DoW2: Chaos Rising (Spoilers may occur)

[Vympel]

Addendum - Vympel, you can become Chaos Marines through the campaign.

SOLD!

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

And what's with the all the Tarkus-hate? How are you guys playing him? He's one of my best dudes.

But then, I tend to spec for melee clusterfuck assault. Get Tarkus set up with a good power sword and get his Chapter veterans trait and he's good to go. He's dependable and gets shit done. Add in Termie armor and he's damn near invulnerable (I had something disgusting like 166 armor rating and 22% damage resist on him by the end). Specced for melee, he's also good ranged once in Terminator so can do both effectively, which makes him a pretty ideal Terminator given their weapon load-out.

Edit: And it seems there's an achievement for doing the Space Hulk missions correctly. Awesome. Shame I wasn't signed in for my campaign save.

[Lonestar]

Well that is interesting. I jsut bought the game on Steam, and it seems the update the day before included the game. The game loaded up almost immediately.

Yeah, same here.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Yeah, that's how Relic has been doing their games. One big huge master game, with each instalment granting access to portions of the content. Sort of like an MMO with its attendant expansions.

[Anarchist Bunny]

Tarkus is a solid character in my book. His extra accessory slot allows him to be key to several points in a map, and meanwhile rather good jack of all trades character with a big emphasis on survivability. Add in the terminator armor and he's deadly at range and durable as hell.

Surprised at all the Cyrus hate, he's one of my most valuable squads. Invest in his energy and stamina to buff his infiltrate, set him up with remote explosives, det packs, sniper round, and artillery and he's a one man problem fixer. Hell, the temple in the second level was wiped out by him alone by using a artillery from his item, plus the one from capturing the communications array. Detpacks safely take out any buildings and some vehicles, sniper shot to solve infantry problems, and remote explosives to kill just about anything. All the while never loosing his infiltrate and receiving damage. Then the boys move in and quickly mow down the remains.

Thaddeus is sort of a glass cannon til you can get him into some terminator armor, although the adding of lightning claws helps make him a little more worthwhile. I've seriously considered rerolling him as a flamer to see if that makes him a little more viable out of termie armor.

And has anyone tried using the Librarian? Can't trade him out for the Force Commander, and so I've got to drop one of my tried and true familiar squads for him? I'm sure he's powerful, but he's a mishmash of ideas and abilities and I don't know what to do with him other than leave him to rot on the cruiser.

[SylasGaunt]

I haven't noticed this, but why would it matter if it's stored in your folder? Steam stores all your save files on their servers. You did sign into your GFWL account right?

Yes I did. I can look at the achievements I earned playing the original, but for some reason I don't have a savegame at all. Nothing in the savegame folder and the game isn't picking one up either.

So lovely apparently my choices now are either play through the campaign again (which means I have to fight some of the more annoying bosses again) or just start Chaos rising without any levels or wargear beyond what it gives me.. joy.

[PainRack]

That's why you put Avitus in terminator armour first (because you did concentrate on useful traits, didn't you)? He tends to spend most of his time standing still at the back, so he doesn't flatten all of your cover. That and Assault Cannon + Focus Fire = lots of dead people. Although he's the character who can equip it first, Tarkus seems to gain least from terminator armour, and certainly lost out most from losing access to most of the equipment. (overall I thought his were the least useful squad, possibly tied with Thaddeus, who tended to be a bit fragile and needed babying around so he didn't fall to bits in the middle of a fight.)

I'm not sure whether they updated the pathfinding and AI, but Avitus and Tarkus squadmates were pathetic in termie. By upgrading to Termie, Avitus squad firepower actually drops as his fellows gets storm bolters...... this gets worse when one considers Never Ending Hail of Destruction deals out a much constant, and thus higher DPS than the Assault Cannon.
I'm not sure whether the newer patches solved it, but that's the reason why I kept Avitus in normal armour.

Ditto to Tarkus. Outfit Tarkus as a close combat squad and shit, and he's actually pretty useful as a tank. Use him in Termie and the pathfinding, speed and shit makes his usefulness drops. Sure, Termie flamer is a good AOE weapon that isn't as vulnerable as Cyrus but the range bit sucks.


In Primarch, the only squad I outfitted with Termie armour was Thaddeus, and that's because teleport/invulnerable makes him imba. And since he can actually disable enemy armour.......

My question was always whether it was more useful to bring along Tarkus or Cyrus. Against Orks, I always bought Cyrus. Shotguns and Sniper rifles helps prevent rockets and lascannons from taking out Space Marines. Tarkus was more useful in defence mission against the Eldar with their Warp Spider, or in Nid missions where their taunt becomes very useful.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Tarkus with bolter is still useful, especially when he can just keep lobbing grenades after another. That is, if you equip him with lots of team bonuses etc., along with a good bolter.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

And has anyone tried using the Librarian? Can't trade him out for the Force Commander, and so I've got to drop one of my tried and true familiar squads for him? I'm sure he's powerful, but he's a mishmash of ideas and abilities and I don't know what to do with him other than leave him to rot on the cruiser.

I like Jonah... though as you say, it's hard to justify bringing him when you can do an all-Terminator death force instead.

I have him set up with the best armor I can find. Using the psychic hoods is great for his powers, but he's worse than paper with them and absolutely wilts if anything looks at him funny. Keeping him in armor is a must. His Force Dome came in handy a couple of times to buy an over-extended squad (or himself) some time until I could get my squads together and cooldowns back. Smite is great spam material combined with the Energy-line cooldown reduction and with some close combat levels he can wreak quite a bit of havoc in melee (one of his CC unlocks duplicates his PBAoE power for free when in CC).

As long as you pump his Stamina-line and give him armor to keep him alive (keeping him pure for the heal doesn't hurt either), he's pretty solid. It does limit your offensive power in a sense, because I found getting most of the Stamina and Energy trees to be critical, leaving only a few points for Strength and nothing for Ranged. On the other hand, he actually lives longer than 3 seconds to use his powers, so it seems to be the way to go.

[Serafina]

If you get a decent armor for the Librarian, he is awesome.

Just don't forget that he is primarily a support character. He can be great against hordes with some of his melee-abilities, but he is too vulnerable to go against the bigger threats.
I have not tested the ranged-tree, but it is propably quite good as well.
Either way, some of his support-abilities are godlike. The timewarp-ability increases movement&attack speed in a substantial area and removes setup times.
The heal is also quite good, as are the chaos-related abilities.

Oh, by the way, i like the corruption-system. Both sides are tempting and viable choices. Chaos appears really powerfull, but so is the no-corruption wargear.

[Dartzap]

Heres hoping the IG get a pack eventually, the forward spotters and storm troopers were complete cocks in that first mission when I tried it (Please note, this may have been due to not sleeping after a night shift)

[Mr. Coffee]

Is it just me or is it fucking difficult as all hell to keep your guys on the pure side of the chaos bar?
Spoiler

Tarkus goes over to Chaos without even trying, and so does the force commander. I can understand why Tarkus goes over, and the Blood Ravens should just start cleansing anyone the second they start talking to their Bolters, but as much of a hateful tool as Avitus is I'd have pegged him as Chaos fodder from the word go. Then again, if were the machine spirit of the boltgun and you had to put up with Tarkus' ridgid ass all the time, you've probably become tainted too.

Not surprising at all is how easy it is to keep Thaddius as a good guy, which comes in damned handy in the final mission if you equip him with that snazzy powersword you pick up after rescuing Martellus. Thaddius just turns into a walking woodchipper and Chaos SMs are like trees with that sword. The problem is, if your FC has any chaos points, it gives everyone else chaos points and Thaddius is probably only good for a single mission with that powersword before he can't use the damned thing. So it really helps if you plan aorund being completely good (except for tarkus' lame ass), otherwise you're limited to using normal untainted gear or the chaos tainted gear.

Also, Gabrial is fucking dick. Seriously, we saved your whitehaired ass from certain death, defeated a fucking demon lord of nurgle, and instead of saying "Hey, thanks, you're AWESOME, buddy!" he's all "Fuck you guys, off to the Eye of Terror with you!" What a fucking toolbag.

[Norade]

Is it just me or is it fucking difficult as all hell to keep your guys on the pure side of the chaos bar?

Reading the fluff for 40k shows that staying pure is always a struggle when chaos is around and I'm glad that they make it difficult to be 100% pure.

[Serafina]

Make sure you fulfill as many redeeming objectives as possible and that you use redeeming items when necessary.
Yes, it IS difficult, but hardly impossible.
Spoiler

Also, you can recover a scroll from the space hulk that lowers the corruption of all squads by 8.
And going with two sacred terminator armors and completely annoited weapons into the last mission kicks as much ass as having all the chaos powers.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

I didn't have any problem remaining pure. I got a couple points here and there, but never enough to push me over into the first tier of Chaos. I even read the forbidden knowledge (and used the +8 redemption scroll afterward), and still had a spare single redemption scroll at the end. A few objectives took some real pushing to do it in time, but that just made it all the more fun for me.

Just take squaddies on the missions they request to go on, capture shrines, and do all the redeeming objectives.

The wise man trusts in the Emperor for his protection.

[dragon]

I just picked up a copy of it however I do not have a completed save in which to import from DoW2. Should I run through a quick campaign first so I can import a save or does it have little impact on the expansion.

[Norade]

Anybody else notice that Chaos seems a bit over good in online play?

[Vendetta]

Relic introducing a new race and making them overpowered until patches restore sanity?

That's unpossible!

[Norade]

Well we all knew they would be good, but I wasn't expecting this level of insanity.

[white_rabbit]

When doing a run remaining "pure" I basically just took guys on missions they wanted to go on, and didn't, I don't know, loot the graves of my fallen brothers, for example.

The Librarian is fantastic, particularly once you level him up enough that he passively uses his powers for free. Major case of glass cannonitis though, although eventually getting teleport helps.

My lineup for most missions in the latter half of the campaign was basically Thule, Avitus and the Librarian, with a CC specced commander with jump pack.

Much as I love the terminator armour, (Games Workshop should take note of the much better design for it) Avitus is basically a bit naff without his plasma cannon or lascannon, although having a signum and the Cyclone with unlimited uses was handy.

Bit disappointed with only two missions in the spacehulk mind, but the campaign was a massive improvement over vanilla DoW2.

[White Haven]

I ran with Melee-commander with Rally, Thaddeus, Avitus in Terminator, and Jonah specced for ranged with a side-order of health and energy so he regens both health and mana. Pure playthrough, didn't lose anybody to chaos. Definitely some more challenging fights than the original. Abused the shit out of Smitespam with the stun-effect staff on Jonah.

[Serafina]

I ran with a complete Terminator-team. Spoiler

You can get an awesome holy terminator-armor if you look around the whole space hulk during the first mission on it.

Other than that, i used the high-end energy traits - they really have a nice synergy.

[Lord Revan]

I'm having problems that the game refuces to render properly and crashes alot, can't comment that much on the campain as I really wasn't able to start it.

[defanatic]

I had that problem. The solution was to delete local content and download again. Unfortunately, the files corrupted again after one sitting, so I just used another computer for this particular game. :/

[RecklessPrudence]

I had that problem too, with the demo that I downloaded last week. All that would run was the opening movie and the main menu - if I went into settings it crashed as soon as I left, if I went into main campaign (demo) it would show the whole 'This is our home' movie with the drop pod, then the loading screen, and crash right after I 'pressed any key'. All I had to do was update my display drivers, and it works fine, if a little slow.

...I really need to get a new computer.