Rogue Trader: Grim Darkness guide (daring)

Rogue Trader survival guide: Grim Darkness

[This is a work in progess]

Like all games of this type, after the first playthough or two it’s so easy it’s tedious, even on harder sitting. Grim Darkness raises the stakes as one misclick, one misjudgement, one bad roll, one bug can ruin your day.

The guide assumes you have the DLCs.

I’ve had a few restarts because – early on – you can run into a large group of cultists with laz rifles and you have, at best, shotguns and spells with limited range. Your party is shredded before you can get close.
Bad rolls in an outnumbered space fight and you are blown up. Restart.
The fight with the genestealer mage is particularly risky due to those cannon turret crypts obliterating you.
Worst was a bug near the end of Commaarah – the party got stuck inside a wall, inside the space marine(!) and are still there.

As the saying goes, failure is an opportunity to begin again more intelligently.

This time, aiming for a few achievements at once, I’m going with bloodspinner sorcerer, but usually I prefer bounty hunter pathways. Officer pathways can be good too due to the insane damage Pasqal can put out with a plama gun.

TLDR; without a ranged / biomancer group and a great tank or two, you are unlikely to survive.

You also want high intelligence, persuasion and awareness for expanded dialogues, checks and discoveries.

There are spoilers, but for the most part you are either looking for them, or you can gloss over them as you are unlikely to remember the details.

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Chapter 1: Rykad system

Explore the ship as fully as possible, talking to everyone, bath and talking to people. Anything that gives experience and potential permanent buffs. Explore the system, talk to the pirates and get a few free items.
(Repeat throughout the game, of course).

Now head to the shrine

There are two puzzles and rewards in the shrine (one an achievement). There are clues to the first one, depending who you have in the party, but really, it’s the sort of thing you Google after spam trying for an hour. Grim Darkness only gives you one try…

Shrine orb puzzle solution:
1: Throne
2: Blood
3: Weakness
4: Purity

Shrine hidden puzzle. You need enough awarenessness to find the button, and are then given a clue: Furia.
Then are pressure pads and stepping on one of the pads points to the shrine. But how? You can Google it, but to save you the trouble, you need 5 people in the party and you need to find and spell on the lettered pressure pads in order: F.U.R.I.A.
This rewards a half-decent mace with a good pushback attack.

Remember to assign ship roles ealry on – before any space battles! It makes a difference, as does boastingplayers skills in the requisite abilities.

Skills for ship posts

Start with Eurac V

Play safe, talk as much as possible, don’t pull aggro unless you have to. For the first fight, stay back, let them come or you and pick them off with Sister Argenta. The lab puzzle is worth doing, for the XP if nothing else. Again, you have one shot at this, so:

Now, go back to the start, chat, play it cool and help up to ‘deal with Cassia’. If you make the right choices Cassia and her guards (including a healer) will join you in the ensuing fight. So very much easier!

Next step: Kibbellah

Just fly around the system until you trigger her dramatic entrance. Now head down to the freight line and explore fully this will give you a few more levels XP and your sixth party member. Plus, she’s crazy powerful.

You can also manage to get mange in the lower levels of the freight line, if so, this can be cured by someone on the command deck. There is an achievement for playing the game though with the debilitating warp spawned rash, but playing at a harder setting, in grim darkness… that’s just masochistic.

Now for Rykad

You want to do this in stages:

Uses pull tactics and kill zones to push to Pasqal. Remember, you can’t heal injuries until you return to your ship and you can’t return to the ship without taking down the anti-aircraft.

Firstly push in just enough to destroy the anti-aircraft turret. When you run into PrivateCaille Regias, give him the benefit of the doubt. Sure, he may be a traitor, but he’s leading the way and when the shooting starts, they target him, not you. I call that a win. (Does depend on difficulty setting! At higher settings, Commissar his ass!)

On the way, keep a sharp eye out for a hive tertium veteran – or at least his corpse and an iconic is otherwise meh sapper shovel. And achievement, I think

Turret destroyed, return to the ship for any healing and fly down to the command bunker, talk to everyone and – more importantly – power up with from the the Explorers, then go back to the ship.

At this point, pay attention to rumours too. There’s a one-time shot at some loot on a planet you previously explored.

Now, go finish Rykad. As a side note, if you have the Lex Imperialis DLC and visit the command center before clearing the west side, the arbities will clear it for you.

Now, finally, clear the power station…

It might vary with dialogues (e.g. else 3,5,4), and there are clues about, but for the Data altar of sacred analysis:

Final Ryak battle: Aurora

This is a hard and risky fight, especially on higher settings with Grim Darkness. With the right tactics (eg video below) it’s doable though – depending on your party and their skillset. Make sure all your party have healing skills, just in case!

The first try (below) was a bit messy, but later battle (after a restart) beat the snot out of him! Basically, if he can’t move, he can’t bring that cannon of his to bear. Also, he can’t call additional cultist!

So, surroundly him so he can’t and use compunding attacks, beat him down. Executioner skills pile on damage, as does poisoning, and warp and fire damage. (Which I’d reward the second fight. All shuttle wear kept intact for the achievement).

All that’s left is to choice the plenets fate:

Attempt to save the people and holy reactor (Iconoclast +15, but Will -5). The world will turn into a deomn planet and start sending out chaos fleet to harass you later. But, if I recall, you also get a drive engine as a thank you from the cogs :)

Blow up the reaction core and destroy the planet (Dogmatic +15)

Leave the planet to its fate (Heretic +15)

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Chapter 2: Footfall

First a word on merchant trade.

The Imperial Navy only want Void trophies, so give them all they want. As you can only get these via space battles, this rep is particularly hard to progress, so if there are quest options with Navy rep, consider them (unless the other options are better)

There is some overlap in what the factions want and what they offer. Explorers arguably have the best rewards, but you need a lot of Kasballica rep for ideal colony management, you balance these. In third place will be the Drusians, with the Fellowship of least use.

Remeber though that planet exploring often needs items like fuel, provisons, holy items, so always keep a few of each back!

There is a loot box behind a keypad locked container. They are a number of obscure clues but (in a previous playthough) I just used Maths on it and worked through the combinations. The save you the hassle of that, the vode is 3,5,4,1

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Chapter 2: Exploring the expanse

As I said above, keep a supply of items in cargo for quests, typically holy items, fuel and provisions.

Do not waste cargo materials for ship battles, fight them yourself for the tactics training, XP and drops.

NOTE THAT if you complete your coronation in Dagonus some things will change, notably in Football, and side quests will close. This is especially true if enter a certain ship to the north too early and get dragged off to Commorrah!

Extractiums
Use carefully and sparingly!
Always put one down if you find Xenotech or Flogiston and – arguably – Adamantine).
For the rest, blance them out and waste them on anything less than +5
Explore planets (if available) before plonking down an extractium as sometimes the choices will reward one.

 

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Herokh’s rim station

Buy (destroy and loot): disruptions plasma arsenal, w-240 passive detection array

If your ship and crew are certainly buffed, this is an easy fight. Just get in close and keep a tight circle, focusing on the turrets. Loot and choose it’s final fate:

Crypt

With normal play, if you wipe, you just reload, in grim darkness that’s not an option. Do or die.

The crypt battle with the gene stealers is particularly tough because of the defence bunkers. The mobs with web guns make it harder again. Tougher settings – like daring – raise the stakes. Add ‘grim darkness’ to the mix and failure is not an option.

Make sure all your characters are well geared, well levelled and are stocked with med kits and healing spells – you’ll need them! GL!

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Colony Management:

It annoys the hell out of me that it you can’t lock in choices because, for instance something you choose at level 2 locks you out of something much better at level 3 – but you can’t see level 3 until you lock in level 2 options… That’s just poor design, in my opinion. Actions have consequemces, that I get, but manufacturing planning, that’s a different matter.

Anyway, you want [conditonally] choices that make you and your party more powerful – more survivable. Obviously you want to go the rest, but cost block others, so choices can matter. Here’s what I strongly suggest:

FOULSTONE

 

JANUS

 
DARGONUS

 
KIAVA GAMMA

 
VHEABOS IV

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Chapter 3

I played this though a few times and some things are still easy to forget (or I’m getting old ).
One of these is finding your fourth party member after being kidnapped to Commorrah…

TLDR; version is you have to defeat Malice or the Commissar and enter the arena and win (obviously). Then you’ll probably find them outside the anatomical opera. Go inside and you’ll find another member of your party – and all your gear – and a space marine. Go outside again and you can now find the last (or seventh) party member.

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