Hey everyone, I had a freaking BLAST with this run! Unlike Kyz, I can only play is short segments, so this was was actually played across 7 sittings and took a whopping 7.21 hours! It was worth the wait because this run put me in the top 20 of the high scores list (as of this writing
). I also streamed this run on my
https://www.twitch.tv/nuzcraft and plan to stream my future runs, though they won't all be with commentary.
From the beginning, this was my first run in Beta 4, and even though I was originally planning a bicycle build, a stash of improved treads in the new -10 lured me back. I took to the mines on both -10 and -9, but I don't remember anything crazy interesting happening, though I may have fought my way through an infestation
. The first couple factory floors were fruitful and I had a pretty good combat build going. Then, on -6, I entered the lower caves (dun dun DUN).
The first half of the caves was a breeze. I had rockets. Life was good. At one point in the second half of the caves, I tried to skirt by some enemies unseen...and was spotted. No biggie, I can handle them. Then a second patrol came in from a different direction and I was pinned. A combination of poor cover, lots of bad guys, and poor heat management meant I had to make a run for it. Virtually nakey, I found a branch entrance to...DM!
DM was fun and informative, but I was leary of the prox. caves that were to come. Sure enough, prox. caves were rough. At one point I had to choose between trying to skirt past a behemoth or a patrol...I chose the behemoth and it turned out okay
Later on, I ran away from progs and patrols and made it back to factory with 65 core. That was quite the adventurous branch
I managed to get restocked into a pretty fancy cannon build with some heavy treads and proton cannons, which didn't do us much good when we fell into the waste
I swapped over to thermal and kinetic weapons and managed to take out two crushers before a third started the beat down. I somehow managed to out-tread the crushers with a semblance of a cannon build intact, a rare feat indeed.
Back to factory sublevel 5, the restock began and I immediately found an exit (like within 100 turns) Welcome to factory sublevel 4. At this point, the items that made it through the waste were starting to show their wear, and the multitude of hunter squad lead me to move towards a kinetic leg build rockin' coil guns and myomer legs. I found a stash of micro-nuke launchers
and took a couple of them (good thing too!) as I then exited into the spooooky upper caves.
The upper caves were quite exciting, as I took advice from bugsniper to nuke patrols liberally. Seriously though, nuclear justice performed excellently in the caves, I can't recommend it enough. I found the exit to the second upper caves and then an exit to a mysterious branch with red walls. What could it be? It was W!
I'd only been to W once or twice, but I remembered (or was spoiled, can't remember) that after an amount of time an assault starts. That being said, I'd entertained myself with a plethora of information from DM and was excited to use it to pillage the SECRET STASH. Unfortunatly, I'm terrible at finding anything and the assault started long before I found my way to meet the infamous Mr. W and his pet Godmode. TrJack3 and bugsniper in the chat were lamenting my imminent demise as I chose to continue exploring instead of escape. Eventually, I found Mr. W and used my special codes to get a couple enhanced biometal legs and some utilities. Then I made my out through the secret exit, using a couple allies as distractions (as well as an experimental phase shifter) to make it safely to the proximity caves. Once again, I made liberal use of my nuclear justice to make it safely to research.
Research started out quite fruitful. Bugsniper convinced me to go for a hover build, which made sense since I was struggling in the propulsion department. At this point, my suboptimal mechanics really showed through, and some tips from bugsniper were really helpful in fine tuning my play (they mostly involved positioning in combat, so I guess I should be reading
DDarkray's Combat Positioning Guide Wandering around was going pretty well until I got cornered by a couple patrols and some errors on my part destroyed any cover I had. I ran for it and managed to find a close exit into a brand new branch...testing!
Testing was...interesting. I met
and ran away quickly. I was extremely low on matter and thought it would be a good idea melee a green bot...right in front of a couple researchers. Oops. Constantly in statis and getting pelted with gunfire, I scrambled for an exit, and ended up going in circles. Eventually, I found a garrison and zxc psudo-jokingly suggested entering a garrison to escape, and that's exactly what I did
Once in the garrison, I managed to take down a couple wardens to restock and then triggered multiple hunter squads
I scraped by, by the skin of my teeth and once again made a run for the exit. ESCAPE!
Now, at -2, almost naked, I needed to restock. Fortunatley, we quickly got a tread build up and running and started exploring. Warlord was attacking from the south, so I did my best to avoid the assault squads that were being deployed. Unfortunatly, being scanned in testing brought with it the wonderful gift of combat programmers! The are SUPER SPOOKY and I don't like them. I poked around, running in circles and ended up with a pretty cool lance build from all the strikers I killed. Unfotunately, the sheer number of robots overwhelmed me and I succumbed.
In the end, this run was amazing. It was my longest and best run yet, and I learned a lot about the game!
You can check out my full scoresheet
hereI really enjoyed this writeup and will try to do long ones like this in the future (they take a long time though!)
Check me out on
twitter,
youtube, and
twitch! I'm try to upload Cogmind vids every M, W, F and am planning on streaming more often!