Played this game blind and unwittingly activated the rulers on the very first chance I got. Even with frequent save/reloads, those were some of the hardest video game fights I've ever had.
Same here. Was utterly hopeless. I've been sending 4 of my 5 guys to the furthest reaches of the map to steer clear of the queen while the one guy finds her, then runs. Then I've been completely avoiding her and waiting for her to use the portal to leave. After that there's so many ADVENT there anyways that I get massacred anyways. After seeing this video, I'm going to restart the game and get some upgrades before meeting the queen.
I once got super lucky. A corporal executed her with a basic repeater on panic reaction on our first encounter. And THAT'S how I got the regicide achievement haha
Lol. Watched the Viper King video a while back and killed him yesterday when I thought I'm far enough into the campaign. Today I'm thinking I'm getting a fairly relaxed guerilla ops as the next mission. Seven of nine enemies down, the eighth just a trooper. And then she hops in the frame while my sniper is way out of position, everyone else clumped up and three guys needing a reload. That execution with my ranger's superior repeater shotty after getting destroyed and already having set an evac point felt soooo good.
Another tip for the queen is that any damage over time effects inhibit her mobility. If you can stack multiple dot conditions on her (burning, poison, acid burn) she'll have much harder time getting around with every reaction while also eating an average of 5-8 damage every time.
When I stack multiple DoTs on an opponent, the game glitches and screws me out of the damage from the second one. I've even seen damage that's been taken heal for some reason. I have no idea how common this is, maybe I'm one of a very few who have had this happen, but that's why I've been reluctant to heavily push the idea.
That's my favorite trick. I generally just stick two because I tend to only have two kinds of grenades, and then I sit back and watch as she runs around the map taking damage every action after I blew out the floorboards from underneath her..
I did that i was so happy with myself until she leaped like a frog and just destoyed one of my guys, then she did her little ground pound and just nocked out two other guys and at this time she had more than half her health and there was reinforcements coming to her aid also this was one of those missions where you had to either kill or capture the VIP I had 6 turns to get my team mates and the VIP out of there and i was half way to the pick up zone. Luckily I killed her with an instakill but the reinforcements almost killed the remaining soilders. The snake king was easy for me just because of the area he was stuck in a small area my Psy soilder got him with the ability to freeze him in place so i could get all my men around him and after he was unfrozen i just used all of there best most strongest abilitys on him. He tryed to run away but my ranger used her double shot to finish him off. This dlc is fun but got me by surprise because I thought it would only start by doing a mission talking about it and not outa nowhere
I love how the DLC doesnt tell you that if you have it installed and play a new campaign you'll be fighting these things in the early game making the game literally impossible to beat.
It's so confusing that if you disable Alien Rulers you get the rulers from start, but if you enabled it you will get them only after taking their first mission
so it's 2020 and I just got this game. Went in blind. Found the beserker queen without having any clue what I was in for...holy damn. Ended up fending her off and surviving the mission...with 3 unconscious out of 6. Finished the mission and carried the fallen soldiers home to safety with no losses... #feltgoodman
Atesz222 omg😂 I just commented the same fucking thing I bought cuz it was on sale for $20 I'm enjoying the game but not the DLC jk i like the dlc but I wish I waited till I had plasma guns or something and armor
Atesz222 right now I got 6 people on the first Quest it shows up they are all rookies and I only have one Frost grenade and I'm reloading the save every time they all die
Why do most people dislike the rangers' sword attacks? They can be very op. In my opinion, reliable sword attacks are more valuable than being able to cloak again
using sword attacks is dangerous. they can activate more pods if you aren't careful enough. remember this video came before WoTc. so there are no reapers. having a recon unit is always useful
@@relinoylli2 actually, i rarely use reapers at all when i play wotc. heck, i don't even use scout built rangers. sure, occasionally it hurts, but having a bladeranger usually makes up for the nearly unstoppable attack (in the sense where the sword can't be disabled by codexes). once you get the ability to attack any enemy coming within melee range, it should be enough to kill a chrysalid (please fact check that, haven't played in a bit). generally, the assault abilities for rangers are underrated imo. i find the extra offense better than stealth
I was super lucky when I encountered the Berserk Queen for the first time My ranger killed her the turn she charged my soliders as his/her shotgun had the repeater with a 5% chance of a an instant kill Couldn't believe it
5% chance is seriously like zero percent in this game. My soldiers constantly miss shots with 80 to 90% of landing and VERY rarely hit the a stupid aliens when the chance of hitting is below 50%. And all the overwatches are basically useless, especially early on in a mission. You simple can't set those aliens up to trap them with overwatches. Xcom manipulates the game by not using random number generators to generate the so-called "chances". Everything is setup to frustrate you and make you feel that the game is a lot of fun.
@@trumplostlol3007 they don't use random number generation because that makes it more consistent, lol. The problem isn't the game, it's your brain's ability to properly understand chance.
@@DBZHGWgamer seriously, do you have a brain? rgn is just a simple command in most computer languages. it is extremely easy to use. And xcom actually uses rgn. The only thing that is unclear is the formula they use for computing probabilities. genius. LOL LOL
Took 2 Reapers with Plasma Vektor rifles with 3 mod slots each(Superior Scope, Superior Mag, Superior Repeater) with the Asian Continent buff that gives weapon mods a bonus. Used the Banish ability on them the second they showed up, it's a 1 in 5 chance of an instant kill and you get 7 chances x2 per Reaper, 14 chances to get an insta kill. And if they're in Shadow, you can get in range without being spotted.
Two reapers still concealed with shrapnel claymores and that one ability that allows a second claymore throw all four claymores on her then have one of your other soldiers (that has lime of sight on the queen and claymores or can throw a grenade far enough) either A throw a grenade for extra damage on the queen or B shoot the claymore either way four claymores isn’t that fun for anyone
How to kill any alien ruler. A: Check if you have a frost grenade. If you don't commit suicide. B. Check if you have a psi ops stasis. If you don't move to C. If you do move to C. C. Check if you have a reaper with banish and superior/advanced mag and superior execute. If you don't commit suicide again. D. Commit suicide anyways because rulers are op.
i went in blind with all the dlc and had issues with the viper king but did beat it, but i did a random VIP rescue mission and the queen showed up. She knocked two soldiers unconscious and thank god i accidentally blew up the ground underneath her, seemingly with the damage i had already done and the fall killed her. I got everyone out on the last turn it was freaking intense.
make it mixed with the LW2 mod and hardest difficulty. one mission is like 8 hours average for me. i just wonder why finishing the game without any casualty is not there on the steam achievements. i save scum because i dont want any of my team dead.
Jordan Thomas yeah all I have is rookies and I went in blind like you same mission 1 Frost grenade I'm trying to beat it without even fighting it I'm just trying to kill the VIP and quickly leave I'm undetected right at the retreat Square I'm going to see how it goes
I found a psi soldier with stasis, inspire, and null lance to be helpful against the rulers as well. Stasis gives you time to load, position soldiers, and maybe put everyone on overwatch without giving up actions. Inspire can give heavy hitters like rapid-fire rangers an extra action (though not recommended unless the ruler is frozen or stunned - don't want to give up free actions). And null lance is just a good damage dealer that ignores armor. Also a recon ranger that can stay in concealment and scout is invaluable. If the scout spots the ruler, set up an overwatch trap where it can't see you. Then have the scout reveal itself while running back towards the trap. If the ruler bites (which they usually do) then this gives the whole squad a free shot at the start of the fight. Nearly the same effect can be achieved with battle scanners, though then you need to work a little more to bait the trap.
Can confirm that the quake doesn’t hit at higher elevations, but it doesn’t matter. Usually she just does the panic thing and your soldiers give her a way up (or worse, your panicked soldier throws a grenade at his feet and your squad drops 2 stories)
I just bought this game on sale a couple of days ago, didn't realize this DLC added the boss units. Lost some good soldiers, but I've managed to pull through and finally defeat the Archon Ruler
I was once underprepared for a fight with her, so I gained altitude and when she got close enough that she’d had an attack on her next action, I threw grenades to blow up the ground under her and also the pipe that she used to climb. It worked long enough to make her retreat
The only reason why I was able to kill the berserker queen was that it went after my grenadier who was on top of a building, but I shot her with my nearby sharpshooter enough to make her open up a portal ON THE ROOF, then I had my grenadier NADE HER and SHE FELL and she had 3 HP left and she then still tried to run for the portal but couldnt REACH instead she ran right infront of my specialist and then it was OVER,
I got lucky my first time with the berserker queen. I got an execution on her with an advanced repeater with my grenadier as she was trying to escape. She is terrifying up close, she caused 2 of my soldiers to panic and run away from her, before I got the execution, lol.
The ruler can only react to actions if it has a line of sight. They can see very far so squadsight snipers are no good, but if there is no line of sight at all, such as if a van or tree is in the way, or if if the soldier is at the top of a cliff or roof with no line of sight then it cannot react, although you cannot shoot either. So how do you take advantage of this? Throw grenades over vans or off of rooftops etc, it cant react when you do this, and with enough dot grenades you can dot the hell out of them before they can even do anything. It is also possible to use things like null lance, void rift, combat protocol, capacitor discharge, saturation fire, shredstorm cannon, plasma blaster, blaster bomb etc to hit it without having a line of sight Whats more, if you have a psi op with stasis, and if you have a gas grenade, then you can stasis the berserker queen when you see her, throw a gas grenade (which wont poison her because of stasis), then when the stasis wears off she will always skip her actions to avoid being poisoned. You can then hit her with a fire and acid grenade to dot her and she will continue skipping her turns but take fire and acid dot damage. Rupture her as well and she will be taking 8+ fire/acid damage per reaction without even moving lol.
I had Banish and Superior Expanded Magazine and dragon rounds, but a scope rather than repeater. Opened with grenadier shred and holotargeting, then used my Reaper to Banish. I didn't kill her by far, but she took a ton of damage and near the end of the first round set up her warp gate or whatever it's called and wanted to flee. Too late, by that time she was low health and got taken out, never having hurt anyone.
@@dingfeldersmurfalot4560 You should always equip any/best repeater and any/best expanded magazine for banish. I had a scope as well (they are fantastic) due to a breakthrough but that's not guaranteed. Reapers have good enough aim especially if you take your time and banish from a good angle or high ground. A scope is good but not necessary. Having her flee without soldiers taking damage is great but it's even better to just kill her flat out with just one action spent. With just an advanced repeater you take 6 shots @ 10% to kill. Statistically 5 will hit so that's a 50/50 to kill her with one action. This is not taking into account: Superior repeater with 15% per shot and up to 20% chance to kill per shot with the right faction order or continent bonus, Up to 7 rounds with the superior expanded mag + same faction order that increases modification effectiveness, Or the fact that burning rounds will trigger repeater chance as well EACH time she takes a counter action. I've done many Legendary runs and even one L/I 9 times out of 10 I've killed her with a superior repeater + banish but of course sometimes you get x-com'ed. The most entertaining one was when I spent like 15 rounds setting up the perfect ambush, my reaper was carrying the only superior repeater. I overwatch trap an annoying rando pod to clear the battlefield before engaging her. I mess up, The pod activates as planned but she triggers as well (not my desire). Then a C team specialist with a basic repeater executes her on his first overwatch shot :D Then procs guardian and proceeds to wipe the floor with the rest of the pod. So yeah repeaters are must have for the alien rulers. no matter what get one.
@@Shattered-Realm Thanks, I'm thinking of doing that. I put my first and only superior repeater on a specialist. Superiors of anything are really hard to find even with the resistance order (Vulture) that gives more loot drops. At least for me, toward the end of July. I'm thinking of taking more covert actions with loot or PCS as rewards, but don't want to potentially waste days of game time for a piece of junk reward. Hopefully my luck on drops improves as the months go on. I'm already facing Viper King, Beserker Queen, and Archon King, as well as a nearly full-knowledge Assassin who gained teleport-when-shot ability (acck!!!), so it's time for upgrades darn soon.
that's probably not a bad idea, and I would probably do that if I were doing ironman, but it takes most of the challenge out. Getting first upgrades of weapons (ALL Weapons) and armor usually makes them very doable and the armors you get from them are really fun to play with. I would hate to only get the armors at the very end game.
I tried it before plasma weapons once before and it was rough, but after waiting until later in the game, it is easier but still tough if you are not prepared for it.
Guys just combo w war of the chosen and they only spawn in facilities and you can just story and covert action to reduce progress if you dont wanna fight
I never forget my first encounter with Berserker queen. It was just another routine mission under the sewers....or so I thought. Then out of nowhere Berserker queen comes trough the falls like kool-aid-man, starting trashing my squad left and right. Funny thing about her: she's an actual berserker. If you managed to get your sights on her when you're in squad concealment, she starts wipe out ADVENT-pods as a warm up. I once managed to sneak up on her to see her wipe out her own guard pod and then run of to find more. She managed to kill 1 and a half pod more before I caught up with her.
Unwittingly started the Ruler DLC early on Veteran. Fortunately, the Berserker Queen has an ACHILLES HEAL....STAIRS. If you position your entire team on a rooftop and block the stairs by positioning a member on top of each stair, she won't be able to reach your team. Just blast away from the rooftop...FLAWLESS victory.
If you didnt know, when you face any of DR. Vahlens creations, not only can they appear in any mission if they are still alive but if you damage them and they escape and you must face them again you will face them with whatever HP they escaped with.
My favorite thing is explosive traps, with a long range explosive... then when the alien moves into my team on their turn... a full scale assault of reaction fire. They 99% of the time attempt to flee or die.
Decided to disable the nest dlc thinking it'd just disable the DLC. Third mission comes along and the viper king comes up. Manage to scare him off. Haven't play the second game before. This guides are really saving my troops
Well put together, and some great tips (if I'm ever silly enough to get the rulers DLC). Put on the 'A Better Advent' mod yesterday and had one of the most, er..., interesting? of missions.
I tried Long War 2 for the first time yesterday and had a similar experience. So many enemies whose capabilities I didn't know. It was really refreshing and I enjoyed it a lot more than I expected.
From what I've watched on UA-cam, LW2 gives a much more nuanced game. Must have been a huge amount of work and hopefully it gets better as the game progresses.
If you have enough strong weapons and armor as stated, AND the frost bomb, you have a good chance of killing her or having her leave. Bolt caster can stun, but it’s not guaranteed. I think it’s a 20% chance. A lot of good tips in this video.
I would also add that Sparks are very good against her. She cannot panic them with her roar, nor can Sparks be struck unconscious. Combine that with the fact that a Spark unit with High Tier Armor and Bulwark is basically a walking tank and always have "Shredder" , and they're basically her worst nightmare.
I know this isn't impossible but god this dlc looks bullshitly unfair, all the gameplay I've seen of it that's unmodded is just squad wipe after squad wipe, honestly what were 2k thinking with letting the rulers react to every action you make???
My impression is that the lead developer, at least, thinks it's hilarious to kill off a bunch of your soldiers. I actually did a "Cat Meows" video about this topic and it's the closest thing to a rant I've ever uploaded.
Dogma 515 the first time you fight a ruler it seems really hard and almost impossible. the next time you fight one you make a joke of them by debuffing them to hell. burning, acid, fire, frozen, stunned, dissorianted, etc. not to mention making them trigger cqq or overwatch every time they do anything besides stand still a die. conventional weapons make them seem like a worthy fight. magnetic makes them easy. plasma turns them into a joke.
Rick Grimes Dirty On Dat Ass yeah I just figured this out, went against the viper King with frost bombs and alien hunter weapons, didn't even get a wounded soldier (Bradford doesn't count to me) then the berserker queen, even easier because she has to be close up to be effective... Then I went against the archon King... He nearly wiped my whole squad on spawn, I was lucky to have nobody die on that mission, but then when he showed up again I got the repeater to execute him at nearly full health
Against the rulers remember these things: 1) mimic beacon , 2) ice grenade, 3) keep group spread apart. If possible try to arrange that the ruler has to charge for 2 turns before they engage, that way your grenadiers can shred some of the armor off and apply at +25% to hit debuff. Also Armor Piercing ammo for the sharpshooter helps a great deal.
The way i defeated the Queen was by stun-locking her with dragon rounds, acid and gas grenades, aswell as the frost grenade. I was able to completely kill her in just one encounter.
You know what was really fun? Dealing with bitch queen, while waiting for incoming reinforcements while already trying to fight off enemies in field. Such endless fun in a game where you can have 99% chance to hit a target and still miss.
I know for a fact this is gonna get lost in the comments, but I had the easiest time with Queen because I got lucky. Archon showed up first, beat the SHIT out of my squad, but after much, much trial and error, I got Regicide with no casualties, in the middle of a timed mission with other enemies to deal with. Hardest thing I've done in the game, period, especially because I had no idea about the rulers, and just grabbed all the DLC at once. Next, Viper always showed up when I was ill equipped, did some annoying shit, and ran. For many missions. Caught him off guard one time, though, as he ran into a stonewall of some of my better troops, but he actually NEVER showed up when my A-Team was all good. But Berserker...? I sent my Reaper, Igor Krachevskoy, on a solo to quietly vanquish an Avatar facility. I had a superior repeater handy and unlocked Banish for just such an occasion. Igor then went down in history as fucking Solid Snake by slaughtering the nearby patrol with a homing mine, save for an officer, then dropping the queen with 5 bullets to the face, and using his last shot to get another homing mine off on the nearby turret the officer hid near in a panic. He frantically ran around a little as Igor quietly sidled up and finished him off without revealing himself. Quietly shuffled into the compound on high alert, and walked off into the sunset with the Queen's corpse in tow as the whole building went up in flames. Remember kids, never tussle with the sneaky assassin.
I managed to 1 hit ko the queen in a VIP rescue last night . My squaddie ranger equipped with a repeater got hit by the berserker panicked did a shot and insta kill the most surprising event in xcom till date I was surprised to see the beast and surprised when it died with a single shot. I am still shocked by the whole thing
You know, coming from someone who loves using swords and especially the Hunter's Axe, I mostly do the Alien Hunters DLC to get the R.A.G.E Suit from the Berserker Queen. When you give a Ranger with a Melee build the Hunter's Axe and the R.A.G.E Suit, there are times where you could potentially wipe out an entire pod in a single turn due to all the free actions and damage you get, along with having heavy weaponry. So knowing how to take down the Queen easier is always good. So thanks for that
I killed her by repeatedly luring her to the top of a building and blowing the floor out from under her...it helped I had everyone in spider suits with the built in grapple.
Hilariously, on one of the covert missions stumbled upon Viper King with my Reaper. Shot, after shot, reaper wouldn't get revealed and I just facerolled the fight, while the rest of the squad were busy with other stuff. From there did the same to the rest of the "Kings". It's pretty amusing when you're pelting them with shots from concealment and the "King" just helplessly wastes turns running in circles :D
I wish I had watched this clip before my first encounter with the Berserker Queen, as she caused me all kinds of hell every time I faced her...and I'd made the mistake of not getting the research projects done and stuff for the Predator Armor and Plasma weapons foolishly before facing any of the Alien Rulers, even if I did nearly kill the Viper King on the first encounter with no problem.
The first time I met the Queen, I managed to shave off more than half her health mostly by sending a concealed Reaper to spot her, sniping her from squadsight, then drawing her back with a "bait" unit. She would just keep going back and forth and never actually attacking. Overwatch traps also work really well, and in general as long as you spot her before she spots you, you'll have an easy time with her. The only really painful to deal with Ruler is the Archon King.
I have had great suscess with the chance to instant kill. im sure my luck will run out eventually against her. i did notice on a level 2 building she knocked my sniper off the corner of the building in cover from the ground with the earth quake think she does. keep the vids coming i love this came all 3 versions
now for something to do after you've killed her... The berserker armor in my opinion works best on a sword master ranger with the axes, you can use the berserker armors slam attack to get next to a recently revealed enemy as soon as their revealed and as that ability leaves you with full actions then proceed to throw your axe then rush with your other axe all in one turn. I've one shotted low level patrols with this combo and even if I fail to get the entire patrol I'll usually kill one and severely damage another while leaving the character in position to blade-storm the second as soon as they move
Found the 'zerker Queen to be the easiest to deal with of the rulers, just shred that armour off, then double team her with bladestorming rangers with blademaster and ionic blades, and/ or skirmisher with retribution/ionic blades, the stunlock while taking damage is beautiful, also poison/fire damage stacks really well, having a sharpshooter with either venom rounds/dragonfire rounds and fanfire does wonders in combination with this effect too. That being said, going up against any of them before magnetic weapons/ predator armour stage? Great way to lose soldiers, unless you are very lucky and coordinate well with what you've got.
Grenadier's two frost grenades solve any problem. The repeater works well for Skirmishers. Bolt caster + poisonous cartridge complex solves two problems at once. A ranger with a stun sword attack + defense protocol + smoke grenade, if the ranger has no natural cover when attacking, will increase the chances that the ruler will fixate on him and miss, and in the meantime you will activate the ruler with attacks from other fighters from a safe distance, but this is not the best option, it is better to leave it as a last resort, and only if the ruler is poisoned by a poisonous cartridge or gas grenade, this deprives him of accuracy and mobility.
I just really love that the rulers aren't immune to the repeater instant kill. Nothing makes me laugh more than seeing something with 60+ health drop like a sack of potatoes after a single hit
Probably the most common comments I get on my guides for the rulers are from people sharing their execution stories. You're definitely not the only one who savors those moments!
I had a nice stun string thanks to two rangers w/ Bladestorm (Arc Blade) and a Skirmisher with Retribution (Ionic Ripjack). She escaped my first encounter but took out like 3/4 of her HP and all of her armor
My first ever play through I was so bad at killing the rulers that the Viper King was still alive when the Berserker Queen showed up. I only survived after many reloads…
hey tapcat I have a question would you say the alien hunters DLC is worth it overall? been thinking about getting it for when I start an Ironman campaign but steam reviews are pretty mixed.
I believe that XCOM 2 is best without any of the DLC. Fighting the rulers in the early game when they first become available is an exercise in frustration. They'll routinely one-shot your soldiers and if they show up on patrol when you're in the midst of a firefight then you could easily squad wipe. And while your tactics can help reduce the number of attacks and possibly drive the rulers off sooner, it is entirely probably that you'll lose soldiers anyway. Later on, they are still dangerous, but better gear and soldiers with more abilities to call on can take them down pretty reliably. In other words, there is never a time in the game when I feel like there's a sweet spot for difficulty. They should be extremely difficult, but survivable if you make good decisions. In my eyes, the devs simply didn't strike that balance. Your mileage could obviously vary, but that's my take on it.
TapCat thanks for the input! probably not gonna get it since as it is I already suck at the game, and would prefer (atleast for my first Ironman run) not to have all my troops die in a one to two shot or be taken out for a month.
Yeah, I don't want to be TOO harsh on it but it definitely isn't something you want while you're trying to learn the game. If you want to mix things up later on then you can always pick it up during a sale.
Late reply, but if you're still curious, you can enable the Alien Hunter DLC missions and just do the very first scan and receive the weapons. So you get to have all Alien Hunter weapons before the 3rd mission and they're a REAL upgrade to anything you have up until that point. The Bolt Caster and Hunters Axe stay relevant even compared to Tier 2 weaponry with the Bolt Caster being the only weapon to 1 shot almost any of the early aliens, the Special Effect of the Shadowfall Pistol is guaranteed 2-3 damage for a Sniper (Minus armor) and the frostbomb stays relevant all game especially in the hands of a dedicated Demolition Grenadier. Seriously, alone the Frostbomb makes a game THAT much easier. So the DLC allows you for an easier start into a hard campaign (like L/I ) with adding some more options to your squad and you can still later decide whether you want to start the Rulers and being able to upgrade your weaponry.
Holy shit, all this time and I never even knew you returned to youtube! After your move and announcement that you left youtube, I remained subscribed but eventually youtube just sort of... unsubbed me without my consent.
Hey, welcome back! I was actually amazed at how many people stayed subscribed after I was so definitive in saying that I wasn't going to upload more videos. But I am indeed back and have been uploading regularly for the past year.
Unique, I had some life changes at the end of 2014 that didn't leave time for UA-cam any more. I uploaded a video letting viewers know that I wouldn't be uploading videos and for almost exactly 1 year that was the case. At the end of 2015, I was able to come back and started creating videos again and expect to keep doing that for the foreseeable future.
first time I encountered her I was doing the first facility mission, had just fought a 2 pod group (they were together and my cover was already blown) and thus was out of ammo even better, my assault was knocked unconscious on her first attack (2 tier axe with bladestorm, wanted her to stay meele stunning the shit out of the queen), my grenadier was also uncouncious right after (goodbye frost bomb. I wanted to take out her armor first) I got lucky and critted it on every other hit mission was pretty much over by that point
There some kind of armor that you can get if you research the Berserker Queen's corpse. What do you get from researching the King Viper's corpse. What do you get from researching the corpse of the King Archon?
It's armor for all 3. Each has unique abilities including the fact that enemies of that type will panic if they see you wearing it. So vipers will freak out if you wear the Viper King armor, etc.
I'd like to do something, although probably not a full Let's Play given that the campaign runs for 100-120 missions according to the developers. No promises, but it's definitely something I'm looking at.
I love how these are supposed to be like the really dangerous boss alien, but through out all of my 3 campaign, somehow I always execute them with Repeater. All of them, in all 3 campaign. Doesn't matter if I'm just trying to hurt them so I can kill them next encounter or I'm opening with Rupture. They just, die.
I beat it by ... saving the game a lot, and reloading. I think it's called "Save spamming or scumming", I don't know. The bolt caster thing that stuns the leaders is good to bring too. Also I just tried to stay alive until she took enough damage to leave, and they don't regen lost health so eventually they will die. I also had the DLC with the Spark soldiers (ie; armored robot for your team to use) and helped with it's rocket weapon to shred the leader's armor.
My personal strategy to cheese this fight is to keep everyone on a rooftop. Then, when the bezerker is found, I place a soldier on each of the ladders, blocking her movement up. This means that she can't attack me, and I just take some free shots at her until she runs/dies.
How come you did first 2 bosses but not the third? Where’s the Archon boss?! Only the hardest boss of em all and only one that really did need a video!
Just ran into the queen on a random VIP mission, it managed to knock 3 of my soldiers unconscious (including my specialist with revival protocol). Had to choose what soldier i was gonna leave behind as i could only carry 2. VIP got killed on the way to evac and i managed to get my guys out with 1 turn left. As frustrating as this game is, i cant way it wasn't cinematic af.
On the easyest difficulty shes a troll, runs up, knocks out 3 out of 5 squad mates and then runs off, and is sometimes with a muton so once she runs off the 2 sods i have left have to deal with the remaining enemys
I know this video is like 2 years old but I found a sort of exploit. Since the berserker queen only has melee attacks and can't jump onto high ground like a spark can, you can use a soldier to body block the ladder leading to high ground. This way, all your soldiers are safe on a platform unless they panic and jump off Ps: exploit i found for viper king was just body blocking him into a wall with 3 soldiers when he's low enough to summon psionic portals. This bugs him into only trying to run and summon portals while your soldiers can just free fire.
gotta ask becuase im planning to start an XCOM 2 cmaping with the dlc installed soon, but does the damage done to the ruler stay around if it runs off and then you encounter it again in another mission?
Otherwise it would be nearly impossible to kill the thing on Legend without having an entire squad with fusion shotguns with rapid fire and group them all near the berserker queen with blademaster so that when she moves every ranger will use their blades and if you have a fusion blade then thats just bad for the berserker queen
I had the Queen attack me during the Avenger defense mission and it wasn't pretty! I didn't have the defense matrix up and it was pretty early in the game so she just ran around knocking my people unconscious and destroying every piece of cover there was while the other aliens kept rushing in. I could only watch. I hadn't started playing Ironman yet so I kept reloading to try to make it through alive. It wasn't until I had an EXTREMELY lucky run where almost every one of her attacks missed that I finally got the upper hand and pushed through. Later in the same game I was getting attacked by the Archon King during an alien base assault and was getting wholly beat down until I lucked out and got an execution on him as a Gatekeeper and it's crew were showing up. I thought for sure I was going to lose everyone. I love this game! Edit-I was playing on Xbox and there was a glitch where the alien rulers showed up in my game without me ever having the option to start the whole thing with the Viper King mission. I was playing a game that I had saved before I bought the expansion packs and even though I chose not to do the missions the rulers just showed up in random missions. It's hard to explain
I thought I had some rough missions against the Berserker Queen, but now I'm just supremely grateful that she didn't show up during the Avenger Defense mission. That's rough!
My first encounters were viper kings in the earlier game and they're still ok. The BS moment was during mid game on a sabotage mission which turned out had archon some elite and shield advents, the double HP reviving Muton like thing and some specters, AND this B*** queen. Got to reload a few times but i still got destroyed. SO... just went with one reaper, sneak around and run like hell after planting the bomb lol.
She showed up the mission right after I kill the viper king. She knocked one of my ppl unconscious and made my speacialist panic so I couldn't wake them up. And by the time I woke them up she was gone
TapCat have you watched the episode when ChristopherOdd fight the Berserker Queen? He launched some granades and the queen didn`t move at all. Is that exploit fixed? And does it still works?
I haven't seen it, but I did recently hear about that. It coincides with a similar experience I had against the Archon King. I haven't heard that they've fixed this and their track record at fixing bugs has not been great. This is the main reason I didn't suggest gas grenades... it just amounts to an exploit.
I think that is because the AI will avoid walking through acid or poison and in the Chris case is that all tile surrounding the Queen is poisoned so the AI broke, and I thought if you throw acid bom at her, she will take acid damage everytime she reacts. This one comes from Chirs video when he throw acid bom and display 16 turn on her acid counter.
Haven't tried this but would putting all of your guys except one on overwatch work? Obviously you would have to be fighting the ruler by themselves but it would let all 6 of your guys shoot for for every actions the leader takes, seems like it would help stack the damage on fast.
It would work if you can set it up before activating her. For example, if you had a stealth ranger that could see her and you set everyone up on overwatch before having him blast her then you'd get all those shots and she would only be able to react to the ranger. But once she sees your group, the party's over!
I Don't know if this comment will help anyone, but I realized why I was facing these things right up early game without ever having done any missions as stated in the videos. Its because at the start of the new game there is a box that asks if you want to enable the missions for the DLCs. I disabled those thinking it made things easier to learn the game, but apparently by doing that it just instanly unlocks these guys for them to randomly show up in your normal missions. Ouch!
This is a great point, they made the menu very confusing and it does pretty much the opposite of what most people would expect. If you keep that mission enabled, you can choose when (or even if) to activate the enemy rulers and that's a whole lot healthier for your soldiers!
Nice video as always! Glad you mentioned the killzone tip as that Is what I used to wreck the berserker queen. Tbh though, I find the berserker queen to be the easiest of the 3, I mean the snek has the least hp & armor but the fact that the snek has ranged attacks makes it more of a threat. Maybe it's because that the first time I met the Berserker I was able to kill it on the first go with a lucky overwatch ambush knocking off almost half of it's HP and shredding 2 armor! I know that won't happen everytime but still! Do you plan on doing anything with Long war 2 mod, have you been checking it out a little??
I think I've actually had the hardest time with her, but part of it is luck. A couple of times when I've found her off camera, she'll slam my specialist first and eliminate heals, then attack the same soldier a couple times in a row to kill them. It certainly doesn't happen every time, but I'd say the RNG portion of her AI hasn't been kind to me. All that said, I rarely lose soldiers to any of them if I've got appropriate level gear. If I don't, I find all of them to be literal killers.
I agree that the Archon king is the most powerful overall. But I usually have tier 3 armor and weapons by the time I fight him, plus the group is getting up there in rank. So even though he's tougher, we've gotten sufficiently powerful enough to largely offset that. That said, he's extremely dangerous!
I do plan to start working on guides once War of the Chosen comes out, but I don't the order they'll be done in. That said, I would ultimately like to do guides for each of the Chosen as well as the Archon King.
Am i playing so well that i got all these rulers so early that i need like twice my armor & damage i just started 2 dsys ago im already fighting this with base armor & only the the first weapons upgrades
I literally don't know how I got so lucky during my encounters with the rulers. First encounter with the Viper King, one of my sharpshooters killed him with one shot (With that 5% equipment) And then with the Berserker Queen, first encounter too, she rushed inside the room my soldiers we're in, I was using 3 rangers and all of them had blademaster. Each one had a free attack, and on their actual turn, one of them stunned her for 2 turns.
I got so lucky when I first met her. It was a retaliation mission and I overmatched my specialist. Advent turn one she shows up triggers the overwatch and is executed by my medics repeater.
got my first encounter with her yesterday ate away half her healh from a roof there was 8 acces points from ladders 4 was from lower roofs and 4 was straight from the ground i blocked all ladders with soldiers on one side of the building but she still went that side she ran on lower roof and love taped my solider from downstair for 2 health when i saw that i trew a grenade to blow the floor from under her worked she had to run to other side of building she did make it up there but has soon has she did i shot her with the bolt caster and got lucky with a stun giving me 3 more free shots on her by that time i had shredded her armor also with a rocket and a grenade launcher shot has she was running towards building so i was all grouped together and got away pretty clean with only 2 health dmg to 1 soldier
i cant confirm if it wont hit you if higher then 1 floor but i can say she didnt even try it went for longer distance run to lower roof instead of 2 floor hiigh acces in front of her so i would say she cant
would've died at first encounter but she fled within my turn. Second encouter she didnt even get close. Same with the archon. Had serious trouble with the viper though
Played this game blind and unwittingly activated the rulers on the very first chance I got.
Even with frequent save/reloads, those were some of the hardest video game fights I've ever had.
Same here. Was utterly hopeless. I've been sending 4 of my 5 guys to the furthest reaches of the map to steer clear of the queen while the one guy finds her, then runs. Then I've been completely avoiding her and waiting for her to use the portal to leave. After that there's so many ADVENT there anyways that I get massacred anyways. After seeing this video, I'm going to restart the game and get some upgrades before meeting the queen.
I once got super lucky. A corporal executed her with a basic repeater on panic reaction on our first encounter. And THAT'S how I got the regicide achievement haha
I've had that happen, too. It's a beautiful thing
Same, that repeater chance saved my squads ass
Lol. Watched the Viper King video a while back and killed him yesterday when I thought I'm far enough into the campaign. Today I'm thinking I'm getting a fairly relaxed guerilla ops as the next mission. Seven of nine enemies down, the eighth just a trooper. And then she hops in the frame while my sniper is way out of position, everyone else clumped up and three guys needing a reload. That execution with my ranger's superior repeater shotty after getting destroyed and already having set an evac point felt soooo good.
Another tip for the queen is that any damage over time effects inhibit her mobility. If you can stack multiple dot conditions on her (burning, poison, acid burn) she'll have much harder time getting around with every reaction while also eating an average of 5-8 damage every time.
When I stack multiple DoTs on an opponent, the game glitches and screws me out of the damage from the second one. I've even seen damage that's been taken heal for some reason. I have no idea how common this is, maybe I'm one of a very few who have had this happen, but that's why I've been reluctant to heavily push the idea.
That's my favorite trick. I generally just stick two because I tend to only have two kinds of grenades, and then I sit back and watch as she runs around the map taking damage every action after I blew out the floorboards from underneath her..
I did that i was so happy with myself until she leaped like a frog and just destoyed one of my guys, then she did her little ground pound and just nocked out two other guys and at this time she had more than half her health and there was reinforcements coming to her aid also this was one of those missions where you had to either kill or capture the VIP I had 6 turns to get my team mates and the VIP out of there and i was half way to the pick up zone. Luckily I killed her with an instakill but the reinforcements almost killed the remaining soilders. The snake king was easy for me just because of the area he was stuck in a small area my Psy soilder got him with the ability to freeze him in place so i could get all my men around him and after he was unfrozen i just used all of there best most strongest abilitys on him. He tryed to run away but my ranger used her double shot to finish him off. This dlc is fun but got me by surprise because I thought it would only start by doing a mission talking about it and not outa nowhere
IIRC thats hoe Christopherodd dealt with the queen during his WotC game. Forgot whoch run it was but it was beautiful
This is what I do. I also like dropping a group overwatch the second I run into the Ruler. It's a nice chunk of damage when they move.
I love how the DLC doesnt tell you that if you have it installed and play a new campaign you'll be fighting these things in the early game making the game literally impossible to beat.
Yeah that was an awesome surprise
I just got it on the Switch last week and wasted 15 hours because I got to the point where I deal literally next to no progress during a boss fight.
It's so confusing that if you disable Alien Rulers you get the rulers from start, but if you enabled it you will get them only after taking their first mission
@@ganr1277
Yeah it should have a description
With wotc i pretty much just solo the advent facilities with a reaper and bypass them until i get stronger or until im forced to deal with them.
so it's 2020 and I just got this game. Went in blind. Found the beserker queen without having any clue what I was in for...holy damn. Ended up fending her off and surviving the mission...with 3 unconscious out of 6. Finished the mission and carried the fallen soldiers home to safety with no losses... #feltgoodman
I started this DLC at the very beginning of the game... why?
I didn't know it adds these things, I thought it brings new equipment only.. xD
Wouldn't that be nice? Better gear with no strings attached? Sign me up!
Atesz222 omg😂 I just commented the same fucking thing I bought cuz it was on sale for $20 I'm enjoying the game but not the DLC jk i like the dlc but I wish I waited till I had plasma guns or something and armor
Atesz222 right now I got 6 people on the first Quest it shows up they are all rookies and I only have one Frost grenade and I'm reloading the save every time they all die
I did the same thing and I just want to die
The armor you get from them is pretty nice though.
Why do most people dislike the rangers' sword attacks? They can be very op. In my opinion, reliable sword attacks are more valuable than being able to cloak again
using sword attacks is dangerous. they can activate more pods if you aren't careful enough.
remember this video came before WoTc. so there are no reapers. having a recon unit is always useful
@@relinoylli2 actually, i rarely use reapers at all when i play wotc. heck, i don't even use scout built rangers. sure, occasionally it hurts, but having a bladeranger usually makes up for the nearly unstoppable attack (in the sense where the sword can't be disabled by codexes). once you get the ability to attack any enemy coming within melee range, it should be enough to kill a chrysalid (please fact check that, haven't played in a bit). generally, the assault abilities for rangers are underrated imo. i find the extra offense better than stealth
Because ranger can be out of position and activate additional pods... You'll understand why this is a no-go in Commander/Legendary difficulties.
I was super lucky when I encountered the Berserk Queen for the first time
My ranger killed her the turn she charged my soliders as his/her shotgun had the repeater with a 5% chance of a an instant kill
Couldn't believe it
5% chance is seriously like zero percent in this game. My soldiers constantly miss shots with 80 to 90% of landing and VERY rarely hit the a stupid aliens when the chance of hitting is below 50%. And all the overwatches are basically useless, especially early on in a mission. You simple can't set those aliens up to trap them with overwatches. Xcom manipulates the game by not using random number generators to generate the so-called "chances". Everything is setup to frustrate you and make you feel that the game is a lot of fun.
@@trumplostlol3007 they don't use random number generation because that makes it more consistent, lol. The problem isn't the game, it's your brain's ability to properly understand chance.
@@DBZHGWgamer seriously, do you have a brain? rgn is just a simple command in most computer languages. it is extremely easy to use. And xcom actually uses rgn. The only thing that is unclear is the formula they use for computing probabilities. genius. LOL LOL
@@DBZHGWgamer but the percentages never seem right
If you get her stunned, she cannot do ANYTHING while stunned. As Tapcat says, any actions you can use that do not cost an action will be helpful.
Took 2 Reapers with Plasma Vektor rifles with 3 mod slots each(Superior Scope, Superior Mag, Superior Repeater) with the Asian Continent buff that gives weapon mods a bonus. Used the Banish ability on them the second they showed up, it's a 1 in 5 chance of an instant kill and you get 7 chances x2 per Reaper, 14 chances to get an insta kill. And if they're in Shadow, you can get in range without being spotted.
Two reapers still concealed with shrapnel claymores and that one ability that allows a second claymore throw all four claymores on her then have one of your other soldiers (that has lime of sight on the queen and claymores or can throw a grenade far enough) either A throw a grenade for extra damage on the queen or B shoot the claymore either way four claymores isn’t that fun for anyone
How to kill any alien ruler.
A: Check if you have a frost grenade. If you don't commit suicide.
B. Check if you have a psi ops stasis. If you don't move to C. If you do move to C.
C. Check if you have a reaper with banish and superior/advanced mag and superior execute. If you don't commit suicide again.
D. Commit suicide anyways because rulers are op.
I like this strategy. Does it apply to Andromedeon too? *FeelsGoodMan*
1. Don't have the Alien Hunters DLC. Get the far superior Shen's Last Gift instead.
@@mannofdober873 that story is so sweet
Watching in 2019, your videos have helped me a lot, clear, concise and complete.
Here's also a tip, if you have a soldier conceiled and spot the queen with it, it wont get the ruler reaction until triggered
i went in blind with all the dlc and had issues with the viper king but did beat it, but i did a random VIP rescue mission and the queen showed up. She knocked two soldiers unconscious and thank god i accidentally blew up the ground underneath her, seemingly with the damage i had already done and the fall killed her. I got everyone out on the last turn it was freaking intense.
make it mixed with the LW2 mod and hardest difficulty. one mission is like 8 hours average for me. i just wonder why finishing the game without any casualty is not there on the steam achievements. i save scum because i dont want any of my team dead.
Jordan Thomas
All the way to the knock out part was exactly how my time today went. Nice job
There is a steam achievement for no casualty. But only in commander or higher difficulty ^^
Jordan Thomas yeah all I have is rookies and I went in blind like you same mission 1 Frost grenade I'm trying to beat it without even fighting it I'm just trying to kill the VIP and quickly leave I'm undetected right at the retreat Square I'm going to see how it goes
Jordan Thomas same situation for me. I am not prepared so i dont know wat im gona do
I found a psi soldier with stasis, inspire, and null lance to be helpful against the rulers as well. Stasis gives you time to load, position soldiers, and maybe put everyone on overwatch without giving up actions. Inspire can give heavy hitters like rapid-fire rangers an extra action (though not recommended unless the ruler is frozen or stunned - don't want to give up free actions). And null lance is just a good damage dealer that ignores armor.
Also a recon ranger that can stay in concealment and scout is invaluable. If the scout spots the ruler, set up an overwatch trap where it can't see you. Then have the scout reveal itself while running back towards the trap. If the ruler bites (which they usually do) then this gives the whole squad a free shot at the start of the fight. Nearly the same effect can be achieved with battle scanners, though then you need to work a little more to bait the trap.
Can confirm that the quake doesn’t hit at higher elevations, but it doesn’t matter. Usually she just does the panic thing and your soldiers give her a way up (or worse, your panicked soldier throws a grenade at his feet and your squad drops 2 stories)
I just bought this game on sale a couple of days ago, didn't realize this DLC added the boss units. Lost some good soldiers, but I've managed to pull through and finally defeat the Archon Ruler
I was once underprepared for a fight with her, so I gained altitude and when she got close enough that she’d had an attack on her next action, I threw grenades to blow up the ground under her and also the pipe that she used to climb. It worked long enough to make her retreat
so i opened up this video and when you introduced yourself im like
"wait what"
Lol, I didn't understand your comment until I looked at your name. Welcome to the channel, us cats have to stick together!
TapCat Yeah!
CapCat LOL
The only reason why I was able to kill the berserker queen was that it went after my grenadier who was on top of a building, but I shot her with my nearby sharpshooter enough to make her open up a portal ON THE ROOF, then I had my grenadier NADE HER and SHE FELL and she had 3 HP left and she then still tried to run for the portal but couldnt REACH instead she ran right infront of my specialist and then it was OVER,
I got lucky my first time with the berserker queen. I got an execution on her with an advanced repeater with my grenadier as she was trying to escape. She is terrifying up close, she caused 2 of my soldiers to panic and run away from her, before I got the execution, lol.
Same but serpent king
The ruler can only react to actions if it has a line of sight. They can see very far so squadsight snipers are no good, but if there is no line of sight at all, such as if a van or tree is in the way, or if if the soldier is at the top of a cliff or roof with no line of sight then it cannot react, although you cannot shoot either. So how do you take advantage of this? Throw grenades over vans or off of rooftops etc, it cant react when you do this, and with enough dot grenades you can dot the hell out of them before they can even do anything. It is also possible to use things like null lance, void rift, combat protocol, capacitor discharge, saturation fire, shredstorm cannon, plasma blaster, blaster bomb etc to hit it without having a line of sight
Whats more, if you have a psi op with stasis, and if you have a gas grenade, then you can stasis the berserker queen when you see her, throw a gas grenade (which wont poison her because of stasis), then when the stasis wears off she will always skip her actions to avoid being poisoned. You can then hit her with a fire and acid grenade to dot her and she will continue skipping her turns but take fire and acid dot damage. Rupture her as well and she will be taking 8+ fire/acid damage per reaction without even moving lol.
Kiri Seraph the line of sight rule came in for WOTC. In Xcom 2 the ruler gets a reaction after any squad member taking an action including reload
Step 1: Level reaper to colonel
Step 2: Choose Banish skill
Step 3: Equip superior repeater and expanded magazine
Step 4: Profit !!
I had Banish and Superior Expanded Magazine and dragon rounds, but a scope rather than repeater. Opened with grenadier shred and holotargeting, then used my Reaper to Banish. I didn't kill her by far, but she took a ton of damage and near the end of the first round set up her warp gate or whatever it's called and wanted to flee. Too late, by that time she was low health and got taken out, never having hurt anyone.
@@dingfeldersmurfalot4560 You should always equip any/best repeater and any/best expanded magazine for banish. I had a scope as well (they are fantastic) due to a breakthrough but that's not guaranteed.
Reapers have good enough aim especially if you take your time and banish from a good angle or high ground. A scope is good but not necessary.
Having her flee without soldiers taking damage is great but it's even better to just kill her flat out with just one action spent. With just an advanced repeater you take 6 shots @ 10% to kill. Statistically 5 will hit so that's a 50/50 to kill her with one action.
This is not taking into account: Superior repeater with 15% per shot and up to 20% chance to kill per shot with the right faction order or continent bonus, Up to 7 rounds with the superior expanded mag + same faction order that increases modification effectiveness, Or the fact that burning rounds will trigger repeater chance as well EACH time she takes a counter action.
I've done many Legendary runs and even one L/I 9 times out of 10 I've killed her with a superior repeater + banish but of course sometimes you get x-com'ed.
The most entertaining one was when I spent like 15 rounds setting up the perfect ambush, my reaper was carrying the only superior repeater. I overwatch trap an annoying rando pod to clear the battlefield before engaging her. I mess up, The pod activates as planned but she triggers as well (not my desire). Then a C team specialist with a basic repeater executes her on his first overwatch shot :D Then procs guardian and proceeds to wipe the floor with the rest of the pod. So yeah repeaters are must have for the alien rulers. no matter what get one.
@@Shattered-Realm Thanks, I'm thinking of doing that. I put my first and only superior repeater on a specialist. Superiors of anything are really hard to find even with the resistance order (Vulture) that gives more loot drops. At least for me, toward the end of July. I'm thinking of taking more covert actions with loot or PCS as rewards, but don't want to potentially waste days of game time for a piece of junk reward. Hopefully my luck on drops improves as the months go on. I'm already facing Viper King, Beserker Queen, and Archon King, as well as a nearly full-knowledge Assassin who gained teleport-when-shot ability (acck!!!), so it's time for upgrades darn soon.
This is why I didn't touch the alien hunter DLC with a 10 foot pole until I got plasma weapons
blacknyellow962 lol I tried it as soon it I got the game .Watched 3 squads get wiped because of the 1st boss XD.
that's probably not a bad idea, and I would probably do that if I were doing ironman, but it takes most of the challenge out. Getting first upgrades of weapons (ALL Weapons) and armor usually makes them very doable and the armors you get from them are really fun to play with. I would hate to only get the armors at the very end game.
I tried it before plasma weapons once before and it was rough, but after waiting until later in the game, it is easier but still tough if you are not prepared for it.
blacknyellow962 all i have is rookies and I activated the dlc
Guys just combo w war of the chosen and they only spawn in facilities and you can just story and covert action to reduce progress if you dont wanna fight
It's such a big pain to fight these rulers on council mission when you barely make it to the extract anyways
Best Channel for XCom 2!! Subbed!
Thanks, and welcome to the channel!
I never forget my first encounter with Berserker queen. It was just another routine mission under the sewers....or so I thought. Then out of nowhere Berserker queen comes trough the falls like kool-aid-man, starting trashing my squad left and right.
Funny thing about her: she's an actual berserker. If you managed to get your sights on her when you're in squad concealment, she starts wipe out ADVENT-pods as a warm up. I once managed to sneak up on her to see her wipe out her own guard pod and then run of to find more. She managed to kill 1 and a half pod more before I caught up with her.
Unwittingly started the Ruler DLC early on Veteran. Fortunately, the Berserker Queen has an ACHILLES HEAL....STAIRS. If you position your entire team on a rooftop and block the stairs by positioning a member on top of each stair, she won't be able to reach your team. Just blast away from the rooftop...FLAWLESS victory.
If you didnt know, when you face any of DR. Vahlens creations, not only can they appear in any mission if they are still alive but if you damage them and they escape and you must face them again you will face them with whatever HP they escaped with.
My favorite thing is explosive traps, with a long range explosive... then when the alien moves into my team on their turn... a full scale assault of reaction fire. They 99% of the time attempt to flee or die.
Wow your voice...... It makes me wanna sleep forever
For dry clear eyes.....
You must also be a fan of Nicolas Cage.
Wtf
🤣🤣
😂😂😂
Decided to disable the nest dlc thinking it'd just disable the DLC. Third mission comes along and the viper king comes up. Manage to scare him off. Haven't play the second game before. This guides are really saving my troops
Well put together, and some great tips (if I'm ever silly enough to get the rulers DLC). Put on the 'A Better Advent' mod yesterday and had one of the most, er..., interesting? of missions.
I tried Long War 2 for the first time yesterday and had a similar experience. So many enemies whose capabilities I didn't know. It was really refreshing and I enjoyed it a lot more than I expected.
From what I've watched on UA-cam, LW2 gives a much more nuanced game. Must have been a huge amount of work and hopefully it gets better as the game progresses.
I never played Xcom 2 but I still watch your video just for your voice
If you have enough strong weapons and armor as stated, AND the frost bomb, you have a good chance of killing her or having her leave. Bolt caster can stun, but it’s not guaranteed. I think it’s a 20% chance. A lot of good tips in this video.
I would also add that Sparks are very good against her. She cannot panic them with her roar, nor can Sparks be struck unconscious. Combine that with the fact that a Spark unit with High Tier Armor and Bulwark is basically a walking tank and always have "Shredder" , and they're basically her worst nightmare.
Berserk queen can disable spark
I know this isn't impossible but god this dlc looks bullshitly unfair, all the gameplay I've seen of it that's unmodded is just squad wipe after squad wipe, honestly what were 2k thinking with letting the rulers react to every action you make???
My impression is that the lead developer, at least, thinks it's hilarious to kill off a bunch of your soldiers. I actually did a "Cat Meows" video about this topic and it's the closest thing to a rant I've ever uploaded.
But how does the alien hunters weapon stun it? Does it stop it from taking things like the reaction turns and attacking or does it do very little?
Dogma 515 the first time you fight a ruler it seems really hard and almost impossible. the next time you fight one you make a joke of them by debuffing them to hell. burning, acid, fire, frozen, stunned, dissorianted, etc. not to mention making them trigger cqq or overwatch every time they do anything besides stand still a die.
conventional weapons make them seem like a worthy fight. magnetic makes them easy. plasma turns them into a joke.
Rick Grimes Dirty On Dat Ass yeah I just figured this out, went against the viper King with frost bombs and alien hunter weapons, didn't even get a wounded soldier (Bradford doesn't count to me) then the berserker queen, even easier because she has to be close up to be effective...
Then I went against the archon King... He nearly wiped my whole squad on spawn, I was lucky to have nobody die on that mission, but then when he showed up again I got the repeater to execute him at nearly full health
The game really makes you think your fighting a loosing war.
Against the rulers remember these things: 1) mimic beacon , 2) ice grenade, 3) keep group spread apart. If possible try to arrange that the ruler has to charge for 2 turns before they engage, that way your grenadiers can shred some of the armor off and apply at +25% to hit debuff. Also Armor Piercing ammo for the sharpshooter helps a great deal.
Berserker queen ignored my mimic beacon
@@matenzo Are you sure you laid the beacon in the line of sight of the queen?
The way i defeated the Queen was by stun-locking her with dragon rounds, acid and gas grenades, aswell as the frost grenade. I was able to completely kill her in just one encounter.
You know what was really fun? Dealing with bitch queen, while waiting for incoming reinforcements while already trying to fight off enemies in field. Such endless fun in a game where you can have 99% chance to hit a target and still miss.
...I mean yeah. 99% isn't 100% you can miss.
With their aim xcom never stood a chance
I know for a fact this is gonna get lost in the comments, but I had the easiest time with Queen because I got lucky. Archon showed up first, beat the SHIT out of my squad, but after much, much trial and error, I got Regicide with no casualties, in the middle of a timed mission with other enemies to deal with. Hardest thing I've done in the game, period, especially because I had no idea about the rulers, and just grabbed all the DLC at once. Next, Viper always showed up when I was ill equipped, did some annoying shit, and ran. For many missions. Caught him off guard one time, though, as he ran into a stonewall of some of my better troops, but he actually NEVER showed up when my A-Team was all good. But Berserker...? I sent my Reaper, Igor Krachevskoy, on a solo to quietly vanquish an Avatar facility. I had a superior repeater handy and unlocked Banish for just such an occasion. Igor then went down in history as fucking Solid Snake by slaughtering the nearby patrol with a homing mine, save for an officer, then dropping the queen with 5 bullets to the face, and using his last shot to get another homing mine off on the nearby turret the officer hid near in a panic. He frantically ran around a little as Igor quietly sidled up and finished him off without revealing himself. Quietly shuffled into the compound on high alert, and walked off into the sunset with the Queen's corpse in tow as the whole building went up in flames. Remember kids, never tussle with the sneaky assassin.
I managed to 1 hit ko the queen in a VIP rescue last night . My squaddie ranger equipped with a repeater got hit by the berserker panicked did a shot and insta kill the most surprising event in xcom till date I was surprised to see the beast and surprised when it died with a single shot. I am still shocked by the whole thing
You know, coming from someone who loves using swords and especially the Hunter's Axe, I mostly do the Alien Hunters DLC to get the R.A.G.E Suit from the Berserker Queen. When you give a Ranger with a Melee build the Hunter's Axe and the R.A.G.E Suit, there are times where you could potentially wipe out an entire pod in a single turn due to all the free actions and damage you get, along with having heavy weaponry. So knowing how to take down the Queen easier is always good. So thanks for that
You're welcome, I hope it helps!
I killed her by repeatedly luring her to the top of a building and blowing the floor out from under her...it helped I had everyone in spider suits with the built in grapple.
This helped me so much, especially that I was unfortunate enough to encounter her on an UFO attack on the Avenger.
Glad to hear it Tiny, she can be a real pain when she shows up at the wrong time!
Hilariously, on one of the covert missions stumbled upon Viper King with my Reaper. Shot, after shot, reaper wouldn't get revealed and I just facerolled the fight, while the rest of the squad were busy with other stuff.
From there did the same to the rest of the "Kings". It's pretty amusing when you're pelting them with shots from concealment and the "King" just helplessly wastes turns running in circles :D
the fire damage tip from dragon rounds is PURE GOLD
I wish I had watched this clip before my first encounter with the Berserker Queen, as she caused me all kinds of hell every time I faced her...and I'd made the mistake of not getting the research projects done and stuff for the Predator Armor and Plasma weapons foolishly before facing any of the Alien Rulers, even if I did nearly kill the Viper King on the first encounter with no problem.
The first time I met the Queen, I managed to shave off more than half her health mostly by sending a concealed Reaper to spot her, sniping her from squadsight, then drawing her back with a "bait" unit. She would just keep going back and forth and never actually attacking.
Overwatch traps also work really well, and in general as long as you spot her before she spots you, you'll have an easy time with her. The only really painful to deal with Ruler is the Archon King.
I have had great suscess with the chance to instant kill. im sure my luck will run out eventually against her.
i did notice on a level 2 building she knocked my sniper off the corner of the building in cover from the ground with the earth quake think she does.
keep the vids coming i love this came all 3 versions
I wish I would've seen this before I started that storyline. I lost a good grenadier taking this thing down.
I lost my best sniper and highest ranking soldier to her in my first confrontation so I share that pain!
Another great vid TC!
Thank you!
now for something to do after you've killed her... The berserker armor in my opinion works best on a sword master ranger with the axes, you can use the berserker armors slam attack to get next to a recently revealed enemy as soon as their revealed and as that ability leaves you with full actions then proceed to throw your axe then rush with your other axe all in one turn. I've one shotted low level patrols with this combo and even if I fail to get the entire patrol I'll usually kill one and severely damage another while leaving the character in position to blade-storm the second as soon as they move
All these years later and you never did a video on the last alien ruler. I demand you rectify this injustice TapCat!!!
Found the 'zerker Queen to be the easiest to deal with of the rulers, just shred that armour off, then double team her with bladestorming rangers with blademaster and ionic blades, and/ or skirmisher with retribution/ionic blades, the stunlock while taking damage is beautiful, also poison/fire damage stacks really well, having a sharpshooter with either venom rounds/dragonfire rounds and fanfire does wonders in combination with this effect too. That being said, going up against any of them before magnetic weapons/ predator armour stage? Great way to lose soldiers, unless you are very lucky and coordinate well with what you've got.
Grenadier's two frost grenades solve any problem. The repeater works well for Skirmishers. Bolt caster + poisonous cartridge complex solves two problems at once. A ranger with a stun sword attack + defense protocol + smoke grenade, if the ranger has no natural cover when attacking, will increase the chances that the ruler will fixate on him and miss, and in the meantime you will activate the ruler with attacks from other fighters from a safe distance, but this is not the best option, it is better to leave it as a last resort, and only if the ruler is poisoned by a poisonous cartridge or gas grenade, this deprives him of accuracy and mobility.
I just really love that the rulers aren't immune to the repeater instant kill. Nothing makes me laugh more than seeing something with 60+ health drop like a sack of potatoes after a single hit
Probably the most common comments I get on my guides for the rulers are from people sharing their execution stories. You're definitely not the only one who savors those moments!
These guys are the real chosen
Thank god I had a 5% repeater on my grenadier, was not prepared at all but he killed it when I stunned her.
Thank god
I had a nice stun string thanks to two rangers w/ Bladestorm (Arc Blade) and a Skirmisher with Retribution (Ionic Ripjack). She escaped my first encounter but took out like 3/4 of her HP and all of her armor
My first ever play through I was so bad at killing the rulers that the Viper King was still alive when the Berserker Queen showed up. I only survived after many reloads…
That sounds seriously brutal.
Ouch didnt know that was a thing. I had just enough time to have made the suit before the queen showed up then
Can’t we use psy ops and use stasis at the end of every turn?
hey tapcat I have a question would you say the alien hunters DLC is worth it overall? been thinking about getting it for when I start an Ironman campaign but steam reviews are pretty mixed.
I believe that XCOM 2 is best without any of the DLC. Fighting the rulers in the early game when they first become available is an exercise in frustration. They'll routinely one-shot your soldiers and if they show up on patrol when you're in the midst of a firefight then you could easily squad wipe. And while your tactics can help reduce the number of attacks and possibly drive the rulers off sooner, it is entirely probably that you'll lose soldiers anyway.
Later on, they are still dangerous, but better gear and soldiers with more abilities to call on can take them down pretty reliably. In other words, there is never a time in the game when I feel like there's a sweet spot for difficulty. They should be extremely difficult, but survivable if you make good decisions. In my eyes, the devs simply didn't strike that balance. Your mileage could obviously vary, but that's my take on it.
TapCat thanks for the input! probably not gonna get it since as it is I already suck at the game, and would prefer (atleast for my first Ironman run) not to have all my troops die in a one to two shot or be taken out for a month.
Yeah, I don't want to be TOO harsh on it but it definitely isn't something you want while you're trying to learn the game. If you want to mix things up later on then you can always pick it up during a sale.
Late reply, but if you're still curious, you can enable the Alien Hunter DLC missions and just do the very first scan and receive the weapons. So you get to have all Alien Hunter weapons before the 3rd mission and they're a REAL upgrade to anything you have up until that point.
The Bolt Caster and Hunters Axe stay relevant even compared to Tier 2 weaponry with the Bolt Caster being the only weapon to 1 shot almost any of the early aliens, the Special Effect of the Shadowfall Pistol is guaranteed 2-3 damage for a Sniper (Minus armor) and the frostbomb stays relevant all game especially in the hands of a dedicated Demolition Grenadier. Seriously, alone the Frostbomb makes a game THAT much easier.
So the DLC allows you for an easier start into a hard campaign (like L/I ) with adding some more options to your squad and you can still later decide whether you want to start the Rulers and being able to upgrade your weaponry.
As a masochist this DLC is great. The absolute panic i feel from the monsters is better than any horror game.
7:35 bladestorm
heymisterderp Thanks I was wondering if that's what he meant
Holy shit, all this time and I never even knew you returned to youtube! After your move and announcement that you left youtube, I remained subscribed but eventually youtube just sort of... unsubbed me without my consent.
Hey, welcome back! I was actually amazed at how many people stayed subscribed after I was so definitive in saying that I wasn't going to upload more videos. But I am indeed back and have been uploading regularly for the past year.
TapCat Cool, cant wait to see more of what you have to offer and see what you've done.
When did he quit? I've only been watching his videos for about 7 months
Unique, I had some life changes at the end of 2014 that didn't leave time for UA-cam any more. I uploaded a video letting viewers know that I wouldn't be uploading videos and for almost exactly 1 year that was the case. At the end of 2015, I was able to come back and started creating videos again and expect to keep doing that for the foreseeable future.
first time I encountered her I was doing the first facility mission, had just fought a 2 pod group (they were together and my cover was already blown) and thus was out of ammo
even better, my assault was knocked unconscious on her first attack (2 tier axe with bladestorm, wanted her to stay meele stunning the shit out of the queen), my grenadier was also uncouncious right after (goodbye frost bomb. I wanted to take out her armor first)
I got lucky and critted it on every other hit
mission was pretty much over by that point
There some kind of armor that you can get if you research the Berserker Queen's corpse. What do you get from researching the King Viper's corpse. What do you get from researching the corpse of the King Archon?
It's armor for all 3. Each has unique abilities including the fact that enemies of that type will panic if they see you wearing it. So vipers will freak out if you wear the Viper King armor, etc.
What mod is it that gives you that Predator armor torso? The default is a tad dull.
Mr. Tapcat, will you be doing any videos using the mod Long War 2? It would be great if you do.
I'd like to do something, although probably not a full Let's Play given that the campaign runs for 100-120 missions according to the developers. No promises, but it's definitely something I'm looking at.
I love how these are supposed to be like the really dangerous boss alien, but through out all of my 3 campaign, somehow I always execute them with Repeater. All of them, in all 3 campaign. Doesn't matter if I'm just trying to hurt them so I can kill them next encounter or I'm opening with Rupture. They just, die.
Make sure to smack a superior repeater onto at least one of your soldiers' weapons. It does wonders.
I beat it by ... saving the game a lot, and reloading. I think it's called "Save spamming or scumming", I don't know. The bolt caster thing that stuns the leaders is good to bring too. Also I just tried to stay alive until she took enough damage to leave, and they don't regen lost health so eventually they will die. I also had the DLC with the Spark soldiers (ie; armored robot for your team to use) and helped with it's rocket weapon to shred the leader's armor.
Didn't know about rulers, activated them from a start. Had to went rookie difficulty to make any progress, still lost some of the veterans
My personal strategy to cheese this fight is to keep everyone on a rooftop. Then, when the bezerker is found, I place a soldier on each of the ladders, blocking her movement up. This means that she can't attack me, and I just take some free shots at her until she runs/dies.
How come you did first 2 bosses but not the third? Where’s the Archon boss?! Only the hardest boss of em all and only one that really did need a video!
Just ran into the queen on a random VIP mission, it managed to knock 3 of my soldiers unconscious (including my specialist with revival protocol). Had to choose what soldier i was gonna leave behind as i could only carry 2. VIP got killed on the way to evac and i managed to get my guys out with 1 turn left. As frustrating as this game is, i cant way it wasn't cinematic af.
On the easyest difficulty shes a troll, runs up, knocks out 3 out of 5 squad mates and then runs off, and is sometimes with a muton so once she runs off the 2 sods i have left have to deal with the remaining enemys
well tapcat, you can just recognize her roar and wait for her to attack her own squad
the viper armor helped me take her down cause once the frost grenade wear off I would freeze her again
I know this video is like 2 years old but I found a sort of exploit. Since the berserker queen only has melee attacks and can't jump onto high ground like a spark can, you can use a soldier to body block the ladder leading to high ground. This way, all your soldiers are safe on a platform unless they panic and jump off
Ps: exploit i found for viper king was just body blocking him into a wall with 3 soldiers when he's low enough to summon psionic portals. This bugs him into only trying to run and summon portals while your soldiers can just free fire.
gotta ask becuase im planning to start an XCOM 2 cmaping with the dlc installed soon, but does the damage done to the ruler stay around if it runs off and then you encounter it again in another mission?
Yes, the damage you do is permanent and will carry over to the next mission.
Otherwise it would be nearly impossible to kill the thing on Legend without having an entire squad with fusion shotguns with rapid fire and group them all near the berserker queen with blademaster so that when she moves every ranger will use their blades and if you have a fusion blade then thats just bad for the berserker queen
I had the Queen attack me during the Avenger defense mission and it wasn't pretty! I didn't have the defense matrix up and it was pretty early in the game so she just ran around knocking my people unconscious and destroying every piece of cover there was while the other aliens kept rushing in. I could only watch.
I hadn't started playing Ironman yet so I kept reloading to try to make it through alive. It wasn't until I had an EXTREMELY lucky run where almost every one of her attacks missed that I finally got the upper hand and pushed through.
Later in the same game I was getting attacked by the Archon King during an alien base assault and was getting wholly beat down until I lucked out and got an execution on him as a Gatekeeper and it's crew were showing up. I thought for sure I was going to lose everyone.
I love this game!
Edit-I was playing on Xbox and there was a glitch where the alien rulers showed up in my game without me ever having the option to start the whole thing with the Viper King mission. I was playing a game that I had saved before I bought the expansion packs and even though I chose not to do the missions the rulers just showed up in random missions. It's hard to explain
I thought I had some rough missions against the Berserker Queen, but now I'm just supremely grateful that she didn't show up during the Avenger Defense mission. That's rough!
My first encounters were viper kings in the earlier game and they're still ok. The BS moment was during mid game on a sabotage mission which turned out had archon some elite and shield advents, the double HP reviving Muton like thing and some specters, AND this B*** queen. Got to reload a few times but i still got destroyed. SO... just went with one reaper, sneak around and run like hell after planting the bomb lol.
She showed up the mission right after I kill the viper king.
She knocked one of my ppl unconscious and made my speacialist panic so I couldn't wake them up. And by the time I woke them up she was gone
TapCat have you watched the episode when ChristopherOdd fight the Berserker Queen? He launched some granades and the queen didn`t move at all. Is that exploit fixed? And does it still works?
I haven't seen it, but I did recently hear about that. It coincides with a similar experience I had against the Archon King. I haven't heard that they've fixed this and their track record at fixing bugs has not been great. This is the main reason I didn't suggest gas grenades... it just amounts to an exploit.
TapCat true but it can be hilarious sometimes lol
I think that is because the AI will avoid walking through acid or poison and in the Chris case is that all tile surrounding the Queen is poisoned so the AI broke, and I thought if you throw acid bom at her, she will take acid damage everytime she reacts. This one comes from Chirs video when he throw acid bom and display 16 turn on her acid counter.
Haven't tried this but would putting all of your guys except one on overwatch work? Obviously you would have to be fighting the ruler by themselves but it would let all 6 of your guys shoot for for every actions the leader takes, seems like it would help stack the damage on fast.
It would work if you can set it up before activating her. For example, if you had a stealth ranger that could see her and you set everyone up on overwatch before having him blast her then you'd get all those shots and she would only be able to react to the ranger. But once she sees your group, the party's over!
I Don't know if this comment will help anyone, but I realized why I was facing these things right up early game without ever having done any missions as stated in the videos. Its because at the start of the new game there is a box that asks if you want to enable the missions for the DLCs. I disabled those thinking it made things easier to learn the game, but apparently by doing that it just instanly unlocks these guys for them to randomly show up in your normal missions. Ouch!
This is a great point, they made the menu very confusing and it does pretty much the opposite of what most people would expect. If you keep that mission enabled, you can choose when (or even if) to activate the enemy rulers and that's a whole lot healthier for your soldiers!
Nice video as always! Glad you mentioned the killzone tip as that Is what I used to wreck the berserker queen. Tbh though, I find the berserker queen to be the easiest of the 3, I mean the snek has the least hp & armor but the fact that the snek has ranged attacks makes it more of a threat. Maybe it's because that the first time I met the Berserker I was able to kill it on the first go with a lucky overwatch ambush knocking off almost half of it's HP and shredding 2 armor! I know that won't happen everytime but still!
Do you plan on doing anything with Long war 2 mod, have you been checking it out a little??
I think I've actually had the hardest time with her, but part of it is luck. A couple of times when I've found her off camera, she'll slam my specialist first and eliminate heals, then attack the same soldier a couple times in a row to kill them. It certainly doesn't happen every time, but I'd say the RNG portion of her AI hasn't been kind to me. All that said, I rarely lose soldiers to any of them if I've got appropriate level gear. If I don't, I find all of them to be literal killers.
TapCat I had the worst time with the archon personally.That aoe attack is deadly
I agree that the Archon king is the most powerful overall. But I usually have tier 3 armor and weapons by the time I fight him, plus the group is getting up there in rank. So even though he's tougher, we've gotten sufficiently powerful enough to largely offset that. That said, he's extremely dangerous!
TapCat Yeah the first time I met him he killed my best soldier :( .Then I one shotted him with the repeater lol.
Gotta love repeaters. They are often the very definition of useless... right up until they're amazing and the greatest thing ever!
I'm guessing that after you do the archon King and war of the chosen is released you will make videos on how to kill the chosen
I do plan to start working on guides once War of the Chosen comes out, but I don't the order they'll be done in. That said, I would ultimately like to do guides for each of the Chosen as well as the Archon King.
Am i playing so well that i got all these rulers so early that i need like twice my armor & damage i just started 2 dsys ago im already fighting this with base armor & only the the first weapons upgrades
I literally don't know how I got so lucky during my encounters with the rulers. First encounter with the Viper King, one of my sharpshooters killed him with one shot (With that 5% equipment)
And then with the Berserker Queen, first encounter too, she rushed inside the room my soldiers we're in, I was using 3 rangers and all of them had blademaster. Each one had a free attack, and on their actual turn, one of them stunned her for 2 turns.
I got so lucky when I first met her. It was a retaliation mission and I overmatched my specialist. Advent turn one she shows up triggers the overwatch and is executed by my medics repeater.
wow this trick is amazing thank you
Most welcome 😊
I did notice you don’t mention psi operatives any reason?
My first time seeing it did pretty much nothing and got reduced to 11 on rookie difficult with mostly bladestorm
I got a lucky instakill shot my 5th time redueing the mission
Stuck on an advent facility cause of this girl xD
Gonna just try and plant thar C4 and get out at this point xD
That pound is insane
It really is and if she shows up when your squad happens to be relatively close together it gets really painful.
got my first encounter with her yesterday ate away half her healh from a roof there was 8 acces points from ladders 4 was from lower roofs and 4 was straight from the ground i blocked all ladders with soldiers on one side of the building but she still went that side she ran on lower roof and love taped my solider from downstair for 2 health when i saw that i trew a grenade to blow the floor from under her worked she had to run to other side of building she did make it up there but has soon has she did i shot her with the bolt caster and got lucky with a stun giving me 3 more free shots on her by that time i had shredded her armor also with a rocket and a grenade launcher shot has she was running towards building so i was all grouped together and got away pretty clean with only 2 health dmg to 1 soldier
i cant confirm if it wont hit you if higher then 1 floor but i can say she didnt even try it went for longer distance run to lower roof instead of 2 floor hiigh acces in front of her so i would say she cant
Hello tapcat, I just defeated the queen without a repeater in one turn from full health :)
Way to go!
Hugo Esson how may i ask?
Teach us!
Where is the one for the last of the rulers?
would've died at first encounter but she fled within my turn. Second encouter she didnt even get close. Same with the archon. Had serious trouble with the viper though