Overview
Trouble with the end boss? This guide should help you win most playthroughs in FTL.
Intro
After finally unlocking all the ships, I wanted to post a guide on how to beat the game. It took me forever to finally start winning. The following guide should help you to reliably complete all the sectors, and most importantly, defeat the boss. These tips and tricks are the only way I can beat the game with about 90% reliability.
This guide will be especially usefull for those who can’t seem to beat this game, even on easy.
Lastly, this guide assumes you are playing the “advanced” edition and I will assume you’ve at least tried to beat the game a couple of times so you have a basic understanding on how the game works.
Preparing for the Boss
Pretty much your whole journey in FTL will be getting ready for the boss. So make sure to get all the scrap you can! The best way to do that will be listed below:
The most important tip I can give is to kill the enemy crew without destroying the ship if at all possible! By eliminating the enemy crew, you gain much more scrap. Also, I find the end boss almost impossible without a ship that can kill its crew (more on that later).
There are a number of ways of to kill your enemy:
1. Rather than raw firepower, try lowering their shields and either destroy or ionize their oxygen systems.
2. Start fires with weapons such as the fire bomb. This will burn out the crew.
3. The most reliable option is to get a boarding party ASAP! Whenever you can, get a crew teleporter from a shop if you don’t have one already. If you can get a hold of some mantis crewmembers, they will tear through the enemy with their combat bonus and increased speed. If you’re outmanned, I like to send as many combat personell over and then mind control of the enemies so that you have a fighting chance. Clone bays can be usefull if you haven’t mastered the art of boarding parties, as you will never truly lose your crew members as long as your clonebay is powered. Also, make sure you have enough weapons later on to destroy any enemy medbays or cloning chambers so that they don’t heal or respawn.
I try to teleport my crew ON the destroyed medbay or clonebay so that the enemy can’t repair them. If the ship doesn’t have either, I teleport them into a room with four squares, if I also have mind control, so that I can have at least 2 crew and one mind controlled enemy in one place wrecking havok (see below)
So, besides boarding parties, here are some other things to look out for:
1. I like to repair as much as possible in early stages while the cost for repairs is cheap.
2. I always load up on fuel during shops, especially if a nebula is nearby. In a nebula, the enemy fleet moves slowly, which will allow you to travel more, but that requires more fuel. I like to have at least 20 fuel until the last 2 sectors of the game.
3. At the start, I like a crew member at the shields rather than weapons or engines because shields take the longest to gain XP with.
4. I always favor lasers (especially those with lots of shots), ion guns, and flak over missiles, drones, and hull lasers. Missiles and drones can get very costly, plust you can sell your missile weapons and drones at shops for more scrap. Lasers, ions, and flak are great because they will help you lower shields and destroy critical ship systems while your boarding party does its job. Hull lasers are good at killing ships, not the crew, so I don’t use them.
5. Upgrading my shields is my primary focus when it comes to upgrades. They keep me alive long enough for my crew to overtake the enemy.
6. If you destroy the enemy cockpit or engines, you will auto hit every shot. However, the cockpit is almost always easier to destroy, so I go for that over engines.
7. I visit all the shops I can in order to find the following essential items. Try to keep about 50-100 scrap on hand in case you stumble on these items in a shop:
a. Long Range Scanners- this will alert you to nearby enemies, which leads to more scrap.
b. Mind control- to aid in boarding parties and to prevent chaos in the boss level (more on that later).
c. Crew teleporter- essential for boarding parties as I mentioned earlier
d. Cloaking- cloaking is great but don’t let it be your last upgrade slot unless you already have crew teleporter and mind control. Cloaking is great for dodging missiles while you prepare to destroy the enemy weapons, but the final boss will be super hard without the former two upgrades, so get those first!
e. Zoltan shield bypass- the least essential of the list, but it will save you a ton of headache during the last boss phase (more on that later).
8. NEVER SEND YOUR CREW TO INVESTIGATE GIANT SPACE SPIDERS…you’ll know what I mean if you try.
Defeating the Boss!
Ok, so I assume that you found a crew teleporter and mind control. You should also make sure to have FULL shields, fully upgraded teleportation, an extra oxygen upgrade (in case the boss hacks your O2), and hopefully Zoltan shield bypass and cloaking (though not essential).
There is a video at the end (not made by me) that will walk you through a similar process.
Boss Phase 1
1. As soon as the boss decloaks, teleport your two boarding crew members (hopefully mantis with high XP) and kill the gunner who shoots missiles (second from the right). You’re dead unless these missiles are destroyed. Cloak their first shots if possible. You can see why teleportation is crucial, because the guy gunning the missiles will just repair them if you shoot the missles with regular guns.
2. Next teleport your boarding party to the ion gunner (far left). These ion shots will wreck havok on your shields otherwise. The image below shows the first two gunners dead.
4. DO NOT KILL THE LAST GUNNER! He’s second to the left. They enemy ship is harmless now, and we need him ALIVE for later. If you kill everyone, the ship starts to auto repair which becomes a nightmare!
5. OK, now if you can, kill the crew inside the main hull. This will be hard using traditional methods. However, I found a neat trick. Mind control one of the enemy crew and then teleport him onto your ship to finish him off! Do this for all the crew except that one gunner. It takes a few minutes, but it’s the easiest way to kill them.
Boss Phase 2
Repeat what you did in phase one: destroy the missile and red laser beam gun but not the main gunner. This phase will be harder because enemy drones will board your ship. Therefore, once the missle and laser beam is destroyed, teleport and destroy the drone control to stop the enemy boarding drone from attacking. If you can cloak, do it before the drone power surges (indicated by a warning siren). Lastly destroy the shields with your crew just like before.
Boss Phase 3
Do exactly what youd did for the last two phases; destroy the missiles. However, the boss now has a Zoltan shield. Do whatever you can to take out its shields to get your boarding crew over (unless you have Zoltan shield bypass). You will notice that one of your crew members will be mind controlled. This is another reason mind control is essential, you can cancel enemy mind control with your own. Otherwise, good luck without a mind control counter! Once the missiles are destroyed, send your crew to take out the mind control center and finally the shields again. Try to cloak during the enemy’s super weapon shot.
After that the flagship will be destroyed! When I was starting out, the following video really helped a lot. As you can see, it is very similar to my guide here, so check it out!
Good luck! I hope this was useful.