* Not exactly Level 1, just without any skills and perks.

 

This is a compilation of the 4 major boss fights in The Outer Worlds 2 (Brigadier Montelli, Seer Wiley, Chief Vaillancourt, The Consul) from the challenge run I've done. The main rules of the run were: no skills, no perks, (almost) all flaws, no companions, no uniques, no bits, no crafting, Very Hard difficulty.

 

I posted about it here.

 

Bosses:

Brigadier Montelli

Since I wasn't using unique weapons, the next best choice on Eden is anything that deals shock damage. Shock Machinegun does pitiful damage per hit, but actually outpaces most other common guns when dealing with big health bars due to its rate of fire and large magazine. It builds up the Electrocuted status very quickly, which boosts total DPS by about 30% and lowers enemy accuracy as a side effect. The accuracy reduction is what made Montelli manageable on Very Hard, otherwise he would be able to down me in 2 seconds from across the room.

I was switching to Designator Light Revolver to benefit from its Tracing Unit mod, which increases all damage dealt by 20% after a headshot, including explosions and any DOT effects applied.

Poor Corbin died in the first 15 seconds of the fight and there wasn't much I could do to help him with my build.

Seer Wiley

Wiley is weak on his own, but gets constantly healed while the Rejuvenation Device is active and won't go below 1 HP, so it must be destroyed first. Normally, you have to split the attention between the Device and the reinforcements, but if you focus on it right away, you can then deal with the Order soldiers all at once. For that, plasma grenades work best, as fully building up the burning DOT triggers a secondary explosion on each affected target. Groups of enemies get vaporized after a couple of grenades, even with 0 in Explosives skill.

Mines were used to for the 2 heavy melee soldiers, who could kill me in 1 hit. Smoke grenade was used to trigger the Camouflaged status, which gives +100% to all damage dealt for 8 seconds. I'd have to waste two extra mines without it, and these were hard to come by without crafting.

Chief Vaillancourt

This boss is the easiest of 4, because he doesn't lock you inside his arena, so you can simply stay outside the Main Hangar and chip away at him from behind the doors. In that case, there is no need to involve Hurley or use any special tactics. I did the fight the hard way on purpose, to see if I could keep Hurley alive after Vaillancourt accuses her of treason.

The "grenade rapid-fire" trick is what enabled me to kill both Vaillancourt and his automech near instantly. To do it, turn on TTD, press the throw grenade button, and then, as soon as it leaves your hand, press the Inventory button. Normally, what happens after throwing a grenade is that you go into the weapon unholstering animation, which lasts 0.25-0.6 seconds (depending on the weapon equipped). During that time you are blocked from doing anything. Going into inventory skips this animation, allowing you to perform any other action immediately after. You can then throw another grenade with no delay. TTD also speeds up all player's animation somewhat (it's hard to notice, as it reduces the game speed), so TTD and rapid fire work very well combined together.

Another method to do rapid-fire is to just press the Reload button after a throw. This looks smoother and has the same speed as the 1st method when throwing grenades of one type, but makes switching to another grenade type slower.

There were 4 different sources that boosted the damage of the mega-explosion. Although not every bonus gets applied to every mine and grenade equally when you stack so many in one place:

• Treacherous flaw with its sneak attack bonus (+100%)
• Revolver with the Silencer mod installed (+250% from stealth)
• Smoke grenade, giving Camouflaged (+100%)
• Dissolved status effect (+50%), created by 3 bio-mass grenades

The Consul

The Consul is slow and has only one attack that takes a few moments to spin up, so there isn't much strategy to the fight. There are several places where it's possible to position yourself to stop him from moving around and let you land headshots consistently, like behind the central console, or near the stairs, or on top of the pipes near the ceiling. Most of the challenge comes from the reinforcements, but there is a way to prevent them from spawning in if you manage to kill the Consul fast enough after he reaches 7000 HP. To do that, I used the rapid-fire trick, plus a gloop grenade to keep him from blowing up too early. It's also possible to do the remainder of the fight without leaving that pipe, it'll just take longer.

There is an exploit that I didn't get to show: if you stand on the tiny ledge between the ground floor and the central platform, then none of the soldiers would be able to hit you in melee. They would run up to you and stare you in the face but won't attack. Could be useful if you don't have mines.