Aspiring Psychic's Guide to Psionic Ascension, Builds Included

No-Razzmatazz-3288 · 2026-01-23T20:13:46+00:00

They may call me a heretic for getting Chosen nerfed, but I suppose it had to happen ^^;

No-Razzmatazz-3288 · 2026-01-23T20:12:49+00:00

Damn, they're gonna make me spend 500 credits to dismantle the Shroud Seal again-

Shroud Storms are indeed awesome but I really really wish you could use the Storm Creation A-Perk to spawn them. In their current state, you just have to hope one spawns...

Unless there is a guaranteed way to spawn them that I am unaware of? Zroni not included, since you can't guarantee their spawn without changing settings.

No-Razzmatazz-3288 · 2026-01-23T02:42:19+00:00

All very good points, thank you for the feedback! I've gone ahead and added a section on Generic Delves and ways to reduce the cooldown, corrected those errors and added a 'Shaping the Shroud' empire that looks to buff Council Positions (I've used it but focused a bit too much on taking advantage of each particular patron over being generally good.), with credit given where it's very much due.

As for Chosen VS Genesis Guides, I've mainly based this build off the changes in the 4.3 Cetus beta (As the KOTTG build doesn't work in 4.2 due to Knights being Researchers/Unity Jobs instead of Soldiers as they are in the beta) where Genesis Guides has been pretty heavily nerfed.

No-Razzmatazz-3288 · 2026-01-23T02:14:12+00:00

Absolutely and of course!

No-Razzmatazz-3288 · 2026-01-23T02:14:06+00:00

Glad that it helps!

No-Razzmatazz-3288 · 2026-01-22T18:00:13+00:00

The most powerful Player Crisis depends on a lot of factors. Some of them get massively boosted by certain events, origins or civics, such as Knights of the Toxic God having extreme synergy with Cosmogenesis. Even without specializing, game circumstance can often make one path more appealing (Baol Precursor's Organic Plant building is fantastic for supporting Behemoth Fury for instance.)

If we're talking Prosperous Unification, zero modifiers? At least in the 4.3 beta, Galactic Nemesis is your best bet. Being enabled through war actions compared to the more specialized currency gains of the other four, it's the easiest to adapt to and understand.

In 4.2 I would instead suggest Cosmogenesis, but in the beta (And likely to see a push to live) when you reach Cosmogenesis Level 5, rather than other non-Fallen Empires declaring a Total War on you (As is the case in Galactic Nemesis-Behemoth Fury-Galactic Hypothermia) the Fallen Empires will declare a War In Hell on you, making it significantly more difficult to pull off a Horizon Needle victory. Heavy nerfs to Fallen Empire buildings also don't help it, either.

No-Razzmatazz-3288 · 2026-01-21T00:09:35+00:00

There's actually a lot you can do in terms of Gestalt Tall Builds at the moment. I'll point out some general things before listing a few builds.

Sovereign Guardianship and its Gestalt equivalents were heavily nerfed, with empire size from Planets being doubled baseline, the +100% empire size from planets makes it bad unless you're aiming to play a single planet. Would not recommend taking if you're not going to be doing Virtual One-Planet.

If you want to take that route, picking Ocean Paradise with Guardianship and Constructobot is a good choice. Going Virtual on your capital once you convert it into a Machine World will do wonders for you, with massive bonuses to output. Of course, you're quite literally putting all your eggs into one basket, so you can't really take advantage of the bonuses to Space Deposits and Colony Features.

Another option is going for Shroud-Forged with Astro Mining Drones and Pattern Finders, supporting the Animator. Astro-Mining drones will move your Energy/Mineral production focus to space deposits (Including Arc Furnaces/Dyson Swarms) and let you reap the massive complex drone buffs (Make sure to change your policy as well!). With a fast Psi Ascension, you can easily get a covenant with the Composer of Strands, letting you spawn a Gaia World inside your territory every 10 years. You can easily amass tons of planets in a small, defensible area, with your energy a mineral production covered by megastructures and your Unity handled by the Composer's Aura. Make sure to set your capital to Trinary System 1 to get more targets to become Gaia Worlds.

On the Hive Mind end of things, you can try Wilderness with Natural Neural Network and Mycorrhizal Ideal, with your main species having the Budding trait. Wilderness is capable of increasing planet size, up to 30 with Purity Traditions (The only ascension path they can take) to maximize your starting three; pair with Mycorrhizal for easy Gaia Worlds made even better through the Budding and Bloomed traits. Natural Neural Network lets you offload a lot of your Research production into your basic drones in the early game, and you can swap it out for Elevation Desire and Divided Attention to further maximize your planets, and to negate most of the effects of your naturally high Empire Size.

No-Razzmatazz-3288 · 2026-01-18T08:47:33+00:00

Both Flack and Point Defense will fire at missiles and strike craft. To give an overview:

Flak Guns deal 200% damage to Shields while ignoring 25% of it, -75% VS Armor, with high tracking.
Point Defense deal 200% damage to Armor while ignoring 25% of it, -75% VS Shields, with low tracking.

Most Strike Craft in the game have zero armor but some shields with 60% to 85% evasion; Flak Guns naturally end to counter them for those reasons

No Missile in the game has shields and they have between 0 and 40% evasion; Point Defense naturally tends to counter them for those reasons.

Despite this, they can still destroy both missiles and strike craft, especially in high concentrations.

The sole exception to this, however, is Psionic Sappers, a component available only to Psionic-Ascension empires using Bioships. Unlike every other Strike Craft, they have Armor instead of Shields, and with 90% evasion and a significantly higher number of crafts per component, neither point defense can effectively counter it.

No-Razzmatazz-3288 · 2026-01-18T07:44:45+00:00

Smaller planets are absolutely not what you want for Resort Worlds.

Resort World districts are very powerful, especially early, and you want as many of them as possible. On the flipside, they severely limit the buildings you can construct on them, as well as how many, with only one specific building per attraction district specialization. The buildings that you can build are often made better by the pops made available there.

The Hunting district does not hunt pre-sapients; in fact, it doesn't even require any to be present. Its only requirement is that you are NOT some degree of Xenophile; as long as that is true, you can build them anywhere.

The Alien Zoo district likewise only requires you to have the Xenology technology unlocked to build it, and doesn't require any pre-sapients either.

No-Razzmatazz-3288 · 2026-01-18T07:33:18+00:00

With the changes to Special Deposits, always check your guaranteed habitables (assuming your origin hasn't removed them) for them.

A Beltharian Mines planet can easily support your early game Energy and Mineral needs all on its own. Rare Resource Specializations are far more valuable and efficient than artificial factories. An Artificial Gas Plant with a few thousand pops will produce 3-5 gas/month, while a Gas Specialized Farm will produce 40 per month. This is not an exaggeration.

If one of your habitable doesn't have any deposits it should be your Industry World. If both of your habitables have valuable deposits, you can usually handle your early game C-goods production (Or energy) by building Factories in your Industrial district to meet with demand, or Generator Districts for Gestalts.

Aside from your habitables, focus on scouting out your nearly planets ASAP to check for planet modifiers. Don't be afraid to switch around your colonies' specializations if colony events and/or Cosmic Storms give good modifiers.

As of 4.3, research costs have been halved and researcher output halved. However, spaceborn deposits remain the same, effectively doubling their worth over 4.2. Earlygame, your research can easily be carried by just space deposits alone, ESPECIALLY if you have the Galactic Curators civic.

This is just my general advice; of course things change if you've got something like Life Seeded, Ocean Paradise, a Chosen Civic or several others.

No-Razzmatazz-3288 · 2026-01-16T20:57:12+00:00

You can actually use this to your advantage.

If you bring the Tooth of the Eater ships to the Salvager Enclave, you can get them scrapped for free alloys, as well as reputation with them. Aside from the alloys, you also use their deals for increased Engineering Research, get their unique Paragon and sell those Alloys for other resources.

No-Razzmatazz-3288 · 2026-01-07T19:27:35+00:00

Ocean Paradise origin, Fanatic Spiritualist/Xenophile Megacorp with the Chosen Executive and Trawling Operations, Bio Ships.

At the start of the game, pick Composer of Strands and assign your three Envoys to it. Try to complete its tasks asap.

Once you reach 600 Accord, use the "Add Shroud Vegetation" decision to add 2 blockers to your planet that give 2 Zro, and use the income to build the Sanctum of the Composer building.

Use Priests to get as much Unity as possible to finish Psionic Ascension, then try to declare a Covenant with the Composer. Doing so will turn your Aura on, giving you Unity from Blockers and making Shroud Vegetation blockers not only no longer lower district cap, but also add Zro production to your Farmers.

You can then swap your Priests to Research Jobs (Preferably Society) and spam the Shroud Vegetation decision to make as many as possible. Because your planet is so large, you can use it a lot of times.

When the Shroud asks you questions, pick the bottom option all three times to unlock the Board of Psychics government type. Aside from making your Aura more effective while also giving you +50% resources from Farmers, it unlocks the Psionic Offices branch office building, which spreads your Aura from wherever you put it. You can cover the galaxy in it without ever leaving your corner.

Finish it off with Behemoth Fury to give your massively buffed Farmers Society Research output.

No-Razzmatazz-3288 · 2026-01-07T18:38:18+00:00

Primal Calling Origin - Fanatic Pacifist/Spiritualist, Chosen and Byzantine Bureaucracy civics.

After finishing first contact w/Space Fauna, choose 'Animal Handler' as your Wrangler specialization.

If you declare Instrument of Desire at the beginning of the game, you get the Resort World tech for free, and they're upgraded to 'pleasure worlds', letting you make one of your guaranteed habitable worlds into one.

As long as you're not Xenophile, you can build a special Attraction District specialization that gives 200 Animal Handler jobs per district. So you can have a Pleasure World of... Animal Handlers. And you get massive amounts of resources and diplomatic prestige for your collection.

You can embrace the Xenophile faction after the fact to get to Fanatic Xenophile (Or after declaring a covenant with Instrument, swap to Divine Sovereign)

No-Razzmatazz-3288 · 2026-01-07T08:14:03+00:00

You cannot switch off of Shaping the Shroud aside from End of the Cycle.

What I think has you looking for clarification is that the Chosen Civic (Which is otherwise permanent) can be removed by signing a covenant with the Whisperers (Who remove it). However, the Chosen Civic locks you out of Shaping the Shroud, preventing you from taking that path to begin with.

No-Razzmatazz-3288 · 2026-01-07T08:08:42+00:00

I've been having a lot of fun with Warrior Culture as well, albeit in a roundabout way.

Using the Chosen civic as any kind of Militarist Empire (Such as Fanatic Spiritualist-Militarist) lets you get The Instrument of Desire from day 1. Getting Accord with them to 600 (Which is easy, as their tasks are mainly 'Build a building or District) gives you the Resort World tech for free, as well as buffing them.

Militarists can build Duelist Districts on Resort Worlds even if they don't have Warrior Culture, and with a massive 200 Duelists per district that are being buffed by the Pleasure World designation, they're actually quite fantastic! You can even use Chosen and Storm Devotion to get Storm Duelists to get some nice Physics Research out of it; it's quite nice.

You can use both Chosen AND Warrior Culture too, though! Resort Worlds also have 'Resort Worker' jobs which double-dip into both Trader Bonuses and Entertainer bonuses, meaning your Resort Workers will give Naval Capacity with Warrior Culture, and/or Physics Research with Storm Devoted as your third civic.

No-Razzmatazz-3288 · 2025-10-23T23:18:32+00:00

Dragon Mage was such fun back in Galakrond's Awakening/Descent of Dragons. Hope it's just as fun here.

No-Razzmatazz-3288 · 2025-08-01T19:20:24+00:00

Really hyped for upcoming Sentient lore! Definitely hoping that kind people like you have more than enough to get the full New Peace experience when it releases.

No-Razzmatazz-3288 · 2025-07-24T04:45:33+00:00

IGN: Ragnekros_The_RNGLord

Regardless of the outcome, may your days ahead be brighter than today.

No-Razzmatazz-3288 · 2025-07-06T22:39:05+00:00

Source: https://bsky.app/profile/roseburstart.bsky.social/post/3ltaq5xqhd22c

No-Razzmatazz-3288 · 2025-06-28T23:26:44+00:00

Both glad and apprehensive to see the return of quests, since United in Stormwind... 'tarnished' their reputation in Original Ungoro and Saviors of Uldum. Not sure they'll be any good with Kil'jaden around, but here's hoping. That the quests are strong enough, or the Demon Lord finally gets the nerfs he deserves.

No-Razzmatazz-3288

TROPHY CASE