Star Valor – Battle Rush Perk Guide

A through guide to getting the Battle Rush perk and achievement.

Guide to Battle Rush Perk

All credit goes to Cosmo!

Intro

Battle Rush (Weapon Damage +10%, Shields +20%) is a great perk to have to start out any new game with, since getting it in-game involves a lot more work than any other perk, so it’s worth using it as a starter perk. Battle Rush is a pretty finicky perk to get to, finnickier than you might expect. There’s the difficulty of the battle itself, defeating a Ravager at level 10, but the bigger issue is not going over level 10. It can happen super easily and it’s an actually involved process.

There’s two ways of doing this really. The cheese way is to abuse the Ravagers disengage distance/kiting, as they are neutral to you while disengaging, and pepper him with missiles (they rarely have any sort of armor repair at low levels so it’s just a matter of grinding him down). Also possible to use a turret ship or a ship with +range weapon slots like the Venghi ships. Then there’s the honest way. However, for both you’ll need to be aware of some mechanics which i’ll also talk about below.

So, first and foremost, what do we need? For getting this perk you need to be considerate of two things, surviving a Ravager’s DPS and not over-XP-ing getting to him. Fighting a Ravager at low levels implies some things. Firstly that you are limited to very low tech levels. We’re talking maybe 5 or so. This means no auto armor repair of any kind or sort, so any sort of armor tanking goes out the door (also no %damage resist armors). So we’re left with Shield tanking. That said, it’s rare (though not impossible) to see Shield Absorbers early on, but it’s not something you need to base your strategy around. So let’s make a character.

Character Creation

Settings

Set Galaxy size to Huge, and Difficulty to Normal. While the difficulty is self explanatory as you can’t get the perk on Relaxed and no need to do it on Hardcore, Galaxy size is important for a not obvious reason. You are guaranteed a Ravager system tied to your original cluster of linked systems. Difficulty radiates out from the center starter systems, and with a Tiny universe, there’s a chance that the jump in levels will be higher, so you’ll be fighting a level 15 Ravager maybe, instead of a level 8 one. The difference is huge. Thus, a Huge galaxy will guarantee that you’ll start against a low level Ravager (to note, this Perk does not care about level difference between you and the Ravager).

Background

Start with the Outis background to start with a Corvette. There’s little reason to start with any other background, but the Indoctrinated +5% shield can be useful if you have that, and you can offset the start -1 ship size with a perk like Sloppy, see below.

Experience

Pick Power Optimisation, Armor Plating and then maybe Ordinance or Technology, with an alternative of Navigation in case you will need to find a new/other Ravager system.

Ship

Given we are going for shield absorption, the Guardian 4-77 Syndicate Corvette is perfect. What we care about here is the Shield Absorption 6 it starts out with and the very good 2x special hardpoints (and good number of weapon slots) which can put out a lot of damage. You will need it unlocked from a previous playthrough by finding it and buying it and then swapping into it though. You can use a Frigate but the Syndicate frigates have less space for guns given they’re using turrets, but those are good if you want to cheese missiles or long range turrets. In any case, any ship with some shield absorption helps.

Other Perks

Neccessary:

• Ace (+30% more credits from kills), from getting to 25 piloting first with a character.
• Marauder (+50% credits from kills), got from killing 20 civilian/mining/independent ships in quick succession. This is a bit harder to get, but you can get by just with Ace.

The point is to get a lot of credits without getting a lot of XP, and killing pirates is the best option.

Other useful perks that you might want to consider are:

• Sloppy (-1 Agility, other minor penalties, +1 ship size) – by aggroing a station and disengage six times.
• OCD (+1 agility) – by exploring 10 sectors.
• Dogfighter (+1 weapon space if ship is Corvette or lower, -1 ship size) – killing 100 enemies while in a sub corvette class ship of your level or higher.
• Agressive (+2 weapon damage), – kill 3 civilian/pmc/mining ships.
• Guardian Angel (2% damage resistence, -30% repair cost) – save 10 ships from pirate attacks.

Do not take any scanner-increasing perks, we do not want to reveal fog of war easier, or more of it.

Co-Pilot

Any with shield absorption but it’s really up to you. We will be looking in all the Academies for shield absorption copilots once we start the game so it’s not a big deal.

Game Strategies

Firstly, as you start out the rule of the game is XP management. Do not take any contracts. Do not mine. Only salvage debris if you need tech levels (you should at most need up to 3-4) or energy cells. Also do not explore all the sectors fully, nor reveal fog of war that you don’t need to reveal. It’ll add up really quickly. If you want to optimise this a lot, try removing your scanner from your ship as this will make sure you only reveal a small section of the map, receiving little XP. Before i go on i have to mention something critical. Save before entering any new system. System contents are generated when you enter them, and that includes the Ravager’s weapon setup as well as any other factors. So save before, since you will require specific circumstances. So just make sure that when you’ll be entering the Ravager system, (which you can easily see because it’ll not be owned by any faction and the map will have a Ravager symbol on it), that you’ll be all geared up and done. But, before we reach that point we need to do said levelling up and gearing up.

Firtly, making money. Only kill pirates, that’s going to make you swim in cash with the 70% cash boost, but you’ll need all of it. Alternatively also check Asteroid Belts for free Crystals you can sell. You will only need one Shield Generator, maybe two, and fill the rest with Shield Chargers. Remove your inertial dampeners as well as lateral thrusters. You will be facetanking the Ravager if it isn’t clear by now. If you find any sort of Shield Absorbers and armor, buy them instantly. These are rarer to spawn. Weapon wise it almost doesn’t matter, for the Guardian put 4 Light Lasers in each special slot, and maybe fit the nose with a few PD lasers. Keep an eye out for a Large Nuclear Reactor, one of those should be enough to keep you flush with energy. Also maybe a heatsink or two, but that’s entirely optional and your focus should be on defences. You need to not die, damage doesn’t matter too much as you will whittle the guy down anyway.

Your overall goals until you reach level 9 will be to find the Ravager system (remember saving before entering a gate), and unlock all the stations in your starting clusters. You need to see if there are any useful gear in each of them, that i mentioned above, and also any cadets in the Academy that you can recruit that will have bonuses to shield absorbtion. Even something as small as 2 or 3 can be meaningful. You only need one though, and throw her/him/they as your copilot.

While it’s not recommended to kill Pirate Hideouts, it’s not the end of the world, and if you get Base Components, remember that with 2 microcontrollers you can make green Upgrade Kits. Apply these to your Shield Chargers once you are full up. If you find any Ancient Relics, keep them in backup.

Once you’ve hit level 9 and ideally Space Pilot 10 (for the 2% damage resist bonus), you will have to start wrapping up. Remember that if you didn’t enter the Ravager system, you will get XP for doing so by uncovering fog of war, so don’t leave entering it for when you’re barely inching away from the end of the bar. You also will triger the perk unlock /before/ the XP ticks over by killing the Ravager, so it’s not critical for you to be way under level 10 for it.

Speaking of levels, put all points into the combat tree, starting with DPS, then into Shield capacity.

The Ravager

Now, once the prep is done, you should have a ship with about 150ish shields and something around 60 units of regeneration, and should be absorbing around 10ish or more damage per second, with also a full rack of Light Lasers and everything maxed out in energy usage. You are good for the Ravager. At this point turn off autosaves just to be sure the game won’t automatically save when you don’t want it to.

Enter the system.

Firstly head towards the Ravager (again, make sure you don’t level to 10 doing this) and be wary of gunfire, you do not want the Ravager to be engaged with anyone else, as the Perk only triggers if you do it solo. Even a stray mercenary attacking it will not be ok and you don’t want to risk it.

If it’s all clear, engage and check what it spawned with. If it spawned with vulcans or other shield-piercing weaponry, reload and re-enter, respawning the Ravager with a different set. Again, check for gunfire and reload if it’s already engaged.

The missile loadout is fine but you may need more shield generators up front as it can burst you down. Any other laser variations should be fine. Anyway, engage, open up and rely on your shields for regen. Take breaks and run away if you start getting into armor. As mentioned, they most likely will not have any sort of armor regen, so it’s all on your time.

If everything goes well, you should be able to kill him and unlock the perk.

Problems

There are some problems you can run into which will make it difficult. First thing, try and scout (and reload), the Ravager system early, so you can see the system level it’s at (which is static, generated on universe generation and doesn’t change). Aim for something under 10. If it’s 15 or higher, it’s a strong chance you won’t be able to do it. Reroll character/universe or…

If that’s the case, try and get a Deuterium Warp Drive, and upgrade it as high as you can, using also Ancient Artefacts which i mentioned to bank, as well as using a Pathfinder and buying energy cells. Now look for solo systems in range of your starter cluster. At this point save, and have autosave off.

Warp to them and try and find a Ravager system that you can do. Same thing applies, you’ll need to reroll it if it spawns poorly. It’s possible you’ll get lucky and get a good Ravager system even if you fail the initial spawn for the linked one.

Another issue is XP creep. You can end up in a position where you’re 5% off from level 10 and you just realised you haven’t counted in the XP for removing fog to get to the Ravager in-system. Take off your scanners and hopefully that won’t add too much XP getting there as you’ll be going in blind and uncovering very little fog of war.

Conclusion

And that’s about it really. Unlock the perks and ships you need, focus on defences, make sure not to overlevel, spawn the correct Ravager and that’s that.

I didn’t spend much time talking about the cheese routes but they’re mostly what you’ve read here, only that you don’t need to bother too much with gear and defences and can just throw some missile launchers on a turret ship and kite the Ravager. This may make more sense if you’re trying to do the Battleship Raid Perk, to kill 5 Ravager Bosses your level or higher using a Yacht or Shuttle, as that can be more difficult, and it’s definitely worth focusing on early, as you want to kill all the underleveled Ravagers before they even get Guardian escorts or attack drones. That’s a separate guide in any case.