Welcome to the closest thing to actual hell that exists in XCOM 2, at least for me. The lost, ADVENT, and the Warlock all on one map for a supply mission where it's imperative to keep pushing forward. I made a few silly mistakes early on like using 1 soldier to suppress a lost only to use another to kill that lost a minute later. Fortunately, I settled down after the first turn or two because the never-ending flow of spectral zombies, lost, and ADVENT made this an extremely challenging outing both for the difficulty and its marathon length. If you're up for watching a video this long, this is an absolutely brutal mission with as many ups and downs as you could hope for and I hope you enjoy it!
This mission was crazy. The fact that you managed to get any crates at all is insane, let alone so many It was also hilarious to see how everything in this missions just kept triggering more lost: Muton using a grenade, robot using missiles, cars blowing up left and right as well as the Purifier exploding, then the Warlock just keeps using spectral zombies and you also just have to use your grenades a lot to even beat the mission. That was genuinely the worst of outcomes that could've have happened, lol
Yeah, at a certain point I just had to say "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" when it came to the explosives. At the end of the day, you'd rather have more lost on the map before you'll allow mutons and MECs to run around beating the hell out of you.
That was an extremely aggravating mission, even for a supply mission. Not at all sure I would have stuck it out, though I really hate leaving early. Must say, at 1:11 that is the most animated I have ever seen you become when your man resisted the PSI attack. Breakfast entertainment par excellence. I just came up on a supply mission myself but paused to eat and be motivated. Thnx. Good vid
I'm watching the video right now and especially early on, I had some cringe moments. But, yeah, that was a lot to deal with and it definitely started to wear me down mentally in the later stages of the mission.
1:26:00 the thing about Salvo with the stock Grenadier class is that you get it all the way up at Major. At that point, your squad already has plasma grenades which is guaranteed to remove any cover that's not outright indestructible. Plus you will also have multiple ways to boost aim and mobility, which makes the whole grenade-shoot-and-not-move limitation less of a conundrum. The Sapper gets it at Lieutenant, which makes it still helpful but less impactful than when a Grenadier would get it later in the campaign.
Yes and no. Frag grenades are less powerful than plasma but I'm facing less powerful enemies. Most enemies only have 1 or 2 armor so the grenade is either stripping half or all of its armor. Plasma grenades don't do that to gatekeepers or sectopods and their damage is trivial against them. I'd also argue that stripping cover is more meaningful now when our aim is crap than it is later in the game. And frag grenades do still eliminate cover in a lot of situations. The bottom line for me is that it's good now and it will be good later. It's not like we we'll stop using it as he gets promoted. And these abilities are too expensive to buy very many (25 points each) outside of the normal promotions so even if you think it won't come into its own for a while, you need to take it when you get the chance.
@@TapCat thanks for your reply. To be clear, I'm not saying that Salvo is useless at Lieutenant, it's good but relatively less so _and_ that it becomes a little bit better later. By contrast Shredder with the stock Grenadier is available at Corporal but is practically useless at that point in the game since almost nothing is armored. Except the Chosen, maybe (and the turrets? which are also rare at that point in the game) but your gunner's aim is extra garbage so just frag grenade 'em instead. But Shredder is essential for the rest of the 90% of the campaign and Blast Padding is kinda meh, so you take it. I believe it's an explicit goal of the proficiency classes is to avoid the extreme end game power amplification and it looks like one way it's doing it is by moving the skills around the tree such that every level up is more relevant (and more immediately so).
@@Zoey--You know, I don't think that I even thought about that but they will come in handy. Especially given how many points it costs to buy extra perks with the replacement classes.
Well done on getting over half the crates! That was a brutal mission but you lost no one - I was a little concerned for the Reaper though. You pulled through, good mission to watch but must have been stressful to play! I like 4 promotions❤
My advice, for what it's worth, is to step away from the game if you feel that happening. Walk around the block or do literally anything to calm down and think about what productive actions you can take in the game moving forward. It's a turn-based game so you can take as much time as you want and it will still be there waiting for your next action even if you don't log out.
Wooah what a mission! Well done! I stayed for the entire thing. This mission should have been named "Murphys law" because everything that could explode did explode in this mission. Except that last truck thanks to the RNG with those shots. Intense! Love it. The wounded isn't even that bad so I would call that a great success!
Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed it. It's really rare for me, but I reached a point where I stopped worrying about wounds. As long as I was confident that I could keep someone alive, I was willing to spend health as a resource to keep us in the fight.
*Ross gets punched in the face by the Lost* Beatrice: "Wei, do you ever worry about some of our teammates?" *Ross gets shot by Mech and gets back up and is about to die* Ross: "I can do this ALL DAY!" Wei: "Nah, they're fine" *Yamada gets bitten by Lost* Yamada: "No biting" Wei: "I think" 😬 *Yamada uses medical spray* Yamada: "Come on I want you to HIT ME!" Lost: 👿 *Lost smacks Yamada across the face* Wei: "Oh that's gonna leave a mark" 😬 Yamada: "Is there NO ONE ELSE!" Beatrice: "It's just, I think fighting this many enemies Is a LITTLE reckless." 🤔 Wei: "You might be right, Yamada just got out of Med bay-" *Yamada gets shot in the leg by Muton* Wei: "-And is headed right back." Yamada: "You're next-!" 👉 *Warlock steals Yamada's ammo* Yamada: "-As soon as I reload, dammit!" *Warlock laughs* 😈 Jones: "Guys, maybe we should Evac?" Wei: "Why would we do that? We're winning" Beatrice: "Yeah can't you tell?" Jones: "This is winning?"🤨 Beatrice: "Of course, they've only lost a pint of blood tops" Jones: 😦 This mission was just insane, the fact no one died and you didn't Evac was just nuts, so many times I thought our Reaper was gonna die, which would be devastating for our campaign. I was like this 😱 almost every turn, but you pulled through. Credit as always goes to Ray for his amazing support 👍
I couldn't let anyone die, your after-mission write-up would have had me crying bitter tears. It was a lot more fun this way! And, yes, there's no question that I'd be lost without Ray here to guide me through the mission.
These are always my favourite missions. Not because they are easy, but because they are hard. Early game + chosen + lost + stupid supply mission. I always feel so knackered after completing one of those.
What a mission. The supply crate one are my least favorite because of what you said, you have to dash so much. Give me a Chosen stronghold mission over these any day.
Supply raids of this type that include the warlock are literally my least favorite thing in the game but at least we were able to move forward at a decent pace and recover some crates.
"Shake it off, shake it off... YES!!!" Great to see TapCat loosing his usual composure in a positive event. We all saw those arms going up😁. After so much crap I would be climbing up the walls.
Forgive me TapCat, but I'm so used to seeing you curbstomp every mission that, while I sympathise with how stressful that must have been for you, it was very entertaining to watch!
do you ever play with the option that doubles everything's HP? (except the generic lost). I personally find it more fun, since especially early game because your rookies don't die to randomly getting hit once (but you do on average need to spend 1 turn to focus down 1 enemy)
Hypersonic Lure would come in real handy this mission. It's been awhile but I don't remember MECs and Mutons showing up this early, if the mods changed alien deployment schedule at all, going armor first was probably not the right call back then.
I wasn't thrilled about the armor pick, but Syken got the "inspired" option so his thinking was that it would shorten the total time for getting armor and weapons and it's hard to argue against that. Hell, I might have actually lost the Reaper in this mission without the new armor... although having magnetic weapons might have meant fewer enemies left alive to attack him so... who knows how it would have turn out? Either way, we'll get the weapons soon and it will all be a moot point.
If I may ask - why are you not sending soldiers to find Skirmishers? I know Skirmishers are kinda meh, but they give you access to pretty sweet resistance orders. It was a pleasure to watch you play, although I was tempted many times to just skip to the end to see if all the guys made it - I worried for our precious Reaper :)
I watched that part of the video and I think I literally had a bit of blind spot and didn't see that option. Because I was trying to click on every one of them to see if anything else had a low chance of them capturing one of our soldiers but I didn't click on the one to find the skirmishers. But don't worry, we'll definitely go get one.
@@jppauley9969 The wound system is very random by design. So you can have 2 soldiers with identical health who take the same amount of damage and one can be gravely wounded and the other isn't. I've always thought it was a bit silly, but that's the system Firaxis chose.
@@jppauley9969 I believe its the medics passive that uses remaining medkits to lesten combat wound severity. There's some kind of behind the scenes dice roll that goes on for stabilising them on the way home.
Loved the mission! I prefer the longer ones myself. Didn't you have to revive the guy that got the kill shot on the Warlock? Or is that different cause it was the Warlock that knocked him down?
He was just dazed and when you kill the warlock he isn't dazed any longer. Revive is something that I generally use very seldom... pretty sure I've never done it even 5 times in any one campaign. It's one of those things that is great when you need it but the more successful you are on the battlefield then the less often you'll use it.
Welcome to the closest thing to actual hell that exists in XCOM 2, at least for me. The lost, ADVENT, and the Warlock all on one map for a supply mission where it's imperative to keep pushing forward. I made a few silly mistakes early on like using 1 soldier to suppress a lost only to use another to kill that lost a minute later. Fortunately, I settled down after the first turn or two because the never-ending flow of spectral zombies, lost, and ADVENT made this an extremely challenging outing both for the difficulty and its marathon length. If you're up for watching a video this long, this is an absolutely brutal mission with as many ups and downs as you could hope for and I hope you enjoy it!
A crazy mission for sure, but considering the end result, just wow 👏 Thank God we get magnetic weapons soon
The legend is that the bottle of Gatorade never runs out.
My daily xcom consumption ☕️
This mission was crazy. The fact that you managed to get any crates at all is insane, let alone so many
It was also hilarious to see how everything in this missions just kept triggering more lost: Muton using a grenade, robot using missiles, cars blowing up left and right as well as the Purifier exploding, then the Warlock just keeps using spectral zombies and you also just have to use your grenades a lot to even beat the mission. That was genuinely the worst of outcomes that could've have happened, lol
Yeah, at a certain point I just had to say "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" when it came to the explosives. At the end of the day, you'd rather have more lost on the map before you'll allow mutons and MECs to run around beating the hell out of you.
What I am looking forward to most on UA-cam every day!🎉
That was an extremely aggravating mission, even for a supply mission. Not at all sure I would have stuck it out, though I really hate leaving early. Must say, at 1:11 that is the most animated I have ever seen you become when your man resisted the PSI attack. Breakfast entertainment par excellence. I just came up on a supply mission myself but paused to eat and be motivated. Thnx. Good vid
It would have been soooo bad if he had gotten mind controlled there, I was truly elated to see him shrug it off. Good luck on your supply raid!
That was a clusterfuck of a mission. I would have made some different choices because of how I play but oof, savage
I'm watching the video right now and especially early on, I had some cringe moments. But, yeah, that was a lot to deal with and it definitely started to wear me down mentally in the later stages of the mission.
Plated Armor couldn't have come at a better time. Maybe that lab rush wasn't such a bad idea.
1:26:00 the thing about Salvo with the stock Grenadier class is that you get it all the way up at Major. At that point, your squad already has plasma grenades which is guaranteed to remove any cover that's not outright indestructible. Plus you will also have multiple ways to boost aim and mobility, which makes the whole grenade-shoot-and-not-move limitation less of a conundrum. The Sapper gets it at Lieutenant, which makes it still helpful but less impactful than when a Grenadier would get it later in the campaign.
Yes and no. Frag grenades are less powerful than plasma but I'm facing less powerful enemies. Most enemies only have 1 or 2 armor so the grenade is either stripping half or all of its armor. Plasma grenades don't do that to gatekeepers or sectopods and their damage is trivial against them. I'd also argue that stripping cover is more meaningful now when our aim is crap than it is later in the game. And frag grenades do still eliminate cover in a lot of situations.
The bottom line for me is that it's good now and it will be good later. It's not like we we'll stop using it as he gets promoted. And these abilities are too expensive to buy very many (25 points each) outside of the normal promotions so even if you think it won't come into its own for a while, you need to take it when you get the chance.
@@TapCat thanks for your reply. To be clear, I'm not saying that Salvo is useless at Lieutenant, it's good but relatively less so _and_ that it becomes a little bit better later. By contrast Shredder with the stock Grenadier is available at Corporal but is practically useless at that point in the game since almost nothing is armored. Except the Chosen, maybe (and the turrets? which are also rare at that point in the game) but your gunner's aim is extra garbage so just frag grenade 'em instead. But Shredder is essential for the rest of the 90% of the campaign and Blast Padding is kinda meh, so you take it. I believe it's an explicit goal of the proficiency classes is to avoid the extreme end game power amplification and it looks like one way it's doing it is by moving the skills around the tree such that every level up is more relevant (and more immediately so).
You can evac after all the crates are gone on these missions and it is not a fail. Great series.
I _thought_ that might be true, but wasn't 100% sure.
@@TapCat Worth staying for the 5 ability points for downing the warlock.
@@Zoey--You know, I don't think that I even thought about that but they will come in handy. Especially given how many points it costs to buy extra perks with the replacement classes.
In fact you get a win even if you mark and lift a single crate. It affects the payout of course.
I bet TapCat feels very lucky getting all the lost missions.
Lol, I am truly blessed!
Well done on getting over half the crates! That was a brutal mission but you lost no one - I was a little concerned for the Reaper though. You pulled through, good mission to watch but must have been stressful to play! I like 4 promotions❤
Yeah, we were dancing on the edge of a cliff for a while there and I was grateful that no one fell off the edge.
These are the types of missions where I lose patients with myself and end up losing one or more of the squad.
No kidding, sometimes the real difficulty is having the endurance to carefully evaluate like 30 turns in a row.
My advice, for what it's worth, is to step away from the game if you feel that happening. Walk around the block or do literally anything to calm down and think about what productive actions you can take in the game moving forward. It's a turn-based game so you can take as much time as you want and it will still be there waiting for your next action even if you don't log out.
That was a brutal encounter! Great job on it!
Thank you, it was about as rough as it gets and I'm grateful we were able to grab as many crates as we did.
Wooah what a mission! Well done! I stayed for the entire thing. This mission should have been named "Murphys law" because everything that could explode did explode in this mission. Except that last truck thanks to the RNG with those shots. Intense! Love it. The wounded isn't even that bad so I would call that a great success!
Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed it. It's really rare for me, but I reached a point where I stopped worrying about wounds. As long as I was confident that I could keep someone alive, I was willing to spend health as a resource to keep us in the fight.
*Ross gets punched in the face by the Lost*
Beatrice: "Wei, do you ever worry about some of our teammates?"
*Ross gets shot by Mech and gets back up and is about to die*
Ross: "I can do this ALL DAY!"
Wei: "Nah, they're fine"
*Yamada gets bitten by Lost*
Yamada: "No biting"
Wei: "I think" 😬
*Yamada uses medical spray*
Yamada: "Come on I want you to HIT ME!"
Lost: 👿
*Lost smacks Yamada across the face*
Wei: "Oh that's gonna leave a mark" 😬
Yamada: "Is there NO ONE ELSE!"
Beatrice: "It's just, I think fighting this many enemies Is a LITTLE reckless." 🤔
Wei: "You might be right, Yamada just got out of Med bay-"
*Yamada gets shot in the leg by Muton*
Wei: "-And is headed right back."
Yamada: "You're next-!" 👉
*Warlock steals Yamada's ammo*
Yamada: "-As soon as I reload, dammit!"
*Warlock laughs* 😈
Jones: "Guys, maybe we should Evac?"
Wei: "Why would we do that? We're winning"
Beatrice: "Yeah can't you tell?"
Jones: "This is winning?"🤨
Beatrice: "Of course, they've only lost a pint of blood tops"
Jones: 😦
This mission was just insane, the fact no one died and you didn't Evac was just nuts, so many times I thought our Reaper was gonna die, which would be devastating for our campaign. I was like this 😱 almost every turn, but you pulled through. Credit as always goes to Ray for his amazing support 👍
I couldn't let anyone die, your after-mission write-up would have had me crying bitter tears. It was a lot more fun this way! And, yes, there's no question that I'd be lost without Ray here to guide me through the mission.
These are always my favourite missions. Not because they are easy, but because they are hard. Early game + chosen + lost + stupid supply mission. I always feel so knackered after completing one of those.
What a mission. The supply crate one are my least favorite because of what you said, you have to dash so much. Give me a Chosen stronghold mission over these any day.
Supply raids of this type that include the warlock are literally my least favorite thing in the game but at least we were able to move forward at a decent pace and recover some crates.
"Shake it off, shake it off... YES!!!" Great to see TapCat loosing his usual composure in a positive event. We all saw those arms going up😁. After so much crap I would be climbing up the walls.
That was really intense and I definitely felt the thrill of victory at the end.
Forgive me TapCat, but I'm so used to seeing you curbstomp every mission that, while I sympathise with how stressful that must have been for you, it was very entertaining to watch!
It's all good, I know it's more entertaining to watch a mission like this than one where I cruise through with ease.
I would do the skirmisher mission just to unlock their resistance orders. They have some of the best in the game.
Fair point!
We are not the heroes You are. thank you for your service!
Lol, thank you although I stand by me gratitude for anyone who stays with me throughout long missions like this one!
do you ever play with the option that doubles everything's HP? (except the generic lost). I personally find it more fun, since especially early game because your rookies don't die to randomly getting hit once (but you do on average need to spend 1 turn to focus down 1 enemy)
I never have, but probably should.
There was another supply crate at the left side that Tap missed seeing around 8:00 - 10:00
Damn! It's always easier for me to see things like that if I'm watching the video after the fact than it is in the heat of the moment.
It's a Michael Bay movie!
That's a pretty good description of the mayhem!
Hypersonic Lure would come in real handy this mission. It's been awhile but I don't remember MECs and Mutons showing up this early, if the mods changed alien deployment schedule at all, going armor first was probably not the right call back then.
I wasn't thrilled about the armor pick, but Syken got the "inspired" option so his thinking was that it would shorten the total time for getting armor and weapons and it's hard to argue against that. Hell, I might have actually lost the Reaper in this mission without the new armor... although having magnetic weapons might have meant fewer enemies left alive to attack him so... who knows how it would have turn out? Either way, we'll get the weapons soon and it will all be a moot point.
I was wondering when one of the chosen would show up. It seems like the tap cat tradition of the warlock raining on your raid is holding strong
Exactly!
that was for sure a nail biter
95 enemies jesus
Perfect
If I may ask - why are you not sending soldiers to find Skirmishers? I know Skirmishers are kinda meh, but they give you access to pretty sweet resistance orders.
It was a pleasure to watch you play, although I was tempted many times to just skip to the end to see if all the guys made it - I worried for our precious Reaper :)
I watched that part of the video and I think I literally had a bit of blind spot and didn't see that option. Because I was trying to click on every one of them to see if anything else had a low chance of them capturing one of our soldiers but I didn't click on the one to find the skirmishers. But don't worry, we'll definitely go get one.
20 days really isn't bad for the reaper. That must be due to the field medics passive after mission ability. Saved at least 10 days for sure!
I agree, it definitely could have been worse.
Reaper should have been gravely wounded, was down to 1 hp. Don't understand why it wasn't
@@jppauley9969 The wound system is very random by design. So you can have 2 soldiers with identical health who take the same amount of damage and one can be gravely wounded and the other isn't. I've always thought it was a bit silly, but that's the system Firaxis chose.
@@jppauley9969 I believe its the medics passive that uses remaining medkits to lesten combat wound severity. There's some kind of behind the scenes dice roll that goes on for stabilising them on the way home.
Loved the mission! I prefer the longer ones myself.
Didn't you have to revive the guy that got the kill shot on the Warlock? Or is that different cause it was the Warlock that knocked him down?
He was just dazed and when you kill the warlock he isn't dazed any longer. Revive is something that I generally use very seldom... pretty sure I've never done it even 5 times in any one campaign. It's one of those things that is great when you need it but the more successful you are on the battlefield then the less often you'll use it.
Ahh
With all the lost missions yall are getting yall need to invest in finding the lost instant kill perk.
That thing is so OP for lost missions, it's just insane.
@@TapCat I know it's going to be a good campaign when I get it early.
Damn, they really failed at making the lost interesting to fight haha