/vr/ - Retro Games

>>3148764
>am I missing anything by not researching the crystal rod?
yes. It will rape anything in close combat in a few hits. reks arachnids and cyber assassins, and various other enemies. Well worth investing in.

Pic is my current playthrough, doing a "strong" psi guy. Got enough weapon skill to use pistols, but not maintain them, just use disposable maint kits and the endless supply of fresh pistols to pad out my psionics.

to be honest psi past tier 3 isn't all that great. Pyrokenesis on Tier 3 is all you need, blows shit up.

Apart from that, this run has heavily relied on smashing things with the crystal shard. Its a quick effective way to deal with most enemies, as long as you can dance close to them and deliver a hit without getting smashed.

Things that require long range dealing with like turrets and droids can be shot with pistol, or grenades, or pyrokinesis (or even cryokinesis if you dont want to invest in psi).

Having a good mix of psi and pistol usage, combined with crystal shard and enough research to use wormblood implants (get health back from piles of worms) makes for a pretty manageable play through.

Other builds I've run:

First time:
Hardened merc who knew all the guns, maxed out weapon skills, maintenance and repairs and used assault rifles and grenade launchers. Completed the game without too much of an issue

Second Time:
Hard core researcher. It was my duty to research everything I could. Anything else was secondary. Challenging playthrough. Not sure how I managed but I think there was a lot of wrenching and I discovered the crystal shards awesomeness on this playthrough. Also things like wormblood implants and the various exotic weapons you get (like the viral proliferator)
my inventory ended up full of worms in beakers, and my life consisted of visiting all the chem rooms scrounging for chemicals and researching.

And then this time I was the "lets max out Psi!" guy. Thankfully what i learned from the research playthrough helped a lot.