Anyone can do this.  All you have to do is wait 3 months and pre-order patch 1.2! You get the full game, bug-free.

Snark aside, it remarkable how tolerant we gamers have become to shady business practices.  I’ve had my fair share of pre-orders in the past, though nowdays it seems everything has some sort of benefit tied into it.  Gamestop has a bonus mission for AC:Origins.  Mass Effect 3 had the playable Prothean as a pre-order.  I have a rule now, that any game that gives me additional content (not cosmetics) is not going to see a dime on regular priced material.  There are literally hundreds of other things I can play or do until some bargain bin sale comes around.

If you think about it, the only benefit pre-orders allow is that you can pre-download the game in order to play on day 1 (PC that is).    Does that even matter on a single player game?  I can sort of see multiplayer games, where you all want to play at the same time… but even then, the servers are likely going to get bombarded for the first few days.

I’ll give a recent example – For Honor.  Tons of hype.  The pre-launch videos were all smooth, and things looked engaging.  Pre-order gave you some extra customization skins (at least the base game version, ignoring Gold/Deluxe crud).  Then the early reviews came out.  They were generally negative, in particular around network connections and game balance.  Steam play has dropped by 95% now.  It lost 70% in the first month.

There are other examples: Evolve, Aliens Colonial Marines, SW Battlefront, Battleborn, AC3 & 5.

There’s always the argument that mutliplayer games need to be played on day 1.  Any multiplayer game that is half decent will not drop all players after a few weeks.  Any well-balanced multiplayer game will not make it so that veteran players completely outrank new players in PvP.  If you find a game where those statements are not true, then you’re playing a game you should not have paid for.

If anything, waiting 2 weeks will provide a better experience due to the “kitchen sink” patch that always comes out a few days after launch.

It’s just so much easier to put the money back into your wallet and wait a few more days.  At least the game will be playable by the time you join.

I like the cartoons, I dislike the movies.  Dislike may not be the correct word.  All the movies are identical in plot.  Humans stumble upon Transformers.  They are after some “ultimate” mcguffin that will save the world, Optimus will die, Megatron will be defeated, there’ll be some lady in skimpy clothes.  Done.

Most transformers games were garbage.  Hard to figure out why, given that it’s just robots on robots… and we’ve had plenty of those games.  The movies put in more energy to the games though, and 2+1 of them stood out.

War for Cybertron/Fall of Cybertron are 3rd person shooters on, yes, Cybertron.  Everything is technology, everyone can swap into some sort of vehicle, you can play both sides, the plot is as nonsensical as the cartoons, the set pieces are immense, and they are a complete blast to play through.  The first one has decent coop, the second one has tighter controls.  Plus, there’s something to be said about fighting against/as giant city robots.

They are maybe 8 hours a piece.  Not a terrible challenge, as there’s some auto-aim involved, headshots don’t seem to matter, and generally large hit boxes.  Good diversion games.

Transformer: Devastation is a different beast.  Here’s a vid from Total Biscuit on it, which covers a fair chunk.

The combat is high paced, but can get repetitive.  The zones also repeat themselves a bit.  The story is solid, the mechanics all seem to work.  It may be a bit short (about 5 hours without digging too much), but the fun factor is through the rough.  It feels a whole lot like the cartoon on the screen.

Overall, I consider it a better game than the previous two as it feels much harder to take a break.  At about $20 or less, it’s a great bargain.

I’m not cheap, I just like to compare.  Cheap is when you buy a tool for $25, knowing it will break after the job, when you could get a tool for $100 that will last forever.  Comparing is when you know what you want and try to find a better deal for it.  There’s always a deal somewhere, and there’s always the “big store” where anything can be found.

For PC games, that’s usually Steam.  Sure, they have their regular sales, and then the summer/winter bargain bins.  The rest of the time, they have games at a fair bit more than their competitors.

With XCOM2 done, I’m looking for something to spend the time until Destiny 2.  I recently finished up my 6 month playthrough of Transformers: Fall of Cybertron, and have a bit of time in Transformers: Devastation. Much different games, and I’ll talk about that in another post.

Right now, the 2 games that seem the most promising are Divinity 2 and Shadow of War.  Everyone seems to be raving about the former (and the 1st game was very good), and the latter has pre-reviews everywhere that are generally positive.  Up in igloo-land, prices aren’t too bad.  $54 for D2 and $80 for SoW on Steam.  Most A+ games are $70+.

I rarely pay $70+ for any game, unless it’s a dev I really want to support.  I can tell you that EA is not one of those devs.  Lo and behold, I check my promotions folder in gmail and found a GMG entry for SoW.  Super pre-order sale, plus more savings with a code.  It brought the price down to $38US, or more like $47 in icebucks.

Not exactly half-price but certainly a massive savings.  The downside here is that I have to wait until Tuesday to sink my teeth into it.  The upside is that it’s a long weekend here, celebrating the birth of Jean Poutine, and the annual tuque dog-sled races will keep me busy until then.  Sorry.

In fact, after the last post I was but 3 research days away from the last mission.  I just skipped all the other events and went full in.

You still need about 150 intel to fully stock the penultimate mission.  That gives you an extra soldier (for 4 total), stealth, some immunity, and larger vision range.  2 snipers took down everything and you just need to hack the final console to beat this mission.  I don’t really get it, considering the difficulty everywhere else.

The final mission is 2 zones.  First is a zone about twice the size of a regular mission… or at least it feels like it.  Advent to start, then moves through harder and harder enemies, ending with 2 Sectopod and 2 Advanced MEC.  That part was pretty easy, since the alien pods are so far apart.  A single sniper with Serial (free action after a kill shot) was able to take all 4 down.  Well, that was after my Avatar sent a null lance to take some hit points to start.  Things were looking pretty easy.  Ran through with 3 total damage taken.

Then the 2nd zone.  There are only 2 objectives here.  Don’t let the Avatar die.  Kill 3 enemy Avatar.  I figured… cake.

Wrong.

There is something about this particular zone that is broken.  Overwatch shots have a <50% chance to hit.  Any shot that is not a crit on an Avatar will graze.  The game actually crashed on me 4 times.  Twice it was due to detecting a vanished Spectre.  The first Avatar took a few more hits than it should have (all 6 guys) and I figured it was doable from that point.

Well, there are 6 teleport pads and they bring in all sorts of friends to the battle.  Actually moving forward is a horrible idea as I had 4 alien pods active at the same time.  Thankfully my Templar was at 3 energy, and was able to “tank” the enemy for a bit.  Enough to return their fired shots and be more or less immune to melee damage.  The enemy wanted to Mind Control someone else, thankfully.

Psionic Storm, a few Serial buffs to take out straggler, grenades, a blaster launcher, a claymore, Banish, a Mimic Beacon… you name it, I had to use it.  This was by far the hardest mission in the game and nearly everyone ended up taking damage.  This wasn’t due to poor planning, but more to some artificial balance mechanism to reduce my chance to hit.  Let me tell you, it is next to infuriating to miss a 100% chance shot, hit a console, blow it up, and take damage on your own soldier.  How does that even happen?

Anyhow, the last Avatar went down with a sword swipe and I was treated to the end credits.  The 3 factions get a 20 second end scene, Skirmishers with the more interesting one.

Overall package, the game is still highly recommended.  The power balance at the end is off, and I can only assume it’s worse if you had the alien hunters DLC.   Not much to do there.  There is always going to be some level of comfort in taking out aliens in XCOM.  I’m glad this run through brought back those feelings.

I’ve finished the Blacksite missions and the Codex brain missions, currently researching the final 2 steps.  These missions are designed to be done with regular weapons – maybe mags, if you play them when they show up.  I waited.  I tried to make it a bit harder with captains and sergeants, but that wasn’t enough to offset a full upgraded sniper rifle, with 4 extra ammo, 4 free reloads, bluescreen ammo and 20% chance to hit.  The sniper kills everything in 1 hit.  Killzone (overwatch shot on anything that moves) + 7 ammo + squadsight = clear a map.

I managed to take out the Warlock as well.  The first floor was oddly linear and my Ranger never broke stealth.  The 2nd floor, I think things just ended up perfect.

Two advent soldiers down in a turn.  I know where the trigger line is with the chosen (2 tiles past half), so I set up the team for an ambush.  He had the most hit points of all the Chosen but still went down in a single round thanks to a chain shot sniper.  That gave the rest of the team free shots on the sarcophagus.  End of round had a Codex and Advent soldier show up.  A serial sniper (keep shooting after kills) took care of those 2 and the rest of the team took down the sarcophagus.  Warlock came back at 40% health, went down in 1 melee strike.

I think now I’m just going to assume the game is complete and go through the motions.  Even with really bad RNG, the damage taken is maybe 3-4 days of recovery.  They are tired for longer.    The power scales have tipped a tad too much in my favor – and I think the root cause is amazing luck on breakthroughs.  I started off early with extra weapon damage, then extra mods.  I do understand that RNG has benefits and drawbacks, but I think there’s a missed opportunity here for some added failure that is not time based.

A few items that could have worked better:

• a separate tired system, with a method to accelerate returns.  Right now, it’s  just a number you have to wait out.  The templar base should address this.
• a more pronounced negative trait system that goes beyond panic.  Lower aim%, lower mobility, failed reload, missed grenades… that sort of stuff.
• Breakthroughs that are weighted against previous breakthroughs and have a cost other than time
• A reason to use a specialist beyond healing
• More mobility for enemy units so that they can close the gap, or pull you out of cover
• A way for a soldier to “tank up” and draw fire.  The AI uses proximity to determine threat
• Better use of enemy threats.  Every month they choose 3 to look at, and you can counter 1 through a guerrilla mission.  I never found them to be threatening.
• More use of the Lost.  They are certainly a challenge at low gear levels.  Sending 3-4 swarms to a high ranked mission is a great twist.  I had it happen a couple times… very entertaining

I think the next update on XCOM2 will be when I clear the final mission.

Rose colored glasses perhaps, but I recall fairly clearly the time I was forced to Skulljack a Codex and out popped an Avatar.  I lost nearly everyone on that mission due to the teleports and massive power that thing had.

Now though?  My sniper had serial with 3 free reloads, 100% hit rate across the map, and 50% critical rate, and he was 3 floors above everyone.  What does this mean?  It means that I skulljacked the Codex to start the round, that removed stealth from the team (minus Reaper & Ranger), spawned an Avatar, and somehow managed to trigger 2 alien pods (advent soldiers).  Oh, and it was a mission to take out an enemy general… who is continuously running away from you.

First hit was for 10 damage and shredded his 1 armor.  Teleported away from the main force, but my sniper could still see him.  22 damage and down.  Serial was activated, and that took out every other visible enemy.  Sniper had 8 kills in 1 turn.

Sure enough, the general had moved away, but not far enough from my Reaper.  Squadsight + grenade launcher on my Grenadier took away his cover and my sniper took him out in another shot.  Map over I thought.  But no, the Chosen Warlock showed up.  He can see through stealth and is immune to melee, so the Reaper and Ranger were useless for damage.  Guess who did all the work?

Don’t get me wrong.  A ranger with the Chosen katanas is a super beast.  They can walk all over a map with hidden Chryssalids and bladestorm each to death.  She took out 6.

My challenge right now is when I get a ton of pods open, and there’s at least 1 crazy enemy.  Like a Sectopod, or a Andromedon.  I’m a few missions away from the final Chosen battle.  I need to rest up a few folk first.  After that is complete, I’m pretty much just a walking chainsaw.

Psi Soldier

I think this is the one area of the game that has been neglected the most in all the DLC.  You still need a Psi Lab.  You still need to take that soldier out of rotation to train.  Training still takes many, many days.  It means that soldier never develops any bonds, and can’t do any covert ops.  Meta-wise, it means that you have very little experience actually using those skills, if they die you’ve lost months of in-game time and no way to accelerate a replacement, and your gameplay tactics are already set by the time one is available.

It is the least intuitive class in the game, which is too bad because they are also incredibly powerful.  I just won’t ever be using one this playthrough.

It’s a game.  There are bugs and quirks.  Here are a few I’ve noticed so far.

Bugs

The game does crash, and the “send log” feature takes about 2 minutes to complete.  I’ve had this happen a half dozen times now.

Quicksave sometimes doesn’t work.  I use this when I start a new map and continue to use it as I progress 3-4 turns.  There’s an auto-save feature, but that’s pretty inconsistent from what I’ve seen.  Combined with game crashes, this can have me lose an hour or so of play.  I’m now in the habit of manually saving.

Quickload sometimes doesn’t work.  I mean, the quicksave is there, just that the button does nothing.  So you have to manually load the game.  It’s like the keystroke doesn’t work.

The Templar overwatch is on button 3 – everyone else is on button 2.  When you press 2 with a Templar, you will shoot someone (or do nothing).  I’m chalking this up to bug, because anyone who spent 5 minutes playing a Templar would have seen this.

The Reaper ability Silent Killer does not always work.  This is supposed to keep you in stealth mode if you have a kill shot.  I play my Reapers forward, as they clear the fog of war.  When their kill shot breaks stealth, they are pretty much dead.

Psionic Bomb doesn’t always show up on the screen.  I know it was cast since everyone needs to reload (only keep melee folks together to avoid the pain of this), but the actual graphics don’t show.  This makes it really hard to position soldiers in order to avoid the explosion.

Scientific breakthroughs do not account for covert operations.  What I mean is that if your do an operation that unlocks +1 dmg on assault rifles, you can still end up with that as a research progress.  The research completes instantly, you get no benefit, and the breakthrough is essentially wasted.

I’m not sure what the trigger is, but enemies had a 100% success chance on any psionic attack for a long time.  Eventually my squad starting resisting some of them.

Enemies can and will ignore mimic beacons, even if its thrown at their feet.  Also, never sell a Faceless corpse.

The Planewalker Chosen ability is like teleport.  If it triggers off a melee strike, the Chosen can move to a separate part of the map but the character still appears in front of you.  If you try to shoot it, then you’re aiming for an empty spot on the map.  Confusing.

Melee strikes on overwatch do not prevent other soldiers from shooting.  I’ve wasted a few overwatch turns just to have my Ranger kill it in 1 hit, then have 3 other soldiers shoot a corpse.

Quirks

Hacking still sucks.  With a Gremlin III, it’s still a 50% chance of stunning a Sectopod.  Controlling a mech unit is a crapshoot.  Maybe it doesn’t work and they get buffed.  Maybe it does and they all of a sudden see a massive chunk of the map and activate 2-3 pods.  I am finding very little use for dedicated Specialists…but I can see why they would be useful in Ironman or Legendary – you need the heals.

You can’t Bladestorm a Spectre.  One great tactic is to attack with melee and stand next to an enemy.  The AI will 99% move, allowing for a free melee strike.  This does not ever seem to work with Specter (black and green guys).  You can shoot them, just can’t use a sword.

ADVENT Priests and stasis are just painful.  They won’t die, come back with 1 HP and then mind-muck a soldier.  Put someone with Bladestorm next to them.

In the base game, light armor with Grapple was essential.  You needed this to clear timed maps that were in the city and had large obstacles.  These are no longer relevant in WotC, and Warden armor (giving an extra accessory slot) is way more useful.  Exception!  Using the Wraith skill to go through obstacles can make easy work of any sabotage mission – especially on high mobility rangers.

Shot chances are seeded, so save scumming is not an option to increase a single soldier’s odds.  It will randomize the 2nd shot taken though.

Melee strikes, while extremely powerful, are extremely dangerous.  In most cases, you will end up triggering another aliend pod.  The best way around this is to put someone in stealth behind the pod and ensure there’s nothing else around you.  Templar, Ranger and Skirmisher can all do this.

I only needed 1 resistance comms building in my base this time, as covert ops and exploration missions can unlock more connections for you.  Massive quality of life boost.

An infirmary with an Engineer makes quick work of any injuries.  There is no way to speed up recovery time from being “tired”, and it appears to be a separate timer.  I had one person tired for 12 days.  Also, removing negative traits requires a fully healed/rested soldier.

The ambush missions after covert ops are generally poorly laid out.  You start with 2 soldiers and have to cross the entire map, through a dock-like map.  There are no enemies on turn 1.  Turn 2 you will wake a single enemy pod while moving forward and reinforcements will come to the start of the map.  Turn 3 is just pure movement, trying to find cover from the first pod and likely triggering the 2nd.  Turns 4-6 are just about getting towards the extraction zone without dying and then triggering the Lost faction waiting for you.  Walk in, extract, done.  You should never fire a single shot during these missions and you want to spread the soldiers to avoid grenade strikes.

Covert Ops provide permanent buffs to soldiers.  Pay attention.  Especially for the mobility boost, which is a massive buff to any melee soldier – particularly Rangers.

Covert Ops priorities should be useful breakthroughs, scientists (til 6), engineers (til 6), reduce avatar progress (if above half), extremely useful resistance orders (like 33% less chosen progress).  Hunting chosen 1 and 2 provide an extra slot for resistance orders, so it may or may not be useful.  Covert Ops also change every month, and when a Chosen mission is complete.

A fully buffed sniper can take out nearly any target in a single turn, anywhere on the map.  On lower HP enemies, he can take out an entire pod (with Serial).  A reaper doing the recon work can provide a secondary kill shot and remain in stealth.  This is borderline OP.

If you don’t have a timer mission, there are no enemies on screen, and you have skills on cooldown – go into overwatch without moving to recharge those skills.

My typical squad rollout has 1 sniper, 1 grenadier (with Shredder), 1 ranger.  I take an extra stealth class (reaper, ranger).  The rest I rotate for experience, or on tough missions, I load out all 3 new classes.

This went by a lot smoother than I had expected.  It certainly helps that I have plasma weapons, and pretty much all the weapon damage breakthroughs (+1 damage) unlocked.  I’ve generally lucked out when it’s come to breakthroughs and covert ops, truth be told.  I’ve only had 1 that was related to base building.

Since it was a Chosen mission, I took the A squad – reaper, skirmisher, templar, sniper, ranger, and grenadier.  I am still having a challenge finding a use for the specialist.

The first floor layout was simple enough.  Mostly just advent regular forces, that go down in 1 to 2 shots each.  Even the Andromedon at the end was an easy kill since the sniper does about 18 damage per shot.  The trick to this was not using the 1-per mission skills (grenades, stealth) as I wanted to save them for the 2nd floor.  This was made a bit easier due to 3 melee (templar, ranger, and skirmisher) who deal a crazy amount of damage and will attack when someone moves.  3 bladestorms are deadly.

Floor 1 complete, I took the ramp down, and again I was faced with 2 advent soldiers.  That was cake.  The floor layout was different here, with the middle of the map at a higher elevation.  Still had the 4 pads in the corners.  Elevation = deadly snipers.

I used my stealthed reaper to trigger the Chosen spawn.  He was brittle (more melee damage) but also had the ability to teleport after taking damage.  My templar took the first shot and hit for 19.  The Chosen popped a slight distance away with a teleport, but thankfully my ranger has 15 movement and finished him off with a 2nd swipe.  This left my sniper, reaper, grenadier, and skirmisher with free attacks on the sarcophagus. It was a pile of damage, about 75% of what was needed.  Round ends.

Codex and Advent Priest show up.  Sniper 1-shots the Codex.  Grenadier takes first shot and the Ranger finishes off the Priest with a melee strike.  Of course, the Priest ends up in stasis.  Rather than have the templar shoot the sarcophagus, I move him to the nearby pad.  Still a bit of damage to the sarcophagus, but not yet enough to destroy it.

Next round has a Chryssalid and MEC Advent showed up.  Unfortunately for the Chryssalid, he showed up next to my templar, who 1-shot him with a melee strike.  MEC advent went down with a single sniper shot (bluescreen rounds FTW).  The priest also woke up, but the ranger took him out with a bladestorm.  Sarcophagus is finally down.

Chosen shows up, I have 3 guys on overwatch and he walks by my templar. That was enough damage for my sniper to take him out with an 85% hit shot.

Overall, I think I really lucked out on this mission.  Enemies were really weak, and the Chosen himself was extra weak to melee damage.  The spawns themselves were low HP enemies, enough to go down in 1-2 hits.  Had I had an Andromedon, Sectopod or a Gatekeeper, things would have gone wrong.

I also think that the Hunter is poorly suited for the tight map as compared to the Assassin (close up damage) and Warlock (super range, AE, summon damage).  With a large investment in mobility for my soldiers (average is 13 for the A squad), as well as bonds that increase the number of action points, it is much easier to close the distance.

I’m still a month or so before I’m ready to take on the Warlock.  And all of this is before I’ve completed the ADVENT Blacksite mission.  Still having a ton of fun, and it’s getting easier to recover from mistakes.  We’ll see how long that part lasts as I encounter more Sectopods.

In the base game, Snipers with Squadsight were death dealing machines.  Fix em up just right, and they could clear an entire map with a stealthed Ranger to find the bad guys.  Rangers excelled at quite a few short-timed missions, in particular the base attacks where you needed to plant explosives.  They wouldn’t kill anyone, but they’d bypass everything and get out before a single shot was taken.

Reapers are what happens when Snipers and Rangers make babies.

They can get right up to someone, shoot them in the back, and retain stealth.  They can throw claymores, essentially grenades that need to be shot after landing, and not break stealth.  The more people they drop, the higher their crit chance.  And then there’s Banish.

Banish requires stealth.  It breaks stealth on use, so you don’t get +2 armor pen (but tactical rigging can offset this).  It has regular hit rates.  It uses all your PCS and weapon upgrades.  And it empties your entire magazine in an enemy – plus can target another one afterwards.

With the +3 ammo clip and a scope, this is a 1 shot kill on anything but the Chosen sarcophagus, and perhaps a Legendary Sectopod.  Anything else is just toast.  You only get 1 use per mission, but considering that you rarely get 2 Sectopods or Gatekeepers… this is a wash.  But you can have 2 Reapers on a mission too…

Templars and Skimishers have their place as well, and focus a bit more on movement play.  That has a rather high risk factor, compared to their potential damage output. I’m sure it has a lot to do with my preferred playstyle.

Next mission up is the Hunter Chosen base.  Now that I know what to expect, of sorts, it allowed me to better plan my squad.  This will be a lot of fun.

It took quite a few days, but I was able to run the necessary Covert Ops (3 of them) to unlock the final base for the Chosen Assassin.  I find her to be the most annoying, since Overwatch doesn’t work on her, she has tremendous movement speed, decent damage, and can return to stealth.  So target #1.

Ok, maybe not target #1.  More like “the only thing not on fire #1”.  This is XCOM.

I made sure all my top tier folk were rested, nothing was on fire, and that I had my best gear on – including mods for free reloads. That last part was the single best move I planned.  Spoilers below… I guess.

Part 1

The base itself is two parts.  The first one is more storage/lab than much else.  A futuristic base, with a solid chunk of enemy pods, split into various rooms.  There doesn’t appear to be any patrols, but there are obstacles all over the place.  There was no timer, so I used my stealth members to lead the pack and ensure ambushes were setup where needed.

That worked pretty well for the most part.  Advent forces, Viper, Codex… they all went down due to surprise attacks and well placed grenades.  Then I reached the last room.

This thing had 3 Mutons and an Andromedon.  Mutons I can deal with, but the Andromedon… jeez I dislike these guys.  Massive hit point pools, then they come back from the dead with as much HP.  This means you want to avoid an overkill the first time, since that damage is wasted.  More grenades, room explosions, and a chunk of cooldown skills to clear that out, but with injuries.

I am glad that I took a few extra turns after this fight to reset my cooldowns, as when you take the “elevator” to the next room, nothing resets.   Grenades and single-use skills did not reset.  Anyhoo, the first part was an ok challenge, but since none of the alien pods worked together, it was an easy enough go.

Part 2

Boss Room.  This was much smaller than I had anticipated.  What you see int eh screenshot below is about half the map.  Those 3 rows make up most of it, with 4 raised areas (two in the screen on bottom left and top right), as well as a large platform to the top left.

Small quarters = wild fights

The fight starts off with 2 random enemies just standing around.  Get close enough and they trigger the Chosen to enter the fight.  Chosen alone are a pain, and there’s so much stuff for people to hide around… shots are not guaranteed.

I do manage to take her down, with some smart placement of the Templar for damage immunity, and I’m thinking I’m good.  I figure it was on-par with the previous floor in difficulty.  I was incorrect.

Each Chosen has a sarcophagus on the large platform.  They are not targetteable until the Chosen is take down. They have an insane amount of hit points, cannot be crit, and heal the Chosen a set amount each turn.  When that counter reaches 100%, the Chosen comes back, and the sarcophagus is immune again.

Did I mention that while this is happening, 2 random enemies will zone in, on the 4 platforms in the corners of the room?  Random.  I went back and checked.  You could get Advent soldiers.  Maybe some Sectoids.  Berserkers too.  Or, in really bad cases, multiple Codex (Codices?).  Yeah, I had bad luck.

If they are low HP enemies, then it takes 1 soldier to take them out.  Some are tougher and need a couple, plus the actual movement across the map.  This is where those free reloads came in super useful.  The downside is that this also means really close quarters for the squad – ideal for grenade/storm use.  Which I had.

I used everything I had left.  Mimic beacon.  Claymore.  A skulljack.  Stun attacks (which are awesome, since they prevent a respawn).  It took 3 cycles, but I ended up taking down the sarcophagus.  A few more shots and the Assassin was down.  It was a nearly 2 hour mission.

The really great part here is that once those 2 parts are done, the mission is over.  Regardless of how many other aliens are on the map.  I finished with 3 Codex on the map, half the squad below 1/2 HP, 2 that had been dazed, one blinded…return to the base has the entire squad out of commission for nearly 20 days.

But the Assassin is gone, so I have that going for me.

So some key tips

• Try to enter the 2nd floor with as many cooldowns and utility items as possible.
• Free reloads are king
• Free movement / mobility is very important to flank and find enemies
• Snipers with squadsight can easily hit the sarcophagus
• A Reaper with an Extended Magazine (+3 ammo) and Banish (empty the clip into an enemy) is crazy damage
• If it won’t die in 1 hit, stun it
• Mimic beacons.  Use them.