Pavonis Interactive Forums

I like to play games Ironman and for first time blindly (without knowing anythin). I played LW1 and know it was really long, so I don't want to play 40 hours to realize I am on the wrong difficulty. My thoughts aboutdifficulties are:

XC1: Classic is perfect in early and mid game for first play but easy on late game. For replays Classic is too easy but Impossible was too hard on early game.

LW1: For first play even the normal difficulty is hard due to lack of info, but for replaying (after got info of mechanics in forum) I found Classic adequate and very challenging (didn't try impossible). I played with 6 to 8 squad and red fog.

XC2: For first play commander was challenging on early (a bit more than classic on EU), adequate on mid game and easy on late game. For replaying I found commander easy but Legendary pure hell (mostly on early game). I needed 10 attemps to beat (most of them ruined just on first month or even on first mission).

So what difficulty and settings do you recommend me? Thanks in advance for answers.

Rookie or Vet. I'm finding Vet to be a bit harder than Vanilla Commander.

You can change difficulty during a campaign.

I started a campaign on veteran and got destroyed since I was still learning the mechanics and I was having a bitch of a time dealing with the timers (I have multiple map packs installed).

So I restarted on rookie thinking it was just too hard and with my better understanding of haven management I was breezing through missions left and right. I was not having timer issues here, it would still get tense but not impossible.

I finally restarted on Vet once again but this time I edited the INI file to increase the timers by 4 turns (same as rookie) and I am finding the difficulty about right, but it is starting to get a bit easier. I am in July and I have only lost two soldiers and it was in a vital supply raid mission with no infiltration. I desperately needed the alloys and elerium from that, so their deaths were worth it. I may try commander after this run. ADVENT is starting to catch up on tech, so we will see if this continues.

To me vet feels right at the moment, but everyone has their own preference.

Go with Rookie to learn all the mechanic. LW2 added and changed a lot of stuff that some vanilla tactic doesn't apply.

Vet, its not so bad.

I think you're going to just end up with the same wonky experience between early , mid , late game as in the past.

So with that in mind, id echo the responses of the above in that you just start out with rookie, and increase / decrease the difficulty as you go to fit how comfortable / restrained you feel during a given month. ( presuming the difficulty change option actually works right )

Thank you all for answers. I am now thinking about Rookie and Veteran.

I think about veteran because I am a micromanage insane player. Those that manage engineers to end a building 1 minute after the drop instead of 3 hours before it (and save 20$ from upkeep) or thoose that spend five minutes thinking to take a 86% action isntead of another with 84%. That short of things.

But think about vetern because I remember LW1 that have several obscure game mechanichs that were "gamebreaking" such as the new airgame mechanics or the alien research mechanic. That were totally unknown and unexplained and could put the player on the position of playing during ingame months a game that was already lost a lot of time before.

Are the new mechanics so critical here? I also be one of those player that read every single hint, tip or tutorial ingame so if the new mechanic is clearly explained is so a good point to veteran.

Proper haven management is crucial. Early game mistakes in that area can come back to haunt you.
You really need to go full recruit/intel on your starting haven and get those liberation missions ASAP. Getting an early liberation really sets you up cashwise for the rest of the game.

In my current game I liberated two havens by May and I am swimming in cash right now.

As far as hidden mechanics though, I think LW2 is alot more straight forward than LW1. I would say the thing that comes to mind mostly is that the permanent tactical dark events say something vague like "some enemies will get this upgrade." You never really know which ones are getting it unless its obvious like plus HP.

In combat at least, you can tell enemies that have been granted a dark event perk by the little green buff carat they have. The dark event perks are applied as buffs so they show up when you mouse over the red alien head like any other buff.

I don't think that's true of alien conditioning, you just sort of have to know what hp you normally would expect and then you see some people with 1 or 2 hitpoints higher than that.

Thanks for answers, I finally choose veteran. Only played 2 missions, so when I had played more I will give some feedback about difficult for new playes.

Appart from this I am amazed with this mod. It looks awesome. Also, when I had played more I will give some suggestions.

I would like to give some feedback to new players but I think I can't. Finally I decide to restart a new campaing and I am going to choose veteran.

I played veteran for first and am sure that playing blindly vetereran is too difficult, but I guess any difficulty is too difficult due to lack of game mechanics info, some of them citical.

So taking some wrong crucial strategic decissions and having some whipeouts just for don't know the mechanics in early game would make almost impossible (in my opinion) to beat the game on first attemp knowing absolutely nothing about the mod. Because most of the important gthings we need to know we need to search on UFOPaedia or in this forum.

I will restart on veteran and will give my feedback for seconf playthrough later.

Listen to me. Play without Ironman for first few times. You will lose anyway. I played 2 times Ironman commander and 1 time honestman, lost all 3 times.

Like you said, its about new mechanics. For example, i didnt know that i must do some missions in certain time or ill lose the game. i couldnt know that.

Dont worry about bugs, you can play Ironman without problem. Just look what mods are compatible with LW2 and youll have no problem.