The second episode of Hint To the Breach didn’t gather quite as many views as the last one, but still pulled in by far the most views of any video this week. I’m not sure exactly why this is. Is it just that people want to start at the beginning? Into the Breach is just that much older? More people have already dismissed the series based on the first one?
Even so, this marks the first time I have received feedback on the tip itself that wasn’t either information I had considered and decided was either unnecessary or best included as part of a separate tip. Now I need to work how how to include the extra info. I can’t edit the old video, I can highlight the comments on YouTube, but maybe I should include a post-closing segment with extra info in future weeks? A feedback and improvements section. Would that be a good inclusion or just feel like padding?
The last week’s releases were:
Saturday, Thursday: Pillars of Ranternity
Sunday: Heat Signature Challenge Run
Monday, Wednesday, Friday: ShadowRan: Hong Kong
Tuesday: Hint To The Breach
The videos
Pillars of Ranternity
YouTube Link
This week we finally make it to Twin Elms, the quest hub for the last act of the game. It has been sitting there on my travel map, taunting me. Occasionally appearing in quests despite being completely inaccessible. We are there and able to pick up what turns out to be a surprisingly small number of quests if we just want to do the bare minimum.
Heat Signature Challenge Runs
YouTube Link
Restricting yourself to a single faction’s gear gives you a much better feel for the personality of each faction compared to the rest of the game. I think this is because, aside from Offworld Security and concussive guns, no faction really utilises their own gear. Foundry NPCs never try to use grenades, you never encounter a slipstreaming Sovereign guard and all factions have guards that glitch. I think each faction could be a bit more interesting to fight if they made use of the tools that are ostensibly coming from their region of space.
ShadowRan: Hong Kong
YouTube Link
The Ares infiltration mission is one of my favourite lengthier runs. It has a bit of everything. Several options are available to break into the labs, you get to see the Shadow economy at work with rival runners after the same or very similar objectives and you also have an unusually elaborate escape section to allow you to see how the corps cooperate and how runners sometimes don’t. It even combos as a personal mission if you happen to have recruited Rachter and talked to him enough. I’m not sure that you could possibly fit any more into this run unless you also made it part of the core plotline.
Hint to the Breach
As I said, this is one of the first tips where I have received substantial feedback about the content itself. In particular the additional advice I was given that I thought was particularly interesting:
- You can use the sale weapon as a way of banking 1 rep for another island. It costs 1 rep and sells for 1 rep.
- If you need an extra rep to hit the threshold for the next island, you may want to consider selling a starting pilot. Any unpiloted mechs get an AI driver who does an acceptable job, they just never learn any skills