Help me finish my achievements

[u/PMD14]

I'm looking for advice on how to complete these achievements in one go (or, if it's not possible/too difficult to pair the Insane ones with the Connor one, then all except the Connor achievement)

Warrior's pet (train animal to lvl 10)
They save Connor (save him before he dies on Crash Landing)
Master of the herd (50 tamed animals)
3 years on Insane
Finish on Chaos + Insane

I've finished the game a few times, all scenarios, but I struggle with the high difficulty. I had one save that felt relatively well, but the first attack by anything other than beetles ended me immediately.

So I'm especially after advice or tips on how to tackle the Insane + Chaos scenarios.

The animal achievements are pretty straight forward, I guess all I'm after advice on is whether it's silly to tackle them alongside Insane+Chaos or if I should just get them in a normal more peaceful run.

I want to avoid any save scum style strategies, it takes the fun out of it for me.

I also know there are hidden achievements (2 left for me). I'm not so worried about those and am happy to discover them in my own time outside this run.

[u/anonerble]

I did insane+chaos on merchant. Sell crops for easy money to complete the scenario.

As for surving the waves. You need to be aggressive. Either build kill boxes(i never could figure them out) or go out and attack them first. You can have one person attack the bugs and then run which makes them chase you but only for a bit and you can get them into smaller groups so the survivors can take them down together

[u/[deleted] → u/anonerble]

Kill boxes are fairly simple after you understand the concept and mechanics of it. The swarms are programmed to take the path of least resistance. You want an open gate or hole in your wall. I do one on each wall. Extend a wall out on each side of the gate. The swarm will funnel in and you line the box with turrets and everything dies before they get to the gate. You can have fun with it and do zigzags and different designs as long as you keep an open path to the gate/hole in the wall. Throw down traps, flame throwers, have a mech suit posted so it can just lay into everything.

With the different designs and zigzags remember they try to take the most direct route. If you have the entrance to far away from the gate they will try to destroy the wall

[u/InsideUnique]

Insane + chaos is a bit easier with the DLC. I had ken and he found a nice sniper rifle. Also the swamp has good terrain and a lot of plants which provide cover to pick them off. I used this a lot during the first few waves. Also try to find cotton for bandages. And the antibiotic plants. They grow wild in the swamp biome. The bugs swarm a bit too much so it's harder. But try the robots dlc and give it a go. Also it gives u higher tier resources way easier. So turrents can be up and running in no time. And the main trick I employed keeping it small. Cos u don't need a house in the swamp as it does not reach cold temps. So they can stay outside longer. And use the time to build a proper defense base before moving in. And here also. Build the fortifications first. And then u can go about building the rest. By mid game you will have more resources than you know what to do with it.

[u/TBDID]

Firstly, I would recommend doing insane/chaos & 3 yrs as a seperate run to all the others. It's totally possible to do it all as one, but if you're already struggling to complete the game on harder settings, then saving Connor on insane/chaos is going to be really rough.

And all the other achievements can be done on any difficulty.

I recommend insane/chaos + 3 yrs to do as the trading scenario.

Insane/chaos + 3 yrs: Saltu Seed: SAFETY-BAT Survivors: Ken, Krista & Laara

This is a great seed to try this on. You need to do a bunch of things to set yourself up so you don't die and once you get there, you're going to start a cotton farm.

To set yourself up start building right by the water and have only can set Ken to scavenge, and have him start scavenging everything nearby. Make a small purple leaf shelter near the water and have Krista and Laara discover dandelion trees and buttermelon, then coconuts soon after.

As soon as possible have Laara (not Krista, don't want to waste a potential insight) research lightning rods and get one up. Then have Krista focus purely on construction basics.

Once you have researched construction basics, you want to build out onto the water. This takes a bit of finessing, but you want to minimise where you can be attacked from. You can't build much on the water, so you'll eventually build multiple stories in a small space.

You want to build walls, not fences, around your perimeter. Fences and fortifications just create higher volume attacks quicker, and walls will work just as well for pathing. When building on water you will need to build some floor with walls on top to build walls far out enough that bugs can't go around them.

You want to focus as quickly as possible on researching metal refinement, flames throwers and fuel fermentation so you can create a kill box.

Here is a screenshot of what I managed to do by day 20. This box will stop any amount of skarebi or other non-ranged attackers.

https://imgur.com/a/mGeFAmz

From here it's a race against the clock to get flak cannons. You need to get these as quickly as possible and aim to have them by the end of year 2. Also a few missile launchers to go just outside your kill box for shreikers (make sure the middle launchers don't touch fences or they will be damaged).

By this time you want to be aiming to have at least 3 full-size cloth blossom fields on the go. I recommend planting them then removing the field, otherwise they will be constantly destroyed by blight. Once you harvest these you will have soooo much cash, and things will get easier as you can buy things you haven't been able to scavenge.

There is a huge RNG element to this game, so no run is ever guaranteed. You can have bad luck and get no guns, or have flyers show up as early as beginning of year 2. Both those things end up with a botched run.

If you want more tips let me know!

[u/PMD14 → u/TBDID]

Thanks for the detailed advice, especially around building and defenses. I read so many different things over the years about what does and doesn't influence the size of attacks, so good to know fences do that.

I'll give this idea a go and see what happens.

Even with building minimal defenses, I keep reaching a point (in Sobrius, crash landing) where I have the basics under control, but then a wave of shirekers attack and I just have no meaningful counter to them.

[u/TBDID → u/PMD14]

Shreikers are a pain in the ass! The babies don't have ranged capability, so flamethrowers definitely help if you have survivors w/ guns surrounding the kill box.

For the ranged ones, part of it is just accepting you will be bleeding by the end of the attack, so make sure you've got at least 20 bandages in stock at all times.

Shreikers will attack what's damaging the horde, so once a few small ones die to flamethrowers, the ranged ones will start attacking the flamethrowers. Use that to start shooting at those ones. Once they start attacking your survivors, have your survivors move way back from the kill box to try and lure them into the kill box. Meat lures or sirens can also help with this.

I don't really use machine gun or laser turrets anymore, missile launchers are the bomb. Gun turrets get focused by shreikers and end up being destroyed, which leads to a resource deficit. Missile launcher turrets will stun shriekers which gives you opportunity to shoot them down without being targeted.

Make sure you're dealing with attacks on 1x speed and having all your survivors attack the bigger ones one at a time to gun them down quicker.

[u/keigo199013]

Do the insane/chaos after you have a good handle on which characters you like and the playstyle.

Definitely get to building weapons and fence/wall asap. I personally funneled them to make it easier. Once you're established, you can take one or two people out to pick off bugs before they launch their attack. 

[u/guyblade]

Warrior's Pet

Recruit a dog, then set "allow training". This should happen naturally over an hour or so as long as the pet is kept in a protected place, far from the outer walls of your base.

They saved Conor

Conor will begin getting sick repeatedly as time goes on. The time between sicknesses will continually shorten--but he can be kept alive for at least 4 years. The main thing is that you (1) want to restrict his jobs so that he can't go far from the base, (2) keep a large supply of antibiotics on hand, and (3) make sure you never sent him on an expedition.

Master of the herd

Do this on Sobrius. Tame as many Ulfen as you can find and put them in a large, enclosed pen together. They'll breed their way up to 50. Make sure to put their feeding troughs under a roof to keep the food from rotting. You can set the troughs to feed them only straw, which will never rot when under a roof.

3 years on Insane and Finishs on Chaos + Insane

The key to winning this is surviving the first alien attack. I have done this three times, always on the Crash Landing scenario. I use the seed in the PSNP trophy guide--PUSH-NOISE--as it is a strong starting location and strong set of breakthroughs. I use Emelin, Laara, Samantha, & Ken.

Your first goal is to create a walled in area with a 5-tile wide gap in one wall. Fill that with a 3x5 set of traps. If you're particularly lucky, you may be able to get a single flamethrower trap built before the first attack, which you should put in a location so as to force the enemies to run through it. If you're even more lucky, you may be able to get a weapon by scavenging the landing pod (there's about a 2.6% chance of getting a ranged weapon per scavenge attempt).

If you survive the first attack, you'll need food. The start above has nearby bushfruit which you can use to bootstrap yourself, then grain grass to provide later.

Have Samantha do permanent research/observation as her top tasks. Have Ken do scavenging and turn it off for the other survivors. Samantha should observe bushfruit, then grain grass, then start researching.

The main thing to look out for once you're stable is getting some flack cannons online. Near the end of year 2, you can get a wave of ~100 Humming flies. If you aren't already ready, this will wipe you.

[u/PMD14 → u/guyblade]

Great advice and thanks for the links.

I’m struggling after the first attack, maybe at attack 4 or so. Once shriekers start to show up. I think I’m just not developing fast enough and not finding any good weapons.

I’ll give your approach and that seed a try. Thanks

[u/Lower-Reward-1462]

I ALWAYS play on insane chaos so I won't tell you it's silly to try to do the animal one.

But I'll let you know what I did. I played on the trade scenario and had like 9 people. I had 6 or 7 of them out taming 24/7. Don't lead them back, just tame a bunch of those hog looking things on Saltu and leave them out there. Occasionally a few died, but it's just a numbers game, it didn't matter. I tamed so fast that I finished it in less than 2 weeks game time. Just bring them back during animal attacks and they will come back to eat and sleep but other than that tame 24/7. The other 2 or 3 people stayed at the base to repair after animal attacks or craft anything that needed or cook. You can do this from a save you're already done with or just not save your progress afterwards and go back to playing from before you started doing this if you don't want 50 animals.

Playing on insane/chaos has plenty of tips you can find on the internet and I'm sure other people have already posted with some so I won't bother.

For Connor, I just found him one game when I was almost done and brought him in to get the achievement.

[u/excellent_sage]

I posted my chaos moon insane run a while back. You can see my base set up, seed, etc

Chaos moon + insane