Some Mooncrash tips

[HaserPL]

As much as I loved playing through Prey, Mooncrash isn't my cup of tea. Most of all, I don't enjoy being rushed in a game like this so my aim was to just complete everything ASAP and not worry about anything else. The trophy guide for this DLC is great and you should read it to get to know the basics, but I have a few tips after playing it for about 15 hours and being mostly done with it - I just need to do the story objectives and just finish the last character's neuromods.

 

When you first start and can finally explore every location and play as a specific character, make sure to stick with the engineer and unlock the Shuttle escape route for all your characters. This will help you get some extra Sim Points as you can escape quickly with two characters, once via the Shuttle and once via the Pod. She has the highest inventory by far so she is the best for exploring, hoarding, and making neuromods for all characters. I highly recommend upgrading just the human skills in your characters first, as having Typhon skills will make it impossible to go through typhoon gates without disabling them first with an EMP/Stun Gun/Shooting the power module dropped near the gate, but I always just purchased the Stun Gun and used it to rush through areas, not wasting any time to clear out the enemies. Play with her and don't be afraid of resetting the simulation as much as you want until you get the Mule operator, this is when you want to drop everything and focus on farming neuromods for your characters. At this point, if you don't unlock the Custodian and do no story objectives, you should stay at around 50% of the KASMA orders, which is where you want to be before things get too annoying. The more KASMA orders you have done, the harder the simulation gets (you end up having Nightmares spawn by the end of the DLC). When you farm the mods, try to loot everything in the Labs and Crew Annex, until you have the most important fabrication plans - Time Loop, Typhoon Spore, and some weapons you fancy, and you're good to go. When you have the Time Loop and Spore, you should unlock Custodian and do the Escape with 5 characters in one run objective as soon as you can, to make things a lot easier. By doing so, even when the simulation increases in difficulty, you will only need to do the remaining objectives in singular runs, like doing specific character story missions, or escaping in a particular way. They can all be done on Corruption 1 or 2, which makes things more forgiving. Spend as many Sim Points as you want to bring lots of Medkits, Time Loops, and a few Spores to kill Moonshark/s easily, and just escape with everyone. After that, you can still farm the mods with the engineer for the remaining skills, and do every other objective at your own leisure.

 

- Start with Engineer and bring Time Loops (20 should be enough for the entire run), Shotgun with 100 Ammo, Every type of meds x2 (in case you get an affliction), 5+ medkits, 2/3 Typhoon Spores for the Shark, Pistol with 150+ ammo, and the Gloo Gun with lots of ammo. Run through the map, take care of the Shark, and go to Pythos Labs (if you can't get through the Gate, and you don't have any EMP, you can go through the Crater's middle building to enter the Labs) to fix the Mimic Generator. You must fix it in order to unlock the Portal escape later on. I recommend escaping via the Mass Driver with her, as you will be able to fix a broken grav shaft (it was always broken for me) which negates some time lost wasted on climbing up the stairs.

- Go with the Custodian, rush to hack the Mimic Generator computer (the same room where you had to fix some shit in the previous run - now it will be available for use by anyone), and escape with the pod (check the pod's location when you're in Pythos Labs Upper Floor Security Office, or in the Crater's Middle Room downstairs. You may need to use an Escape Pod Navigation item, so craft one in advance just in case/buy with sim points. 

- Escape with the Volunteer via the Portal you've previously unlocked. He is very weak in combat so rushing to the Portal is the safest option.

- Escape with the Director via the Brain Scan (you need Phantom Genesis 2 for this one). Go to her office in Pythos Labs and use the computer on the 1st floor of her office to set the channel to 0, then go upstairs, pick up the DataVault operator, and place it on the desk. Start the procedure but you will be tasked with finding a volunteer body and using the Phantom Genesis 2 skill on it to scan it via Psychoscope. The body can spawn anywhere so go downstairs to the volunteer observation room and track the bracelet (this is the only place where you can track specific volunteers) and complete the task. Then just go back to her lab and escape. THIS ESCAPE IS EXCLUSIVE TO THIS CHARACTER AS EVERY OTHER CHARACTER CAN BE USED BY EVERYONE.

- Finally escape with the Security officer via Shuttle as this might be heavy on the combat so he's the best one for last, if you stayed on Corruption Level 1 you should be fine even with just a wrench.

 

15/20 Time Loops will be enough to keep everything at Corruption 1 or 2, and you can always buy more when you escape with a character and choose the next one. If you don't know the maps well enough, just bring more. I spent almost 100 000 Sim Points during my run, but it made it easy as hell. I was just running like a madman and killing everything in my sight. Enemies do not respawn until the next Corruption level is reached, so if you can spare the points to use Time Loops all the time, after your first run you don't even have to bring any weapons with you, just a Stun Gun to run through the Gates.

 

If you go heavy on purchasing items with the sim points and you're worried you won't have enough by the time you want to finish the last KASMA order, you can grind sim points by purchasing a single Spore, killing the shark in the crater as soon as you can, and just rush for the shuttle/escape pod. If you're fast and loot corpses along the way, one run will give you about 6/7000 Sim Points in like 5 mins, so getting 50.000 is not a huge problem at all. One full run with the engineer around the map while looting and killing everything gives +50.000 anyway. Don't be afraid of just running and ignoring the enemies, you can safely do so as long as you have some medkits and food to heal any potential damage. but I wouldn't worry about it too much. The only time you CAN run out of healing items is if you attack and fight with everything, which is not really required unless you want to loot a place entirely. Make sure to abuse the save system in the game, when you enter a location for the first the game saves and that's it. So if you got caught by surprise and you have no way of healing yourself or something, exit and start again. You can also save and exit at any point if you want to use that as a backup save. 

 

Overall I'd say the DLC lacks enough content to justify having to play it for like 15/20 hours, + having some difficulty options would make things WAY more enjoyable as you have to play with all the survival mechanics you didn't have to engage in the base game at all, + you are always playing against the timer. 

Edited March 26, 2023 by HaserPL

[drfk168]

I appreciate the tips, which were helpful while playing this fun DLC. Thanks!