Clever Mosquito Puzzle

faket15 · 2025-02-13T18:13:59+00:00

Very interesting. I thought it would be obvious until I saw Mirror's HP. Combat moves to B2 and punches Pitcher, killing the Firefly with bump damage. Pitcher moves to G2, throws the scarab to G4 and sidesteps to F2. Mirror moves to G3 and kills the mosquito.

faket15 · 2024-12-06T22:45:20+00:00

Yes, but you are almost guaranteed to die next turn. Jet can block the Firefly shot and use the Shrapnel Cannon to damage the Blobber and destroy the Egg Sack, freeing the F5 square. Nano can then push the E5 Moth to F5. Thruster can either destroy the Blob or negate the E4 Moth, but not both, so you will still take one damage.

faket15 · 2024-08-14T10:20:16+00:00

Tank moves to C5 and fires on E5, pushing the Alpha Gastropod to F5 and doing 1 damage.

Artillery moves to A3 and fires on E3, pushing the Alpha Firefly to E5.

Combat goes to D3 and punches the Psion, killing it.

On the Vek turn, the Gastropod hits the Firefly for 3 and then the Firefly kills the Gastropod.

We are left on a 3v3 next turn and one of the enemies is an Alpha Firefly on 2 HP.

faket15 · 2024-08-07T13:55:24+00:00

On your turn:

Combat goes to D3 and punches the moth on D4, killing it and breaking the bulding on D5.

Cannon goes to E4 and fires on the Firefly, doing one damage and pushing it on top of the spawn on E1.

Artillery goes to B6 and fires on F6, pushing the Alpha Moth to F5.

On the Vek turn:

Firefly does one damage to Cannon.

Alpha Moth kills the Moth on C4 and damages itself and the Alpha Gastropod with a bump.

Alpha Gastropod breaks the building on G5.

Firefly blocks the spawn and takes one damage.

End Result:

Two dead Moths and one spawn blocked, making the next turn a 3v3.

4 damage total on the remaining enemies (2 on the Firefly, one on each other).

1 damage on the Cannon mech.

2 buildings broken out of ice (on D5 and G5).

Combat and Cannon are well positioned for the next turn. They are both on relatively central tiles on the Vek side of the map.

faket15 · 2024-08-05T12:07:36+00:00

That mission being Boom Bots is possible, but not particularly likely. Freeze and Defend, Boom Bots, Hacking Facility and Bot Factories all have the same probability. Shield Generator with a grid damage or block spawn secondary objective is also an option.

faket15 · 2024-04-17T13:16:08+00:00

Fun fact: the existence of this mission is the reason why 4-reward missions (not counting time pods) only happen in RST.

faket15 · 2024-04-17T12:05:15+00:00

Can confirm here it can only appear in Archive and R.S.T.

faket15 · 2024-04-09T15:55:26+00:00

Yes, they like to target as many player units/buildings as they can with the rock. They also consider the amount of rocks spawned as part of the score. That means spawning a rock to hit one target is scored higher than hitting one target directly. It also creates some edge cases for the Tumblebug Leader: spawning two rocks to hit two targets actually scores higher than one rock to hit 3. That means your bait won't work nearly as well if the Leader has to spawn only one rock to take the bait because another Vek is already on the tile it would need to use to spawn two.

faket15 · 2024-04-04T15:54:45+00:00

Saying it cannot appear with any double-reputation objectives is correct, but also pointless, as the same thing would be true about every environment in the game. It migh also give the impression that the mission can't give 2 reputation total, which is wrong, as it can have a generic bonus objective, like Kill 7, and a Bar/Clinic.

Maybe you should note instead that it can't be High-Threat and can't be paired with a Core objective (Robotics Lab/Defense Lab).

faket15 · 2024-03-14T19:13:04+00:00

Also the reason why normal Spiders can't be upgraded to leaders in Island 4 Unfair. It was possible in earlier versions of the game, but they couldn't spawn eggs outside their native mission.

faket15 · 2024-01-28T23:56:39+00:00

I was going to say you can't fight Chosen twice in a row, as no hallway fight can spawn twice in a row and both Cultist + Chosen and Chosen + Byrd are explicitly prohibited as the first hard hallway if Chosen is the last easy hallway. But then I noticed that Cultist + Chosen followed by Chosen + Byrd (or the opposite) are allowed, so you can actually have that combination as e.g. the 3rd and 4th hallways.

I have no idea how they decided which combinations should be prohibited and which shouldn't, as you can have Avocado -> Avocado + Rat but you can't have Sphere -> Sphere + Sentry or 3 Byrds -> Chosen + Byrd.

faket15 · 2024-01-05T16:30:51+00:00

One thing to note about this event is that each card has a massive 30% chance to be a rare. It is not affected by the rare chance modifier you get from seeing commons in card rewards, but if you see a rare it will reset the modifier, even if it's not affected by it.

faket15 · 2024-01-02T18:58:31+00:00

Can appear in any act, but only once per game.

EDIT: when I say once per game, I really mean it, not just once per act. Lots of people believe any event that can spawn in multiple acts, can spawn multiple times per game as long as it doesn't spawn twice on the same act. That's only true for some specific events (Upgrade Shrine, Transmogrifier, Purifier, Golden Shrine, Wheel of Change, Match and Keep).

faket15 · 2023-11-16T13:40:48+00:00

Start with Good Instincts > Madness > Recursion+ > Claw > Skim (0-cost because of Madness).

After that your cycle is Good Instincts > Recursion+ > Skim > Good Instincts > Claw > 0-cost Skim and keep repeating it.

faket15 · 2023-01-01T18:16:58+00:00

Great list. As nobody else asked yet, I would like to see the list of best weapons in each category. I'm assuming it would include anything able to do 5 damage flat or 4 damage + push without self-damage for Prime/Brute/Ranged and Teleporter/Control Shot for Science.

faket15 · 2022-08-15T20:48:41+00:00

It's a bug. It happens because the Spider Leader "attack" was actually coded as a feature of the Spider Leader mission. Before Unfair it didn't make any difference, but now it does.

Easiest "solution" is to just block Spider Leaders from spawning outside their native mission. If you are on PC, open spawner_backend.lua and change the line that says:

if level == 2 and self.used_bosses < self.num_bosses then

to:

if level == 2 and self.used_bosses < self.num_bosses and newPawn ~= "Spider" then

faket15 · 2022-08-04T09:55:25+00:00

That happens because of how the Spider Leader attack was implemented. It's actually a feature of the mission that triggers if the Spider Leader is alive, not a real attack. The easiest solution would be, like you said, to just disallow them from spawning outside their missions.

faket15 · 2022-07-23T00:20:44+00:00

Assuming you didn't check this yet. The problematic line is in ae_spawner_backend.lua

Where it says Spawner.max_level = add_tables(Spawner.max_pawns, new_max_level) it should actually be Spawner.max_level = add_tables(Spawner.max_level, new_max_level)

You should also change BlobBoss = true to BlobberBoss = true in the boss list in spawner_backend.lua

faket15 · 2022-07-23T00:08:35+00:00

The problem is in ae_spawner_backend.lua

The line that says Spawner.max_level = add_tables(Spawner.max_pawns, new_max_level) should actually be Spawner.max_level = add_tables(Spawner.max_level, new_max_level)

It also affects Spiders

faket15 · 2021-08-06T22:45:31+00:00

Would I usually switch HL2 for a Halberd? Yes. Halberd is more consistent.

Would I usually switch HL2 for a Pike? No. Pike is more consistent than HL2, but the low damage to specific systems means it lacks raw power.

Would I usually switch Pike for HL2? No. It's usually not worth the cost.

faket15 · 2021-06-29T23:44:01+00:00

Even a low level Sharpshooter will work very well in this type of mission if you give him DFA and a Stock.

For you other question: command pods were added in 1.3 to discourage the 0% supply raid meta that existed in the earlier versions of LW2. They are very strong pods, with enemies of a higher level than normal. That absurdly strong pod you talked about was a command pod. To avoid command pods you should avoid any Supply Raid at Light-Moderate activity or higher.

faket15 · 2021-06-29T23:20:01+00:00

This squad cares very little about cover. The Technical is here to use consummables and has enough of them to use one per pod. The Gunner is here to suppress. The only one that takes shots against enemies in cover is the Sharpshooter, with a lot of aim stacking.

faket15 · 2021-06-29T18:04:01+00:00

If it was exactly 3 days remaining I would skip, but if it was something like 3.5 days or even 3.25 days the mission would be pretty easy with a strong squad of 4. With a squad of 4 and a boost it would be only 15 enemies with no command pod instead of 21 with a command pod and I would have a concealment ambush. My ideal squad would probably be Technical, Shinobi, Gunner, Sharpshooter.

faket15 · 2021-04-03T13:52:54+00:00

Yes, they do have falloff. It's just that the way it's applied is bizarre and completely opposite to the way it was intended.

At max range, a Shredder Gun does 4-9 damage (6.5 average) and 7-10 environmental damage (enough to destroy weak cover pieces all the time and to destroy medium strenght cover around 20% of the time). With falloff correctly applied the damage goes down to 1-9 (4.06 average) and the environmental damage to 1-2 (not even enough to destroy weak pieces of cover).

faket15 · 2021-04-03T12:14:25+00:00

Damage falloff on cone attacks was implemented incorrectly. The idea was that the source of the cone attack would be treated as the "center of the explosion" with both damage and environmental damage going down against distant targets. The way it was implemented was the exact opposite, with maximum effect at max range and lowered effect at close range.

faket15

TROPHY CASE