Going from watching your Sunday military videos to watching a video about gaming is abit of a trip.

I saw this video for the first time around 10 months or more, when I first played Phoenix Point. Now I was thinking of playing it again and searched for this video only to find it and realise that it was by Perun, whom I now follow because of his indepth talks about supplies and the war in Ukraine. Wow.

10/10 - This is exactly the video I was hoping you'd make next. I'm 180 hrs of playtime into my first playthrough (I assume, that's pretty bad) and made a buuuuunch of the mistakes you've outlined here, which makes the game start to feel like a treading-water sort of grind by the time you're mid-game, starved of resources and struggling to keep on top of everything. Coming from X-Com, I thought, oh SWEET I get MORE THAN ONE BASE?? I'll build that second one up ASAP to keep ahead of the curve. Now I have like 10 of them, pretty much all completely built up with shit I never really needed, have researched EVERYTHING, allied with all factions and only just got the final Ancient refinery to actually start building those weapons, which makes all that other gear basically redundant. I had no idea you could cut a profit purely from trade! What a game-changer! I would also add with the advice about building Living Quarters/Hospitals, it makes no sense to have these facilities in bases that are geographically close, put them on either side of the globe so you've generally got a "rest/heal" base within range of whatever conflict you're fighting. 2 such bases seem to be enough for that.

If playing Festering Skies, I don’t steal faction ships until after the first Behemoth sighting. Steal them after that they already become preloaded with weapons and misc modules. Before the Behemoth, I just activate closest base with a Manticore.

24:00 Researching live aliens gives you bonus damage against them. This is crucial with lesser weapons and still useful with tier 3 weapons for aliens with insane amounts of HP. So don't skip that research.

I'm a bit sad to hear how much of the tip is "don't engage with the game here, it's a trap" feels kinda rough for the player and designer

Thank you! As someone who logged untold hours of Xcom UFO Defense Force, Phoenix Point satisfies that itch, but I’ve forgotten what it means to really hustle. Even the old Xcom rewarded the player for not researching the tech that advanced the story and research all of the second tier that could be found beforehand. This is a different rhythm and vids (both these tips-based and play-throughs drive that notion home. Appreciate your work! Cheers!

Sweet. Awesome tip and strategy guides to the overall game. Thanks for this. I know that its your opinion and wont argue one way or another. If you disagree, just dont do it. Dont argue.

35+ minutes is not just tips, it's the whole shaft! On the subject of reverse engineering - i would humbly submit that if you steal aircraft from Synedrion(what with the brutal rep penalty current patch have introduced) you might as well reverse-engineer their SR or you will run out of ammo well before you learn how to produce it the legit way. In fact, in my current playthrough i ended up building a few Pythagoras's, and Synedrion was by far the last faction i got to 50% with(through *almost* no fault of my own).

This is the video I was looking for. Huge help as a first time player, Ive been running around with 1 ship because it felt unworth to get another. Totally wrong, much appreciated on the vid

I mean, I do try my best to equip every operative with a personal set of gear... But sometimes the recruitment just gets ahead of the economy, and I am forced to shuffle the gear a little. Yes, I still manufacture it as soon as I can. But I believe that this approach is also viable, and less cheesy than just teleporting the same 9 sets. The way I see it, my more acclaimed, veteran operatives have their own, customised gear, while the rookies get the Phoenix-issued weaponry (and whatever armour is free at the moment rather than the specifically matched sets I'd otherwise use).

Just came across this, and I really enjoyed the video! One thing I am extremely confused by is how are you possibly beating the Ancient Site missions without upgraded gear? The Hoplites seem to always come in huge quantities and positively WRECK my soldiers even in the mid-late game. I can't even imagine trying to do that early game with tier 1 weaponry.

Nice to see an updated guide most of the ones I've found although good are a year or so old, thx.

I wish the game had lower than Rookie difficulty. I started a couple of times and i have no idea when i stuck and why, is it close to the end game, is it middle. Would be awesome to have Story Mode difficulty where you can have 1 ship and 1 team and just enjoy the game with your main team which you stick with and actually finish the game.

Came here after I got absolutely destroyed entering lategame (playing on Heroic). My economy was shit and every 'Extreme' threat mission was detrimental to the campaign. I'll wipe my tears and enter another one backed with the solid information from this video. Cheers. This game completely failed at teaching the player a lot of things they should know beforehand.. but, maybe that is indeed my XCOM background factoring into how I played the first time.

In the video there's mention of the possibility to get an free aircraft when remote activating a base. I havent seen any such "free" aircraft? Is it perhaps a feature when playing with festering skies dlc?

Teleporting equipment is not a strong cheese, rather an economical gamble. Sure, you can just share Equipment, but that's how you get the A team wiped out in an ambush.

Ooo that’s the power point guy We meet again It’s really funny how when I need western perspective on military stuff I watch Perun and when I need a guide on a new strategy game I find him again.

Thanks so much for this, first actual strategy guide I have seen.

In one of your infiltrator class video you totally undervalue the technician. No wonder if you skip adv. laser weapons. Just for the fun i build a team with only Infiltrator/Technicans. These laser towers can do 600 dmg. And due to remote controll they do it twice per Technician per round. Also if the are close to empty or damaged, pick them up and place them again.

Independent heavy legs are good because they have almost as much armor, but don't have the -1 Speed.

I am going to get this on steam. Good to know this stuff before getting in to make it more enjoyable start.

Thanks for the guide. I just got back into this game after a long break and these tips are super helpful 👍

I’ve restarted this game three times in attempt to win the strategy that is Phoenix point the first tip you give is an absolute winner

Great video! I need to spend a point to advanced laser tech: they give you a shoulder mounted laser weapon that is Tier 3, spent 1 AP (that's quite useful for an Heavy, which action costs at least 2 AP) and reach almost everywhere in the map. It's very powerful and I suggest not to skip it

Thanks for an excellent video ;) i love this game but always seem to struggle in the midgame, i've played hundreds of hours but im yet to see the second half of the game ;( Specifically 1. not being to access enough of the globe to do missions or scavenging etc, (im guessing after watching your video its because of lack of satellite coverage) 2. how to defeat the ancients at the archaeology sites, even with maxed out characters i get destroyed (and without tier 2 weapons allround that would surely be even more difficult ) Anyway im going to start a new game following your advice and see how it goes (and im only playing on veteran lol) Keep up the great work! :)

Look forward to see your next play through after the changes from the last patch. Think it’s changed things a lot from your current game.

Something I've been doing that now looks like a mistake: leaving a garrison in a base. I see all that red around a base (like in SE Asia in this video) and I want to put a dozen soldiers and maybe a vehicle in there! Looking around the internet, though, it sounds like we get more than enough warning, as long as you've got a team somewhere in the hemisphere. Now I've got to see about getting all those troops out of Australia...

I feel like even this guide most of it is going over my head😂 literally just started

Your tip 6: ancient tech, doesn't that require dlc? If so, and we don't own the dlc, which research if any would be skippable? Thanks!

I played this game the Complety wrong way. I pretty much did everything u said not to, but I also went in blind with not much TBS games experience. U would get a kick out of my run.

Just bought the game to play on steam deck great video thanks for the tips

If you have the corrupted horizons DLC researching aliens will also unlock alien abilities for the mutoids which is a new type of soldier that relies on the mutagen resource. I wouldn't say the advice given here isn't gd anymore, rushing T3 weapons is a totally valid strategy but researching aliens is less of a "trap" since they literally make a class of soldeir more powerful. Another CON of this strategy is that since you rely on the factions to research their own tech you'll get their tech that much later, so for weapons this isn't a big deal but this also affects tech for augments and more importantly the exclusive faction classes thus limiting your options for multi-classing...

Thanks for this. I basically had no idea what I was doing at this level.

Just wanted to say, love your videos, have found them very useful. Would like one on the assault class when you get the time. I am going to have to start again, as I haven’t got enough of the map open for where I am at time wise, especially for where you seen to be at a similar time. I haven’t even seen anything about ancient tech, what story mission starts that up?

Regarding the endgame faction research, I was confused at first why I couldn't choose the other factions' endings despite having done all of their final research and penultimate missions, too. It seems that you can only do the final mission for the faction whose endgame research you did first! Then, only the final mission for that faction spawns. The only other ending you can choose at any point is the Phoenix Point ending, but - unlike for the other faction research - that one actually tells you that it locks out the other endings...

Knocking down a facility gets enough resources for one more weapon. Imagine you demolish your apartment and get a Beretta as reward 😀

Beginner with few days in here. I don't know if I missed it but I don't think you talked about mist repellers. Since your recommendation to avoid most researches made this a lot more complex, do we avoid mist repellers altogether or is it still fine to research and build them on our bases? I see in this video you don't have them on your bases. Is there a reason for it? Wouldn't it help slow down the mist and prevent starvation of populations?

Those are some great suggestions there. I knew getting ships and soldiers throughout the game is really important, but I never knew I could mess up research with reverse engineet everything under the sun.

What about Mutoids? Doesn’t that make Mutagens more important? As well as the autopsy research to get their Pandora’s abilities? Or are they a mechanic better left ignored?

Thanks A TON for this!

Playing my current campaign on legendary I unfortunately fell for a few of these traps, I raided allies for materials early and built a few fabrication plants so I can quickly build up Manticores to fight the festering skies. This helped in short term as I was able to immediately counter the Festering Skies and get several small teams out exploring. I invested into food production which will take time to see returns on. I have not stollen a single air craft as (unpopular opinion) the middle of the ground Manticore is not bad! Usually 6 dudes is all I need for most missions. Another unpopular opinion, using vehicles is not a bad idea. They offer some cheesy time consuming strategies for haven defense. I was able to take down my first Scylla using 3 rookies and an Armadillo because it acted as a nice fast moving tank to kite it around until the heavy with the grenade launcher shreded enough armor so that the priest can panic lock the Scylla with a redeemer rifle. I managed to do a haven defense using only one assault and an Armadillo by rallying all the defenders in the first turn and using the Armadillo to tank damage. Now in the mid game the thing killing me is: the constant need for tech resource, corruption because the Acheron refuses to show up, and glitched probes that I can't manufacture even though I have a powered archeology lab. It was damaged while being constructed which I think may have gliched it. I'm building a second lab to see if the glitch gets fixed. If not, I'm stuck trying to win with tier 2 equipment.

why this series is not ever! such a pity :D

I’m in my first ever run and I’ve tried to go in completely blind. It was such a big mistake, I’m almost into February already and just got my 3rd team, all the scavenging missions I’m finding are high difficulty in the mist at night, and that wouldn’t normally be a problem but I just got a loaded fucking intel report with some boney looking snake thing and some big ass quadruped worm launcher, I’ve been cruising up to this point haven’t lost a soldier yet, but something tells me that the next time I get ambushed I’m gonna get screwed. Still not sure who I wanna ally I’m closest to the disciples but I’m thinking synedrion because the anti mist stuff is pretty cool, not sure if it’s actually useful in the long run but from the past few mission I’ve had to do in the mist I’m thinking it will be.

The Xcom series was some of my all-time fav games but Phoenix Point is better in every way imaginable. Sirens: Crippling the head does not remove their mind control ability. The head augmentation that gives you neuralize (or whatever it's called) works to stop mind control. Biggest tip: The War Cry ability (Heavy class) combined with stun weapons is the "end all be all" of combat. War Cry covers a huge area (10 grid in all directions) and reduces all enemies to only 2 action points. Just the War Cry will make Chirons and most of the Pure soldiers completely not be able to do anything. Only Pure Engineers and Assaults can fire with a War Cry on them. Without moving, the eng can fire a PDW twice and the assault can fire once. If you put a small stun factor on the assault he can no longer fire at all. The engineer needs to be stunned past the halfway mark to remove his ability to fire. This works on all monsters or soldiers. War Cry and a little stun and they are helpless. Harvesting: I never kill pandorans except for pesky worms and fraggers. All the rest I simply overstun enough to keep them stunned til the end of the mission. They are a great source of food that can then be traded. Farming Scavenging Sites: A vehicle can hold unlimited gear so I save all scavenging sites until i have 2 containment rooms, the Tiamat, an Aspida, at least one Hvy/Priest with Sniper perk, one Hvy/Engineer with Sniper perk, one assault/Hvy with Ready For Action perk (no cost for accessing backpack) and 2 other Hvy/Snipers. I bring lots of fuel for the enginers arms for repairing the vehicle and people. The Assault goes into the Apsida where the fast vehicle can move the soldier very far at any time. The assault/Hvy can then use 2 AP to get out leaving him with 2 AP. He can then either fire his weapon and get back in for safety, or he can use War Cry and 1 stun while still being able to retreat into the Aspida if needed. His quick hands make him ideal for grabbing goods from the crates or picking up loot. Four soldiers each take one corner where they can jump jet to any new enemies spawning and still have 1 AP left for a War Cry. If it's the Pure, I farm them for weapons and ammo. If it's Pandorans, I keep them all stunned with handheld nuerazors until I'm ready to go. Must have 2 containment structures built if you really want a good farming run. One Chiron takes up 5 space in containment so 50 fills up too fast. With the Pure, there is a max number that will spawn and they stop coming after a while but it's still a good amount. I have yet to run out of pandoran spawns but at a certain point you get so many stunned that it becomes difficult to keep them all "topped off" with stun while new ones keep coming. At that point I go for all the crates with my Aspida and Hvy/Assault and vacate the mission. Do not go for the crates until ready to leave as it will bring your Apsida to a crawl. Using this method you can easily get 2000-3000 food which trades for about 3k-4k materials or about 1k-2k tech. Rage Burst: Hvy ability that allows you to fire 5 times for the weapon's normal 1 shot cost. I use this with a stun sniper rifle at point blank range on all massive monsters and hits usually about 4 times giving an average of 64 stun. Since all my troops are heavy/something, they all have it and will stun a Scyllia into dreamland in a couple turns.

Just WOW! :-) Very useful video. Now I'll have to start the game all over again. (For the 5th or 6th time at least. :-))

Good video. Now I know what to to avoid: buying Phoenix Point.

Thank you for this vid! I have restarted this game 4 times and haven’t finished it yet. These tips are exactly what I have been looking for. Wait do training facilities stack?!

I'm beginning to have problems combating The Pure, I forgot you can have multiple teams with aircraft for missions, I'm still running 6 man teams in mission's.

Owned this game since only-Epic days and so much has changed. Now I am playing with all dlc on steam. Your guide is the way to beat this new meta. Gone are the days you just need 2 team with 2 Tiamats, also food productions were keys. Phoenix point has bad design and bad strategic layers, but the real ballistic model and ability to aim different body parts make me never wanna play Xcom again.

I'm a total newbie, I started my first game a few days ago after watching your playthrough. Synedrion was the first faction I discovered. After the latest update, stealing a Helios early game is a -18 penalty. Is stealing a single aircraft, let along 2, is even viable with such penalty?

These Videos have been life savers.... seriously Your awesome... except I cannot seem to steal a ship.... the enemy kick the holy livin shit out of me... what.. am I doing wrong? I mean ... it isn't even a close game .. they flick me away like a booger on a fingernail.....

Awesome tips! Thank you!

thanks mate! it helps. i could use a guide on air combat next ;-)

wow, dude. You saved me a lot of bad choices. I love X-Com, and to NOT do autopsies, or reverse engeneer alien tech would be suicide. That would have been a 100% choice I'd make in this game, as well. Thanks for pointing that stuff out. The 'lots of troops, and lots of planes" is kind of my normal strategy, so thanks for the confirmation. Great video. Question: In X-Com, you can stall the story, but not doing a certain mission, or research, buying yourself some time to upgrade. Can that be done here? Do some missions, upgrade before progressing the story?

Super helpful, thank you!!

Hey @Perun does the 4th DLC change anything regarding the global strategy?

"I'm well into the mid game" (22.01.2047) Checking my game at 22.01.2047 with 9 troops and 2 aircraft and _sweating_

I’ve just hit a difficulty wall in my game (vanilla, veteran, no idea how many hours but I’m basically obsessed with this game currently). Everything had been going pretty smoothly but now I’m having a bish of a time for example a vehicle rescue with multiple chirons and unlimited reinforcements. I got to the vehicle but was blocked by a Chiron corpse with no other way out. Had to reload to latest autosave. Another one was rescue independent soldiers- literally unwinnable from the start.

Great vid. My only question is how do you clear the excavation sites with the basic T1 weapons?

More! Give me more!

I gotta say it sounds good and all to steal a plane from one of the havens at the start.. but boy are those soldiers they send wiping the floor with mine.. headsets even behind full cover, it is as if they dont want you to steal planes at the start..

The only thing you didn't cover that I wish you did is mist repel. Is it a trap?

Excellent video

Trick question from noob - Why is playing fast and skipping half the game a good thing? Not criticising your strategy but rather the game itself. What am I missing? Seems like a great game to just mellow through...

This is great. Thanks!

The only thing you need to know about is that saving the game every turn saves your ass. Here in console the game crashes very often during loading screens and you can lost all your progress of the mission

Thanks for all this tips. As a new player (PS4), sometimes I find myself not knowing what to do since this game plays different than XCOM. To get new armor/weapons I recruit soldiers & strip their stuff for research. Always use only the 6 soldiers that I start with since I play in recruit difficulty to learn the game. I love this game but the constant crashing make me save constantly. Again, thank for all this tips. Guess I'll start all over again since I'm not that far in the game & have made some mistakes that you said we shouldn't. Also I don't like heavy's soldiers even with sniper armor for the boost in accuracy🤦‍♂️

Now that the Terror from the Void mod has been released, when will you revisit Phoenix Point?

I have yet to find ANY reason to have an Access Lift in a base, past the initial clearing. They really seem to be there only to give you some materials. Even on max difficulty, I have yet to resort to running from a Pandoran invasion force - reloading exists for such cases anyway.

I had someone from a haven I was defending join me after the battle. I figured it was something new they added. Now that the game is available for consoles I hope the modding community develops. I only have 5 mods for the game and 4 of them are made by the same author. This game has the foundation for something amazing but they didn't open it up to workshop like XCOM 2 did. I have over 1k hours into WOTC and the modding community is the reason for that.

Some spoiler warnings would've been nice...

I wonder how much of this holds up with the terror of the void mod? And do people really go through the game that fast? Is it really supposed to be done by march/april?

Just started the behemoth edition how does scanning work? Only from your bases or some other way?

thanks so much bud!

Very helpful thank you

Hm. I didn't actually notice what transport craft I started the game with. Is that actually a manticore? Because if so... then when you play the first mission of Festering Skies... Well, the reward is meant to be a manticore, but your transport is lost in the start of the mission. So that means all you're really getting is one extra soldier at the end of that mission, and also it starts off the annoyance of having a huge alien aircraft going around blowing up havens? Did I make a huge mistake taking that mission?

You didn't say anything regarding the mist.. is there anything special to do with that? I know you can't push it back (unless you get it from euh, the green faction).. but is that it? Should I be fearful of it? I know it's just added difficulty..but is that it?

should you activate bases you cant reach? just wondering if you should start scanning a soon as possible. this game is so much more complicated then xcom 2. just feel overwhelmed eith all the choices. looking forward to any of your other guides for beginners.

Own this on PC never finished bc patches ruin save files. I really want to play but it seems like a lot of micro managing. I'm not good at micro management. Xcom 1 and 2 weren't overwhelming but I did have to watch videos to better understand some things.

First of all, MANY thanks, amazing video. As someone who came back to the game for a (soon) new playthrough: Has the Mutation / Weapon Meta changed a lot from your last videos some month ago? For example i see in a lot of videos more and more tentacle mutations which where crap before? Has most stayed the same of can you give some pointers about those changes :) ? Thanks in advance!

What’s the highest tech tier in the base game. No DLC?

Yay!

Uh can i ask how your factions are not more hostile towards each other tho if its on pc prob a mod to keep them quiet

"do not reverse engineering of equipment" - can't agree with it. SOME equipment is worth reversing. For example, Bulldog AR. You can aquire it at the 1-4 first days and they are (in some battles, e.g. vs Anu or New Jericho) more profitable then the Ares, because of their armor shredding. You can waste many days, waiting for "Gauss technology" from NJ, it's easier to reverse Bulldog and craft some of them... Same about autopsies - if you do "Arthron autopsy" research, then "shotgun" research, then kill a Siren and do "Siren autopsy", after it you can research and manufacture the Slamstrike - the best weapon for disabling enemy head or hand.

this looks like this game is super hard. I am playing it for like 3hours and i dont even want continue after this video lol.

I cant see inside the buldings. On the videos when one of our troops inside, the roof become invisible. But mine on Xbox is not. Is there a way?

Ok im not exactly in to win the game, but to enjoy the game. So skiping bunch of reaserch is well....skipped content. Can anyone tell me how to prolong the campaign as much as possible?

By the time you finish watching all these tutorial videos you could have beaten the game. It would be nice if people made concise guides. Don't get me wrong I appreciate the detail - but so many videos by so many people are like 30 - 40 minutes long

Man ive never seen a game that didnt want you to play it so bad

I'd say it's a mistake to overlook the two faction tech. Laser turrets and PDW don't have an ancient counterpart, ancient is may better in general but a few choice researched wepons can be a big help IMO.

For the food production part I have to partially disagree Recruiting soldiers, which is extremely important since you NEED these troops to go out there and do the work cost A LOT of food (except if you're lucky with rescue missions). Food production, as an economic structure, is bad I agree : growing food only to sell is a trap people fall into (me included when I started) BUT 1 food prod building also means 8 soldiers that won't cost you any food maintenance, and THAT is the part that does the trick for me. Don't overbuild food prods, build just enough to keep your soldiers fed, and then you can use the extra food you obtain when exploring and saving havens for recruitement and trading purposes without worrying about getting out of food.

The new update gives -22 opinion to a faction you raided. I don't think raiding multiple aircrafts are viable early stage since you want to trade with the factions for resources.

I grap aircraft and they went air combat and then huge ship shows up and starts destroy havens If you do that base gets hit you screwed

Overall good, but I really don't see why you want more than 2 teams in the game. My first prio is to build 2-3 training facilities and start recruiting a 2nd team as early as possible; you will not use them until you get additional ships anyway, but this way you will start with them having max level skills; sure, you will not have a lot of skillpoints, but enough to make them usable without having to do 10 missions to level them). I believe this approach is even more useful since you can now get a team of mutids that doesn't even need to do missions to turn into their full potential. And another very important point is... Haven dies... don't get upset if you lose some, it doesn't matter in the long run.

It’s the archeology also in the base game (none of the dlc activated(?

On PS5 you can't steal/raid a ship and continue to play. There is some kind of bug that eliminates the crew that stole the ship from doing any missions of any kind whatsoever anywhere on the map. Eventually the game locks up and you can't play it. This happened to me twice. I tried it the first game and I couldn't do anything after I stole the helios. I could trade with the stolen ship but my main group could do no missions, nothing. They just flew around as havens got destroyed by the Pandorans unable to land and deploy. I started a new game, stole another helios and the exact same thing happened again. And then it locked up. This happened today February 3rd. I checked for an update and it said I had the most recent update soooooo..... if you're playing this on PS5..... you can't steal a ship early in the game or you won't have a game to play at all unfortunately.

I love xcom 2...this game is awsome but what I have noticed....the stealth aspect it's gone.. there isn't any chance ti sneak...enemy's already know your there the minute you arrive

Hmmm, so the game doesnt really offer multiple winning pathways of playstyles?

Honestly, the pressure of the strategy element outside of combat turn me off these xcom style games. It gives me stress that drains my motivation to play.