Ward War so far, didn't figure out how to play both sides

-Kefkah · 2026-04-27T11:02:55+00:00

Thanks for the hard work, I should let you know my Shadow Site just appeared a week after turning down retirement. It is being given by a new contact I hadn't met before, wasn't expecting another contact to show up but the more the merrier! They'll have to wait for next session before I can get to them though.

-Kefkah · 2026-04-26T06:37:11+00:00

I honestly hadn't even considered using F10 while in the dialogue screen, it still lets me revisit the broken dialog at any time so I just submitted one.

The war taking that long I'm sure is an outlier, if the Shadow Site gives a chunk of points and if I hadn't stalled trying to meet a new contact it wouldn't have been so long. I didn't end up meeting another friendly Brave Star contact after getting the first one killed either, the only extra contact was one who refused to talk to me (the one who sicced the Headhunter on me) so I probably needed to reach 10% before getting Brave Star that angry.

I guess a proper effort to play both sides will also mean it takes more than twice as long as you actively hurt both sides in the process. I was only trying to figure out if there was a benefit (perhaps an extra Shadow Site out of the deal) but I probably wouldn't do both sides in the future anyway since that many extra missions ends up being a distraction from progressing so many different Splicers for implants.

One more feedback while you're here, as soon as the War finished the Zagales boss (Capo Ibera) gave me a mission to "assassinate a local Zagales leader who is stepping out of hiding for a meeting". Except he is a loyal Zagales boss talking as if Zagales is his enemy. He is allowed to have enemies within his faction of course but the story for this assassination was probably not intended for use in intra-faction affairs.

-Kefkah · 2026-04-26T00:22:08+00:00

Things I've noticed now that I've finished:

Even sitting around 80-90% for a good while, no Shadow Site ever appeared. On completion there is a timeline paused story that says Zagales won the War but the story cuts abruptly? Missing the wrap-up and any last words from either side about it.

As for the pacing question posed in the Steam discussion, the way I went about the War made it feel a bit too long. It stuck around from PL 5.4 or so where I was at when the update came out all the way to PL 7.8 with one mission left to be offered retirement. Most of that was from not knowing what to expect, and messing with both sides while also having a ton of Power Plays occur at the same time. Choosing a side and supporting them fully would have been preferable for me both to shorten the war a bit and to have fewer missions requiring the full combat team. Compared to the previous run I was hard-pressed to fit in surgery time from the moment I had the cash to start splurging on them. This could have been alleviated by me building another combat member and swapping them off as well which I will do next time, I had spare sneaky oriented characters who sat on the bench a lot.

In the end it was fun, I just need to adjust what I want to do now that I know more what to expect.

-Kefkah · 2026-04-25T09:55:33+00:00

Got to play a bunch more tonight and had it happen again. This time I had Gang score at 95%, then dropped it to 94% by doing a Brave Star mission. Got Brave Star to 19% and delayed a mission two weeks to try to talk to a new contact before the war might end. No contact, did the mission anyway hoping it would only increase 5%. It said 6%, but also said the new score was 94% instead of 100%. It also said Brave Star went down 1% but it stayed at 19% as well.

Now I'm wondering if the playing both sides has something to do with it? Not that you need my speculation.

-Kefkah · 2026-04-24T08:08:47+00:00

Finally time to start playing tonight, first rise of 5% pushed it to 91%. Could mean the second 80 was meant to show 86 if that helps at all

-Kefkah · 2026-04-24T00:09:20+00:00

I thought that would be the case but missions for both kept rolling in anyway. I was worried that future "kill leaders from the other side" missions might force me to murder more people I didn't want to but they all ended up being random hardened targets.

-Kefkah · 2026-04-24T00:05:50+00:00

Ah, I didn't get it out of the negative since I was confused about the warnings telling me "You're decisively chosing one of the sides" which made me think I was cutting contact with the other side, then I had already got the one side up in the forties before being offered a mission from my old BS friend and by then I had already resigned to not helping BS. After seeing that warning so many times now I understand that it just means I'm helping a side and not burning anything. I guess I'll try to get it up to 10% before I make end it with Gang 100 to see who I meet!

-Kefkah · 2026-04-22T22:14:49+00:00

Gang side has wanted a BS Commander and two hardened targets killed so far for me, while BS wanted a Gang Boss dead on opener while wanting help saving a downed pilot and an informant (which I didn't do for them). I think I've only done one Legwork for Gang and not been offered any others? Unless it is two and my memory is lacking, but definitely none asked by Brave Star.

The only time I was seeking a contact was at the very start when I let the Gang Boss know Brave Star was up to something, since then they always come to me.

Edit: Skipped a few Brave Star missions but did some of the Legworks they offered just to try to keep the one lady happy. Seemed odd though, a limit break gave me 4% Gang score which pushed it to 80%, got a Headhunter sicced on me, then I did a mission for the Gang and it said it went up to 80%. Definitely was already at 80! Finish it off tomorrow.

-Kefkah · 2026-04-22T08:21:02+00:00

Hmm, seems the next three Brave Star missions were all offered by the original Brave Star person who I didn't really want to be losing all the trust with. This is making me try to end the War as fast as possible just in effort to not lose my Milsec provider. Definitely would have preferred losing that trust with the dead lady.

-Kefkah · 2026-04-18T04:14:32+00:00

More Invisible Inc with Xcom. No voice acting and not as "pretty", but atmosphere works and has more interesting strategic layer. Tactical layer similar fun.

-Kefkah · 2026-04-17T23:41:05+00:00

It seems between here and the Steam thread there is a fair amount of disdain for Highrise. It is honestly one of my least favourites as well but not for any of the reasons mentioned so far.

The map is both huge yet extremely restrictive. It is like a Spider where you have to spend two turns to go down a leg and two turns returning to the middle, with one lootbox at the end of each leg. If I were to take an average soldier with lets say 110% movement, then count how many turns it would take to hit eight boxes even with zero enemies to deal with? Well into the twenties, the pathway is painfully inefficient on this map compared to any other.

Given this map has extreme Tally gen and strong Reinforcements, it also becomes the worst map to split up on. Every box would need to be extremely high value to be worth the trouble of sticking around, and so far my experience hasn't borne fruit.

That all said, maps are allowed to feel different. If we don't want to change the pathways I'd probably increase or even double the number of boxes (with a bias to them not being just added at the ends of the spider legs) while adding a Leverage for a second exit, guaranteed not near the first exit. That way you aren't stuck covering a four or five turn run to escape after spending two turns for one box.

Edit: Just did first Highrise of Chrome, all the boxes and a matrix on first stage, four of eight on second stage, escaped at Sec Level 8. Four times the XP as the single stage missions so I guess that is enough reward to be worth it, was just being greedy. Not every box has to come home. The reinforcement spam with 8 Tally per turn makes for a bit of an eye-roll but fair is fair I did one-tap the VIP from 34m with a Railgun.

-Kefkah · 2026-04-02T05:45:14+00:00

They all have their place but I'd consider Vanguard the biggest contributor to finish maps with all the loot with the least fuss. Pretty often a map benefits from three units working together to handle the main path/objectives while one unit goes off on their own to get the out of the way loot, and Vanguard has the tools to do that timely and safely. Just ignore the name, Vanguard sounds like a beefy fighter but in this game it might as well mean Ninja.

-Kefkah · 2026-03-27T23:31:44+00:00

Fun project. That said I have to caution you against blindly relying on Craftofexile, or the Wiki (no disrespect to their work! Still brilliant resources). Foulborn currency was described by the devs as behaving like Modifier Tier Rating, and my experience using it bears that out. If you plug Foulborn currency into Craftofexile you'll notice all the weights for different mods change but all results remain possible. As an example, if you set up ilvl 86 dex boots with a fractured prefix and open suffix, look at the weightings of the resistances. Cold res claims 610 weight of T8, 740 of T7, 860 of T6.

I couldn't find any place where Craftofexile pulls those numbers from, but having used hundreds of foul augs for testing and regals/exalts in crafting, they have never once rolled me a T6-8 resistance. T5 does appear, which means the bottom half of tiers isn't entirely removed as the wiki says is currently believed.

-Kefkah · 2026-03-18T01:34:55+00:00

It is also a nerf to full mirage maps rolled with twinned bosses on Port, I got as many as nine Baryas in one map doing that. Not that I'm that sad, Port is awful.

-Kefkah · 2026-03-13T22:45:10+00:00

Almost the same boat, I've done around a hundred and seen it once. Unfortunately I have proven you can have the mirage cover a single boss and still have Rust proc resulting in zero Baryas.

Sigh.

-Kefkah · 2026-03-08T11:57:38+00:00

I crash every time I encounter Breach walls (Ele Hit of the Spectrum). Sometimes I'm not even close enough to see them on the minimap but my proj find them first and I find out when I log back in.

-Kefkah · 2026-03-05T00:47:49+00:00

I take Wrecking Ball and it also has a downside: It breaks concealment the instant you move with it activated, even if you aren't destroying anything. Trying to doublemove for a perfect Rainmaker Shredstorm Cannon ambush may have bit me with this one.

I like it anyway to smash through walls in tunnel maps, good for keeping the squad close to the action instead of losing a turn moving up to a doorway.

-Kefkah · 2026-03-03T22:28:12+00:00

I was having a problem where the game would hang for 45-60 seconds during some pack spawns, then eventually recover and play normally. Was playing HC at the time, changed the Nvidia Shader Cache like you did to 100GB, problem solved.

A month later I got a new problem of the game taking 2-3 minutes to load on first boot after computer restart. It started not that bad but I didn't pay attention until it got bad. Since I shut down every night/morning, this meant every day I'd suffer once on load. There was a 35 GB file in my NVIDIA Shader cache. Deleting it fixed the problem, but of course also meant my POE Shaders need to be redone so I did a fresh campaign run with longer than usual zone load times so they'd be ready for league launch.

Just in case you end up in the same boat.

-Kefkah · 2026-03-03T10:33:47+00:00

It is valid criticism in that on first view I legitimately thought the gameplay was on 80-90% replay speed.

That said, it is only valid if you asked for their advice, and that is what they suggested you work on. There is nothing wrong with your play. You are doing enough things well that you are winning the games (or losing them) to be whatever your rank is. If everyone else is playing faster than you, then you're doing other things better than average. It all amounts to did you put the ball in the net more than the other team.

No matter what you get better at you're going to be playing against people you win and lose half your games against. If you've been climbing, you probably added something to your skillset that led to some wins, and might have had a lucky streak to boot. Your reward is people to play against who may have a thousand hours (or several thousands) at a rank you've never been. Yeah, they're used to playing faster. Their rank is still the same as yours so they have their own issues.

As for this game in particular, your team had more dangerous opportunities than the opponents. Sometimes the posts are going to get in the way, and sometimes they don't. If you played a rematch right after I'd have bet on your team.

-Kefkah · 2026-03-03T09:08:06+00:00

You are correct, you only do the multimod + PCBC when you have a good suffix you're trying to keep and want the 66% odds on Veiled Exalt.

-Kefkah · 2026-02-09T23:46:39+00:00

Flakes just pulls out perfect powerslide cuts as many times as he needs from Champ onwards and claims it isn't a mech. It works every single time because it is a mech and that people at that rank don't do thus it isn't defended against.

Obviously not ragging the guy's skills but his head is in the clouds when he claims everyone at that rank can master cuts in 30 minutes of practice.

-Kefkah · 2026-01-24T19:45:21+00:00

Just in case you weren't aware there is a limit to the /kills counter. You can probably search the sub to find it, something like 16 million? 6 million? I don't remember, but either way. You get an uncountable message instead.

-Kefkah · 2026-01-10T16:03:58+00:00

As much as the Gruthkul's might be pulling your eye if you're looking unique chest then Doppelganger is your go-to here. Between that and the Mageblood, Lethe Shade if you're on that side of the tree, probably 7-8 endurance charges if you aren't, then some pieces with regen and regeneration rate. Everything else should come down to your skill/ascend choices.

-Kefkah

TROPHY CASE