Platinum Tips/ general advice

[Pes_anserinus]

Having just obtained the platinum for this game on the PS5 I thought I would create a new topic with some general advice/ tips. 

Most of the information is spread across several achievement hunting websites unfortunately. 

Additionally a lot of the trophies were initially unobtainable and took quite some time to be patched, there are still reports of buggy/ inconsistencies unfortunately. 

 

When I completed the research intensive trophies/ rookie playthrough I had these active:

• Living Weapons Pack
• DLC 2 (Legacy of the Ancients)
• DLC 1 (Blood and Titanium)
• DLC 4 (Corrupted Horizons)

It seems that blood and titanium is required to ensure master manufacturer is obtainable.

LotA is incredibly helpful adding some of the best weapons to the game. 

Corrupted horizons and festering skies add a lot of new mechanics/ enemies to the game that are quite irritating when aiming for an efficient trophy playthrough, but are enjoyable for casual play 

promotional codes can be activated to give you free additional armour/ weapons

The difficulty trophies do not stack

 

General Tips/advice

 

SAVE A LOT (+ backups because the game crashes often, particularly when missions end) The final mission is particularly prone to crashes

 

A lot of the difficult of this game can be completely eliminated by save scumming. 

Save/ reloading exploits:

obviously missed shots/ hits from enemies. However, reloading after the enemies turn will often skip their turn/actions completely

Missions restart, repositions enemies/ enemy types (useful when looking for goo/viral damage), but also box locations on scavenge missions and ally equipment when going for reverse engineering

A lot of the economic difficulty can be eliminated by moving soldier’s gear/ weapons across squads.

Legacy of the ancient weapons are amazing. Infinite ammo. Missions can be a bit tricky/time consuming however

 

Rush explore early/ couple of helios ships if possible (fastest air speed possible).

Early game snipers and assaults are best, particularly after level 3.

Mid game, once you have LOA weapons heavies can grenade launch most of the map, snipers can one shot through armor and assaults can shard gun at point blank range.

End game

Heavy/assault with vengeance torso, propeller legs and scyther will one hit chain all small enemies, two hit chirons.

Sniper/infiltrator with scorpion again will one shot most small enemies from ridiculous range

Berserker combos are great. Adrenaline rush with mutated head (daze immunity) + rapid clearance/ 1 AP weapons allows for potential single turn map clearance. Shard gun at point blank

Save a lot (+ backups because the game crashes, particularly when missions end)

In mission with allies, all their weapons/ inventory (not armour) can be unequipped to be collected at mission end.

 

 

All possibilities:

5 endings. NJ, ANU, phoenix, Syn terraform and syn polyphonic

Technically you can save two endings for the hero and legend play through however given how buggy the trophies have reportedly been was concerned it wouldn’t unlock so I did it this way to ensure I got all the endings in “one play through”

Biggest annoyance is there are two syn endings which get locked at 50% diplomacy. Make sure to not make any choices before this when exploring that shift tendency (there are a couple of exploration encounters that can impact this)

HARD SAVE at the end of the pirate king mission. Your 75% mission should be black ops for polyphonic or the real virus for terraform

Otherwise the other endings lock out after completing each respective factions end mission RESEARCH. I made a save once I had all their final research unlocked then new saves for each of the final missions for each faction.

You will need a Scylla vivisection for the phoenix point ending to unlock the virophage injection (which will override all other ending unlocks so do this research last).

 

 

Final mission:

All the final missions are essentially the same:

 Kill initial enemies (Scylla/gatekeepers). Kill yuggathon receptacle. Plant device.

SAVE a lot. This mission crashes often. Particularly when using the grenade launches.

By this point In the game, this mission is a breeze. All you 9 troops should be end game lvl 7. you can clear most of the trash with one assault heavy hybrid, scyther, close combat spec and vegance torso. You can easily one hit everything and panic the scyllas for clean up.

or

You can hang back at the spawn and clear the rocks on top of the first wall, move heavies up and nuke them from a above. Then move your assaults round the clear. There are no reinforcements at the start so no rush.

Once you have cleared the scylla’s, move up around the right side as you can get sniped off by a couple of hitman past the now open gate.

The receptacle activates once you pass through with “embrace the void” keep people spread out and it goes down easy enough with plenty of point blank shard gun shots. there are a couple of reinforcements every 2-3 turns but nothing difficult

 

 

Manufacture master/ all research

 

Definitely the most annoying trophies. The amount of prior inconsistency doesn’t help.

The guide for these on the xbox achievement site was very helpful.

 

I found that manufacture master did pop across saves. I aimed to build everything initially and made everything except the anu mutogs on a single save. Only had enough mutagens for 5 mutogs. Built those then reloaded and made the remaining 3 mutogs and the trophy popped. Given the time to get scientific rigor/ all research I would aim to get it in one save to be safe, also easier to track what has been built

 

All research will require 75% diplomacy at some point will all factions. You can complete all their final research on the same save (just not each final mission). Make sure to complete the virophage injector last however.

 

Also goo repeller and pandoran virus infection will require you to encounter enemy variants with goo and viral damage respectively (I think this won’t unlock unless it is a tab on the pandoran evolution page, because being hit with viral damage from weapons/ siren prior to this wouldn’t unlock this research)

 

Scientific rigor

 

It’s still unclear the exact requirements of this trophy.

It seems to involve some reverse engineering, however exactly what and how many is unclear. On rookie armour can be obtained from haven recruitments.

 

I started this and managed to reverse engineer all the armour sets and was half way through the weapons when I noticed that several reverse engineering researches were no longer in the completed research tab.   I believe that some of these are removed when the corresponding faction research is completed. I wasn’t sure if this would lock out the trophy so I stopped reverse engineering and aimed to complete the all research/manufacture trophies on that play through. To my surprise once I completed the virophage injection both scientific rigor and all research popped. 

This probably needs some better testing. However, it definitely did not require any of the vest modules which would have taken quite some time to acquire to reverse engineer. Several people seem to have corroborated that you do not need the vest modules. 

 

 

Legend route/ speed running through the game.

You will need to do at least 3 full runs of the game. Technically you could do everything in 2 however it would mean completing all research/manufacturing on hero and given the need to reverse engineer everything* (supposedly), I would do those on rookie 

You can beat the full game by February/ within a month game time utilising save scumming and exploits if you want.

 

as you progress you will want

an early base with 5-6 training centres. 

3-4 planes (faster the better) ideally you will just steal them all. 

2 fabrication labs 

3-4 reasearch labs (more the better) 

5 archeology labs once available 

cybernetics (if you plan to use bionics/ one hit melee build) 

Access to antartica. 

 

– > sheepy's tech tree is great on the wiki. 

Atmospheric analysis

The phoenix archives

Haven recruitment protocols

Haven trade protocols.

Human pop census

Symes retreat (mission)-> rise by sin (legacy mission)

(once available) Clear a colony -> Pandora colonies  -> capture and containment -> siren vivisection -> Pandora telepathic nodule

Prisoner of ice (mission)

Pandoravirus

Time vault (mission)

Andtediluvian protociv 

Seeking dr symes (2 missions)

To Antarctica (mission)

 yuggothian entity

 

That’s the mainline phoenix research.

+ whatever is needed to get allied (75 rep) with your favourite faction.

You can save scum reputation by reloading a single exploration point until you get an event that will reward the rep you want/ need.

I think the easiest ending to get is probably syn’s.

All of their diplomacy missions are relatively easy. You only require a siren vivisection. Plus, you get access to restricted bionics for the vengeance torso and sentient AE to speed research by 50%.

 

Good luck. 

 

 

[RNumbers]

This game is still on my list (and on my shelf), so thanks for this!

[Blackmist_FFXI]

Scrolling thru my back log. So happy to see this is fixed and able to plat.

 

Time to get back to it.

Much trial and error.

 

Took like 10 runs to even get/steal a 2nd airship to double up on operation 

[nimrod2009US]

Thank you for the Tips @Pes_anserinus

[Avalion1980]

Just a tip:

I have not got Master Science during my first run, I crosschecked and reserached all items. Instead, I've got Scientific Rigor by the end of the game.

Game crushed many times during missions, where lot of enemies were around. I read somewhere, that it might spoil trophies and based on my experience to get trophies, I agree.

 

During my 2nd run, I tactically quit the game during big missions after each better turn and uploaded my saves into the cloud. If the game crushed, I quit and downloaded them again. By this tactic, I've got Master Science after a while, when I had researched ultimate project for one of the fractions. In this run, I still had many projects to research, at least from other 2 fractions. So items from both runs were combined.

 

I can confirm, that all research is not necessary during just 1 run and that game crush might spoil the trophy. Try to play clean run and rather download your previously uploaded save.

 

I had similar issue with All the Live Ones as well, I had all of them in Containment cell even started to catch different types of particular species, but no trophy. I killed them all at my base in Containment cell and started to catch them again. Acherons are not required and IGNORE its mission, if you do not want to have them as a regular enemy in any other missions.

After a while, I got the trophy, but it was after I started to pay attention to reload my saves from the cloud if the game crushed. This was done during my first run, where I played all DLCs. If you are more a trophy hunter, I strongly recommend to turn them off for your harder runs. Keep just Blood and Titanium. They can extremly harden the game, base game is hard enough. Mainly, the final mission on VERY HARD, where you have 2 scyllas and lot of enemies in front of the gate and the game crushes a lot.

You must be absolutely prepared with strong soldiers and almost perfect weaponry to match the enemy. For this, you might consider to include DLC Legacy of Ancients due of its ultimate weapons, but it's doable without them as well. 

 

All other trophies, I've got naturally, no issues.

Edited April 23 by Avalion1980

[Falc0n857]

Hi, i Just missing 5 reverse engineering. Thor, rattlesnake, Fire resist, motion and repellers module. Did all others research..

 

master and scientific didn't pop.

 

Endings too..

 

What can i do?

11 hours ago, Avalion1980 said:

Just a tip:

I have not got Master Science during my first run, I crosschecked and reserached all items. Instead, I've got Scientific Rigor by the end of the game.

Game crushed many times during missions, where lot of enemies were around. I read somewhere, that it might spoil trophies and based on my experience to get trophies, I agree.

 

During my 2nd run, I tactically quit the game during big missions after each better turn and uploaded my saves into the cloud. If the game crushed, I quit and downloaded them again. By this tactic, I've got Master Science after a while, when I had researched ultimate project for one of the fractions. In this run, I still had many projects to research, at least from other 2 fractions. So items from both runs were combined.

 

I can confirm, that all research is not necessary during just 1 run and that game crush might spoil the trophy. Try to play clean run and rather download your previously uploaded save.

 

I had similar issue with All the Live Ones as well, I had all of them in Containment cell even started to catch different types of particular species, but no trophy. I killed them all at my base in Containment cell and started to catch them again. Acherons are not required and IGNORE its mission, if you do not want to have them as a regular enemy in any other missions.

After a while, I got the trophy, but it was after I started to pay attention to reload my saves from the cloud if the game crushed. This was done during my first run, where I played all DLCs. If you are more a trophy hunter, I strongly recommend to turn them off for your harder runs. Keep just Blood and Titanium. They can extremly harden the game, base game is hard enough. Mainly, the final mission on VERY HARD, where you have 2 scyllas and lot of enemies in front of the gate and the game crushes a lot.

You must be absolutely prepared with strong soldiers and almost perfect weaponry to match the enemy. For this, you might consider to include DLC Legacy of Ancients due of its ultimate weapons, but it's doable without them as well. 

 

All other trophies, I've got naturally, no issues.

Crash only on legendary. First run.

 

I'm on rookie With no crash. i did  factions research After reverse.  Damn.. 300 hours so sadly

[craigm1987]

10 hours ago, Falc0n857 said:

Hi, i Just missing 5 reverse engineering. Thor, rattlesnake, Fire resist, motion and repellers module. Did all others research..

 

master and scientific didn't pop.

 

Endings too..

 

What can i do?

Crash only on legendary. First run.

 

I'm on rookie With no crash. i did  factions research After reverse.  Damn.. 300 hours so sadly

For all endings I made a save on the very last turn of each final faction mission. When the trophy didn't unlock I loaded up each ending and finished them in one sitting which worked for me. 

Scientific Rigor/ Master Scientist eventually worked for me but I had to do all research in one playthrough, then reloaded before the final research 4 times before it unlocked. 

Edited April 24 by craigm1987

[Falc0n857]

9 hours ago, craigm1987 said:

For all endings I made a save on the very last turn of each final faction mission. When the trophy didn't unlock I loaded up each ending and finished them in one sitting which worked for me. 

Scientific Rigor/ Master Scientist eventually worked for me but I had to do all research in one playthrough, then reloaded before the final research 4 times before it unlocked. 

Ok thx. I'm doing the same for endings..

 

For scientist i miss 6 Phoenix research.. my questione Is: can i do a factions research After the reverse completed? The research disappear, but not immediately

Edited April 24 by Falc0n857

[craigm1987]

3 hours ago, Falc0n857 said:

Ok thx. I'm doing the same for endings..

 

For scientist i miss 6 Phoenix research.. my questione Is: can i do a factions research After the reverse completed? The research disappear, buy not immediately

Yes once you have all reverse engineering of a certain faction research, you can then do that research. For example complete the Deceptor MG, Bulldog AR-50, Iron Fury HG and the Cyclops SR7 reverse engineering then you can complete the Gauss Tech Research. 

[Falc0n857]

2 hours ago, craigm1987 said:

Yes once you have all reverse engineering of a certain faction research, you can then do that research. For example complete the Deceptor MG, Bulldog AR-50, Iron Fury HG and the Cyclops SR7 reverse engineering then you can complete the Gauss Tech Research. 

Ok and this Is what i did.. i'm missing goo research.. and 4 reverse

.. as i said. I think that i renounce. Let's try

Really thank you

 

[Avalion1980]

I know it sucks to obtain them without issues , just summarized my experience.

 

I did ps4 version and later during my 1st playthrough it started to crush really often and it followed me during both harder playthroughs as well. It was my assumption, that it relates to spoiled trophies. Maybe I'm wrong, just ensured it smooth progress by using regular cloud saves and I've got them.

 

Sorry to be not helpful for your case.

[Falc0n857]

On 4/25/2024 at 10:13 AM, Avalion1980 said:

I know it sucks to obtain them without issues , just summarized my experience.

 

I did ps4 version and later during my 1st playthrough it started to crush really often and it followed me during both harder playthroughs as well. It was my assumption, that it relates to spoiled trophies. Maybe I'm wrong, just ensured it smooth progress by using regular cloud saves and I've got them.

 

Sorry to be not helpful for your case.

Scientific rigor Is done.. master isn't.. damn

 

Thank you guys

Edited April 26 by Falc0n857

[Falc0n857]

On 4/25/2024 at 6:58 PM, Falc0n857 said:

Scientific rigor Is done.. master isn't.. damn

 

Thank you guys

I did It finally.. Just upload save for crashes.