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Invisible Inc. Do's and Don'ts

By SSP

This guide contains some useful do's and don'ts for Invisible Inc., a game I like so much that I actually bothered to get all of the achievements for it. This guide is based off of my similar FTL guide. Having a list of things you should and shouldn't do in the game is, I feel, a quick and easy way to get better at the game, as well as an easy way for me to summarize the game for you.

This list is meant for if you already know how the game works but want to get better. I will not go into every detail of every item or agent, I will just list some points of good practice.

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Created by

SSP
In-Game
Gnomes

Category: Gameplay Basics, Walkthroughs

Languages: English

Posted

Updated

29 Jan, 2021 @ 3:54pm

30 Jan, 2021 @ 2:38am

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Guide Index

Overview

Do:

Don't:

Comments

Do:

start off the game with a good team that suits the mode you want to play and pick Incognita Programs that synergize with them. For example, if you want to survive for as long as possible on Expert Plus Endless, it's a good idea to pick Central, Faust and Brimstone. The characters are really not created equal and some are pretty much useless (like Decker). Unlock some good ones before starting some of the harder modes. Keep in mind that you can't find "archive" agents in missions, so make sure you get all of the archive ones you want at start.
pick the right missions. The most important thing here is to identify the weaknesses and strengths of your current team. Do you have nice Programs but low skill levels? Then go for a vault, preferably in Sankaku territory where you can hack your way through easily. Keep the hazards of the various corps in mind, Sankaku missions play very differently from K&O missions. I personally think K&O can be especially dangerous with its 180 degree vision guards. Try to keep your team balanced and multi-capable.
get an access card before doing vault or neuro missions, so you can loot what's behind the door.
do vault missions early on to skill up your team.
upgrade your agents to specialize them, get one agent to focus on hacking and use only him/her for consoles, another one should focus on anarchy. Every agent should get at least level 2 anarchy to loot guards from behind. However, speed should be upgraded for all agents, and it is the most important skill since it lets you do things faster. You might want to get a "power agent" at first with more skill and speed than the others, to deal with annoying situations early on.
choose some detention center missions early on to max out your team, but do this after you get a bit of money and equipment first so they aren't just dead weight.
regardless of skill level, agents are always good at pinning. Pinning is extremely important in this game, and you can use various tricks to pin multiple enemies at once. It's possible to pin up to 8 human agents and multiple drones in the ending pad, by dragging a downed guard onto another downed guard and piling up drones. None of them will wake up as long as your agent is on top of them.
abuse Faust and Brimstone with pinning, early on especially. If you are patient, you can pile up an entire level's worth of agents in the ending pad and let turns go by. Each turn has a chance of spawning a daemon and a chance of converting the daemon into 200 credits. I have survived up to turn 200 on a single mission this way, pinning and using various items to keep the guards out forever while farming cash. This is boring though and breaks the game, so don't overdo this.
make a plan when you start a level. You are dropped in a room. Where are the doors? Assume that guards will come through the doors on the next turn (they usually don't but they can!), scout each door to see what's behind, divide your team to cover different areas and scout fast. An extremely important part of the game is finding the exit pad, once you have this you can move your agents (and downed guards) toward it and turn it into a safe haven or a place for your hacker to generate power with his Portable Server.
choose where to send your hacker last on the first turn, send him to where your other agents have spotted consoles so you can hack them.
know where to hide. This is something you will have to practice in the game, but new players tend to be overly careful about hiding spots. Guards can walk right past you and not see you as long as you are next to cover. Abuse this as much as possible.
pickpocket guards or knock them out and steal their stuff.
find a way to tag guards (Tag Pistol or Wisp Program, the former might be better to save an incognita slot). This is incredibly useful for safe and quick exploring.
hack things early, many things in the game can boost firewalls, so getting rid of firewalls early on is a good thing. Focus on whatever is blocking your agents from exploring first (cameras especially), then take out less important firewalls like noise bugs and stores.
buy Incognita Programs that suit your needs. Always get something that will efficiently and quickly lower firewalls. Lockpick v.1 is a good example (1 firewall for 2 power is not a bad deal early on and better than brimstone's 1 for 3, and it has no cooldown so you can spam it). A "hammer" style Program that can take out 5 firewalls for 4 power is also a good choice. I'm not a big fan of parasite, since it's too slow to use in a pinch, slowing your team down.
always get the Bless Program when you see it. This is by far the best Program in the game, since it shortens daemons' lifetime. It synergizes powerfully with Central, Faust and Brimstone, making daemons more helpful than harmful. This is essential on endless games where daemons pile up like crazy!
run a lot, but mind the sound. When you toggle running, and make your agent take a single step, you should see an outline of how far the sound traveled. You can use this to carefully avoid being heard by guards and sound bugs (drones are deaf). Always run when you are sure the way is clear, and to speed up dragging.
create distractions. Walking into a guard's peripheral vision (the part of his sight cone that isn't fully red) will make him walk to that location on the next turn. Creating noise (such as by running) does the same. You can use this to get guards out of the way so you can get past them. Do this all the time.
know when to knock out guards and when to leave them alone. If a guard is patrolling a part of the level you have already safely looted, and you can get around him, just leave him. Guards close to the exit should be knocked out and pinned on the exit pad.
be aware of changes prompted by rising alarm levels. Alarm level 2 can sometimes change the guard patrols, this causes a period of extra danger and uncertainty until the guards settle into their new patrols, make sure your agents are out of the way of unpredictable changes. Remember: assume that every unopened door will have a guard coming through on the next turn.
get door traps. They are very powerful and let you knock out guards with high armor without weapons.
get augments and weapons that raise your armor penetration, to deal with tricky guards.
get a cloaking option for at least one agent. This can be done with a rig or an augment. On long games, there is going to be at least one situation where you must cloak to get past a stationary guard or other obstacle.
be aware of the "hours remaining" on the main map, plan your missions so you can do a final mission on your final couple of hours, try to fly short distances.
knock out the scientists on the Omni levels and loot them with a high anarchy agent, they often carry augments.
get a Portable Server, especially Portable Server III. Let your hacker deploy it in places where he can pick it up later, like the exit pad, it generates power every turn.
find an accelerator chip for your hacker so you can get more power per console.
get Data Blast, since it's nearly always the most efficient program for taking out multiple firewalls in an area. Scout before use so you can take out as many as possible at once.
get Torque Injectors, an augment which lowers cooldowns on items, put it on Dr. Xu to generate more power by using items in quick succession.
dominate the mainframe. Check out every Server Terminal to find useful Programs, try to generate as much power as possible. Hacking everything quickly trivializes Sankaku and cripples the rest, without working mainframe devices the guards alone are rarely a threat.

Don't:

be slow. Scouting and acting fast is key to beating the game's RNG (just like in FTL). Focus on getting rid of the most immediate obstacle to your agents' progress.
panic and make quick decisions. Except for time attack games, you have all the time in the world to plan your moves. If a guard spots you you might feel stressed and like you have to do something, just check out the situation and go over your options, there is usually a way out. Rewind a turn only if you have no other options. Options include: hiding, cloaking, knocking out the guard with another agent, shutting a door on him, shooting him with a gun, knocking him out with Lightning.
stand next to a door that a guard's about to breach.
ever take chances with a door. Assume, always, that there is something on the other side looking at the door and it's about to come through. This is especially true on expert plus where sightcones are often invisible. You cannot gamble with this, the game has a way of doing exactly what you don't want to happen.
forget to peek. Peek every corner until you are sure it's safe to walk.
buy situational stuff when you are lacking in basic supplies. Essential things include the speed skill, weapons offering armor penetration, strength for carrying all of your agents' items + at least 1 empty slot. There are many funny utility items in the game but you should only buy them on long games when you are swimming in money, things like the hologram projector or maxed out skills in hacking for every agent.
haphazardly trigger daemons. Try to find out what a daemon is first, the Bless+Central+Faust+Brimstone combo lets you tank most daemons, but still not all of them. Validate (spawn a guard) is always really nasty, as are the daemons that raise firewalls or block incognita. Some daemons are harmless (like the one that lets guards recover KO damage when none are KO).
get too attached to Internationale. Most new players love using her because you get her first and she lets you easily scout the mainframe and get the general layout of the level. These are great skills and she's a good agent to use, but clever scouting lets you accomplish the same without her augment so she's a bit of a crutch at times. I would personally take archive Sharpe over her any day. Experiment with agents.
kill guards, unless you really must. It costs money to clean up the bodies. The problem with lethal weapons is that killing is situational, so your agents will be carrying around a situational weapon in the event that you need to use it, which is a questionable decision when you could just be carrying a good nonlethal weapon like a door trap.

(The one big exception to this is when you have Draco on your team. Draco is a really interesting agent who feeds off corpses to raise his skills for just the cost of cleanup, while dispensing guards. Get Draco the augment that prevents alarms from setting off kills, and equip him with an EMP device to disable guards' heartrate monitors before you kill them.)
hang on to stuff you don't need. I always sell all med gels and grenades, because I can use that money to upgrade my agents so I don't get into situations where I would need to use either of them.
take the special missions, the ones where you fight against the Omni corp, lightly. These can be really hard, depending on the layout you get, since they often have big rooms where guards can easily spot you and slow you down. Generally you should keep Monster at the exit pad, dragging some KO guards back there and pinning them to give you freedom of movement, while using your other agents to scout.
get overconfident and go after things you can't get. It's good to get every item and safe on the game, and it's a good principle to work from, but break it when something is out of reach. Don't let an agent go into a wide room with multiple patrols to break into a single safe, especially when you haven't found the exit yet.

7 Comments

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cbclaw 31 Mar @ 1:52pm

Decker useless? Huh? I always pick him due to his speed and cloaking ability, literal extra life.

monolytht 29 Sep, 2024 @ 8:42am

If you get into a situation where you need to rewind, gather as much intel as you can before you do it. (Explore rooms, trigger daemons on devices to identify them, check nanofabs)

Hekateras 18 Jun, 2022 @ 8:10pm

@SticksBender : It can sometimes be useful to trick the guard into KOing an agent instead of shooting to kill, but I think they usually do pin the agent. And it's a 2 turn KO in that case (since the agent is pinned and it doesn't immediately tick down).

SticksBender 18 Aug, 2021 @ 10:23pm

I would not, don't 3 is actually half the time a do. When the guard breaches the door, it will KO the agent for 1 turn. The guard will then pin that agent for 1 turn, look around, and then walk away and completely forget the agent was ever there. Basically, it lets you trick the AI into using a stun when they have infinite ammo on a kill.

SSP [author] 26 Apr, 2021 @ 1:15pm

As for 4, I think there was a point where I decided to just stop risking anything ever and my play drastically improved. In the beginning I'd often go like "eh, nothing's going to come through probably" and then there's always a guard. This is effectively the same principle as for FTL (for which I wrote a similar guide): RNG sucks so you must control the situation so RNG does not matter as much.

Hekateras 26 Apr, 2021 @ 7:30am

I think Don't.2 and Don't.4 are my favourite tips. 4 is crucial for anyone struggling with the transition from Beginner to higher difficulties. 2 is crucial even for experienced operators. Sometimes half the challenge is in remembering all the options you have and that Ping is off cooldown, actually.

Hekateras 8 Mar, 2021 @ 1:01pm

Nice guide! :D

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