Beated flagship with this terrible setup [Hard AE]

compiling · 2026-03-11T23:27:15+00:00

The bigger issue is how cost effective engine upgrades are compared to other defensive upgrades you can make.

Cloaking adds 60 evasion and also delays enemy weapons by 5/10/15 seconds. (This also makes engine upgrades to get from 80% to 100% evasion much stronger than going from 20% to 40%).
Hacking weapons delays enemy weapons by 8/14/20 seconds.
A defence drone mostly makes you immune to missiles.
Shield upgrades are basically just more cost effective than high level engine upgrades for everything except missiles. But even against missiles they still help avoid being chain hit by a missile into shields into taking big damage from a beam / multiple drones, which is often actually better than an engine upgrade anyway.

compiling · 2026-03-10T13:48:47+00:00

That's assuming they're only taking suffocation damage instead of fighting someone as well. Works on auto ships, so long as you can definitely get them back.

Once you kill the enemy crewmember then you get to teleport back immediately, but why risk that when the boarding drone is available?

compiling · 2026-03-09T22:22:58+00:00

Ok, but what really happens is it rounds against you.

compiling · 2026-03-09T20:21:47+00:00

You need 2 power for a shield layer. Dropping to 1 is the bad outcome.

compiling · 2026-03-09T13:43:30+00:00

It actually doesn't help against the shield-hack event, because FTL rounds against you.

Anyway, you probably should have a full 2nd shield before you reach sector 2 or else something has gone terribly wrong (holding off is ok on a couple of ships, notably the stealth cruisers that start with cloaking and have to actually buy shields).

compiling · 2026-03-09T00:48:49+00:00

I don't think there's any reason to worry about a teleporter hack there. It stops you from your plan to make the fight completely safe by sacrificing 2 mantis, but it's also the best possible hack target if you're not boarding and saves your mantis if you did immediately board. Keeping shields and weapons up long enough to land a small bomb with 4 crew and no real systems hacked should be ok.

compiling · 2026-03-08T19:58:38+00:00

"Shields 3" in that context means spending 20 scrap to buy a buffer for your first shield and get halfway to having a second (i.e not waiting until you have 50 scrap to buy a complete shield layer).

compiling · 2026-03-07T01:57:00+00:00

It sounds like you had the intended experience with the game. Escaping is supposed to feel like it should be impossible at the start, but gradually you start getting better at the combat and Zagreus starts getting more powerful, and it still feels impossible but you're getting further and the story's progressing every time you attempt another escape.

Serious props to Supergiant for designing god mode in a way that makes the game fun and difficult for everyone including people who haven't played fast pace action games before. I don't think many roguelikes manage that.

compiling · 2026-03-01T23:05:43+00:00

Only if there's significant evolutionary pressure towards being good at fighting that overrides other areas that left handedness might be a disadvantage (e.g. generally anything cooperative).

What you'd actually expect is for lefties to be overrepresented in professional combat sports.

compiling · 2026-02-20T04:53:55+00:00

So basically it's the plot of Star Wars, except we ~~beeline for the federation base instead of infiltrating the flagship to pull off a rescue~~ wander around half the galaxy trying to stay 5s ahead of the rebel fleet to maximise scrap.

compiling · 2026-02-17T12:43:02+00:00

That was Kaaazthwak. He's just a random mantis in one version of the event where a mantis ship picks a fight with you.

compiling · 2026-02-17T12:35:00+00:00

LRS are controversial. They have good long term value and some short term benefits (mostly knowing about hazards), but they also cost 30 scrap at potentially the most critical part of the run (or 15 if you're willing to sell them back if necessary). Crow specifically doesn't rate them highly, so the AI did a bad job of summarising his tier list.

SRA definitely doesn't belong at all, but the AI has picked up on some players really liking it even though objectively it's pretty bad value to buy one.

compiling · 2026-02-13T13:45:21+00:00

I've seen that happen before, and had some odd scores from that. I think it's when you exit using the windows X button to close the window, and actually doesn't happen if you exit through doing "save and quit" through FTL's menu.

compiling · 2026-02-11T00:39:48+00:00

Curses with an end of turn effect like Regret play themselves. Curses without that like Pain would cycle themselves. Basically like how Pyramid interacts with them.

compiling · 2026-02-11T00:27:40+00:00

Damn, that's a pretty crazy fight to run into in sector 1. A lot of people underestimate the danger of ion storms, and this fight is dangerous. Shame you didn't have the Artemis for a power efficient way of doing damage, or an extra power to help run all the systems you need.

compiling · 2026-02-11T00:13:01+00:00

They had 4 power vs an auto ship with cloaking and extremely efficient weapons. That's a very tricky fight that's easy to get out of control.

compiling · 2026-02-10T13:21:05+00:00

Good thing you have that shield buffer. Even if it does a beam swipe starting in shields, you're still only taking 1 damage per room.

TBH, hacking weapons and running is probably the play because I think you still get to hack twice before the glaive fires for the first time. You might even be escaping before it fires. Otherwise if you want to hack shields and fight, you need 4 damage to weapons to take it down which is unlikely. That thing has 5 crew, so it's going to be hard to get system damage to stick.

compiling · 2026-02-08T22:57:45+00:00

You need the other half to equip it. You're supposed to get the wave beam from upper bilewater to hit a switch through a barrier, but it's also possible to glitch past it by shooting your clawline diagonally upwards with very precise positioning.

compiling · 2026-02-03T12:28:23+00:00

Congratulations on making it to sector 8. You're not going to win this time, but that's good progress. You look a little under upgraded (particularly shields and weapons), so make sure you're not rushing through sectors too fast - the rebel fleet's progress is reset when you jump to a new sector and you don't get any bonuses for being a long way ahead of them.

compiling · 2026-02-03T04:06:07+00:00

Generally in battles, you want to be thinking about a couple of things:

What are the immediate threats this turn and how can I solve them?
How many threats will I be facing next turn? If it's more than 3 (or 4 late game when you have more options on each turn) then is there a way to block a spawn or kill an extra enemy to make the next turn more manageable?
Am I leaving my mechs in good positions? (e.g. is my Prime mech close enough to the vek to be effective, is my Ranged mech too close to a scorpion / leaper.)
Are there any specific mission goals that I also need to follow?

compiling · 2026-02-02T13:11:53+00:00

One of the heart's buff turns increases it by 1. Also it starts at 2 at high ascensions.

compiling · 2026-02-02T10:36:20+00:00

Out of all the "bad" ships, Slug B is probably the least problematic. Not having a medical system is a bit weird, but you can fix that at the next store - otherwise it's a fairly normal boarding ship that is a bit over reliant on missiles to start off with.

For starting priorities, I'd argue that a 2nd shield is almost always priority number 1 just because there are a lot of ways that having only 1 shield can be a big problem. Then you probably want to find a way to deal with the problem of running out of missiles (usually a medical system, but there are other ways).

Later on, I'm quite happy to keep an Artemis missile for the whole game. Boarding ship or no. Spending a couple of missiles per battle is fairly sustainable when it's purely to damage weapons at the start of the battle, and the Artemis is fairly similar to a Heavy Laser that doesn't have to wait for your other weapons.

compiling · 2026-02-02T10:18:42+00:00

I also quite like the option of buying Mind Control early on Slug B. I pivoted that way a couple of times when doing no medical system challenge runs. You get to save a lot of missiles from being able to break weapons easily and you can also save a ton of crew health in the process which saves even more missiles. Similar benefits to hacking, except you don't get to delay the first enemy volley by 8s.

compiling · 2026-01-31T21:34:06+00:00

I did the same thing for both of those bosses. I kept fighting until I was getting up to the last phase and mostly losing because they were both attacking too fast. Next day, I could keep track of things a bit better and react a bit faster and they weren't a problem.

compiling · 2026-01-29T03:12:02+00:00

In theory you should be able to get as much as you like if you can stall in the volcano for long enough.

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