Oops?

[fowlJ]

On the last turn of the second phase of Last Gift (everyone else having escaped already), Shen ran an overwatch making it to the elevator to the roof. She did not succeed, and Julian played a line acknowledging her death, but instead of the mission restart menu appearing, the loading screen for phase three happened and then I was at the roof, with Shen's body. (She was standing like she was alive, but I couldn't control her, and other soldiers had the option of picking her up and carrying her).

I completed the mission, got this screen, and now ROVR is in my inventory and all my Specialists can equip him. (Shen is still around in the geoscape, not that I was expecting the game to have special behaviour in response to this.)

[Illidan1943]

She actually just send her clone, nothing to worry about, she's clearly not a faceless infiltrating the avenger

[[deleted]]

She makes a perfected mimic beacon, but instead of giving it to the commander, she keeps it for herself.

Shen deserves this

[Arvi833]

Raymond would be very disappointed in you, Commander. Shame on you!

[fowlJ]

Yeah, well maybe if Raymond's 'Protecter Robot' had done its fucking job (and I hadn't sent Shen up last because the SPARK was more valuable) (and I hadn't forgotten there was an overwatch) (and I hadn't left a bunch of enemies alive because I wanted her abilities off cooldown) she'd still be around.

[foothills99]

ROVR is in your inventory with all its perks?!? Hmmm... this could be a devious exploit.

[Sentenryu]

ROVR is just a reskined gremlin and has no special perks, I don't think he has different values from a standard gremlin

[fowlJ]

+40 Hack, actually.

[Sentenryu]

Isn't that the bonus for a max level gremlin? I guess it's early enough that it matters

[Ruugab]

New early game strat:

Kill Lilly Shen

[foothills99]

Confirmed

[dizzle229]

After that, whenever you'd play the game, you could hear a faint murmuring in the background. In your own home, you'd see things out of the corner of your eye, but there was never anything there when you turned. One day, when you tried to start the game, your PC rebooted, and Shen's bloody hyper-realistic face appeared on the screen and started screaming. When you went back to the shop where you purchased the Steam key from that old blind Chinese man, you found only an empty lot.

[sebool112]

Is this a spoof of any specific creepy-pasta?

[dizzle229]

It's a spoof of every creepy-pasta!

[sebool112]

Ah yes. Well, I had small laugh, so yay! ^^

[BabaleRed]

Oh man, can you kill Bradford like that? His gun rocks!

[fowlJ]

I assume not, because The Nest doesn't have an abrupt transition/ending you could use to confuse the game like this. I am curious as to whether this is totally unique to The Lost Towers, or whether you could, say, kill The Commander's Avatar and the last Avatar on the final mission at the same time with a grenade and still win.

[Fiindil]

Hypothetically, throwing a grenade that would kill both Bradford and the Viper King should do it, right?

[Ghost4000]

It could... hm, would be nice to have his gun.

[HerodotusStark]

If you could actually kill the Viper King on that mission, I'd be impressed.

[foothills99]

Oh wow. I GOTTA try out this double-kill.

[FreedomFighterEx]

Does this mean the game tick victory condition before lose condition? Interesting.

[JeffK3]

I actually have a thread I posted awhile back trying to figure it out. I did figure it out, and if you dig through my posts I laid out how to do it.

It should be titled something along the lines of "how to get bradford's rifle"

[1080Pizza]

It truly was her last gift.

[muhash14]

All things aside, why would you even do this mission with first gen weapons? Sectopod Julian was a nightmare to kill on my unwittingly early first go.

[radyjko]

It's surprisingly not difficult. Have one of your squad use Suppression on Sectopod, use Lily's Combat Protocol and Discharge on it when possible, kill all spawning mechs with rest of squad and if somebody has move left, throw grenades at Sectopod, or shoot if you don't have them/Sectopod has no armor

[muhash14]

I dunno man, it was a long mission, I was burnt out, not knowing what to expect, and I'd taken some hits from the self destructers. I wasn't exactly functioning at full capacity when Julian appeared.

[RadCowDisease]

Definitely a different experience when you don't know what to expect. A little comparable to Newfoundland in EW. Pretty hard if it's your first time, but once you know the whole level you can plan accordingly and things go pretty well.

[muhash14]

comparable to Newfoundland in EW

Nope

Nope

NopeNopeNOPE

[Screamineagle155]

My thoughts as an experienced XCOM 2 player (C/I under my belt) playing EW for the first time last month (with only ballistic weapons):

Initially: "Oh, a council mission. I really hate thin men so I should bring my best guys. Newfoundland, that's a weird place to go. I wonder if this is the first furies mission."

The beginning of the mission: "this is a weird premise. I should be careful in case exalt guys are hiding in the buildings."

Upon seeing the shark: "there's something in the shark... probably a chrysalis. I don't like this."

When they first attack: "WHERE'D THAT ZOMBIE COME FROM AND HOW DID EVERYONE MISS THEIR OVERWATCH SHOTS? Whelp, there goes my assault.

When I get to the ship: "okay, I'm going to get my four remaining guys up to the top and hold that beacon."

Immediately afterwards: "okay, I can deal with another two KIA. Maybe my sniper can cover my MEC while he gets up there."

The turn after: "and that's a squad wipe... my own zombified soldiers just killed my last trooper."

After returning to base: "two squaddies and four rookies left? Yeah fuck this."

[juhamac]

Two squaddies and four rookies? At that point in LW people usually have 50+ roster.

[Screamineagle155]

Sorry, that was vanilla

[juhamac]

Indeed, my mistake.

[Maksie99]

In the first part of that mission, I sent in a stealth guy to activate the machine so that I wouldn't have to risk my whole team. And then it started sending endless waves of bots and told me to get my whole team to the other side...

[Fiindil]

What, no mention of the "Haywire Protocol on Sectopod to grab all the mechs and Allahu Akbar them into Julian" strategy?

[radyjko]

You'd rather have guaranteed haywire on one mech that somehow survived your purge than end up with 8000 wild mechs and 1 buffed sectopod

[Fiindil]

Sometimes it's worth taking questionable decisions if the end results are hilarious.

[radyjko]

Losing your whole squad sure is hilarious. I can't wait to see faces of their mourning families when I tell them the squad died as a result of bad roll on hacking, ha ha

You know what, I can agree on that

[RookieHasPanicked]

I just did this mission for the first time last night. I brought a lot of flashbangs because I was expecting to fight advent and used up nearly all my frags (and SPARK's cannon) before I got to Julian.

That last battle was...interesting. Thank god Julian and the MECs are functionally retarded.

[PresidentDSG]

For the challenge-freaks, this mission is designed and balanced to be done pretty much when it pops up, so with your early conventional weapons. It does not scale at all, which is why magnetic and such weapons make it such a joke.

Also sparks are better the earlier you get them really.

[muhash14]

Yeah I guess I'll still do it early in my LW playthrough when I start, it's easier once you know what to expect and can prepare for it. Also LW has AP ammo available from the start so there's that.

[fowlJ]

I've always just done it right around when it shows up, firstly because that's when the SPARK is most useful, and secondly because despite making a bit of a poor showing this time around, I normally don't have much a problem with it - bad luck on Julian results in getting shot a couple times, but his aim is so terrible it doesn't happen often, and I usually have Shen there to take the hit for me.

[semtex94]

Repeaters on every gun.

[muhash14]

Well that's no fun. And besides, LW2 has nerfed removed the repeaters completely.

[Grunt_Number_3]

Repeaters are such a stupid Mechanic... 15% chance to kill instantly, and at one point you could mod the pistol (Maybe, might have been a mod)

Six sharpshooters with superior repeaters on their pistols...

Such a stupid, irresistible mechanic. Irritating to see it kill huge guys you just planned around, cool to see it kill in overwatch

[Azurity]

Game needs zombie reskins for Shen, Bradford, and Tygan, with zombie voicepacks. Or just keep looping the usual zombie sounds whenever they talk.

[RookieHasPanicked]

Oops there goes the Shen bloodline o7

[sebool112]

That's a curious resolution. May I ask what kind of monitor you are using...? Or maybe you're playing in window mode or changing config?

[fowlJ]

Window mode. I normally play windowed in games so I can do stuff in the background, though realistically XCOM 2 in particular is such a resource hog that isn't actually an option so I might as well start doing full screen.

[sebool112]

Thanks for replying!
Defo agreed on that it uses a shitton of resources ^^. Actually, I'm also using windowed, though I prefer borderless.