I am currently playing the base game on Xbox. I am an experienced XCOM player that beat Enemy Unknown and Enemy Within on Impossible Ironman without losing a soldier, country or satellite. A lot of luck and many new game starts were needed to do that! Anyway, I’d like to tackle this game the same way with self-imposed restrictions to make it a little more difficult. I have beaten it on Normal difficulty and want start on a Legendary game. My goal here is the same, do not lose a single soldier AND not lose a single haven. While I believe it is fairly feasible to beat the game on Legendary without losing a soldier, I believe that it may be impossible to not lose a single haven. The sheer number of havens, the rapid progression of the pandoravirus and the number of bases to activate with satellite coverage along with needing multiple aircraft just seem to be too much to overcome. To the experienced players and/or developers, is it even remotely possible to not lose a haven on Legendary?
When you have DLC3 (Festering Skies) enabled then Behemoth is destroying havens - and you can’t do anyhting about it. So with that DLC it is impossible task to do. But without that DLC… who knows. Maybe? But you would need to get really good position on start, good RNG with resources sources, and properly place aircrafts with soldiers to be able to try that.
You need to prioritize building Manticore so you can deploy at the far-flung base(s) where the Mist is starting. You should be able to keep up as long as your original team gains resources somehow. The bases are usually too scattered to be able to fly there from Phoenix Point.
You can only initially recruit from Phoenix recruits, which limits team make up sometimes. A scarab or such doing initial scouting could open up some haven recruits at the new location.
I found, for the most part, the teams never paid for themselves. There were never enough haven defenses or scavenging missions to generate what it cost to build the team. Mostly they explored a bit and then sat. The number of havens can be very few in some parts of the world.
The teams also never really levelled up very far by the end of January when the Pandoran heavies start hitting.
It was always a tempting way to play. Possible. But by no means easy.
As my buddy above mentioned, the havens destroyed by the Behemoth don’t count! You can’t stop that. There has to be some endless doom in the world!
If you do have the Behemoth active, you need 2-3 airships THERE to deal with the things that come out of it. So that’s more pressure on ship acquisition.
Now thats an ambitious goal. I haven’t tried this before but I’ll share my thoughts anyways.
(as Yokes mentioned → do not play with “Festering Skies” otherwise this will be impossible. Also with fighting so many battles in areas covered with mist, you might want to turn off “Corrupted Horizons” as well)
You’ll need a lot of phoenix bases all around the world and a lot of aircrafts with capable soliders.
Getting lots of Aircrafts will require lots of reccources. So my proposition is to steal them. Probably from NewJericho havens because I think their aircraft is probably the best one overall. However if you realise, that you get to the havens to late, you might want to prefer the Synedrion aricraft.
The Manticore would probably be best for this kind of challenge but as I said its expensive to produce and with activation a lot of bases and equipping a lots of soliders I just dont how you could have spare reccources to build mulitple aircrafts.
The main problem with this is idea is probably that you will sour your relations with one of the factions and you might not be able to build it up quickly enougth to be able to see their havens and if you dont see a haven, you cant defend it. So you might fail the challenge without even noticing it until later on when you find the already destroyed haven.
Getting the Phoenix bases should be fairly easy however I’d recommend not to get all of them. Only get as many as you need.
Getting lots of good soliders can be hard as well. My intitial idea is to try and go for a couple of scarabs early on. While the scarab is usually not worth leaving three other soliders at home I think in this scenario where you probably cant equip all of your soliders anyways the scarab could prove to be very usefull.
However if you are getting Synedrion aircrafts you’ll only be able to carry two soliders + the scarab. For harder haven defence missions this wont be enough I think.
So far my main idea of approching this.
Other tips:
Always go for pandoran colonies as soon as possible to minimize the ammount of attacks.
If you are playing with the “blood and titanium” dlc you might want to try and take out the Pure quickly as well to get rid of their attack entirely (however their attacks are usually not as strong as pandoran ones)
Have a medical bay and living quarters in most of your bases to recover your soliders.
I’d recommand putting a heavy in every aircraft later on to be able to use warcry against chirons, sirens and snipers.
I agree that Scarab early on is life saving. But having too many of them would be waste of resources. In my opinion it is easier to get 3 soldiers and give them just main weapon with spare magazine and medkit. Armors are not necessary if you play carefully.
Thanks for all of your inputs!! I was hoping to enable all of the DLC for this type of run but I will turn off Festering Skies. I have the Behemoth Edition on disc but need to install it. Blathergut, were you successful in your attempt to do the same? I tried it already and I lost a haven by the second or third mist growth. I think it might be more important to gain diplomacy with all three factions to Supportive so that all of their havens pop up automatically during scanning. Also, it seems important to get up another fabrication plant ASAP to cut the time to build Manticores in half. I think this game is the opposite of XCOM. It was fairly easy to not lose a satellite but due to RNG mechanics it was luck to not lose a soldier. With Phoenix Point its harder to keep all of the havens. Is it just me or are the Disciples of Anu research upgrades lacking compared to the other two groups? Outside of getting the Berserker class for Armor Break and the Priest for head mutation that enables increase in speed I don’t see the benefits from researching their tree.
Truly I don’t remember if I lost absolutely NO havens. And it was probably easier to do with an earlier version of the game where there were more Pandoran nests and haven attacks so that your widely scattered teams could actually level up. Now, when I put teams in various locations, I find they aften just sit with no fighting. But it’s a valid way to try and play.
Yes, Fab as soon as possible so that Manticore 2 is as soon as possible. Where this goes depends on your situation.
Yes, hit 25% if you can. It greatly reduces exploration time. And you get some much needed faction research topics.
Personally, I like the Disciples the best. Most flavour. Beserkers with armour break are essential. The Disciples assault armour is excellent (speedier).
Tell you what: I’ll try a new run with this in mind, all dlc enabled, with the understanding that the Behemoth may very well destroy some havens, but see if I can keep the rest from going down. I’ll keep you posted here.
Of course, one thing you notice near the start is that there is a major delay between when a 2nd or 3rd Mist area can appear (first day even) and when you can have a 2nd base + airship + team available. So, you have no control at all until that point. You may very well lose a haven or two before you can ever respond to them.
Probably. But mutations are interesting, acid cannon is fine, shredding shotgun is fine, also Ragnarok and Mjolnir are fine additions to arsenal when you want to poke something well armored (they replace for me Fury and Odin) + Hand of Tyr as best aircraft weapon. And most important… with Festering Skies enabled you really want that ECM Jammer from them. Oh and thanks to them, you can have mutagen harvesting from aliens.
Thanks Yokes. I forgot about shredding shotgun and combined research amongst the factions. Early game I prefer the research trees of Synedrion and New Jericho but will eventually add in the Anu research as I see fit.
Can anyone confirm the following? Let’s say I get to SUPPORTIVE with one of the factions so that their havens automatically appear but then perform a raid to gain diplomacy with another faction which would result in the prior faction diplomacy dropping to FRIENDLY. Will I lose the perk of the havens automatically appearing?
Oh and I already tried a couple runs on legendary and lost a soldier. I will admit I was playing aggressively so will need to adjust my approach a bit. It seems ideal to get the first two mist points in proximity to each other after researching atmospheric analysis. Blathergut keep me posted on your progress. I have to start Anu run!
-team of 8 + vehicle in North Afrika (Manticore has vehicle + Hvy, Bsrk, Snpr)(Stolen Syn ship has Hvy, Aslt x 2, Bsrk, Snpr)
-team of 8 + vehicle in Mexiko (same as above)…Mist is in Central Amerika, a 3rd base there with 25% scanning but no havens near Mist
-team of 8 + vehicle in North Afrika (Manticore just built but 3rd Syn ship not stolen yet)(team is levelling up with 3 training facilities there)
-4th base in East Afrika
The biggest problem has been revealing any havens near the 2nd Mist outcropping. It takes a long time to get bases + scanners going.
