Darjeeling

It's a much better experience if you have someone to pick a carry and play with, but yeah, I can see the frustration. If you have the hero in the 10 hero challenge, it might be a better idea to just finish the other 9 and then re-roll the Io.

I guess the reasoning for the 'one shot' was that there could only be one "volunteer" which seems odd, given that all the facilities which lead up to that point were still intact. I agree, just having people die would have been better. I did name all my soldiers (after writers from my university courses, with Friedrich 'Gonzo' Nietzsche as the volunteer). The final mission just sapped by enthusiasm for the game, so I just looked up the ending and let it go. Looking forward to doing another playthrough on 'classic' though (and to eventually get Enemy Within).

After owning XCOM: Enemy Unknown for more than a year, I finally had a proper game of it last week. I had never gotten into it properly, but I had a week off and with all the hype around Enemy Within (and given my enjoyment of some videos by perfectly silly English gentleman Matt Lees) I decided to give it another go. WOW, what an excellent game. I played it all through (on normal) and it was easily one of my best gaming experiences of the year so far. I'm very tempted to give it another go on classic once I have some free time again. It turns out the main difference between this and my previous attempts was that I finally set it to ironman. When I played before without ironman enabled, I found myself lapsing straight into a perfectionist mindset, trying to optimize every single move and save-scumming the most straightforward missions. When, at a terror mission, I was suddenly unable to save all the civilians, that mindset didn't work anymore and I just gave up on the game. Ironman has me playing a completely different style and I love the game for it. I should perhaps mention that I never finished the last mission. It feels completely incongruous to an ironman playthrough and has me right back in my old mindset - not a place I want to go. Did anyone else have this issue?

Not much of a 'trick' per se. If you are trying to hit them onto people farther away it's a bit of prediction of where they are going and then expanding/contracting accordingly. It should be reasonably easy on targets that are running away. A somewhat harder 'trick' is to 'orb bomb' people by getting right next to them (with tether or relocate) with balls active just next to you so that they all hit the target right after another. In terms of healing: Always keep tabs on your own health/mana. You will only give additional healing to the one you are tethered to if you are, in fact, yourself healing (so if you are full HP and getting healed, you partner isn't getting anything out of it). The most powerful items with wisp (although it's not necessary to build them on the hero, just to have on the team) are perhaps arcanes and mekanism, because both give health/mana to you and your partner AND on top of that your partner gets another chunk of it through you (so you are effectively giving 2+ mek charges at once, but only, again, if you are actually being healed from it). Sorry if you already knew all this, but I've seen some Wisp-players not quite aware of all the interactions. Hope it helps!

Hi there! I've been listening to Idle Thumbs for pretty much the entire post-Kickstarter era, but never had the time to get into the community (I had a forum account at some point, but I lost the password). In terms of regular gaming I have Dota 2 (and Spelunky daily challenge). Apart from that I enjoy games that challenge me systemically (Dark Souls, XCOM, Super Meat Boy) and those who have something to tell me. Not sure if those groupings make a ton of sense to other people, but it's the best way I can put it. Also, I've recently become obsessed with Netrunner (if anyone lives around London and is up for playing, feel free to PM). black0tea on steam