f13.net

This thread is for any tips and tricks you may need, or whathaveyou.

Obviously, there may be spoilers, please black text them.

You know:



DO NOT POST STORY SPOILERS IN THIS GODDAMN THREAD. I WILL SLAY YOU.

Someone please tell me what the most overpowered build is now.  I'm a wuss and the only way I can get through these games is by having god like powers.  Actually, if there is already a god mode cheat known for the PC that would be ideal.

I bought SS2, installed it, ran through the tutorial, got to the opening screen where you don't know what's going on with all those worms crawling around and hit alt+f4 because it creeped me out too much.  Never even tried to play it again.  I stopped playing resident evil 4 after reading the manual where it said at some point I would have to leave the girl alone and she might be dragged off screaming.  It is still sitting on my shelf, it never even got a chance to be inserted into the ps2.  But I will play Bioshock, the switch to be more of an FPS instead of a pure thriller will be fantastic for me.

It isn't any less creepy than System Shock.  If anything, it's worse.

My wife downloaded the demo over the weekend and played it late Saturday night while I was sleeping. She didn't make it past the creepy girl and Mr. Bubbles.

All I'll say is you missed two enormously good games.  Don't make that mistake a 3rd time...

Oh, and the ghosts in SS2 would have put the shit right up you.

:)

Edit: Nevermind...just another bug in the game.

Electro-Bolt + Wrench is a stupidly awesome combo that seems to last for quite a while.

Electrobolt+Wrench is awesome until you get Ice + Armor Piercing Bullets in the machine gun (or the grenade launcher).

Oh man. That will rip shit right the fuck apart.

Beware of hacking in the PC version. Apparently it has a tendency to trip a bug that causes you to crash out, and by all appearances make your last saved game crash on load up as well.

I get to start over again.  :x At least it's pretty.

You mean don't save every 10 feet in these types of games?

right so some explosion freaked me and I wigged out and ran while looking behind me and then i sort of turn around and find that i decided it would be cool to run straight into a big daddy.

so the big daddy summarily bitchslaps me against a wall and goes RRRRNNNURURRAAAAHHHGGGHHH!! (translation: get to fuck) and even points in the direction i can go in return for not being messily killed.

thoroughly intimidated now i go leave and hide in a corner and it takes a few minutes hovering near a health station to get the resolve up to keep chugging through this hideous underwater hell.

Man, when was the last time I was ever cowed by a game? Oh rite -- ss2.

I'm clearly going to like it on Friday.

Alas, I'm probably going to be one of the people that's bugged to fuck tho.  My luck never holds.

No crash on hacking for me, I've hacked a bunch of stuff.

Hint: When you get telekinesis, drop the electrobolt power and keep the fire power unless you've already melted the two iced-over doorways. I only melted one before I got telekinesis, doh. None of those doohickeys to swap them back (genebank?) in the medical level, so I'll have to backtrack at some point to finish that little area.

Or, just melt the two doorways as soon as you get the fire plasmid and do whatever you want :P

Does anyone think there might be a penalty later on based on how many times you jam an Eve syringe into your body?  Something along the lines of since you used (X number) of Eve you get permanently twisted into a splicer yourself, I fear an alternate ending.  I'm trying to take it easy on the roids just in case.

One complaint:

Total lack of enemy variety.

It feels like Condemned, only with a higher respawn rate :(

Edit: The game is amazing despite this, which I suppose makes it even more of an achievement. Though, if they quadrupled the respawn rate we'd be looking at Dynasty Warriors Central Park Submerged! Edition.

Yet you could use this complaint against SS2 as well.

SS1 was better in that regard tho.

Given the situation you're entering, the types of  opposition you face makes sense.

Now, if you entered  in say ten years later, with some continued development, it could really be a freakshow.

Just imagine everyone that's crashing at the beginning  as deciding not to take the scary elevator under the water and just decided to hole up in the lighthouse until a search team showed up.

Idiot n00b question:

Does dying have any kind of penalty?  The first of those robo-bodyguard things I had to fight must have killed me a half-dozen times.  Step out of respawn machine, walk up to badnik, put a few bullets into it, screen gets all blurry, can't see or aim or anything, die somehow, repeat until all it's health is gone.  As far as I could tell, I was actually gaining EVE from doing this, and I didn't seem to be loosing money or ammo.  Am I loosing something here and not noticing it, besides the ten seconds it takes to walk from the checkpoint to where I died?

No, its pretty lame, But of course you don't want to die. Use the camera when you get it and the game gets easy. really it is an enjoy the environment, get spooked a few times. If you research as much as you can the game is not difficult. But the environment is so cool. Well, I am an fanboy, I think it is really cool.

Dieing has 2 bad effects

Little sisters will take the chance to go hide again. This isn't a problem, just wait for the Daddy to bring another one out.

Splicers will heal themselves at nearby heal stations. Just hack them first :).

The first time I saw that my jaw dropped, fucking NPCs aren't supposed to be smart enough to use MY first aid stations!

I'm replaying on hard and one of the mad doctors was throwing grenades at me in medical. I run out ammo, have a silver of health left, but decides to run to the hacked health station.

He dies, blows himself up with the last grenade as they tend to do, and that then destroys the health station I needed to use!

Something else that improves the game: I downloaded latest vid drives and that made everything...very dark. Darker than Thief Dark. Much more atmospheric.

That chemical thrower is a freaking godsend. The cross bow I'm not using that much, but using trap bolts while retreating into cleared areas works well. Some powers work really well with the stealth concept. I definitely want to go that route.

Research research research.  That with electron gel whittles a Big Daddy to dead in nothing flat. I loves me some electron gel.

The crossbow's the sniper rifle of the game, and once you upgrade it to have the bolts not break so often, you only rarely have to buy more ammo for it.

So far I have but one complaint.

Wrench Jockey + Wrench Lurker was powerful enough on its own but factoring in Bloodlust effectively ended any and all shortages in the entire game for me. But, I guess this is okay in a game that won't even let you die.

I have been heavily biased towards one-shot-one-kill weapons. I have considered the machine gun useless for much of the game and only ever seem to use it to hammer big daddies with a surplus of AP ammo. I use the crossbow and the shotgun when I am not using the wrench.

Bear in mind also that you can stack level 1 with level 2.

:)

and enough research on bouncers provides a 50% wrench damage increase cumulative with everything.

Even shard + adrenaline overproduction in SS2 was not this cheesy. I am giving up the wrench bonuses and bloodlust now because they turned the game into a not-scary-at-all version of Whack-A-Splicer (Win Every Time™) and I wish to return to the game I was previously playing.

Another stupid question:

How are you guys getting rid of those electric tripwire traps?  I generally just shoot out the bolt with a pistol, but that seems like a waste of ammo.  Sometimes I can telekenetically toss things through the wire, but that takes EVE...  I can't seem to connect with the wrench, for some reason, either.  Is there some cheap way to do this?

You can pull the bolts out of the wall with telekinesis. Also, any sort of explosion I believe will remove the traps.  Additionally, you can hold a chair or something largish infront of you and set of the trip wires by walking the object into them.

I just shoot them with the pistol. Might try the MG if there starts to be too many of them.

regular MG rounds are essentially useless and probably win for cheapest method; otherwise TK takes the cake due to the low eve cost. objective fact.

I tried the MG and it's pretty inaccurate, averaging 3 to 5 rounds to take out one wire. I'll stick with pistol or TK for now.

I used the shock plasmid, it overloads them.

That's a lot of EVE.

Any advice on what weapon to upgrade? I'm a little into arcadia with an upgraded damage Machine Gun and I'm liking it a lot so far, outside of the fact the game took 90% of my fucking ammo during the Peaches event.

I liked the grenade launcher damage upgrade against big daddies.  The crossbow (you'll get later) has a damage and the ability to retrieve the bolts for upgrades. Pretty much makes it a sniper rifle with infinite ammo.  The shotgun damage is helpful too, since again, it was one of the main ways I took down big daddies (electronic buck), otherwise I didn't use it a whole lot.  I really wish the shotgun had an increased clip size.

I upgraded the pistol last.  Chemical thrower right before it.  I didn't use either of those very much. 

The pistol just doesn't hold enough ammo. I don't think you get enough ammo storage for the shotty either so I went with the machine gun...smart move that was since the game has pretty much stopped giving me machine gun ammo after taking it all away during the Peaches event (I'm pretty bitter about that).

Also, is it me or did Atlas assume a whole fucking lot of me after the fun in the submarine bay? Hello? I just wanted out thanks??

I upgraded the shotgun damage and reduced the chemical thrower fuel usage the first two opportunities I got. With reduced fuel use + electric gel Big Daddy fights are pretty easy.

As for which plasmid + weapon to use, I liked Incinerate + Machine Gun. Incinerate leads off and does DoT while the MG whittles down health while I can see them. If they run away, that's fine - there's a good chance they'll drop due to the fire before they can reach the water or heal. Plus an burning enemy is an enemy who attacks you less.

Incinerate is generally cheaper on EVE than Electrobolt. TK can also be used to do some pretty good damage by throwing things at targets and it uses minimum EVE.

The chemical thrower is a good anti-Daddy weapon with the electric gel, because as long as the ammo holds out, your target's paralyzed.  A couple of mines on the floor, an arrow to the head, he runs over the mines to get to me, then hose with electric gel until down.

Napalm works well on splicers.

The thrower was an underwhelming weapon but it was a nice topper-offer for big daddies.

I only ever had to use it in fluke circumstances, however. Trap bolts + mines would, for a significantly light amount of resources, take out any big daddy, since they are compelled to charge you pretty much no matter what. One corridor + one corner provides all the impetus for the big lugs to charge through several wires at you.