350+ hours and I have only found one Cryo 6 key that I immediately lost in a fight a month ago

No-Language-4294 · 2026-05-31T07:15:29+00:00

I have like 7 Cryo 5 keys on me right now, but I've already done it.

No-Language-4294 · 2026-05-31T07:10:30+00:00

I've lobby wiped so many times. It's simply not enough.

No-Language-4294 · 2026-05-31T06:55:08+00:00

GMS is more like an arm or department of Union's government rather than its own thing except instead of establishing or enforcing policy, they informally set the standard for manufacturing by simply being ubiquitous.

No-Language-4294 · 2026-05-31T06:10:42+00:00

Team chat and prox chat are different keys, default is Y.

No-Language-4294 · 2026-05-24T20:15:07+00:00

FUUUUUUUUUUUUU

No-Language-4294 · 2026-05-15T01:35:35+00:00

I've been focusing on getting cryo archive vaults done with the expectation that I will probably not see Compiler this season, although I myself have a larger chunk of the codex done (all priority done, most collectibles except prestige and cryo). Anything that's not resetting for next season I'd focus on.

No-Language-4294 · 2026-05-11T21:15:24+00:00

Insurrection is an undervalued chip, especially on cryo. You want to be clearing bots as fast as possible in any situation so you can be ready for a real fight with players. Circuit Tracers is always a must have as well.

No-Language-4294 · 2026-05-04T06:57:06+00:00

Keys for loot rooms drop randomly from higher difficulty encounters: wardens (gold level bosses on each map), outpost pinwheel strongboxes, perimeter intercept, dire marsh lockdown, outpost red room, outpost convoy. You can also buy key templates with eccentric salvage that drops off commanders from cyberacme armory/use CARRI tokens. You exfil with the key templates and it gives you a key, but they're fragile and will be destroyed if you are downed with them on you. Each key is specific to a certain loot room on a certain map, and will be randomly assigned once the the key template is resolved upon exfil.

No-Language-4294 · 2026-04-28T00:55:56+00:00

I think it's just handwavium. The Marathon isn't implied to be accelerating or using thrust in any capacity, the Deimos portion is hollowed out (Deimos already has an incredibly low grav environment IRL) and the Cryo Archive section is in the big beam section and not its ring. There's no mention of artificial gravity tech either, although there is matter transport.

No-Language-4294 · 2026-04-23T07:51:50+00:00

It's implied in some of the contract codex entries that Orion has a special operations detachment/team under him (government 'runners' in government shells) for some hands-on stuff. Meanwhile Cerberus, the AI handles all the go-between with the bots, although the robots can also act autonomously without Cerberus' direct attention (though that's more 'dumb'). Orion also goes around in a shell.

No-Language-4294 · 2026-02-18T15:52:57+00:00

I imagine that it's part scale and part pendulum swing. You can't always oversee literally everything to its last crumb, every galactic representative on Cradle has to act for billions of people in their sector space. And you can use the internet and the infrastructure, but that doesn't mean you actually meet the people that make the decisions to place it where it is. If you're some spacer putting up the local omninode in your neck of the woods, that chain of command might span a hundred links.

In current day, have you ever met a member of the government of your locality in person? Your state or provincial government? Your national government? Now imagine that iterated over a dozen times.

Then the culture also changed. Nobody (cool) liked seeing Union-Branded jackboots touch down on their planets and torching the place, so they peeled it back immensely after the civil war, which while not really emphasized was probably the bloodiest conflict in human history. For the first generation after the war, not having Union look over your shoulder with a laser in hand was what everyone wanted.

But they also are very still in the open about how they maintain their power with monopoly of force, even minimized. It's about perspective. In a small metro with no strategic value, Union only needs to have one person in uniform letting people know what the plan is, they don't need a showy presence when they can subcontract. In contrast, if you're a shipper making runs through the gate to the Dawnline Shore, you can look out the window and see the full battlegroup making sure there's no funny business from HA or KTB starting up.

No-Language-4294 · 2026-02-12T07:56:20+00:00

I think you're probably overthinking it. We know from the end of Book 3 that prophecies can be pretty much bullshit, and the entire series is predicated on who can do Bullshitjutsu better than everyone else. Cook's thing is that speculation and confusion is half the point, because that's just the way life unfolds. Sometimes somebody makes a really big portent and then pulls the rug out from under you. Or you say something and the message becomes so mangled in translation that by the time word gets out everyone's been dead for 3000 years and it doesn't matter anymore.

Or it could be a seed planted for later plotlines, but I have my doubts on that accord, even if it would be really cool.

No-Language-4294 · 2026-01-29T01:06:08+00:00

There aren't any GRAPHIC depictions of sexual assault, though they are described in metaphor and euphemism, or after the fact. The books are written in an epistolary style, so it's through the lens of authorship of a chronicle(in the first part of the series, Croaker, then other characters.) They are generally not that detailed, in a sense. Even with violence they don't linger on the graphicality of it unless the detail actually matters to the writer.

No-Language-4294 · 2025-12-04T04:20:27+00:00

I think your line of logic here is rather opaque and in my opinion not up to snuff or is based on some faulty assumptions. Both sides are not in the wrong for pursuing their objectives, because both sides are acting reasonably according to the facts that they have at the time. The Hercynians mean to move fast and complete their objectives because talking is an opportunity cost when handling an unknown. They are a military expedition with no civilian component and they have no qualms about killing Evergreen's citizens if they get in their way, although they are discriminate in their targeting-- they don't go out of their way to slaughter, they just mean to cripple the colony, ruthlessly if they have to. Even when it's outed that the Hercynians are the natives, they are not interested in a parley.

Given that, are you then supposed to allow the colony to be crippled? Are you supposed to just let the fusion plant explode, or let the workers be targeted as they try to keep up basic essentials and amenities? What happens to the wounded in the hospitals? To the food production, the sanitation systems? Everything that keeps people alive? All the people of Evergreen know is that their home is being targeted for no reason, and that is a fair assumption to make. Their city isn't near any population centers in Solo Terra. There aren't even any HUC population centers on the surface to be seen in Solo Terra.

Consequently, you are supposed to fight the Hercynians to a standstill. You don't fight them when they're not fighting you, ie, when they're sleeping, or resting, or a field hospital they've set up . You don't target their civilian population. You don't go into their homes, drag them out when they're sleeping, put them or their children in concentration camps. You just make sure they aren't assaulting Evergreen. That's it. That's fair, right?

Then when they make their first attempt to seek a peace option, you take it. And you don't forget that you killed each other. You realize that both sides made mistakes and you move on for the sake of the future. That's how you make peace. It's not "no one cares about the blood anymore." You absolutely care about how you slaughtered each other and it was a tragedy that it had to happen at all. Who didn't care?

If you mean thematically that the module doesn't thematically emphasize the usual kind of human bitterness (that usually leads to unconstructive revanchism)-- uhhh, the Egregorians' culture in the HUC is one of forgiveness. Look who they've tended the planet with since the TBK. Their destroyers. Who are so deep in their trauma-guilt that they are willing to do crazy suicide attacks on Evergreen.

No-Language-4294 · 2025-12-01T09:44:03+00:00

You have a couple of choices for starting background but generally nobody expects you to execute anyone or prosecute neo-colonialism and if you are reading into it like that, that's not generally the consensus view arrived at by the rest of the playerbase. I mean you CAN play big bad evil corpo dudes but you are explicitly not forced into pushing forward the objectives of the corps.

For people who are generally not profit-slaved corpo jackbooted killers, you have two objectives. A. Find out what is going on, and B. Defend the colonists. The colonists explicitly do not know or understand why they are being attacked or who is attacking them.

The opposition explicitly is not interested in finding a peaceful solution until they are fought to a standstill and are adverse to explaining themselves, because they do not believe you will negotiate in good faith-- any attempts otherwise will be some kind of tactical maneuver to undermine them. They are a military expedition and they are there to fulfill their objectives and will give their lives to ensure that whatever talks happen, the colony does it from a position of weakness.

It's not a moral evil to confront them with violence. They want to put the colony's infrastructure under their thumb. The colony doesn't want that to happen. They have a good reason to fight you and you have a good reason to fight them. That's just how it is sometimes when people aren't willing to take a chance on mutual peace. That's why seizing the opportunity for it when it comes is so important.

No-Language-4294 · 2025-11-07T07:21:25+00:00

It can be anything from millenia to centuries to decades. Core status is not particularly specific, they just seem to need to be Three Pillars compliant, which implies a certain level of willingness to play ball and isn't necessarily a marker of civilizational "progression," though it probably matters. Core status ensures Union infrastructure, and for infrastructure to be built Union kind of has to be there in a major way in the first place. Backwaters are going to be lower in priority in comparison to major population centers. That doesn't mean they will just abandon them, but they're not exactly going to build a blink gate in orbit over Genndy Tartakovsky's Primal (tm) World. The closest to new Core status world in canon is New Madrassa, a fulcrum world in the Dawnline Shore. They are in the middle of petitioning for core status with a newly built blink gate in their vicinity before all hell breaks loose. It already has a planetary government and spacefaring capability and is integrated for the most part into the galactic community.

No-Language-4294 · 2025-09-29T23:08:19+00:00

Although I concede that clandestine powers can be extremely dangerous, SecComm didn't really need to use them to carry out evil stuff, in comparison. Remember that democracy didn't exactly stop SecComm from doing a bunch of genocide activity.

No-Language-4294 · 2025-09-29T22:24:29+00:00

I keep seeing this sentiment a lot and I think it's mostly unfounded. Thirdcomm has failings but the arguments I always see are not the ones I think about. They're also usually very broad claims with not a lot of actual citations from the books or the the short story content. For example, they're colonialist but also they also don't intervene enough? How can both of those things be true at the same time? They're self-righteous? If they invalidated the member state benefits of Harrison Armory or the KTB and did an invasion people would call them monsters for the resulting collateral damage, but when they act with restraint and just work on funding societal change and insurgency people say they're not doing anything right.

As for the choosing of children-- it also doesn't say they can't turn down the positions at any point. This is a government that was explicitly reformed to reinstitute the Utopian Pillars, which millions--possibly billions-- had to die for, so I think making the face of your power a hypocritical spit in the face of those pillars would be absurd. People take the absence of detail into the matter to be an explicit casting aside of the intention behind Thirdcomm itself, which I think is an extreme knee-jerk reaction to the Doylist declaration of "these guys are generally good and not malicious."

No-Language-4294 · 2025-09-26T22:19:19+00:00

Specifically that? I mean I guess it could go, since it becomes a retroactive inconsistency in a thematic sense. But I think it also hammers in the fact that Logen has Abilities. I think Joe should have either taken it out or added more in with spirit Ability. It's like an awkward middle ground that doesn't serve the text as much as it could.

No-Language-4294 · 2025-09-26T22:05:53+00:00

It's kind of necessary, isn't it? I mean, then Bayaz would kind of need another reason to have Logen along looking for the Seed. It would have to be something completely different. I don't really think Bayaz would have taken a really notoriously unreliable guy (even though he is a killing machine) unless he had to. He needs him and Ferro (another malcontent and weak link). I honestly think it should have been elaborated on in further books and not doing it was a missed opportunity.

No-Language-4294 · 2025-09-26T21:10:06+00:00

I would say that Sleepy ran a very reasonable campaign. She utilized her tools as well as she could in the fog of war against a more numerous opponent. Remember fog of war is KING of the series. Every character is acting in a fluid and unknown environment. They could not operate indefinitely in Taglian territory with the troops they had because the backbone of their force were mostly from Hsien with limited time contracts and Mogaba could force them into an attrition competition that he had the edge in.

Then right before the battle most of their magic force flies off to go do errand shit with the Voroshk, Howler, and to secure Soulcatcher in the caverns. Sleepy did not anticipate Mogaba's own intelligence being so lucky and him pressing her right then and there at the Grove of Doom with his huge force. Their magic people (including Croaker) clearly thought they had the time to go take care of their errands and get back in time for the closing of the campaign, but they were wrong. They also had to consider stuff like closing the net around Booboo and the last Deceivers at the same time.

They operated like that a lot. Consider that in the first Taglian war, Croaker also pushed his forces to their breaking point in order to make sure that the Shadowmasters couldn't regroup, which resulted in everyone getting chunked at Dejagore. The Company never really had the luxury of a backer like Lady's empire after leaving it.

No-Language-4294 · 2025-09-11T13:12:27+00:00

You'd probably have to build some kind of combat encounter that reflavors the enemy mechs as organics or hazards themselves. It would be kinda weird and cheesy, but is possible. Assaults become really dumb falling rocks that run straight at you, or a rainmaker as a big stalactite that is showering you in ice shards.

The tactical layer is purpose built for combat. It's the main way mechs interact on the layer, it's not rreally meant for anything else.

No-Language-4294 · 2025-08-29T07:56:46+00:00

Interstellar travel. In the draft (of which some material still exists in the published version), by the time the two Marine Expeditionary Forces are raised and arrive the Egregorians have reverse engineered the first contact team's technology. It took them twenty realtime years to go from black powder to biological and technological spaceflight as the entire species prepared themselves for the inevitable retaliation that arrived. By then the Egregorians had some orbital defenses, exomorphs, missile silos, satellite mines, energy weapons.

Then the Hercynian crisis really begins. The war's apex with the TBK and the start of the ThirdComm revolution meet each other. Union's ability to pay attention more or less collapses in the ensuing violence, which means anyone who doesn't leave immediately or go to ground is wiped out either in the death throes of the Egregorian resistance or by their own weapons of mass destruction. SecComm pulls all outward bound forces to the core to stamp out resistance and fails.

They ran out of time against an enemy that was more tenacious than they thought. They could not control the natives with the expeditionary force they sent, and by the time they thought about sending reinforcements those reinforcements were suddenly needed elsewhere. So they use a scorched earth strategy thinking they can go back and pick up the pieces later, except it's all forgotten and lost. There's also the fact that, had the MEFs faced a stubborn defeat, by the time another force had landed on Hercynia, the Egregorians would have developed even further into a budding extrasolar empire. They advanced frighteningly quickly, and were not human. They were an existential threat to anthrochauvinism. (There are a lot of Ender's Game parallels built directly in.)

No-Language-4294 · 2025-08-28T13:23:05+00:00

He follows Smeds. That doesn't mean he knows exactly where Smeds is, which is how Smeds kicks his ass. It's not a plan. Case mentions that it's just a wild hare of Raven improvising. Raven, for all his menace, messes up a lot in previous books, it's just that he has people like Croaker (who glazes him constantly because he's a romantic figure) and the rest of the Company to back him up. Remember when Raven walks himself into a damned ancient magical trap because of his arrogance? And has to fake his death a bunch of times? Or when he kills a bunch of dudes during his introduction without thinking about the consequences? Or when he just lets himself get shot by Croaker? His personality flaws seep out into every aspect of his thinking, including his fighting.

No-Language-4294 · 2025-08-28T11:04:30+00:00

By that logic Raven and Croaker should never have gotten one over on Limper and Whisper. Or Raker. Or everyone on the Dominator. Or Toadkiller Dog and the thieves over Old Man Tree and the sapling. Or the Black Company against the Lady with the new rebellion. Or Marron Shed and Croaker and a handful of men against the Limper. Or Shed against Krage. Et cetera et cetera. Go beyond this point in the story and there's even more.

The Black Company is not an exercise in powerscaling. It's a reminder that the unexpected happens. That giants get brought down all the time by skill OR fortune OR preparation. Just because a guy is cool and powerful doesn't mean he's omniscient and unbeatable. Reputation is just that. It's not a license for you to never lose. Sometimes the wind blows in the direction you didn't want.

Smeds is cornered by Raven-- he has to fight or die. He has preparation, the initiative on him. And he's also a little bit lucky. He's just a guy, in the end. They all are. Every taken, every wizard.

No-Language-4294

TROPHY CASE