This page gives detailed instructions and background for the first 30 minutes of gameplay. If you are confused by some parts of the game at the beginning, hopefully following the instructions and background here will make it clear. This page is created using the first Early Access version of the game which will be (was) released October 17, 2023. I will try to ensure the instructions are updated when the game is updated, but ... hey, Early Access. This tutorial is written by one player (with many helpful reviewers) and any opinions are my own, not the studio's.
There's not much to say about the first few screens. In the first page of "Assemble Your Merc Company", read the backgrounds if you wish. You can customize your merc's appearance later. In the second page, read the origin and then start the game. Once the loading screen is finished, there is an introductory dialog. Using "tab" key will advance the dialog and ESC can skip through the story section quickly. The merc on the right is your "Face", who stays in the headquarters and is one of the characters consistently in your earpiece during missions. Once all the dialog finishes you will be in the main tactical view shown below.
The first turn[edit | edit source]
This game has a strict initiative order; one character moves at a time. The larger portrait at the upper left is the current character, and the portraits to the right of the first one show the order of when the player characters and the enemies will move. Emille is the only character who can act right now, followed by Aaron, then Zasha, then the three visible enemies. The large numbers like 19, 18, 18 represent the initiative score; highest initiative moves first. Above you can also see the glowing blue hoverpad, which is your objective. Later, you'll be using the >| button, "end action for turn", but don't worry about the other buttons for now.
Before doing anything, use WASD to pan the tactical view, and QE to rotate. It's highly useful to hit "h" for highlighting. This puts a red outline around enemies, green around friendlies, orange around loot, and blue around objectives.
Above at the upper right you see your two mercs, Zasha and Aaron, who will need to move through security to reach the hoverpad. The red arc is the view area of the camera, which is also highlighted in red. Moving through the red arc will break stealth. It's never necessary to maintain stealth, in fact at some point you will "go loud", but the longer you can avoid it, the better off you will be. There is one guard, Pito; the status "unaware" indicates he has no idea of any enemies around yet. Hover the mouse over the guard. The red area that shows up is his vision cone. When his turn comes, he will move, and you want to avoid being in his vision cone.
OK, time for the first action. Click on Emille's portrait at the upper left so the view centers on her, and rotate so that you can see the guard and part of the camera cone.
Hover over Emille's action buttons at the lower left. The three actions "jamkit", "lure" and "anticipation" will be helpful. "Jamkit" can disable a camera, "lure" can distract the guards, and "anticipation" can help predict where the guards will move. First, let's disable the camera, so that the other two mercs can move through it on their turn. Click "jamkit". The game view will move to show the camera, and the dialog requires you to take an action to apply. The icon shown is for spacebar; get used to this symbol because spacebar is used to confirm a lot. The heavy red circle shows the maximum range of the ability. After you press spacebar, the camera is disabled.
This cost Emille one action point, shown by the orange ovals in the bar over her. The green bar represents hit points. She "could" move towards the hoverpad objective. But, if you hover the mouse over the guard Theta, you will see his vision cone. If Emille moves towards the pad, she would cross into his vision cone and be spotted. Let's not worry about moving her for now.
Instead, let's try to figure out where the guards will be so that it is safe to move. Click Emille's "anticipation" action button, and press spacebar to apply the ability to the guard "Pito". Now some red dots and arrows appear to show where he will move. Good, we don't have to worry about him seeing Aaron and Zasha move. There might be more we can do but click the >| button to end her turn.
Now we'll move Aaron. To explore where he can move, left click on a possible destination. The game will show a preview. Each of the large blue dots represents how far he can travel with one action point, and the hover help at the bottom shows one action point remaining: the single orange oval. The hover help shows that Alt can be used to sprint. Currently, as you can see from his character outline, Aaron is crouching which means his movement will be slower, but quieter. Left click the destination shown in the screenshot, and press spacebar to confirm. Click >| to end his turn.
We'll move Zasha next to that guard, but let's experiment with sprinting. Press alt, and you will see that Zasha stands up. Now left click near Aaron to show the move preview. There is a large orange and red icon showing that some guard will hear her when she reaches that point. Aaron was sneaking, so he could arrive there without being heard. Her move would take only three action points. Now press alt again, and the preview updates. It takes more movement points, but she will not be heard. Make sure she is crouched and move her near Aaron; press spacebar to confirm.
When you click to end her turn, then the remaining characters, the guards, will have their movement. If needed after their moves are finished, pan around to make sure you know where each guard is.
Security, stealth, restarting, and saving[edit | edit source]
When the turn ends, some text scrolls by in the lower left. Now we can discuss about security level. But first, a few tips for restarting and saving. In case something goes dramatically wrong, press escape to get to the main interface screen. You can always retry the turn, or restart the level. You can also use the four save slots shown for your own saves. It's important to know several unique features of the save and load sequence. First, if you save, and load again, you will be restarting that turn. If you were in the middle of the turn sequence when you saved, the turn sequence will be at the beginning again when you load. Second, you cannot load from these save slots at the main game loading screen. From the main game loading screen, you are only given one selection, which is your latest save (probably an auto-save). Load that; then press escape; now you can see your save slots and load the game you actually wanted to load.
One of the key concepts of the game is that there is an AI system defending the location, which monitors the guards and guides their action. The text that scrolled by in the lower left is the "thought process" of the AI. Now it is quiet, but later when you break stealth you will see that it takes many defensive actions, including summoning reinforcements or activating additional security measures. This also relates to the security tally, at the upper right corner of the screen. The small bars show minor security levels; when the bar fills, the numeric value increases. The AI actions and the tally go together. So far nobody is alerted to the team. No matter what you do, the tally increases one per turn, so there is some time pressure.
Plan A[edit | edit source]
When the new turn starts, use the portraits at the upper left to check the guard positions. Hover the mouse over each one. If they are in the current view they will highlight; if they are not, click the portrait to jump cut to them. You may need to pan the view to understand where they are. Initiative is rolled randomly for each character for each turn; the turn order may have any sequence of player and enemy characters.
Zasha moves first (your turn order may be different). Below, I have moved Zasha a little closer to the objective. She still has several action points; but I did not end her turn. She did move through the outer edge of Theta's vision cone to reach the wall, and there was a tiny red flash during the move, but she was crouched and not in the cone for very long. She is still hidden and she can use her remaining action points later after the guards move.
The delay action button at the upper left decreases her initiative by 10, and puts her into a new position in the turn order. Her initiative is 17 (your value may be different); subtracting 10 means she will be able to use her remaining action points after all the guards move. Click "delay action".
The guard Theta to the right will probably spot Aaron and Zasha next turn. Emille has another trick up her sleeve, "lure". We can lure Theta into moving away. When it is her turn, click the lure action button at the lower left. The large red ring shows the range of the ability; you can trigger it on any point inside. The small red ring shows the area of effect; all the guards in the small ring will move to investigate. We want that guard to move as far away as possible, so she will need to get a little closer. Make sure she is crouched ("h" to see outlines, "alt" if needed) and move her slightly into the corridor. Then trigger lure so that the guards will investigate as shown below. The guard will change from "unaware" to "suspicious" and turn towards the noise. Move Emille back out of the corridor towards the hoverpad objective and end her turn.
Zasha and Aaron should be able to move into the corridor after the guards have moved. Make sure they are crouched ("h" to see outlines, "alt" if needed). After the turn ends, check all the guard positions. There is a new complication: one guard has entered just beyond the objective. When Zasha and Aaron can move, left click to preview their moves. If they sprint, they will immediately be heard; but if they move one action point while crouched, they will be out of hearing range of the guards. Then they can sprint. This way, all three of the mercs can reach the hoverpad.
Great, mission accomplished! OK, not quite. The name of this scenario is "plan B" for a reason. There is a new objective. The view should pan to the new objective, which is a large yellow glowing area pretty far away from you, with a lot of guards patrolling. We have to get one merc into the yellow area for two turns; then the team can escape. (Unless we need a "plan C".)
Plan B[edit | edit source]
From here, your gameplay will probably differ. I will show some key game features, but you will need to find your own exact path. I moved the mercs closer to the exit, but failed to account for all the guard paths, leading to the situation below. Breaking stealth is not at all fatal; but now it is time to start shooting. Not all the guards are immediately alerted. Each one may have a different status. Muk and Zeta will be shooting, but other guards further away may be only suspicious, or even still unaware. In my game, I chose to let Aaron cover for the others with his rifle, while Zasha cleared the way of other guards with her sword. Emille ran for the elevator, triggering it, and soon the others could join her.
There is only one guard between the team and the elevator, and Zasha can reach that guard to attack with her sword. There is no point in stealth, so make sure she is standing, and then preview a move which will bring her very close to the guard. Make sure she will have two action points left after moving! There is nothing more embarrassing than running up to a guard and not having enough AP to attack. A sword attack does not guarantee a kill, so it is less risky if the merc has 4 AP left, or another merc's turn will immediately follow who can finish off the guard.
In this game, if a guard spots a merc and then is immediately killed, it "counts" as a stealth kill. That is, even if the guard has some exclamation like "I see you!" or "Alerted!" it is OK. After moving very close to the guard, click the sword icon at the lower left, and you will see the below targeting reticle. There are several key points. The octagonal reticle shows the target. The large red ring on the floor shows the range of the attack -- melee weapons clearly have a short range. The percent chance to hit is shown at the left (64%). The amount of damage that will be "soaked" by the target's armor is shown to the right (33%). The hit point bar immediately under the target's name will pulse, showing the potential damage range. For future higher level, or stronger targets, you will see that the damage range doesn't get all the way to zero, which means a single attack will definitely not kill that target. Press spacebar to confirm, and good luck on the kill!
Aaron has several possible targets for his rifle. Click any target, and you will get a targeting reticle similar to what is displayed for sword attacks. You can press tab to rotate between targets to see which one will make the best target. As with the sword attack, there is a large red circle on the floor indicating the maximum range of the attack, but since it is a rifle, the range is high; you can see part of the circle along the top of the image. In this case the team is spotted anyway and the path to the exit is fairly clear, so it is worth taking the shot.
Aaron was shot, so now it is time to learn about using carried items. Click the backpack icon at the upper left to open any merc's inventory. Click an item, in this case the medkit. This does not use the item, it only activates it; it adds an action button at the lower right. In some cases you may want to activate an item and carry it for some time before using it. Click the action button to heal.
Thank goodness the elevator worked. That concludes the first mission, and will shortly bring us to the safehouse, the other major element of the game.
Legwork and Safehouse[edit | edit source]
Before we reach the safehouse screen, there is a little more background to read; keep your finger over the tab key for some time. This dialog introduces one concept called "legwork" which allows you to optionally send mercs on side missions to hopefully get useful information or resources. There will always be a tradeoff between having mercs unavailable and the chance of a benefit. In this case, left click the legwork box and send Hammond on the mission.
Now we reach the safehouse! Many other games have a similar concept of a base with rooms that can be improved over time. During Early Access, this part of the game is not yet available, and some of the icons aren't relevant yet. Hover over the icons at the top to see your power rating, inventory and shopping options. Just below the top row of icons, the timeline shows the events that will be occurring. We can see that the main character -- "Tri" in my game -- will be available in a couple of days. Click the "play" icon at the top left and you will see the timeline advance. Blur has some more things to say, and when Tri is rested, there will be more dialog.
Introduction to class training[edit | edit source]
After the main character is available, click on the barracks to get a detailed view of the team. The main character has two training points available. Take a deep breath, it is time for the level up screen! Click the main character on the left, click the "class training" button in the middle, and then focus on the bottom center of the screen, shown below.
Each of the larger cross shaped icons represents one talent the character already has. For each one, left click the icon to see a detail popup, then close it with escape. Precomputed advantage on the left makes another merc move sooner; Lookahead in the middle is similar to Emille's anticipation talent which we used before; and Security Scramble on the right is similar to Emille's jamkit talent.
There are three primary ideas in this screen. First, the large cross shaped icons represent major talents. Second, each talent can be upgraded in a number of ways, related to the small icons around the outside of the cross. Third, to allow choosing a new talent you must first choose one of the small octagon shaped connector boxes to light up the path. These are are small buffs to different stats.
The talent popup has a sub-popup which you invoke by pressing spacebar. This shows a tree of the upgrades to the talent. You can left click on each upgrade to get information about it. Most of the talents have an upper and lower upgrade line; on each line, you must progress from left to right. That means for most talents, you will be able to choose only one of two upgrades at any time.
For a quick, "good enough" choice, I recommend spending both points on upgrading Security Scramble. On the upper line, the upgrade reduces the recharge time by one turn; on the lower line, the upgrade increases the duration by one turn. The "respec" button is available, and you can certainly spend as long as you want to choose your own upgrade path.
Hopefully this has introduced enough of the main features of the game. Have fun out there, chumbo!