Game: "Do not do this" ASpec: "LET'S DO THIS! LEEEROOOOOY JEEEENKIIIINS!" Me: "All hands all hands Warm up the jump drive. Raise the shields. Power up the guns and tell your wife you loved her. FULL SPEED AHEAD!"

You can ask the Unbidden about the shroud. you ask them "Are you from the shroud?" "We know of it, we come from a place close to there... very close."

Paradox needs to add an hero achievement to Stellaris: "Not the End yet" Bring forth the End of the Cycle and stop it.

"Dormammu, I've come to bargain!"

Whispers in The Void = Tzeench Composer of Strands = Nurgle Eater of Worlds = Khorne Instrument of Desire = Slaanesh The End of The Cycle = Malal

So the 4 main patrons are basically Tzeentch(Whisperer of the Void), Nurgle(Composer of Strands), Khorne(Eater of Worlds), and Slaanesh(Instrument of Desire) Utopia making Stellaris move up in the world

*creates fanatic materialist and militarist empire* *Declares war on any and all spiritualist empires encountered*

I feel the shroud overtaking me *It is A GOOD pain~*

Wouldn't it be better to put the few survivors of your race onto world ships so they can experience a 10,000 year long guilt trip?

Blood for the blood god! Skulls for the skull throne! Milk for the Khorne flakes!

"there is 4 of them well techincally there is 5" *cough* *cough* chaos gods *cough* anyways looks like it is ineed time for eternal war

Guess I'm killing all psionic empires now

Do you feel the Warp overtaking you? IT IS A GOOD PAIN.

Who wants to birth Slaanesh? I hear he/she has a nice collection of fun pleasure/pain instruments.

This shroud business sounds a lot like 40k's warp, it has 4 massively powerful entities (one of intellect and insanity, one of life and death, one of honour and slaughter and one of hapiness and excess), you can travel through it using special drives, it can only be accessed by psionic individuals, you can summon entities from it...

So making a covenant with the End of the Cycle turns you into the Eldar and creates the Eye of Terror where your empire once stood? Ouch.

Meanwhile in the Retconnian: YES! I'm canon again, sorta.-Malal

“You will need an empire that has spiritualist...” My materialist/egalitarian/militarist democracy of psychics with citizen rights synthetics led by an elected chosen one that somehow ended up with psionic robots wants to talk to you.

Sanctioned Psyker: You requested a Psyker, my Lord? ASpec: *pushes Lightning Arc button and selects a Tau Fire Warrior squad* Sanctioned Psyker: Witness your dooooooma!!

I think we all see the 40K references up in here. We got Nurgle, Khorne, Tzeentch, Slaanesh, and End of the Cycle is either Malal, or Mister Eaten from Fallen London (I mean c'mon, it even says "DO NOT DO THIS" in the fluff text and doing it is a Very Bad Idea. Clearly your entire civilization is Unaccountably Peckish when you do this.)

So The End of Cycle isn't an end event technically, so it can happen WITH Scourge or Unbidden? OK NOW IMAGEN ROUGE AI VS PCYONIC MIGHT

End of the cycle = Stellaris: Genocide route

Getting that 40k fall of the Eldar/age of strife vibes. This is going to be epic. *For The Emperor!*

Am I the only one that sees the game of pong at the end with the avatar?

You can actually become psionic without being spiritualist, but you need scientist expertise Psionics. Heads up for those that want to make space wizards, not space clerics.

"Do you hear the voices too?" One of the texts from contacting the shroud. Yeah, they knew *exactly* what they were alluding to.

>239 likes >0 dislikes No filthy xenos or unusually clean robots detected

I feel sorry for the people who didn't read the text before forming the covenant.

Maintenance for the warped consciousness reckoning...328k fleet power......1.3 energy, .3 minerals. This seems legit.

Can the AI trigger that too? I have a stupidly big spiritualist AI empire in my first game, would be too funny if it suddenly just vanishes while leaving that thing there.

What would be cool is if you can become energy beings, then the Unbidden come saying you are food, then repliy "No, You are".

So are there Space Marines too? I mean we have Chaos gods...

Jesus Christ, that end game crisis... If you were pretty much 3/4 the strength of the galaxy, everyone is screwed. But hey, all are purged this time.

The unbidden got one hell of a buff

BUT, if you can win the game in 50 years after accepting the covenant, you don't have to pay the price! once you make the deal you must begin a large scale blitzkrieg around the galaxy. at least you might lose your empire, but that one planet, but those conjured psi entities might kill the last few surviving empires.

End of the Cycle - brings a whole new meaning to 'curiosity killed the cat' Dammnnnnn I must admit if I was given that choice (without knowing what it does) I'd of been tempted to just do it and I probably would just panic and freak out and go all giddy at the same time switching between manic evil cackling and excited glee like a child in a candy store...

And the end of cycle is why you go for machines because they don't make giant death things made from your entire race

64 years into my newest playthrough... Kicked three empires asses already by rushing cruisers and shield, was doing awesome, was colonizing my sixth planet... Suddenly from across the galaxy comes a blood court with 12 planets already, overwhelming in all degrees, and they declare war almost instantly upon meeting me... I paused, used command prompts to check, they're a regular empire, somehow equal to an FE in fleet power, with the FE being only superior in tech and navy room... Advanced neighbours was turned off... How the hell did that happen?

+ASpec I just found out about one of the most trivial yet amazing things the shroud can do, it allows you to actually talk to the Prethoryn Scourge and gives you an additional dialogue option with the Unbidden!

YOU SHOULD NOT FORM A COVENANT WITH THE END OF THE CYCLE. You still here? Ok let's make a covenant with the end of the cycle. Killed me dude hahaha xD

"54 fleet power" 54k? 5400? 54.0?

Sooo, now i can make both necrons( synthetic ascension+fanatic purifiers) and Eldar(psy ascension) Gotta think how to make Da orky boiZ(hive mind perhaps, idk) too and i can have a "War in heaven" game.

It literally took me like 5 full traditions before the tech for psionics even popped up. But eyyyyy was able to take both levels of the Ascension perks at once.

What happens if you do end up beating The End of the Cycle?

so if you and friends are playing a multi match game that every one works hard for and then you think "man how well will all my friends playing this due when fighting an unstoppable force? how will they *RAGE*" doing the end of cycles will answer your question

A wise man once said: *"WITNESS YOUR DOOM!"*

I really liked this video, being a new stellaris player myself, it really helped! And I really enjoyed the ending, that was a good cinematic shot of the phsionic cloud at the end, it's terrifying lol

Amazing Walkthrough Aspec... thanks for sharing this with us.

40k influence is strong with this one.

EMPEROR PROTECTS! STAND BRAVE AGAINST THE HERETICS OF CHAOS

This is fantastic! Thank you for this video! Sounds fun!

Great guide man, thanks

For the EMPEROR! The might of psykers belongs only to HIM!

aspec.. you have to do a end of cycle let's play.. were you rebuild and recover after being exiled!

GW, I know everyone jokes about this, but please don't send your army of lawyers hopped up on codex book sales and sue. That said.... I really hope the modders give me my Avatar of Khorne. FOR THE SLAUGHTER!!!

Blood for the blood god!

So what happens to the shrouded planets? Can that be reclaimed or are they permanently rendered uninhabitable as a monument to your hubris? And when you say the fleets become derelict do you mean we can reclaim them or they are actually destroyed?

Hoping the AI can also do The End of the Cycle.

So you're saying I can make a GOD? Will the god attack me? Could I maybe prepare worlds for my people to reinhabit? The questions are endless, unlike the cycle.

Chaos Gods...instrument of desire...Slanesh its that you?

I've always wanted to role play as the Eldar.

ok so I force summoned them on another AI empire (with the help of good ol' console). It's about 1-2m fleet power with 4 arc emitter type weapons that have very high rate of fire, and always 1 shot kill your battleship. ......and It's so bloody easy to kill. Allow me to explain. Its shield is impossible to take down, but its hull point is abysmal. It was summoned around 2670 (version 1.6.1 vanilla btw), I specifically nerfed myself to control only about a third of the galaxy just to see if my fleet can deal with that. I had around 3300 fleet capacity & 1 million combined fleet power split into 3 fleets. no confederation or anything. They're mainly made of Arc emitters, as it is my favourite weapon regardless of the enemy, along with a bunch of naked corvettes armed with torpedos that ignore shields. They got psi jump drives, enigmatic shields, and so forth. the empire that spawned it was next to me, but its capital was on the other side of the galaxy. Annnnd of course the main reckoning death ball came for my capital system right away before any other planet, because I'm a fucking player instead of AI. fucking hate that. Anyway I only had 1 fleet within jump range before he obliterates my capital world. it's only about 350k fleet power (compared to the reckoning's 1m) And I won. Yeah. I barely touched his bloody 300000 shield, but the torpedoes that ignore shields, a bunch of bombers, and of course the Arc emitters tore its bloody hull apart. I lost a bunch of ships, and even my triple upgraded shield+hull+armor (I science'd hard early on so those were the researches left) battleship gets 1 shotted. but nake corvettes got 1 shotted too, so those bought me a bunch of time allowing my arc emitters (spread across around 120 battleships) to just do 1~300 direct hull damage with 100% accuracy. and when the dust settled, the ball's explosion was spectacular, and I still had about 200k fleet power left on that fleet. (My other 2 fleets warped back into my capital system AFTER the battle was won) so yeah. it's not end game crisis because it....isn't that hard to kill. Oh btw, no celebration or any dialogues for clearing out the fall of eldar--i mean balls of reckoning.

Great Video!

What is even the point of making a covenant with the "end of the cycle" if it just obliterates everything in your empire except for one world and unleashes a terrifying monster on the galaxy?

The fun thing is you can actually ask Unbidden are they from Shroud or not. Their answer is no but they say they know of it. Wonder what's going on there. Do they worship Shroud deities or are they arch nemesis?

Now I think of it, you forgot to mention the huge -1000 diplomacy malus you get from birthing the End. Even the three genocider empires will get kinder words than the player, apparently.

The worp enteties is a nice touch and a nice refrince to 40k. The 4th sounds like Slenesh and the and End of the Cycle sounds like the Chaos God of Malice.

Yes the video was informative to me. I was able to get the base game while it was on sale. I plan to get Utopia in a couple of days. Brgh paydays. Psionic is one of the paths i intend to explore.

End of the Cycle be like: Wanna make a contract and become a Magical Girl?

End of Cycle seems to be worth it. It's pretty easy to win the game in 50 game years with a +100% bonus.

The conclusion of this event chain is so Childhood's end.

I havent played a singles stelarris game (pc is bad) but I want to know if you could use the "end cycle" option as a self destruct button to mess up with an enemy who is going to win?

Basically the Fall of the Eldar and the birth of Slaanesh...

Do you hear the voices too?

I completed Breaching the Shroud and didn't get the Seance Event, nor The Shroud added to the contacts screen. Did it get bugged with Distant Stars? I went back to an old game, pre-Distant Stars, and could access the Shroud, so is is broken?

Welcome to 40k!

09:18 Can this be countered with Biological Ascenscion? And does having Psionics and/or said Patrons have any affects on Horizon Signal or Vice Versa? 10:11 Oh jeez, these guys are the Powers of Chaos from 40K. Tzeentch (manipulator and spy), Nurgle (tinkerer with genetics), Khorne (war and more war), and and Slaanesh (greed and perverse behavior).

THIS IS THE ONLY TRUTH, BECOME ONE WITH THE ETERNAL CYCLE ! .... can you hear the madness ? so , if you are losing , you may want to create that thing and become one with the universe following the only true destiny ? :D

The end of the cycle? What if stellaris is connected to SC2 and amon is freaking everywhere and he's in the stellaris universe, just in another form.

Jesus the Role playing elements in this game are enormous.

The end of cycle would be great as a challenge, activates end of cycle: 50 years to win or everyone loses

Is the warped consciousness hostile, allied or neutral towards you? Because its bar is in blue which generally represents and ally. Can you even talk to it?

I have also read that when you meet the scourge that you translate what they are saying. Learned this in a post on steam. The guy took a screenshot of it.

The end of the cycle reminds me of Amon and the hybrid from Starcraft 2 "The end war has come. Amon's fury will engulf the entire galaxy. . . . . But one spark of hope remains."

THE WARP! THE HERESY!

Discovery right now really broken, first 2 traditions i mean - + to anomaly and research points for reserching planets. 3+ science ships and you get +100% to research as long as you science ships scout galaxy. You dont need to finish it btw, grab anything what you desire. Also whole harmony top tier too.

You don't especially need the Spiritualists. It also works when you have at least 1 Pop with the 'Psionic'-Trait.

Oh wow. I did whole psionic thing with the shroud once and my offerings were all really boring so I gave up on it and just blew all the materialists into stardust the regular way instead. I had no idea you could do all this cool stuff.

Nice, I can literally play as the Eldar

"1 Army unit." "Do not ignore it" what dude it takes like 10 armies to take over any given bombarded planet, tops, the shroud is pretty lategame, why the fuck would you need more armies?

The base planet pop isn't the only thing to get the psionic trait, leaders do as well and its custom to which type of leader. it's actually quite powerful.

You don't have to have 3 ascension perks to access Mind Over Matter; I have it on my current game, as my 3rd perk (of 3 so far). All you need is the Psionic Theory tech researched. I had never got it before, so I started a new game recently designed to ensure that I did; if you look it up, the tech is "random", but weighted depending on certain variables- stuff like fanatic spiritualist and having a researcher with the Maniacal trait really help if you want it earlier, as does getting the research boost from the tech ascension tree, which increases Rare tech options. I had my ascension perks all planned out, and only two perks I wanted were available right off the bat, so when my third slot became available, I decided to just let it hang until I met the prerequisites for them, which I figured would take a while (because it did for the Titans and Mega-Engineering perks in the past). To my surprise, I don't even think it had been hanging there unused for year before I got the Psionic Theory tech, and made Mind Over Matter my third perk choice. Now all I need in terms of techs are the Titans, Mega-Engineering, and Climate Restoration (I think that's what it is called), and then I will be all set for my perk picks. P.S I case you were wondering, I chose/will choose the following ascension perks: Technological Ascendancy, Imperial Prerogative, Mind over Matter, Transcendence, Colossus Project, Galactic Wonders, Master Builders, and maybe Consecrated Worlds (because it is only allowed by spiritualists, which I never play, except this once just to try Psionics).

...but mechanically the shroud is just not that good it seems... random events or making some pact that will both help and hinder you? They sound fun but they don't sound very useful compared to what I've seen and heard of the other paths. I hope I'm wrong on that though.

Dude, there are 5 crisies, robot uprising, the swarm, the unbidden, war in heaven, and the end of cycle

The End of the cycle has to be the coolest thing I have ever seen in Stellaris.

so we can do a 40k run with this yes

We need the Emperor in this game.

So... you pull an Eldar?

Just imagine starting the end of the cycle in a multiplayer game.

How do u get those cool shots of the planets and the star at the start? My game wouldnt zoom in enough