is really good.

It isn't really necessary to take a lot of defensive stuff like this but unfortunately there isn't an enormous amount of damage increasing options for weapons beyond just getting your proficiency up.  Two artifacts I do like for that though are the damage for carrying obolites artifact and the damage bonus for adrenaline stacks artifact.

Edited May 4, 2021 by Elegy

[JhOnNY_HD]

Hollow seeker with serrated ammo and portal beam is the OP combo to melt everything 

[NarcissusBaz]

27 minutes ago, JhOnNY_HD said:

Hollow seeker with serrated ammo and portal beam is the OP combo to melt everything 

I've seen this statement online about almost any weapon in the game. I guess once you unlock the perks and get comfortable with a weapon - IT'S GOOD. For me it was unexpectedly the acid spitting weapon. Crazy stagger and DoT damage. Once I hit something with the acid/virus on that weapon I stopped caring about it - it was already as good as dead. Melted Hyperion on first try without a sweat.

[Valkirye22]

9 hours ago, JhOnNY_HD said:

Hollow seeker with serrated ammo and portal beam is the OP combo to melt everything 

Agreed, but it does fall behind in terms of accuracy and leach rounds on the Carbine can get you out of some really tough situations.