Overview
This guide is created with the intention to assist newer players or players who feel that their progression is not optimal by providing new tactics and ideas to be explored.
Introduction
Hello there fellow crawler, my name is Fume and this is a guide I have created with the intention to make the game easier for people who want some guidance or would like some help. The contents of this guide are written with the difficulty of Hardcore in mind.
Join the discussion at: [link]
Class Previews and Opinions
- Soldier:
Left Tree: The left most tree is the playstyle that caters to an unstoppable tank, a *juggernaut* if you could say so.
Middle Tree: Deals with fanciful AOE explosions and bomb mechanics, just imagine a roman candle, but replace the candles with rockets.
Right Tree: Deals with shooting, using critical hits, AOE attacks, and overwatch.
Out of all these trees I feel the left one is the best. Why? To put it simply, the other trees are doing jobs that are done better by almost every other class. The leftmost tree offers the something unique that only the Soldier has access to. No one else has a multi taunt on the first level, no one else gets so much free damage resistance, and no one else gets the ability to tank exhorbitant levels of damage and come out with barely a scratch.
- Smuggler:
Left Tree: Offers an assortment of traps and goodies to secure victory with.
Middle Tree: Turns the Smuggler into a gunslinger from the Wild West with natural damage steroids and scaling abilities.
Right Tree: Gambling is king/queen with this one. You do a ton of damage or you do none, or worst of all you blow yourself up.
Out of all these trees I feel a combination of the left and the middle are often the most effective in a mission. The middle tree has natural steroids for the Smuggler to become an insane blender and the left tree offers the breathing space that allows the Smuggler to become said blender.
- Cyberninja:
Left Tree: Offers a system that increases accuracy, satisfying combos to pull off that do great damage and disable.
Middle Tree: Focuses on a system that rewards aggresive damage dealing and planning. All in the auto attacks and combo setups.
Right Tree: This is probably the sterotypical ninja trope we’ve all been waiting for. Provides debuffs for your foes and buffs for your allies. Whether it is the fog that blinds your foes or the stealth that conceals your allies this tree always lets you *strike from the shadows*. (Add cringe effect.)
The right tree as well as the left tree are the greatest in this class. The left tree offers versatility through it’s timeline manipulation and raw damage. The right tree offers powerful buffs later on that can save a battle going south or establish dominance, however it has to borrow damage from other trees. The middle is simply focused on damage.
- Hacker:
No tree reviews here, the Hacker is the support class and thusly the Right Tree is dominant. That doesn’t mean she/he is bad, in fact I would even wager to say that the Hacker is the most powerful class due to the buffs provided by the said tree. The other trees don’t have much of an incentive, requiring too much build up to be of use. { Buff plz 😉 }
- Prototype:
Left Tree: Offers a *stable* utility tree with nice damage. Doesn’t shine at anything particularly. Has one amazing buff.
Middle Tree: Focuses on aggro pull and recovering health lost.
Right Tree: High risk, high reward. Frequent shutdowns and malfuctions.
A combination of the middle and the right tree (with a sprinkle of the left) results in a god machine. However, the quality of your weapon becomes very important at that point, only rares or better should be used and they should preferably have buffs such as “Thunder Capacitator” or “Glacier”. When this class functions the damage of every other class pales in comparison.
- Void Psyker:
Left Tree: Utility/Damage centric. Strips shields, regains health, and innate damage reduction
Middle Tree: All about damage and void energy. Overloads don’t matter later on.
Right Tree: Read Lovecraft. Deals with things from “out there”, multiple AOE attacks, bypasses armor/shields, and risk of overload is greater than the others if mismanaged.
I feel the left tree wins in the end. The right tree flubs a bit against shields and the damage becomes a bit lack luster. The middle is a good competitor but suffers from build up time.
I will go into detail in the next section why the left tree is superior.
- Force Psyker:
Left Tree: Wannabe Soldier. Attempts to absorb damage like the Soldier can but fails to due to the fact that it is limited by the pitiful Focus pool and the numbers/cooldowns aren’t favorable enough. (Either buff the numbers or lessen the cost of the abilities.)
Middle Tree: This is the *better* left tree. Basic ability provides a shield based on the damage you do. You may feel this class is essential early game because of this.
Right Tree: Crits and damage. In the end the tree is lack luster because like I said, Focus is very limiting and it is difficult to procur more like the Void Psyker.
The middle tree with a combination of the best of the left and right tree is how I feel I can use this character to it’s maximum potential.
- Engineer:
Left Tree: Creates constructs, offers some utility. Has a long build up time, damage isn’t spectacular.
Middle Tree: Offers a damage oriented playstyle, has pitiful damage though. Feels less reliable than the Prototype.
Right Tree: One singular bot with stats inherited from the Engineer. Offers pseudo taunt and utlity. Damage isn’t spectacular.
Mainly the left tree with constructs with one point from the right is how I feel I can get something out of this class.
Leveling & Skill Selection P1 (Soldier, Prototype, Hacker, Cyberninja, & Void Psyker)
- Soldier:
Left Tree: Meat Shield -> Defiance -> Cry Havoc -> Juggernaut -> Bloodthirst.
Right Tree: Crack Shot -> Custom Armor -> Overwatch -> Kill Count -> Specialist.
Feel free to upgrade whatever you want afterwards.
Active abilities: You can change abilities by dragging them and dropping them in the active abilities panels.
Juggernaut, Cry Havoc, Bloodthirst, Overwatch, and Specialist.
Reason: The ultimate tank package with some support. You can Bloodthirst before Juggernaut so that your retaliation shots will heal you. This ensures that you will survive the oncoming storm of hits. Afterwards you can use Cry Havoc to provide a boost in offensive power to your teammates and yourself.
Best Weapon: Best weapon type for this setup is a Heavy Weapon. You want to stay in Juggernaut for as long as you can. Once you are out of Juggernaut, the bonuses that the Heavy Weapon gives to Overwatch and Specialist cannot be ignored. (20% extra damage or -30% accuracy to foes hit.)
- Prototype:
Right Tree: Chaotic Shot -> Assault -> Core Dump -> Chaos Modal -> HAM
Now you can choose between upgrading left or middle. I’m a fan of upgrading middle to access Adaptive Armor, Relentless, and Termination Mode as fast as possible before going for Hunter Killer, Safety Protocol, andTarget Lock.
Active abilities: You can change abilities by dragging them and dropping them in the active abilities panels.
Safety Protocol, Target Lock, Assault, HAM, and Termination mode.
Reason: Safety Protocol starts the damage chain off with 10% damage and 6% crit gained each turn. After casting it pick one unlucky mob and cast Target Lock on him. This results in a 70% bonus in damage to the Target Locked enemy. WIth another passive factored in that’s 120% and if that’s not enough, at 5 malfunctions entering a battle your damage is 170% if you finish the combo without malfunctioning (This is impractical as shutdowns are a waste of time, best to use HAM or Termination mode to prevent a shutdown.). Keep in mind this is without buffs from other classes. This means that the Proto is good at deleting one enemy very fast, especially since Target Lock resets after you kill the mob targeted(only if Proto kills it.) If you wanna be boring HAM is an option but you have to farm a malfunction first and then hope you roll lucky for the malfunction amount next time. Termination mode is there for sustain and damage resistance if you flush a few malfunctions.
Best Weapon: There is no best weapon type. However the Prototype functions best with weapons that have on hit effects such as Corrosion, Blaze, and Thunder Capacitator. I tend to gravitate to hammers due to their affinity with Thunder Capacitator. ( Or at least that’s what I keep seeing.)
- Hacker:
Right Tree: Virus: Hotlink -> Overclock/Timed Relased (One or the other based on preference) -> Hyper Thread -> Overcharge -> Ex Machina
Finish the right tree then proceed to upgrade whatever you want, preferably finishing the left tree to gain access to Snowcrash
Active abilities: You can change abilities by dragging them and dropping them in the active abilities panels.
Multicore, Hyperthread, Overcharge, Ex Machina, and Snow Crash.
Reason: Ex Machina acts weird if you don’t have the skills you want equipped. The reason Snowcrash is there is because it is a very strong CC option.
Best Weapon: Hacker doesn’t use her weapons often, however she fares best with something with a high TU and hopefully Legionnaire. This is so she/he can go as soon as possible and deploy Ex Machina for as long as possible. If she actually appears in the time line again Snow Crash should be provide additional assistance.
- Cyberninja (Utility):
Just go down the left tree and stick with it till you unlock all the trees. Yes, the left tree is THAT good.
Active abilities: You can change abilities by dragging them and dropping them in the active abilities panels.
Flurry/Kougeki, Dash, Shadowfall, Concealing Mist, and Assasination.
Reason: Concealing provides a great survivability boost and with the passive from the left tree, each time an enemy misses they gain a combo point. Which in turn fuels Shadowfall. If you feel there aren’t enough combo points on all the targets use Dash to spread more before activating Shadowfall. Once Shadowfall is active feel free to use Flurry/Basic attack and spread as many combo points as possible. Once the debuff is about to run out, use Assasination to refresh all abilities and start over again.
Best Weapon: I feel that dual blades get the best bonuses from the middle tree, elemental bonuses are nice, particulary Glacier/Thunder Capacitator varients.
- Void Psyker:
I really have no tips for this one, generally I just slog down the middle as it offers a pretty good way to dispose of excess energy at tier 2 and the basic ability isn’t terrible.
Active abilities: You can change abilities by dragging them and dropping them in the active abilities panels.
Drain, Siphon Life, Cannibalize, Voidstorm, and Dark Majesty.
Reason: Dark Majesty and Drain are incredibly powerful late game. At level 100 mobs have insane shield levels that can reduce your damage significantly if you have no way to deal with them. The ability to make them simply *evaporate* is disgusting, you’ll do a respectable amount of damage while doing do too. However Dark Majesty can be saved for another spell as well, Cannibalize. Cannibalize is there for those annoying PODs and buffing units, when it is used properly it amps the Psyker’s damage up to 11. *For every effect eaten, gain 5 void energy and boost damage you deal by 30% for 5 turns* Siphon life is there to offer sustain, it’s fairly bad against shielded units so use Drain to remove shields. (Great against the bugs through.) Voidstorm is just there as a safety net to prevent emergency overloads, it can be replaced with anything else that drains a large amount of Void Energy.
Best Weapon: Base damage has to be strong as Psyker doesn’t have many innate damage bonuses that are constantly active. Bonuses like Legionnaire and Light Weight Materials are something to keep in mind though.
Here’s a screenie to show how good he/she can be at end tier with the appropriate supporting team and void energy levels. I prefer to think of her/him as the AOE alternative to the Prototype with a higher chance of blowing up and actually killing your teammates. This is why I prefer the Prototype in most cases. However, Juggernaut + Ex Machina stops this, allowing your Soldier to take the brunt of all five instances of Overload damage, if he/she should drop to 0 health Ex Machina prevents that leaving them at 1 hp. This isn’t terrible as the Soldier enters battle next round with plus 20% max hp. Do make sure not to step in traps though, or better yet expend a medkit to make sure your soldier can pull off a full heal from Specialist+HW after Bloodthirst.
Leveling & Skill Selection P2 (Smuggler, Force Psyker, and Engineer)
- Smuggler:
I found going down either of the trees was fun, although I feel the middle one is the most satisfying.
Active abilities: You can change abilities by dragging them and dropping them in the active abilities panels.
Kalmonri Trap, Bag of Wonders, Push Yer Luck, Buddy Shield, and X. (Whatever you want, I prefer Bounty)
Reason: Smuggler generates a ton of threat due to her/his passives in the middles tree and the deployment of traps the second his/her turn arrives. You can mitigate this by shoving a fellow crawler in front of your Smuggler with Buddy Shield, all the threat that the Smuggler generates is now given to the unlucky sod who has the highest health. Push Yer Luck scales very well and with the Fan the Hammers passive you get get the most out of it. Kalmonri are Artifact are something to do when Push fails.
One a brief note, if you invest fully with the active skills of the gambling tree, it gets pretty good, although I personally don’t like being that adventurous given that a failed roll may result in the Smuggler blowing itself up or doing pitiful damage for it’s DD role.
(My party comp atm is a Soldier, Smuggler, Proto, and Hacker.)
Best Weapon: I prefer pistols so she/he can deploy first (hopefully) and lay down her/his assortment of traps and use Buddy Shield as soon as possible. Pistols also benefit from the Akimbo skill allowing her to shoot twice. (Pretty sure it applies to any of her attacks that may use her basic attack.)
Alas these two classes, they need the most help out of the six currently available. The abilities that make them the most unique aren’t particularly amazing and their other ones are outclassed by other classes. They need number adjustments and one needs a rehaul in my opinion.
- Force Psyker:
Go down the middle tree to enhance the survivability of your allies and do decent damage.
Feel free to upgrade whatever you want after.
Active abilities: You can change abilities by dragging them and dropping them in the active abilities panels.
Warden’s Wrath, Warden’s Blow, Murica- I mean: Manifest Destiny*, Manifest Spirit, and X. (Whatever you want, I prefer Manifest Rage)
Reason: Barriers, you must construct additional barriers. Careful focus management can result in an influx of shielding for your crew. Unfortunately this doesn’t matter because after 10 levels or so as barriers aren’t affected by damage resistance buffs and they go before shields. If you want shielding check out Overcharge, now that’s a REAL shield for your team.
Best Weapon: High damage and low TU, this guy/gal seems to prefer melee weapons as a result. Why do we choose low TU? THis is so that turns come quicker resulting in more focus income or faster barriers. High damage is self-explanatory, you need damage to make good barriers.
*Look ma, I’m a stand up internet comedian!
- Engineer:
Go down the right tree, it’s pretty friendly during the early stages. After that expand with the left tree and focus on bots. Upgrade whatever is left.
Active abilities: You can change abilities by dragging them and dropping them in the active abilities panels.
Deploy Bolty, Mr.AutoRoboto, Overshield, Thumper, and Junker.
Reason: Deploy Bolty offers Boly a weak heal, the reason why I keep it is to be honest, I haven’t used Engi in a while… I. Mr. AutoRoboto allows Bolty to do it’s own thing so you can deploy your robots. I chose Thumper for it’s special ability which is admittedly pretty good (until you hit shields) and Junker for his AOE and taunt. Overshield is chosen so that your Engineer can die instead of your other Crawlers. You may ask why no double robot, exploding death robots, or shield bots, or autocannon robots. The answer is it takes too long to build up. All of these skills use at least 50% TU and if you’re using a heavy weapon so your robots can actually damage through high enemy mob shields then you’ll be spending a lot of time waiting, autocannon robot isn’t picked because it resets upon the death of the target, meaning he’s like a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ Prototype Assault skill and Shield Robot’s job is done better by the Void Psyker and Hacker. I loved this class when I first saw it, was one of main chars for the first L100 Hardcore but ever since then I’ve just kept him sitting in STIX, there’s just better classes for what he does.
Best Weapon: High damage and low TU, this guy/gal seems to prefer melee weapons. Why do we choose low TU? This is so that turns come quicker resulting in more robots deployed and special skills used. (rehashed to maximum effect.)
*Look ma, I’m a stand up internet comedian!
Ranking the Classes
This sections shows how I feel about each class at certain points of the game in no particular order.
Pre Maxed Tree:
Tier 1: Force Psyker, Smuggler, and Cyberninja
Tier 2: Soldier and Engineer
Tier 3: Prototype, Hacker, and Void Psyker
Post Max Tree:
Tier 1: Hacker, Void Psyker, Soldier, and Cyberninja.
Tier 2: Prototype and Smuggler
Tier 3: Force Psyker and Engineer
Post Maxed Trees: ( All skills unlocked)
Tier 1: Hacker, Prototype, Smuggler, Soldier, Void Psyker, and Cyberninja
Tier 2: Force Psyker
Tier 3: Engineer
- Soldier
She’s/He’s ranked highly because he’s user friendly. As soon as you get him he has access to a taunt and durability steroids, the farther down he/she goes the better it gets, with access to sustain, additional damage reduction, and a small conditional heal the Soldier truly will never need a medkit.
- Smuggler
She’s/He’s ranked highly for the same reason the Soldier is. Her damage however, scales well and her ability to stop enemies from getting the first round through her traps is amazing.
- Cyberninja
Like the soldier, Cyberninja is easy to use out of the box. Early game damage is good with the left or middle tree. Late game is amazing through the dodge buffs and accuracy debuffs as well as skill cd resets. Damage does suffer to a certain degree in the end game though.
- Void Psyker
Is terrible to level. Once you get her to 12 in the left tree though, she is to clear rooms solo if given half the chance. (Dark Majesty + Drain) The other trees require more build up but function the same. Single target damage is oft eclipsed by the Smuggler and Prototype but her AOE is unmatched. (In a nomal scenario, no point trying to farm for a L5 HAM repeatedly.) Also is capable of self sustain.
- Prototype
Slightly worse than the Psyker to level. It does get better once you level Assault fully though. The Proto is embarassingly bad early game but when you reach late game it’s Assault ability combined with it’s own passive buffs easily breaks 200k with assistance from other classes. If you want overkill however with all buffs up and a full stack of malfuctions, activating HAM is over 2 MILLION DAMAGE. Also capable of self sustain like the Soldier.
- Hacker
Doesn’t exist until level 12. This is due to her buffs being a bit short early on. Once Ex Machina is available she easily becomes the lynchpin of your team.
- Force Psyker
Very strong early game on Hardcore. Basically acts as a walking preventative medikit. Unfortunately she/he falls off in the late game as the barriers generated do not scale off of resistances and are taken off before shields. Her/His damage tree is lackluster as well. Desperately needs the barriers to scale off of shield resistances/buffs or be under the shields to absorb HP damage.
- Engineer
Level up Bolty. Use Bolty’s skills. Finally reach Mr.AutoRoboto. Give Bolty Sentience. Deploy Robots one at a time for full TU cost. Watch as your robots only do 10k dmg while everyone else has been doing more than you. Attempt to copy them and use the middle tree. Suffer more malfunctions than Prototype. Cry deeply. restart game.
Desperately needs a reworked middle tree and better numbers on left and right trees to be comparable to the other classes.
Skill Combos
Cry Havoc + Abilties that have special effects if they crit.
The Soldier with Cry Havoc provides a 20% damage and crit boost if the allies targeted are above 50% HP. This does wonders for some classes, for example the Force Psyker now has a 20% more powerful barrier and a 20% higher chance to apply half of the original barrier’s health as new barriers for each of his teammates, himself included. Another example is Trick Shot from the Smuggler this additional 20% crit goes a long way for stocking up crits for showdown. Let’s say that the pistol she/he holds has 10% crit, Trick Shot has a 15% innate chance to crit, since this is a Gunslinger ability it gains 5% extra crit from Fan the Hammers, with Cry Havoc this equates to an original crit amount of 50%! This is only on the first shot, each additional bounce gains 5%
These are just the most interesting examples, there are plenty others to list. Cry Havoc is just that synergistic.
Buddy Shield + Soldier passives
With Buddy Shield the threat generated by the Smuggler is redirected at the highest HP member of your team. Often that is the Soldier. What does this do for the Soldier? Well for starters this increase in threat generation results in the Soldier often having the highest threat on the team, this allows his Defiance bonus to kick in giving him a bonus of 20% DR.
Push Yer Luck and Juggernaut/Overshield
Push Yer Luck is amazing, make no doubts about it. The damage is great and fuels the Fan the Hammers passive, what isn’t so great is when Push fails and you taunt all the enemies. This is a quick way to delete your Smuggler. Juggernaut and Overshield remove this issue by redirecting the damage the Smuggler takes from the enemy to the Soldier/Engineer thus making the skill risk free.
Hyperthread and Concealing Mists
Hyperthread increases dodge chance every time an enemy misses and Concealing mists provides massive dodge chance but weakens every time an enemy misses. You see what I’m getting at here? The dodge abilities overlap each other perfectly resulting in a bubble protection.
This is a bit redundant in my opinion if your guys are wearing good light/tac armor.
Ex Machina + Every Class
Makes everything better, DMG boosts across the board, % DMG resistance, time unit reduction, increased shielding, and more! What isn’t to love with this skill?
Force Psyker + Soldier + Smuggler
Assuming the Smuggler goes first they should use Buddy Shield to redirect aggro.
If the Soldier is next they should Cry Havoc before going Juggernaut or Overwatch with a rifle weapon, preferably rare or better. This allows him to break shields, which in turn allows characters to benefit from the increased crit from Cry Havoc. Assuming the Force Psyker is after the Soldier they can start with any ability, I personally prefer Guardian Spirit or Manifest Destiny.
The Smuggler should come up next in the timeline and when they do, assuming shields are down they should use Trick Shot which will farm crits stacks for the Force Psyker. The Soldier can do the same with Specialist + Rifle. The crits farmed allow the Force Psyker to use an ability on the right tree *Don’t remember the name” which deals damage based on the amount of crit stacks stored and replenishes Force Energy for each instance of damage (It’s also free to cast, *gasp*). This does solve the resource issue that the Force Psyker has although it doesn’t solve the durability issues that shields face without a first turn Manifest Destiny. (Also why doesn’t Manifest Destiny count for the Warden skill which deals damage based on the hp of barriers created?)
There are many more interactions out there but I found these to be the most fun to write about.GL out there and experiment away!
Class interactions with the levels
Some fun interactions, list the missing ones on the discussion I linked above so I can implement or list them below. Cheers!
Soldier:
– Can bet in the Zero G Grav events on the terminal.
– Shoots cameras with points in the Specialist tree.
– Bomb disposal.
– Can shoot special flying camera. (Spawned at hated level)
Prototype:
-Talks to machine NPCs extends to medbots, construction bots, and turret bots spawned from traps. Medbots and Construction bots can be conviced to assist the player with the middle and left tree
– Interacts with nanites which can prove to be beneficial or harmful.
-Can find temporary upgrades from the metal boxes of the level, does have a chance of incurring an expensive repair fee though.
Hacker: (Messy part)
I’m pretty sure the Rootkit tree allows you to hack cameras and turret spawning from traps.
– Allows you to hack the terminals in the world, ie: Maglock safes, Zero G prize pool, and etc.
– Not sure which tree but she/he can hack the special flying cameras.
Smuggler:
– Gambling tree lets you bet on the Zero G and win.
– Smooth talker in scenarios that demand it.
– Can shoot first in scripted confrontations so that the party doesn’t have to enter combat.
– Can remove bombs from booby trapped hatches.
Force Psyker:
– INCOMPLETE –
Void Psyker:
– INCOMPLETE –
Cyberninja:
– Can gut opposition in scripted interactions to avoid combat.
– Can crawl into weird spaces to get loot on ships.
Engineer:
– Can find really nice loot in metal boxes/weird spaces.
– Bashes door open without team taking damage. (His poor knees, if you’ve gotten the dialogue before, eh?)
– Sends his robots to find loot in weird spaces.
The End
This is the first guide I’ve written on Steam and I hope it isn’t too bad. If there’s anything you would like me to add or anything you would like to discuss feel free to add me or comment and I’ll happily strike up a conversation with you. I need your opinions to make this guide better, feel free to post constructive feedback about what you didn’t like, what you want changed, and what you want added or better yet post it in the discussions topic about this guide so I can read it and implement it even faster!
As a brief note, when I praise some abilities and classes over some other ones, it doesn’t mean that the others are worse, it just mean they aren’t good enough yet. As this is an early access game sometimes balance is skewed. I do commend Juggernaut games so far though, as almost all the classes have a unique aspect that they preform very well, just some need a little help and tweaking at the moment.
Cheers and peace out!