General tips

[MMDE]

There's already a trophy guide for this game, but I thought I'd create a thread regarding tips for builds etc.

 

One of the most important aspects of succeeding in this game is a good party, and to get one it's rather vital you plan your character builds ahead of time down to the last detail. This is not easy as you'd imagine for a game like this. Each time you gain 1000 xp, your entire team will level up. The gain of xp is constant, so doing the same easy enemies over and over nets you a lot of xp. Ideally you'll want to level up your character up as soon and fast as you can to 100. Each level-up nets you a competency point to spend on each of the characters competency (skill) tree. This is where it really gets confusing, as there's actually 51 different active competencies (abilities you must active in battle to use) and 178 different passive competencies (passive abilities that boost your character in some way). Yes, there's that many, and you should make sense of it all before you even spend a single point.

 

In the pause menu there's a reference option, which explains a lot of different things. This include all the information you need. The developer even added an own section for character usage, where he for each character lists like 12-15 paragraphs about how to use the character and good tips for what to spend your competency points at. Yes, it's that extreme.

 

Once all the 100 points are spent on a character, that character gets an "overpower" boost as well, which is why you'll want to be on level 100 with each character. The faster you can access the other big area through some mission you get from the city where there's an airline building, the faster you get access to some additional boosts that takes up 2 weapon spots, but are very nice. Following that quest to the very end even gets you a final massive boost for your main character that boosts everyone else. At that point, with good builds, everything in the game is super easy.

 

 

Unless otherwise specified, mentioning one category means putting all your points there. Here's my setup:

 

Alex:

• HP
• Defending? Well, depends... Quick defend is not that useful if he's always just defending. You already get Quick Defend from Elemental Defense too. Power Defend might in fact be better sole investment. Instead of quick defend, invest in the the middle stuff in Survivor, for more 25% hp or less defense.
• Physical Defense
• Elemental Defense
• Teamwork
• Brute Force
• Full Defend
• Heroism
• Spend the last 4 points as you wish.
• AI:
  1. Redirect
  2. Brute Force
  3. Wait until defend bar is full
• Weapon: shield, mod with either evasion or defense or something 

 

Sean:

• Evasion
• Stealth
• Rifle
• Pistol (only the 6 on the left side, for more fire damage)
• Offense
• Elemental
• The rest is for you to choose, but I recommend Sonic, because if you get a rifle that can hit more than one enemy, sonic will attract a lot of enemies and group them together and kill them all in one shot (saves ammo). Debuff might be useful if you're alone against some boss, makes it miss more. Elemental Defense is probably not a bad idea.
• AI: Disabled, you should control him, otherwise make him just stand still alone away from the battle. Very good as last-man standing, as his "alone" attack is great.
• Weapon: rifle, preferably a rare one that has "Rifle Area" mod. I found one that had -Physical Defense, +Rifle Area, +Stun.

 

Robyn:

• Unarmed
• Evasion
• Offense
• Agility
• Stealth (only the 4 +Move ones)
• Teamwork
• Reaction
• Combo
• Rest is up to you. I prefer HP, which makes her last more than one hit. Combat Knife makes her move faster, but it's rather useless when she moves as fast as she already does. Sledgehammer can give you evades, which makes her less likely to be hit, but only 10% at the cost of 6 points.
• AI: Attack... She will go totally bananas, and you really just want her to beat up everything in the dungeon to build up combo.
• Weapon: Knuckles, never found anything perfect fit rare weapon wise, but adding attack or combo or evasion is probably good.

 

Hayley:

• HP
• Assault Drone
• Defense Drone
• Ammo Drone
• Assault Rifle (for the drone boost)
• Offense?
• Illusion?
• Chaos, well, this one has two interesting abilities. Overclock and Drone Boost. Drone boost is quite expensive to invest in, but if all you do with this character is drones, well... go for it, maybe?
• AI: Well, this character's strong point is all the drones. It would be nice if you could use golemry, but this wasted my entire party so many times due to the explosion of the Symbiote stuff. It's just too dangerous IMO. I would set the AI to deploy drones first, then maybe focus on using Illusion. Then Assault rifle, and finally something like a knife.
• Weapon: Assault Rifle, due to that being upgraded for the drone boosts.

 

Arthur:

• Pistol? The interesting part here is that he gains "Burn on", which is a form of combo stuff. This however is not as useful as with the melee characters, as you need ammo for it. But alongside Hayley, this guy might just do fine with Pistol and a lot of HP. Don't combine it with rifle.
• Rifle? I chose him to be a rifle guy, he gets pretty decent stats for it too. What is confusing is his amount of possible HP. On the image he holds a rifle... Probably don't combine with Pistol.
• HP? Gets him to 700HP... which is a lot in this game, but is it useful if he's gonna be a sniper, which takes more damage the further away from the enemies?
• Defense? Especially useful if Pistol + HP.
• Teamwork
• Ammo management, getting ammo drone can be useful if not combined with Hayley or something.
• Knockback? Only do this in combination with Rifle, as it's for the +300% extra rifle damage, which is quite a bit, but it's expensive.
• Movement? Can be nice, especially if sniper who wants to stay away from action. Not as useful if a lot of defense.
• Survivor? Can be very useful if lots of HP and defense, but maybe not the most important?
• AI: Disable if rifle, enable drone then focus on attacking with pistols
• Weapon: Rifle or Pistol

 

Sabine:

• HP
• Attack? Well, it depends on if you really wanna attack with her. She gets a bit of attack, but it's honestly not that much especially considering the starting point.
• Defense
• Healing? This is her strongest point I think. She can heal your party, and especially your tanks as they drop in health, if that happens.
• Teamwork!
• Stun
• Vital Shot? Well, it's an interesting skill, but should be maxed if you wanna go this route, which result in everyone getting healed quite a bit every time she uses this skill, while damaging an opponent.
• Survivor? This makes her last much longer, along with Defense and HP.
• Pistol? Well, some paths has healing, so that's cool. Some also have elemental defense, which can be nice. Costs you just 5 points to get +50% healing and +10 elemental defense, but do you need the +50% healing?
• Shield... Do you need this stuff? Well, it's a lot of defense and HP stuff. May even get her a shield.
• Assault Rifle... well, only the stuff that gives your team physical defense.
• AI: I'd keep her healing people / vital shot when they get low on health, and after this maybe just wait for defense to full up with shield equipped.
• Weapon? shield, or whatever you feel like, like pistol or assault rifle. Don't really recommend attacking with this girl.

 

Dominic:

• HP? Well, his right hand path HP nets you a lot more HP for a few points. The left hand path allows you to do an attack that acts as if your attack is hp - cur HP. I think he can only get 300HP, unless you boost further with the weapon. Not sure this is actually worth it or not. Could be with max hp + boosted further with weapon and if you use the risk ability first to get 25% health. That's 225 in attack, but possible there's some weapon that can boost it further, but it should be what you use. This will be 40 more attack than what you could get from simply modding the weapon. It's really up to you. Never did test the attack, and if there's any limitations to how often you can use it etc. If you don't have any weapon with +HP, you could probably go Evade for the weapon too.
• Offense? Well, definitely the left hand path, which gets you a LOT of attack.
• Risk? It's a risk, but allows you to drop in HP to take advantage of adrenaline to massively boost your attack even further.
• Turmoil? There's more Adrenaline on the left hand side here too.
• Dexterity? This is really just about stealth damage, but there's some quick (less time between attacks) as well. Stealth is good for rocket launcher, quick is good for unarmed.
• Anti-tank? Well, this can certainly boost attack further, but I'm not entirely sure how it works or not, but I think it works well against enemies that takes little damage from attacks.
• Chaos? Wild strikes is a passive skill, so it basically just randomly adds more damage to your attack, depending on how many gamble range you have.
• Rocket launcher? Well, it's either this or Unarmed I think.
• Unarmed? Well, it should be combined with Combo. You can potentially get all I've mentioned without the Rocket Launcher for the price of 99.
• AI: disable if rocket launcher, if unarmed: Risk. Berserk Rage, Desperation, Frenzy. Attack
• Weapon: unarmed (knuckles) or rocket launcher.

 

Mia:

• HP
• Offense
• Behemoth?
• Anti Tank
• Ammo Management
• Combat Knife?
• Stealth? Good combo with combat knife for backstab.
• Napalm Ball? You may also invest in Napalm ball + fire damage etc.
• AI? I just disable her, if she survives to a boss, her Behemoth can do some damage. She can also backstab while controlled by you etc. Napalm Ball might be useful, or flame thrower. This is a jack of all trade character, that's not really good at anything unless you handhold her.
• Weapon? Behemoth? Flamethrower? Combat Knife?

 

There's 4 different ways your party can be split up, and I recommend you read the trophy guide about this, but if all you care about is the people in your party, and not the story, and who'd blame you, then there's really only two realistic choices. You can either pick Sabine or you can pick Dominic and Mia. Sabine can heal, and has some nice team skills, but that's about it.

 

As for your main character, you'll want it to compliment your team. I recommend investing in all the teamwork upgrades there are, these just help your team. Evasion is always nice, just to survive. I wanted mine to help Robyn with her combo stuff, so mine invested all into combo, and AI set to give combo to Robyn whenever I got like 4%, otherwise just attack. Putting a point or two into ammo drone isn't the dumbest thing you can do. In the HP category you find the By A Thread passive ability too, which can be nice. It is nice to have Fire shot, even if you only use knuckles I think. If you only use to boost combo, then Movement can be nice, which gives movement and quick. Which is also nice when you walk around on the world map. Stun can be pretty nice.

 

As for where to level early and all the way to level 100?

That house in Brandon has a lot of enemies you can easily take out with a rocket in the first room. May wanna use one of the characters you don't want on the team to boost maximum damage for this if you aren't going to have a rocket launcher on the team. This room gives 160XP, there's a very similar one, with a tiny bit strong enemies somewhere near or in Stonewall I think. I just can't remember where. I want to say it's closer to Impossible. Both of these "dungeons" are related to quests, so if you clear it, I think you may get locked out of it. Anyway, yeah, even with the 200xp one, that's 500 runs back and forth, but then you're done.

 

After level 100, what you'll want to do is progress the story and do side dungeons for rare weapons. At some point in the story you get a quest to go to Brandon. This time you get the quests Look To the Skies and Another Prairie. Look To The Skies is something you should focus on doing, which is basically going to the airport in Brandon and then go to the extra area, an entirely new location / world map. There you'll find a lot of new quests, which all result in unique items you can equip for each character, which boost their stats a lot. Finish the story quest there, and you'll get another boost for your main character that boosts entire party as well. At that point you'll be super OP.

Edited October 3, 2019 by MMDE

[jdh0921]

I know it's old, but just wanted to say this was an excellent guide, thank you.

 

Here's some things I noticed in my playthrough that may be helpful down the line. I had to do two playthroughs, but I think it is doable in one.

#1 and the reason why I ended up having to do 2 playthroughs.. make sure Robyn lives! She died in my first playthrough and I didn't know it was due to a choice I made, and it made the rest of the game a lot tougher. She's ridiculously OP'd when fully leveled. I ran with Sean, Robyn and Hayley for most of the game. Sean could clean out whole rooms in stealth, Hayley could replenish ammo and health, and Robyn just wrecked everything. Some rooms I'd snipe everyone except for one person and let Robyn wreck just so Hayley's drones could replenish Sean's ammo.

 

#2 Literally the only reason I had to do 2 playthroughs was because of the Golden Opportunity quest. Lots of tough bosses, and kept getting killed without a damage dealer like Robyn. But, this quest has a great spot to do "The Tables Turn" trophy. When doing this quest, it's the second to last room before the final boss, initially it is empty. But as soon as you move, 10-12 Betrayers pop up and murder you. If Sean is in your team however, you can drop a Sonic Ball, and pull them all together. This will count for that trophy. As it's pretty hard to do legit.

#3 Explore all the buildings! It's key for "Searching for the Conversation" and "Coming Together" trophies. Some of the quests in "Coming Together" won't start unless you go into them. The Casino in I believe Brandon and the strip club in Portage la Prairie are two examples. I thought I had glitched this trophy because of that.

 

Those are the main things I can think of off the top of my head. Again, kudos to @MMDE for writing this up! Super Helpful

 

[MMDE]

On 1/31/2021 at 9:13 PM, jdh0921 said:

I know it's old, but just wanted to say this was an excellent guide, thank you.

 

Here's some things I noticed in my playthrough that may be helpful down the line. I had to do two playthroughs, but I think it is doable in one.

#1 and the reason why I ended up having to do 2 playthroughs.. make sure Robyn lives! She died in my first playthrough and I didn't know it was due to a choice I made, and it made the rest of the game a lot tougher. She's ridiculously OP'd when fully leveled. I ran with Sean, Robyn and Hayley for most of the game. Sean could clean out whole rooms in stealth, Hayley could replenish ammo and health, and Robyn just wrecked everything. Some rooms I'd snipe everyone except for one person and let Robyn wreck just so Hayley's drones could replenish Sean's ammo.

 

#2 Literally the only reason I had to do 2 playthroughs was because of the Golden Opportunity quest. Lots of tough bosses, and kept getting killed without a damage dealer like Robyn. But, this quest has a great spot to do "The Tables Turn" trophy. When doing this quest, it's the second to last room before the final boss, initially it is empty. But as soon as you move, 10-12 Betrayers pop up and murder you. If Sean is in your team however, you can drop a Sonic Ball, and pull them all together. This will count for that trophy. As it's pretty hard to do legit.

#3 Explore all the buildings! It's key for "Searching for the Conversation" and "Coming Together" trophies. Some of the quests in "Coming Together" won't start unless you go into them. The Casino in I believe Brandon and the strip club in Portage la Prairie are two examples. I thought I had glitched this trophy because of that.

 

Those are the main things I can think of off the top of my head. Again, kudos to @MMDE for writing this up! Super Helpful

 

 

Honestly, Robyn is all you need. And everyone else should be built to support her as much as they can. However, it's not always that simple, because there was some points where you couldn't use her, so the rest of your party needs to be decent on their own as well. The combo transfer stuff can be very useful, because combo is super OP. Evasion is kinda OP. I can't remember if it was this or the sequel, but a character with high evasion, defense, hp and shield is nice. Maybe something that can heal them in some way too, and attract enemies. Basically, one character all enemies try to attack that they really can't hit, and if they hit, they don't really do anything, while Robyn goes around building up combo and after a while just one punching them.