Aliens: Dark Descent – Useful Tips and Tricks

Basics

Сrеdit gоеs to Xeonzs !

Just small basic info that I often see asked about in the discussions (all of the info below is from the in-game codex):

• Secondary weapons need to reload, but don’t take ammo
• Xp is gained from completing objectives, events (onslaught, aggression level increase) and boss kills (queen, preatorian, crusher)
• Pressing R reloads all marines (only if they’re below 80% capacity)
• “Kill that bastard” refers to clicking on and prioritizing a target to be killed
• Stress isn’t just gained while detected or during hunts, traits or wounds, also from enemies being present on the squads own motion sensor (so not deployed ones).
• You can drag and drop the flamethrower cone to widen it and cover an entire street, not just a doorway.
• The power loader can be fully repaired for 1 tool
• Resourceful perk description is wrong, it doesn’t refill the mags, it gives you entirely new mags, so you don’t have to feel like waiting till your mags are almost empty before you shelter, it also stacks, so if you have 2 guys in your squad, you’ll get 2 mags added to your spare every time you shelter.

Crew Management on the Otago

• If a soldier is tired but also in the medbay, don’t use a doctor for them, they’ll get some rest while they heal up, unless you’re going to the next day anyway, then use up any doctor charges you got.
• Deploying a tired marine isn’t THAT bad, it just gives a -10 bravery debuff which means either more shelter-saving or popping dem pills, they’ll be come exhausted after that mission, but they recover from exhausted when going to the next day, it essentially just prevents you from going in more than 2 times with the same guys on the same day.
• I’m personally prioritizing the traits which prevent them from getting tired, fix their own trauma and remove bad traits, this just cuts down on all the headache-inducing mechanics.
• Psychiatry removes 2 pips per day, so don’t bother putting a marine in the psych ward if they only got 1 point of trauma, unless again you got a spot free anyway and you’re going to progress the day.
• From DEV: “At the end of a run, the marines receive 0 to 3 Trauma Points depending on the maximum stress level reached during the run.” so it’s actually better to prevent them from reaching the tresholds whenever you can.
• If you don’t like the promotion offers given to your marine, just click the back button and open promote again, the 2 options should’ve been rerolled (could still be teh same, maybe just 1 different or 2 different).

Maps are Persistent

• Just remember, everything is persistent, so if you had to rush out of the map and you had to leave your sentries behind, just come back to pick them up another day, they’re not lost forever.
• Same goes for a room you might’ve walked passed, but you don’t have a hacker or marine with smart trait, you can always come back for this room if you so desire, I usually wouldn’t bother unless there’s still several rooms / buildings unexplored however, cause wasting an entire day on 1 medkit, 1 tools and 1-2 ammo (which won’t carry over) isn’t worth the cost (spending days has downsides, can’t say which without spoiling too much).

Weapons and Upgrades

• From what I’ve seen all classes get the revolver at level 2, while it has half the clip size, it CAN roll up to 3 damage per hit instead of 1, however the damage rolls are 1-3, so if your RNG is bad it means reloading more often than with the standard pistol, but if your rng is good and you also got a point or 2 in accuracy trait, then the revolver is a very good weapon to carry out most of the time and only carrying your pulse weapons during onslaughts, hunts and events.
• The Smart Gun is probably something people will unlock just for nostalgia, but the true benefits are in the upgrades that come with it for the class, you can deploy it as an improvised turret (your marine will use it’s secondary weapon) and improve the effects of slowdown in the suppression cone.
• The biggest must-have in my opinion though is the sniper for the recon, because that has a silencer upgrade on the recon itself, so this allows you to essentially get rid of pesky patrols without alerting anyone or anything, this doesn’t even warn nearby enemy right next to the target.
• This therefor allows you to stay out of being spotted a lot easier, thereby reducing stress buildup and aggression building, it also just allows you to dispatch them without needing to go around or letting them pass.
• I don’t know how I feel about the heavy pulse rifle, while yes you get bigger magazines, so more ammo per reload (which is still always just 1 mag) which means better ammo efficiency, you lose the ability to launch grenades for that specific marine, I’d say give everyone in your squad the heavy pulse, but have at least 1, maybe 2 with the normal pulse so that you aren’t without grenades if you lose the grenadier marine.
• Thanks to ‘Lv2Bat’ for providing insight into how mines work before I’ve unlocked and used them myself:
• So mines I figured would be quite useful, I’d probably leave them on enemy spawn points as population control measures, but he provided some good knowledge:
• They don’t cause team damage, they don’t trigger you are sighted, but I assume they do attract others as it’s an explosion, but they’re good for covering escape routes and defensive placement infront of your sentries for example.
• I still need to unlock the plasma rifle seen in the trailer and mentioned in the comments, will share thoughts once I have it.
• The RPG is hard to control as you need to lead the target, so you either need to have good timing or get them to come straight at you, but then it does like 3-4x the damage of a standard grenade, worth it if you play on high health difficulties or often go into medium/high aggresiveness.

Resource Management

• This one is rather simple, just don’t bring any resources and I mean it.
• You’re going to find so many resources on the map as they’re huge and everytime you come to a location it starts of peaceful so you have enough time to loot and fill up your bags, also every map I’ve done so far has at least 1-2 turrets or provides them if you’re about to run into some ♥.
• What this does is allow you to take more with you back to the Otago and build up supplies for missions that you are struggling with (so that you have some backup items incase you gotta redeploy), the only exception to this could be a medkit or 1 sentry, a medkit incase you get messed up before you find the first few (don’t use medkits unless you got a wound) and sentry because they are refilled for free if you bring them back to the Otago so it’s essentially free bullets when you have to shoot anyway.
• Ammo is a special case because there’s no limit to how much you can pickup in a mission, but it also doesn’t go back with you to the Otago, so you actually shouldn’t be grabbing up too much ammo, because you want there to be ammo on the map incase you gotta make a 2nd or 3rd trip and those new squads might need ammo as well, try to limit yourself to 6-8 mags in reserve, this is where the generic ammo pouches upgrade comes in very useful, because it starts you off with 1 extra mag instead of just increase capacity as the description would suggest, reducing the need to consume ammo on the map.
• Useful fact: secondary weapons (pistol, revolver, smg) do not consume ammo, you just gotta reload them often, so if you use the reload perk/trait, having that person use their secondary when not facing big amounts of enemies could be a big ammo saving tactic!
• Use your command points, these can really save you in so many situations AND save you ammunition.
• A horde coming through your small door chokepoint? Drop a napalm pool in it so they’ll have to walk through fire and not just your bullets.
• A runner in your face? Don’t risk your marine getting it’s arm torn off, shotgun the bastard.
• A boss not in melee range yet? Use this oppertunity to launch a grenade at it and inflict severe damage.
• Command points are an infinite resource, use it as such, just try to keep always have 1 point left whenever possible for nasty surprises, I usually don’t deploy sensors for example unless I’m at 3 or higher.
• Tools I try to only use for door hacking and welding for safe havens, I don’t want to waste it on doors teh xenos will just break through in 10 seconds anyway (just don’t unlock the door to begin with so they won’t attack it).
• For medkits I save them for when marines drop to 2-3 healthy and if a single or particular marine is close too 100% stress or went over it and is causing others to also gain more stress, if you’re at max and you find more med boxes, but your guys only have 1-2 dmg taken, it’s probably better to just pop some pills unless you’re gonna shelter and rest soon (or just did recently).
• The research is a lot and while at first rare, over time you start building it up faster as you kill more enemies and bosses are worth more and guarantee drops, crusher 4 and queen 8.
• Most of them are “Okay”, the pheromone mine I’d stay clear from as you’d want mines to only kill what’s coming towards you, not anything lingering nearby and seeing it, while the hive tranq and pheromones are good value, as they essentially reduce the difficulty by 1.

Combat Tactics

• If you’re spotted and they’re already coming for you, your first instinct would be to pull back and setup a defensive perimeter or try to stay clear from the hunt.
• This actually hurts you however, because you’re going to be building up stress for your marines and aggression on the enemy anyway.
• So what you should actually be doing is changing your mentality to: “I’m spotted anyway, I should get as much done as possible” especially going into new rooms and whatnot, cause let’s say there’s a bunch of facehuggers, it doesn’t matter now if they spotted you cause you’re spotted already anyway.
• So while it is initially bad, during the time you should consider yourself immune to spotting and use this to push to through areas where you’d otherwise rather not get spotted.
• The exception to the above is when you enter a new aggression level and you’ll get a wave headed towards you after a 30 second timer.
• Use this time to setup a defensive position, preferably with a single chokepoint or long sightlines and set 1 marine on suppressing fire on where they are coming from.
• For the aggression level waves you can actually prepare, because as you go through the map you should be placing motion sensors (especially on spawn points), these will stay there permanently even if you leave the map and come back, this allows you to monitor where enemies are spawning and more importantly where the aggression wave is coming from, so you know what direction to cover.
• What also helps with providing yourself a safe space is NOT opening all doors, some doors will be locked but you can go around, if you let this room on the side of your main path only let 1 of it’s doors unlocked instead of both you have a nice room you can run into and lockdown for either safe haven and rest or use as a defensive position with natural chokepoint, the reason you want to do this is because welded doors will be attacked and broken, while locked doors won’t so essentially count as walls that you can unlock when you actually need them.
• Remember that your ARC has a gun on it and is not just a transport, if you have motion trackers placed around the compound and see a patrol heading your way, send the ARC to the nearest ARC point and it will blast them before they even reach you, also if you’re going to enter a building make sure you leave the ARC covering the entrance, so you don’t get any unwelcome visitors from behind and you have a point of strength to retreat to.
• Place a motion tracker near each ARC point as well, specifically for the purpose of blowing them up and attraction attention to that area, so that they aren’t just being pulled away, they’re also being killed by the ARC, this can be especially useful if there’s boss enemies on the map that are no longer hunting you but that you’d obviously like to get rid of.
• If you don’t want to deal with being hunted phase or don’t think you can handle it the extra stress for example, just make a shelter and rest or run for an elevator and go to a different floor to stop and cancel the hunt.