XCom2 opinions

henriquejr said:

Pladio,

Are you using a mod managing tool like Nexus Mod Manager or only the (not) good and old Steam Workshop, in order to have XCOM2 heavily modded like that?

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I used the Steam workshop, but what I did first was to unsubscribe from all (using Steam), deleted all the config folders and verified game integrity after that.

I did this because at first the game did not run as I think there were some previous configs saved that broke everything.

Then I used ChrisOdd's modlist (https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1328549637) and subscribed only to those that interested me. For example "World War L" did not interest me, because I do not enjoy the Lost and making them harder felt like a way to reduce my enjoyment. The looks are cool, but it doesn't say how to disable the new Lost monsters and so I did not include them.

The last step was to look through some mods that I would enjoy and I loved playing with Grimy's loot mod when I played last year so I included that. I then also included I think only 4 others (TheAxeMod, WotC Mod Everything Reloaded, WotC Infiltrator Primary Secondaries).

Essentially, the list of Chris should all work as he's playing on YT with it. Any additions would be at your own risk.

Saying all of this, I did try downloading a "mod launcher", but it doesn't seem to work very well. It was helpful in creating the list I made for you up above, and it shows if there are any potential conflicts, but it doesn't seem to launch the game on my computer.

I love this one, even if it can be quite punishing at times!

Time for a thread necro.

I was browsing my Steam library for something new to try and realized I never played this. I had meant to play it a long time ago, but it's one of those games that always got pushed into my backlog for whatever reason. I really liked XCOM EU.

First impression: This game doesn't fuck around. I got party-wiped on the very first mission on Veteran difficulty, and I can't remember the last time that happened to me in any game.

I only have the base game + Alien hunters and Shen's Last Gift installed. I want to do a vanilla run first and save War of the Chosen for a replay.

Are there any mods that are considered must-haves? Also, is there a way to see an enemy's stats during combat? I figured out that I can see my soldiers stats by hovering the mouse over their name in the lower left. Is there another way as well?

JDR13 said:

Time for a thread necro.

I was browsing my Steam library for something new to try and realized I never played this. I had meant to play it a long time ago, but it's one of those games that always got pushed into my backlog for whatever reason. I really liked XCOM EU.

First impression: This game doesn't fuck around. I got party-wiped on the very first mission on Veteran difficulty, and I can't remember the last time that happened to me in any game.

I only have the base game + Alien hunters and Shen's Last Gift installed. I want to do a vanilla run first and save War of the Chosen for a replay.

Are there any mods that are considered must-haves? Also, is there a way to see an enemy's stats during combat? I figured out that I can see my soldiers stats by hovering the mouse over their name in the lower left. Is there another way as well?

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First and foremost, this thread being necro'ed is always welcome

The mod list I used on my last XCOM2 run is written below. Please, note that they're meant for War of the Chosen expansion. If you wanna use some of them, you should search for the non-WotC version (usually mods for War of the Chosen have the "WotC' acronym in the name and almost all of these mods, if not all of them, have a vanilla version available).

-X2WOTCCommunityHighlander v1.22.7
-[WOTC] Alien Hunters Community Highlander
-Missing Packages Fix + Resource
-Capnbubs Accessories - WotC
-Free the Hood - WotC
-FTH Capnbubs Addon - WotC
-[WotC] MGSV:GZ MSF Headgear
-WOTC Female Clothing Pack
-[WOTC] More Clothes Options (and other stuffs)
-Maps by Vozati [WotC Edition]
-Missing Packages Fix - Parcels and Maps
-Overwatch All/Others WotC
-Evac All - WotC
-Customization Camera Control
-[WOTC] Cost-Based Ability Colors
-[WOTC] Carry Unit Fix
-[WOTC] Stabilize Me
-[WOTC] Civilians Revamped
-[WotC] Numeric Health Display
-[WOTC] EU Aim Rolls
-[WotC] Gotcha Again
-WOTC Use My Class

I don't use a lot of mods, at least not on my current gameplay. There are videos on YT with players using 100+ or even 200+ mods.

As for a way to see enemy's stats during combat, I don't know if "Yet Another F1" is the mod you're looking for (and I also don't know if it works with vanilla).

Regarding must-haves it always depend on what you want or expect, of course. I've opted for most QoL mods in my XCOM2 "first-runs" (first run with XCOM2 vanllla then another "first run" with War of the Chosen enabled). But from the (very few) mods I use above, I'd always use Stabilize Me because your medics can stabilize others but IIRC nobody can stabilize them, if need be.

I don't have the ability to check now for the key to press but there are a few mods that show you a lot more information.

You would have to look for the exact names of the in the link below because I don't have my pc with me, but I'd recommend these ones:

Cost based ability colors
Yet Another f1
Gotcha again
Evac all
Extended information
Evac all

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1494089482

I'm almost finished with my most recent run, actually. While I understand and agree with your plan to play vanilla first, the content as well as "quality of life" improvements from WOTC are significant. Once you run WOTC you won't go back.

Generally, I don't get too excited about mods, but I've settled into a few now. Most are voice/clothes type stuff with a few "quality" types (I note one big one missing from the previous lists) and just a couple that actually change gameplay. I'm using the WOTC versions of all of them, so I'll omit that text. I think you'll be able to find vanilla versions of most of them.

male hair pack
female clothing pack
gotcha again
ruler reactions revised
show enemies and terrain
capnbubs accessories
instant avenger menus
stop wasting my time (I'm amazed this one wasn't mentioned, wouldn't live without it)
female hair pack
shogun2 female japanese voice
shogun2 japanese male vc
xcom2 international voice pack
welsh eng voicepack
farscape voicepack
cerys (witcher) voicepack
rdr2 arthur voicepack
bob ross voicepack

JDR13 said:

First impression: This game doesn't fuck around. I got party-wiped on the very first mission on Veteran difficulty, and I can't remember the last time that happened to me in any game.

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Haha, same here when I played this during a free weekend. Full wipe (repeatedly!) on the first mission = One major WTF moment indeed.

That first mission is insanely difficult but after some research I found out from the forums that this very first mission is for some silly reason in fact considered to be THE most difficult mission of the entire game!

Overall I thought the game was rather easy, yet yeah that first mission will rock you hard if you simply rush in. Sadly after that one, they all, for the most part, seemed rather simplistic or timed affairs after that.

How is the Minsc & Boo voice pack not in everyone's must-have list!?

The numeric health bar mod will become a must-have around half way through.

WotC really does change things around - doing it on a second play-through makes sense. If you really want to go hard core, get the Long War of the Chosen mod along with it.

Moriendor said:

That first mission is insanely difficult but after some research I found out from the forums that this very first mission is for some silly reason in fact considered to be THE most difficult mission of the entire game!

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I don't think it's so much the mission itself that's hard, it's that you start out clueless. Even if you've just set the game down for a few years, the nuances get lost.

Thanks for all the suggestions! I'm going to hold off on installing most of those mods until I get more familiar with the game. For now, I'm just gonna go with Stabilize Me, since that seems like it should be in the game anyways, and maybe Cost Based Ability Colors.

Yet Another F1 is tempting, but it seems a little cheaty.

Do I need to have the Highlander installed for those?

dteowner said:

bob ross voicepack

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Ha ha that's awesome!

Finished the first mission on my second attempt with no losses and 1 soldier gravely wounded.

Is it worth it to always open doors on vehicles that have them? I noticed a couple of vans that looked like they could be opened. The first one didn't have anything inside that I could interact with, and I couldn't open the second one despite it displaying the door icon. I assume some of them will contain loot?

JDR13 said:

Thanks for all the suggestions! I'm going to hold off on installing most of those mods until I get more familiar with the game. For now, I'm just gonna go with Stabilize Me, since that seems like it should be in the game anyways, and maybe Cost Based Ability Colors.

Yet Another F1 is tempting, but it seems a little cheaty.

Do I need to have the Highlander installed for those?

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If you really go with only very fews mods, I *believe* you won't need Community Highlander mods.

I had to use them because my mid-game was crashing to desktop a lot on ADVENT's turn. So I posted my issues on the proper Steam forum and an user, after seeing the mod list I was using, told me to add both Highlander mods as well as few others, and also to delete the config.ini file.

JDR13 said:

Finished the first mission on my second attempt with no losses and 1 soldier gravely wounded.

Is it worth it to always open doors on vehicles that have them? I noticed a couple of vans that looked like they could be opened. The first one didn't have anything inside that I could interact with, and I couldn't open the second one despite it displaying the door icon. I assume some of them will contain loot?

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I wouldn't mind to open vehicles' doors, unless the mission says a given object/person (which is the mission's goal) is inside a van, for example. Car's open doors may serve as a source of cover. But BEWARE: cars/vans tend to explode a lot on this game, causing damage to both enemies and party members near them You've been warned!

Also: There's no scattered loot on this game. The "loot" you'll eventually find is tied to some enemies on the map (when you kill them, they'll leave something behind much like in the tutorial mission). You'll have few rounds to get the loot before it vanishes. And yes, there is a mod that indicates which enemy is carrying such loot by putting an icon on its head, but I forgot the mod's name (I never used it).

henriquejr said:

Also: There's no scattered loot on this game. The "loot" you'll eventually find is tied to some enemies on the map (when you kill them, they'll leave something behind much like in the tutorial mission). You'll have few rounds to get the loot before it vanishes. And yes, there is a mod that indicates which enemy is carrying such loot by putting an icon on its head, but I forgot the mod's name (I never used it).

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Thanks. I knew about the loot on enemies, but I didn't know there was a time limit to pick it up.

JDR13 said:

Thanks. I knew about the loot on enemies, but I didn't know there was a time limit to pick it up.

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The time limit is a number displayed under the "picking hand" icon, like the one below:


I believe the mod used to show which enemy has loot is "Additional Icons". The enemy will have an icon over his head like this:

I'll also chime in with that warning…..do NOT hug vehicles too tightly in this game, or you'll wind up like a boy scout marshmellow! I swear sometimes the enemy shot empty vehicles when none of my squad was even near the bloody things, those critters just wanted to watch the world burn.

I'm only 4 missions in, and it seems the Shen's Last Gift DLC has already started. It's marked as Difficult, so should I avoid that mission for now? Can I wait as long as I want before doing it?

JDR13 said:

I'm only 4 missions in, and it seems the Shen's Last Gift DLC has already started. It's marked as Difficult, so should I avoid that mission for now? Can I wait as long as I want before doing it?

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You can wait as long as you want on that one. I generally wait until I have gauss weapons, but I also don't play the game for a challenge.

The retaliation missions are somewhat frustrating. How are you supposed to save civilians that are getting killed halfway across the map?

You're not. You only need to save 6 or so and unless you're playing very slowly it isn't usually too hard.

The point is that you can't play the overwatch game. You need to move forward. Sometimes quite aggressively.

Make sure that when you do you are using full cover.

Later in the game you will have more tools at your disposal.