"Dropping Fliff Like a Sultan" - Getting Rich in Necromunda: Hired Gun

The money’s good, the dog’s loyal, 

and the gun’s reliable – 

but can you survive the hunt?

- Focus Entertainment

Welcome Gangers to The Art of Caesura!

Man, years with no Necromunda video games and now we have two landing within half a year of each other! Last week we looked at Necromunda: Underhive Wars, but rather than just reviewing it, we looked at how I managed to reproduce my tabletop gang in the game. 

Likewise, this week, I don't want to just review Necromunda: Hired Gun because there are already loads of reviews out there, and having read most of them, I don't think I would have too much to add. Instead, I will give a brief distillation of my overall thoughts, wax on about hired guns in the Necromunda setting, and then talk about how to make bank in this game.

The short form is that the setting and sometimes the mobility are rad, but just about everything else is overwhelmingly average and some elements (crashes, inventory, takedown animations) are bad. 

For me, the most accurate way to consider this game is that it is distinctly "Double-A", which is fine. We have become accustomed to huge multi-million dollar AAA games that take teams of hundreds of people years to develop. This game was made by a small team, and at launch cost about half as much as AAA games at launch. I think that's a more fair frame of reference going into to this game. 

Anyway I am a big fan of the idea of Hired Guns in Necromunda. They are some of my favourite models from the setting to paint because they are so diverse. I thoroughly enjoyed painting Yar Umbra, The Deserter and Mad Dog Mono they are all super characterful, and learning how they manage to eke out their existence on Necromunda, helps to flesh-out the world.

I realized while playing this game, that the kind of game I actually want in the Necromunda setting is a full-on RPG. Like the scale and scope of The Witcher 3 or Dragon Age: Inquisition, or Fallout: New Vegas, or many others. Necromunda is such a deep, rich setting, involving House politics, espionage, intrigue and wanton violence etc. I would love to craft a character who - over the course of the game - could become a Ganger, Guilder or even rise to the peaks of Spiredom. I was discussing this with a friend, who recommended I check out Wasteland 3. I shall have to. 

I know it isn't fair to wish this game was a completely different genre of game, but it's actually because this game really nailed the setting of Necromunda (much more so than last week's Necromunda: Underhive Wars) that made me yearn for other types of stories that could be told and explored in that setting in the medium of video games. 

Making All the Money

I don't have a segue for this bit, so let's just lurch onto the topic of making tons of money in this game. For those unfamiliar with this game, the in-game currency ("credits") is used to upgrade your dude and your dog (and technically your guns, but you are better off just finding those) which unlocks more abilities and game play options in both side-missions and the main campaign. For me, this made the rest of the game more fun because you open up new strategies to test out in different situations; for example, unlocking a "Close Combat" skill, or a night-vision skill that highlights hidden chests. 

Contrary to other walkthroughs I've read, the first thing you want to work towards is maxing out your Vocal Implant. Which first requires maxing out your Cerebral Implant. This doubles the amount of money you make from side-quests. 

If you simultaneously upgrade "Shock" under your "Lumen" that will allow you to perform strong "take down" moves on Ambots and Hero-level enemies with force fields. This is important because the easiest side-quests involve taking out a certain number of these enemies. 

Next you want to progress the main quest until you unlock "S-Tier" missions, these provide the most rewards (and do not seem to be much more difficult). 

Now, armed with your maxed out Vocal Implant and Shock you want to preferentially pick S-tier "Psi Slaves" or "Ambot Hunt" missions because these have the best rewards for least time spent. Your strategy in these missions is to pretend you're an assassin version of Spiderman, quickly whip around the level with your grappling hook (so that hordes of enemies can't all close in on you) b-lining from target to target and then using your souped up Shock ability to take them down quickly.

When you're going into a mission, on the "select your loadout" screen buy max (3) med kits and stims (they are like one third the price here than if you buy them during the mission). 

Using this technique, I could regularly amass over 100 000 credits in under 3 minutes (and that's not even counting sales from loot which could sometimes be in the tens of thousands). 

Now, is this fun? Well it depends. As a busy dad, I don't have a ton of time for gaming, so grinding out a few short side missions to unlock a bunch of upgrades does feel like I'm accomplishing something with a short gaming session. By playing the same levels, I can memorize them and their spawn zones, try out new skills and descend upon my enemies like a true terror of the Underhive. But I recognize that this gameplay style won't appeal to everyone and might feel overly grindy or "gamey" to some. It's cool, different strokes for different folks and all that. 

Thanks for sticking with me and sorry for the disjointed post, I just had a few disparate thoughts provoked by this game that I wanted to mull over. 

See you next week on The Art of Caesura!

Reading: Station Eleven - Emily St. John Mandel

Watching: Katla

Next Week:

Strategy in the Mortal Realms...