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Aliens: Dark Descent

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Aliens: Dark Descent > Guides > T's Guides
102 ratings
Check those corners!
By T
Spare yourself the restarts, spoiler free
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T
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Category: Characters, Classes, Gameplay Basics, Loot, Maps or Levels, Walkthroughs
Languages: English
Posted
Updated
25 Jun, 2023 @ 6:34am
29 Jun, 2023 @ 3:33pm
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Guide Index
Overview
Game over, man! 
A-holes and elbows. 
Have you ever been mistaken for a man? 
Warnings for mission 6 (mechanics spoiler) 
Comments
Game over, man!
  • The game has very little reason to be replayed, other than upping the difficulty level. Maps remain the same and randomness only comes from events (between deployment days). On high difficulties these events are almost always bad.

  • If played as mostly a stealth game, you have no time limit within missions. The mission will go on until you die or withdraw. This approach changes a bit at the very end, where just pushing through while spamming buffs is a very preferable option.

  • The campaign has a doom clock, unlocked later in the game. You have ~3 days to complete each mission (depending on difficulty)

  • The more you are spotted, the more you fight, the bigger the enemy attacks. There is a max, after which the game doesn't get any harder.

  • You gain xp for completing objectives, "special" waves and bosses. Whether you've killed 5 or 500 grunt aliens does not impact the xp screen.

  • The game is a bit buggy, your marines can get stuck on enviroment, quests will be blocked, sometimes abilities will not fire. Save yourself the frustration and don't ironman it until it is deemed "stable"

  • There is no easy way to make your marines stop shouting the same three lines of dialogue for the entire game. Strap in!
A-holes and elbows.
The game is balanced around your marines having terrible aim and filling their diapers every 20 steps. The more you focus on fixing those, the easier time you'll have

  • Marines get tired after missions (-10 bravery), if they go on a mission when tired, they are exhausted instead (cannot go on a mission).
  • Sustaining any damage (even just damage to armor) also can give your marines the wounded debuff, preventing them from attending missions until they are healed.

  • Your base has a bunch of medics that can be assigned to shorten the wounded debuff by 1 day, you can assign multiple medics to one marine. Medics are quite handy!
    Your base also has a number of engineers that generate resources (4 or 5 per engineer per day)

  • Upon leveling your marines get a pick out of 3 random positive traits.
    Always pick the one that makes your marines immune to the tired status if given the option.
    You can safely to ignore the + resources trait.
    "Fast" doesn't stack.
    "Resourceful" doesn't work as intended as of 25/6, it gives you +1 ammo instead.
    Accuracy is always a solid pick if nothing else is good.
    Critical hits and decapitations are both very strong effects.

  • Marines get to pick one of 2 random classes at level 3. Each class gets a skill right off the bat. a second skill on level 6 and third on level 10. These skills are preset, no options to pick from.

  • Item progression is locked behind resources and marine levels. Want to use the smart gun? Get a gunner class. Want a rocket launcher? Get a level 6 marine.

  • You have primary, secondary and special weapons. Flamethrower is a level 2 special weapon, that you want to take with you at all times. Special weapons cost CP to use, an infinite resource. Abusing CP is the easiest way to break the game. (infinite mines, motion sensors, sniper shots and overwhelming firepower for short encounters)

  • Your marines can equip "upgrades" in the armory. These are permanent. Wait with selecting upgrades until your marines get classes, as this unlocks a whole lot of other upgrades. After finishing the first mission the game forces you to upgrade a single marine and unless you have some characters with levels, you will only get 2 options.

  • The first real mission of the game cannot be completed in one go, to progress you need to return to base at least once to unlock progression. On your very first deployment, without including special waves, you can get to level 3 on 3 of your marines and level 2 on the 4th one (he has a debuff that makes him earn 1 less xp per mission). Meaning you can unlock 3 class rolls on the first "go".

  • Alternatively you can return to base instantly after taking an elevator up. Find a new elevator going down and get out. I recommend at least reaching level 2 before returning


  • You unlock the ability to deploy 5 marines later in the game, until then you're stuck with 4 or less.

  • Medic class allows you to heal when resting, heal downed marines. It also adds a small bonus when resting.

  • Sergeant speeds up CP generation and lowers stress buildup, it also has a skill that makes you immune to stress damage (costing CP). This outshines any other class as later missions really stack the stress debuffs.

  • Gunner is better at shooting big swarms with their upgraded gun and better targeting. It allows unlocking rocket launcher and improves suppressing fire ability.

  • Recon can kill aliens without breaking stealth (uses 1 CP, requires sniper rifle) It is the king of early levels, and can be very useful to set up a rocket launcher shot with a snipe which briefly stuns bosses. Being able to scan the entire map for a wrench and offering a short range detection of even motionless foes keeps it useful even when there are too many enemies to sneak past safely.

  • Tecker.. flies a drone around.. Can open encrypted doors (as can a trait) and can upgrade turrets. On level 10 tecker can open encrypted doors without using a wrench... It's nice to have, but there are enough wrenches to just grab the trait instead.
Have you ever been mistaken for a man?
CP abuse breaks the game. Early on you can use the infinite motion trackers to divert attention of patrolling enemies. Late in the game, as your CP generation gets better you can force your way through parts of the mission having spawn points mined, blocking corridors with fire, and mowing down any big aliens with grenade / rocket / snipe spam with your stress-immune marines.

  • Enemies break open welded doors if they hear a noise behind those, or if their pathing randomly tells them to. Don't waste wrenches on random welds in the wild. Instead place random mines which cost CP.

  • That said, welding the last door to form a safe room breaks the current hunt / attack event. As does swapping levels with an elevator.

  • A lot of the time enemy pathing will try to avoid fire so badly, that it will treat it as an impassable wall. If you create a wall of fire behind a door, you may just wait the search phase out.

Best ways to deal with stress are, in order from best to worst :
  • Early on don't have stress in the first place. Avoid fights, sneak about.
  • No, really, avoid stress if you can.
  • Get a level 6 sergeant, their CP-using ability allows you to ignore stress buildup for 30 seconds.
  • Weld a single-doored room shut and rest in it to recover 100 stress on all marines. (costs 1 wrench)
  • Use 1 medicine to reduce stress by 100 for a single marine.

Don't let your stress reach high levels, this is the easiest way to lose a run. Stress debuffs can get nasty, and the higher your buildup the more trauma you will suffer after the mission. Since trauma builds up based on the highest stress level you have reached in the mission, it is best to reduce stress before it hits 200.

  • One turret is worthless, always stack them up. Don't forget to pick them up later. A bunch of turrets in a corner / corridor, coupled with suppressing fire and flamethrower will beat any encounter the game can throw at you. Create your own walls and force the entire swarm into a single nice row of suppressing fire, flare, turrets, grenades and cuss words.

  • Overcharged turrets apply suppressing fire and are slightly more efficient at killing aliens, that said 4 / 5 turrets pointing in the same direction are brutally effective even without committing wrenches to upgrading, one of your marines can suppress instead.

  • Your ARC / APC (the tank thing) has infinite ammo and doesn't aggro enemies. Luring enemies to it (or having it drive TO enemies) is a good way to thin out the map, that said there are a lot of scenarios where you cannot count on it.

  • You bring wrenches, medkits, turrets and biosamples back to base, you can then bring them with you on future deployments. You can also create more on deployment with resources.

  • Your squad brings 4 ammo units with them. Any ammo you bring back home *DISAPPEARS FORVER* If the mission isn't over leave some ammo behind for the next squad.

  • Special waves always warn you about where they are coming from, the exclamation point will blink, wave and tell you to come hither. You then have 30 seconds to find a corner, set up your turrets, flare up and use fire to create a corridor whenever you want.. or block the passage altogether once they get close enough. Any place can be turned into an impenetrable fortress with enough imagination fire

  • Encrypted / computer locked doors cannot be opened by the enemy, consider that before opening the shortcut.

    There is a small research section included in the game. Bonuses provided by the unlocks are not permanent, you have to select them on deployment to activate them for that mission. Their usefulness is varied. +1 armor and armor not breaking from acid can prevent your folks from getting hit at all. Another allows you to remove facehuggers, which otherwise is a death, though you can kill those critters in all scenarios. You can complete the game without using them

    Stay frosty!
Warnings for mission 6 (mechanics spoiler)
As of 25/6
The side quest to determine loyalty is bugged, if you complete it you will always get the bad results. Bad result can cost you one day of delay.

Furthermore, the mission has an unskippable breaking point that will force your marines back home, this always costs you the day. The breaking point allows you to come back stronger... the following day. Keep that in mind when picking your squad, as the latter part is shorter, but somewhat more intense
10 Comments
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Gerardatje 6 Nov, 2023 @ 11:57am 
"The game has very little reason to be replayed"

Yeah, well, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man. - Lebowski

Please remove that @#$& from this guide, it makes me want to dislike it just for that because you don't get to decide for someone if it is worth re-playing over and over, yes or no (for whatever reason). And implies it lacks content for anyone immediately checking this guide, please remove that sentence, stick to what is objectively useful, not to what is subjective in your view.


For the love of god, please, PLEASE remove that subjective opinion line 'that opens the guide':

"The game has very little reason to be replayed, other than upping the difficulty level."
ZioFBV 8 Sep, 2023 @ 8:15am 
I basically agree on every point here, except about poor replayability. I think the game provides enough elbow room to tackle a good part of the encounters, especially the boss fights, however you see fit, for instance, experimenting with different team compositions, strategies, and whatnot.

The real downside of Dark Descent is indeed the heapload of glitches... speaking of which...
Did anyone ran into unkillable eggs after the last patch? Played 100 hours before it and never got this one, but my current run is plagued with this glitch.
spoonlamp 13 Aug, 2023 @ 2:47am 
It might be worth knowing that there's a mission where you defend an elevator at the end and get picked up by the spaceplane. I strongly recommend you pick up the four turrets you have down and instead drop a wall of fire before you get cut-scene collected. Annoying way to lose 4 turrets.
Dark Side Cookies 6 Aug, 2023 @ 5:21am 
Something I haven't seen mentioned on any guide:
The Unbreakable Will trait prevents marines from being Tired. Apparently this also means the marine can never be Exhausted. Therefore they can be removed from Intensive Training at any point without them becoming Exhausted. This is a great way to cheese the training mechanic and get some free XP without having to worry about leaving your squad short handed.

I was able to confirm this with two marines in Training. One with the U.W. trait and one without. The one with the trait was not Exhausted after removing them from Training, and was even available to go on a mission immediately. The only drawback is marines cannot be removed from Training and re-added on the same day, so it's best to wait to put marines into Training until right before you start a new day.

This may or may not apply to events that cause marines to be exhausted. This also may get patched out later as it may not be intended game behavior, but for now it's nice.
PinkLuver 7 Jul, 2023 @ 4:14am 
Incredible. Very informative and completely valid (as of today).
Deepeye 1 Jul, 2023 @ 8:51am 
Really good guide, I have tested and experienced almost all of the stated and attest to validity.

Stun on snipe is a discovery for me! Solid points, man!
Pvt.Hudson 26 Jun, 2023 @ 12:37pm 
Thnx man! This game is a Pvt.Hudson simulator, all the stress... xD
It's a game over man, a game over! :D
T  [author] 26 Jun, 2023 @ 9:13am 
I have checked it and you're right, it is not the intended behavior but it makes it a... decent trait. Thanks for the input, i've edited that point
PizzaKrydder 25 Jun, 2023 @ 5:45pm 
Oh and well done on this guide, great tips for anyone starting out! :D:
PizzaKrydder 25 Jun, 2023 @ 5:43pm 
Resourceful does stack, however the description is wrong/deceptive. It states you get to reload your squads weapons for free during rest, but what it actually does is give you 1 ammo. You get +1 Ammo for each marines with the perk. Whether or not that's working as intended, and the description is wrong, or vice versa, I cannot say.

I have been using it throughout my campaign to get a couple ammo clips back each time I rest, it's come in handy plenty of times when ammo reserves have dropped dangerously low.