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I'm curious about this. I started playing 1.0 and turned off the DLC story missions. I encountered the Viper King relatively early on, and it took me 3 missions to take him out: a troop column, a supply raid, and a radio tower.

Since 1.1 was released, I haven't had a whiff of the Berserker Queen. What are other people's experiences post 1.1?

Viper King arrived quite late. Advanced Troopers appeared earlier than him.

Viper King showed up in a mission just before 1.1, got away, and haven't seen him (or any other rulers) since. It was a big scare too, because I had no idea that inactive DLC, but still installed, will cause the rulers to show up (and it's pretty awful in my opinion).

I haven't seen them either. I got the "weapons of the hunt" POI twice for some reason (yay for double frost bombs?), have never gotten the alien nest even through september.

Mandurang wrote:Viper King showed up in a mission just before 1.1, got away, and haven't seen him (or any other rulers) since. It was a big scare too, because I had no idea that inactive DLC, but still installed, will cause the rulers to show up (and it's pretty awful in my opinion).

It's counterintuitive, but when you uncheck the box at the start of a campaign you are disabling the DLC story mission, not the rulers showing up. If you don't want to play with the rulers, CHECK the box, and then never do the story mission.

dodger wrote:

Mandurang wrote:Viper King showed up in a mission just before 1.1, got away, and haven't seen him (or any other rulers) since. It was a big scare too, because I had no idea that inactive DLC, but still installed, will cause the rulers to show up (and it's pretty awful in my opinion).

It's counterintuitive, but when you uncheck the box at the start of a campaign you are disabling the DLC story mission, not the rulers showing up. If you don't want to play with the rulers, CHECK the box, and then never do the story mission.

Wow, thanks for the information, that's really counterintuitive. I thought I had to uninstall the DLC completely (which I guess also does the trick?).

Mandurang wrote:

dodger wrote:

Mandurang wrote:Viper King showed up in a mission just before 1.1, got away, and haven't seen him (or any other rulers) since. It was a big scare too, because I had no idea that inactive DLC, but still installed, will cause the rulers to show up (and it's pretty awful in my opinion).

It's counterintuitive, but when you uncheck the box at the start of a campaign you are disabling the DLC story mission, not the rulers showing up. If you don't want to play with the rulers, CHECK the box, and then never do the story mission.

Wow, thanks for the information, that's really counterintuitive. I thought I had to uninstall the DLC completely (which I guess also does the trick?).

Uninstalling the DLC will remove the Rulers AND the weapons. Otherwise they're just gated behind a mission, or given to you outright. SLG is the same way. If it's turned off, you just never fight Julian, you get the SPARKS right away. (Though LW2 gates the SPARKS behind ADVENT robotics research in that case)

Best way is probably to turn on The Nest, grab the Hunter's Axe and Frost Bomb because they're cool, and then never explore Vahlen's lab. The Lost Towers is a great and easy mission though, totally worth running some troops through.

Yes, I've killed the Archon King 3 times now, luckily he only has 3 HP each time he comes back lol.

Killed the Viper King in 1 Turn on the associated mission, met the Berserker Queen on the Swarming Codex Brain Location Mission at the end of September.

I feel the usual XCom2 cycle of "appearances" by Rulers has been heavily re-scripted for LW2. Might be wrong though.

The ViperKing.. we still get to see first in the Cavern if that DLC is activated from the opening options.

Berserker Queen.. i initially met at the storyline BlackSite.. but she escaped. It took a long while (at least three weeks later) before she showed up again in some obscure "Hack Console on a Train" mission. I was VERY lucky to finish her (right before Evac) since these have extremely tight Re-Inforcement cycles & all the while a shielded Muton-Eilte and Black-Archon were still standing near the hacked Console with three other pods watching my skin-brush escape.

Strangely.. it's only about FOUR full weeks later that i finally could meet the ArchonKing.. on a pretty solid "Ambush Troops" much to my surprise. Luckily once more -- he was discovered very early (right off the Drop-Zone by a daring Shinobi yellow scouting attempt, btw) on that map, so i could setup a proper Overwatch round that softened him up enough (along with his two Archon guards hiding behind a fence!) to use rupture at the right time for an extra turn of multiple solid hits. Thank you to LW2 for that new 50% reaction ruleset (i really enjoyed that suspense of NOT knowing the if & when conditions)... Dead!

Thus -- they seem to be spreaded apart... but this is (i think) an illusion created by the multiple Hit/Miss distribution of Missions. We skip some so they (each Rulers) must be recycled in consecutive schedules every now and again.
It's either good or bad based on your opinion of predictable gameplay systems. The rational impression i get from those rare presences is that we MUST simply absorb a relative number of edgy coincidences.. more so than what XC2 tried to shuffle around under their limited Events structure -- as compared with LW2 highly variable potentials & timely contexts.

LordYanaek wrote:

trihero wrote:I haven't seen them either. I got the "weapons of the hunt" POI twice for some reason (yay for double frost bombs?), have never gotten the alien nest even through september.

Got the PoI twice but unfortunately didn't get a second batch of hunter weapons

Devon_v wrote:The Lost Towers is a great and easy mission though, totally worth running some troops through.

Yep. Lost Tower can be be done "fingers in the nose" as soon as you have AP rounds. Only the sectopod causes some troubles but once you shred it and disable it with Rover it doesn't last very long either, even with it's huge HP pool. Too bad i still havn't seen it now (may) in my second attempt. First one i already had several levels on the spark by mid may.

Saw the beserker queen on the blacksite.

Stunned it and killed it in one turn. It helped that it walked into the spot I had set up fire teams around the turn before to kill the the turbo bug.

I got the Viper King on May 5th... yup

Well I didn't get a second copy of all of the alien hunter weapons now that I look more carefully, but I do have 2 frost bombs. I think this is because my grenadier with the original frost bomb was infiltrating a mission when I finished the scan, so the game's like wut you don't have a frost bomb ok lemme give you one.

Devon_v wrote:The Lost Towers is a great and easy mission though, totally worth running some troops through.

Depends when you get into it, in my experience. I definitely wouldn't try it with a four-man team in vanilla, but if you're into predators and mag armour it's pretty easy.

Def. still one of my favourite setpieces though. LW2's reinforcement system doesn't generate the same kind of pressure or intensity that the constant waves of MEC units did.

I still want a TC where you play as Julian and use that gigantic army of SPARK units to crush ADVENT. You can choose to help or hinder the Avenger & Commander at your leisure, but would have to contend with retaliatory strikes from the Avenger if you push your luck. Kind of... strategy mode vs LW2's guerrila war mode.

Def. still one of my favourite setpieces though. LW2's reinforcement system doesn't generate the same kind of pressure or intensity that the constant waves of MEC units did.

What do you mean by this? LW2's reinforcement system eventually drops 8 man pods on you every turn.

In Vanilla, I easily farmed the MEC waves with bluescreen rounds until I got like 100 or so kills on everyone or got bored or it started getting laggy because the room was littered with too many bodies to render. On legend vanilla they only made like 3 or maybe 4 mecs a turn, which was to deal with since you had high ground and bluescreen.

Curious about the DLC for this game. I have completely avoided it so far, because "Pay To Win" uber items hold relatively little interest for me, and story missions are my least favourite part of XCom. I prefer DLCs that add depth and mechanics to games. Which of the DLCs are worth getting?

Mooncabbage wrote:Which of the DLCs are worth getting?

Well, if you want only one, get Shen's last gift. The spark unit is fun and in LW2, actually useful (horrible aim made it questionably useful in Vanilla). It's definitely not a "pay to win" as it's not overpowered but it's definitely unique.

Alien Hunters gives you 4 unique items (you have one and can't build more) that were definitely very powerful in vanilla but are more balanced in LW2 due to the higher number of enemies (free attack with the axe is nice but in LW2, you often wish you could use it several times per battle). It also adds 3 very tough (and in vanilla potentially deadly) "boss" aliens that will show randomly in missions (thought LW2 limited where they can appear) They were really dangerous in Vanilla because they would act after every action you took but they aren't as deadly in LW2 as their reactions are more limited (i think they only react when you don't shoot them, but it's just observation). They are more like big bullet sponges that can actually leave you with every other alien alive when you have dealt with them.

Ignore Anarchy's Children, it's merely a cosmetic mod and even thought the quality is good, the aesthetic is debatable (Mad Max rather then XCom), plus there are a couple of good cosmetic mods for free anyway (some of them are as debatable as AC but they are free).

Just wait for a sale, they are old enough that you can get large discounts.

I've been getting the rulers, they show up every HQ assault. The viper showed up once, got away, came back at full health, was able to kill him second try. HQ assault after that, berserker queen who also escaped. I just wish they showed up a little bit more.

Arcalane wrote:

Devon_v wrote:The Lost Towers is a great and easy mission though, totally worth running some troops through.

Depends when you get into it, in my experience. I definitely wouldn't try it with a four-man team in vanilla, but if you're into predators and mag armour it's pretty easy.

Long War though. As soon as you have AP rounds and a few Rangers that's really all you need.