So You Want To Play WH40k: Rogue Trader... (New Player's Guide)

[Music] what's going on everybody morm here this time bringing you my new players guide for Warhammer 40K Rogue Trader with a few important notes right here at the beginning much like my wrath of the righteous new players guide this is effectively a compilation of many other guides I've already made with the pre-release version of the game which is how I'm bringing you this video on the day the game launches but using that early access I was able to pile together all the important systems to potentially help some people out and explain how a lot of mechanics and things work in a way that is more in-depth than I might normally go into in any other video and while it isn't in this particular video because I didn't want to inflate the runtime unnecessarily I've also made a lore primer about what to expect from Warhammer 40K and this game specifically as a setting just to kind of get your feet wet if you don't know anything about the game at all much like myself at one point that video is going to be linked in the description below if you'd like to check it out and I didn't add it to this video because for the most part it is not strictly speaking necessary to understand that to know how to play the game with all of that said though throughout this video If you hear me say anything that's a slight bit off like mentioning the pre-release version every single section that would be wise so I didn't want to surprise anybody there and as a final note I did make some of these videos and guides with a pre-release version of the game that was different from the review copy that I received and while functionally speaking it won't affect anything information wise you might notice a discrepancy between like a UI element that you see on screen as opposed to how it is shown in game the one section of this video that that would have majorly affected which is the convictions system was actually made specifically for this video as opposed to a guide I had already made which means everything in this video is up to date so with no further Ado jumping into those sections from here what's going on everybody morom here this time bringing you a guide for character creation in Warhammer 40K Rogue Traer as alcat games just recently gave several people myself included access to what is very close to the release version of the game with the main thing missing being the last few acts so I'm using that to make a few guides ahead of the game's release on December 7th naturally though we need to start at the beginning with creating a character as this is a big RPG your choices in character creation matter a great deal and it's definitely worth walking through them so with that in mind to kick us off right out of the gate the first screen you're going to be presented with in character creation is choosing between a custom or pre-generated character the pre-generated characters have a set starting point that you can still take them in a few different directions however their beginning archetype is sorted out so they have a relatively straightforward method of progression compared to creating your own custom characters so if you're a little intimidated by all the choices these are valid options especially if you're just playing on normal and each pre-generated character represents the three base classes with one of them being excluded of the four basic archetypes and the one they excluded is the one that's a little more difficult for someone to play so it makes sense they wouldn't have made a Preen for that though it is a very strong one that said if you want to pick a pregenerated character you can still change their appearance like you could with anyone else but from there let's talk about creating a custom character that is to say who our Rogue Trader is going to be now the first thing this does is start you off with the appearance tabs you're to pick a portrait much like Min crpgs you can if you want to use a custom portrait and if you click over to that tab it'll actually bring you to the folder as well so you can find out exactly where you need to put images to create a custom portrait in game they do have a pretty good selection of pre-made portraits as well though and clicking on one will give you a sort of Base starting point for your character's appearance as well and while not necessarily a big change I actually do like that because that makes sure that your character at least lines up a little bit with the portrait you selected which is a little touch but I like it now the rest of the appearance options are basically what you would expect you can change body type facial features hair eyebrows pick the color of those things you can also put tattoos on your character you can pick up to five layers of different tattoos along side things like augmentations as this is said in Warhammer 40K so naturally being almost a cyborg is definitely something you can do you can pick a variety of augmentations usually a couple but the first Big Choice you make in terms of defining your character side of appearance is what world your character is from Warhammer 40K is divided up into a large variety of different kinds of Worlds each one of them representing a certain way of life so to speak or lack thereof in some cases and what type of world you hail from comes with a variety of bonuses though right here at the beginning it's worth mentioning the three main things a world selection is going to do for you the main thing right at character creation is that it is going to modify your characteristics that is to say it's going to make a stat adjustment based on where you're from this can be positive and negative unless you pick Imperial world at which point it's just purely positive but then we have the features and the talents the feature is what you'll get right at character creation so for death world we can grab survival Instinct which gives you this ability right away which in the case of death World simply makes them much more survivable however talents when you meet certain level requirements you'll be given a talent selection and these for each planet will be added to the list of Poss ible choices you don't get the talents right away you get the features right away so with those things in mind let's talk about each of these worlds individually so death worlds are pretty self-explanatory they are places where living is incredibly difficult and if it wasn't for the resources on them we probably wouldn't be there people from Death worlds make great survivors thanks to their survival Instinct feature which grants them temporary health when they drop below a minimum wounds by the way is your HP in this game and they also gain a variety of strength and physical bonus they do however take negatives to Fellowship which makes them a poor leader which is a type of class and they also take a hit to their intelligence now as they're leveling up death World characters could potentially gain extra crit chance against bleeding targets or half dead targets which can make them incredibly deadly as they can also get extra crit chance for using certain types of weapons and they even get stronger as they get injured or at least they can if they take the talents for it so to summarize death World characters are great for physical characters that are often in melee as they get a bunch of bonuses to exactly that next up though we have voidborn voidborn are essentially people that were born in space in a world like this sometimes with massive Crews of void ships many of them are born and will die on that ship having never seen a planet and often these people are referred to as voidborn they gain bonuses to willpower and intelligence and thanks to probably traveling through the warp fairly often they make great psychers thanks to their willpower bonus now now their feature Fortune allows them to roll any failed attack Dodge Parry characteristic or skill test so basically they can just reroll any roll they make with a 20% chance of success giving them an extra shot at something they otherwise failed though the chance is small but also any enemy that attempts to dodge or Parry them also has a 20% chance to fail after they succeed their initial role so this can give you a small bonus and detriment to your enemies which can make them great all-arounders for kind of whatever you're trying to do and many of their talents revolve around exactly that for instance their bloody mess talent that they could pick up grants them a 10% chance to double the already strong damage from a critical hit they get a talent called Jinx potentially that allows them to influence the luck of everyone around them based on their health and that's kind of the theme of the voidborn but perhaps most powerful I would say of their abilities is actually their B smart Talent if you choose to pick this up you could replace the fellowship bonus on any ability or Talent with your intelligence bonus and there is a class that relies very heavily on Fellowship so being a voidborn you could shift that entire bonus basically to your intelligence stat instead so that could be a build defining Talent if you wanted it to be that brings us to Hive World however Hive worlds are people with incredibly dense populations basically most of the surface of a world or the hive is a gigantic City we're talking cities with the population of billions so naturally a lot of their bonuses revolve around the idea of others or just being around other people which gives them bonuses to fellowship and in this case agility but we do take a hit to our willpower their feature strength and numbers gives them a bonus to their resolve which affects the momentum combat stat which is important but we'll talk about that in another video but they take a penalty to this if there is no one else around so basically if they are near other creatures in combat they get a bonus and a penalty if they are not now many of the talents they have available to them revolve around being next to either enemies or Allies for instance the helping hand Talent causes a hi World character to when starting their turn next to an ally character grant them an extra two movement points and when they end their turn adjacent to allies everyone gains two movement points that is to say all the Allies in the vicinity so things like that can make them great for buffing your entire party if you wanted to that brings us to the Forge World though Forge World characters get a variety of really interesting bonuses but Forge worlds are huge and industrial planets they're usually all about as the name might imply creating things people from there tend to be a little smarter and a little tougher thanks to the nature of that provided they aren't all just servitors of course but unlike the other worlds the Forge World actually gets a choice of their feature bonus they can either take a bonus to their critical chance a bonus to their Dodge chance or a bonus to their Armor All potentially very good bonuses and thanks to the fact that each of these bonuses is calculated a little bit different ly off of different stats intellect agility or toughness you can pick one that kind of leans into what you want that character to do which can make them I would say fairly adaptable to just about any situation perhaps unsurprisingly the talents available to a Forge World character revolve around weaponry and armor and taking any one of these as you leveled up could potentially give you bonuses to your damage in combat with specific weapon types via Pinnacle of Weaponry extra movement and deflection while running in heavy armor as well as extra chance to hit and Dodge reduction to enemies when they get hit via Persistence of the forge so because of that I think Forge World makes a really great versatile home World option because it can lean into a lot of different things depending on which talents you do or don't want to take but they also get a really strong bit of feature selection however in terms of being an all-arounder imperial world is probably your best bet and this is thanks to the fact that they don't get bonuses or detriment to anything mandatory however they're feature Humanity's finest allows them to take a plus 10 bonus in whatever characteristic you want which means you can get a substantial bonus to exactly the characteristic you want without having to take a detriment at all and then you combine that with their talents which are all about promoting the Imperium of man as you might suspect which can grant you bonuses to other human allies as well as other people from Imperial worlds so basically if you don't know what to pick Imperial world I would say is kind of like the default option simply because of how versatile the bonuses can be so personally depending on what I wanted to do I would alternate between Imperial or Forge World in most cases with all the other worlds kind of changing or depending on specific things I might want to build a character for but just like generally speaking these two would be what you would pick that does however leave us with the last one which is Fortress worlds basically military worlds that train constantly from the day they are born to whenever the end is to be ready to defend the Imperium of man which makes it perhaps a little interesting that they take a hit to their fellowship or their camaraderie stat so to speak but they do get bonuses to perception and willpower their feature never stops shooting allows them to on killing enemies Grant a percent chance to give them extra attacks in combat which can be a pretty good feature to be sure alongside with their potential Talent pickups giving them bonuses to ballistic skill which is your ranged Weaponry perception and will power in combat via combat addict alongside a few different talents that buff their never stop shooting feature to be more effective but also via something like spare magazine they could also reload in combat for the cheap but unless you're using a low capacity magazine that doesn't come up a ton exactly but after you pick your home World giving you those base bonuses the next thing you pick is your origin which is one of I would say the two biggest choices you're going to make in character creation which are origin and archetype origin is what your job was before you became the Rogue Trader and then your archetype is more like a class so naturally origin is an especially important choice because of the roleplay implications at the same time depending on your choices here it can have some pretty interesting effects on both what you're able to do as well as your Triumph and Darkest Hour as those are based on your origin but let's not get too far ahead of ourselves and go through these Origins one by one starting with the Astra militarum Commander that is to say the Imperial Guard right away they're going to get regimental tactics which is an ability they can use which is the case for most the features for these that allows others to deal additional damage to enemies adjacent to the commander and their allies but you can only use this once per combat but it is a pretty strong ability they also get bonuses to ranged Weaponry perception medical and Athletics now after character creation when they're leveling up they also get an option to increase their perception and medicate on top of picking a few unique talents now like most of the origins the talents usually buff their ability in some way so the astr militarum commander gets several potential talents they could pick up that affect their regimental tactics ability as you can see so these are bonuses you could get to potentially make that ability even stronger next up we have the commissars or the officers basically of the Astra militarum they get bonuses to weapon skill which is to say melee weapons Fellowship Athletics or coercion basically reflecting their job as an officer their feature is at all costs which gives their next single shot or single Target melee attack the ability to mark an enemy Target which can reward action points and movement points to the Ally who kills it or if you hit an ally with it they will just gain an extra bit of action point and movement points on their next round again can only use this once per combat and you cannot use it on yourself which means the commissar makes a great choice for an archetyp type we're going to talk about all about buffing your companions with extra turns now later on when they're leveling up they can get an extra bonus to their fellowship or coercion on top of again bonuses to their at all cost ability as well as allies that are adjacent to them next up we have the crime Lord pretty self-explanatory origin on that one they get bonuses to their weapon skill that is to say melee weapons perception awareness and logic and we will cover these characteristics a little later by the way but their ability is Surefire plan when they start combat they get a bonus from their intelligence via stacks of Surefire plan activating that ability consumes Stacks one at a time to make their next action stronger based on what that action is for instance for an attack they could deal more damage if they move they could get more Dodge and Parry chance until their next turn or they could even debuff enemies now unlike the others this can be used more than once you can use this multiple times per turn even but once you're out of the stacks of Surefire plan they're just out and this can be a slightly more active way to play a character so to speak due to the various ways you can use that ability now as they level up they can get a bonus to their perception and awareness and their talents they could pick up as they level up can actually give them extra stacks of Surefire plan such as through killing plan which can restore stacks of it mid combat and then the other talents typically just buff the bonuses from that ability now all in all I would say that makes Crim Lord a pretty versatile origin just because Surefire plan can be used in a variety of ways that you can adapt to your situation so as is probably intended Crim Lord is a very adaptable origin for just about any archetype which then brings us to the ministorum priest the ecclesiarchy if you will which naturally see to the religious needs of the Imperium and they get bonuses to lore medical willpower and toughness but their warh him ability is a really great support ability once per combat they can give a PO potentially huge bonus to your momentum which will make a little more sense when I talk about combat but this ability can effectively allow you to activate a sort of ultimate ability on a character much sooner and you can increase how much momentum you gain from warh him based on the amount of enemies already around you or the amount of times you've hit enemies as well so basically you can use warh him to potentially get those big ultimate abilities much faster if you use it correctly one of our companions has this by default which is arenta now as they level up they can pick up willpower and Imperium and unsurprisingly their talents buff warh him and some way for instance Litany of hatred causes the priest and the Allies within the warh him radius to gain extra damage on their single Target hits and attacks of opportunity for the next round so that could also be really great as well they do get a couple other abilities that grant them extra damage to demons and psychers however and while a little bit Niche could potentially find some use in certain areas to be sure though one of their cooler talents is actually the emperor protects which gives them a percentage chance based on their willpower to just flat out ignore an enemy attack and if you find ways to buff and really max out your willpower stat that could actually get a lot of use but ultimately the priest origin is I would say a little more suited to General support thanks to warh him but then we have our Navy officer people in charge of the various void ship fleets out there they get bonuses to agility Fellowship Commerce and demolition their ability is brace for impact which allows them for one round in a three- cell radius around the officer to Grant your allies deflection which is a flat damage reduction and this increases based on the archetypes that you've taken with a potential three being allowed which could bring this at Max so to speak up to a plus six that is to say just reducing all damage by six for a round so decent but definitely defensive in nature which makes it I would say suited for the Vanguard archetype which is a defense oriented archetype now as they level up they could get bonuses to agility and demolition but their talents as you might have guessed are all about buffing up brace for impact with pretty much all of them just granting extra bonuses on top of the abilities such as extra movement points to get out of the way from people pushing enemies back from your characters and reducing damage they take from like attacks of opportunity which again just makes it a really good defensive option for origin now next up we have the noble I don't think anybody needs the concept of nobility explained to them but Nobles of the Imperium exist and that's what this origin is all about though as a rogue traitor you kind of become a sort of noble regardless but as such they get bonuses to their intelligence coercion persuasion and fellowship another great option for a character that's all about talking their way out of problems potentially their ability is you serve me they get to designate an ally as their servant anytime their abilities affect that servant that servant gains a bonus to all of their characteristics until the Noble's next turn the servant also gets extra crit chance on any Target that the noble is also hitting so once per combat you can effectively assign this to someone now as they level up they get extra bonuses to fellowship and persuasion and their potential Talent Picks Grant extra bonuses to the servant they assign every round such as giving it extra movement points extra action points pretty much what you'd expect but that brings us to what is hands down the most interesting as far as the origin characters which is the sanctioned pyer and I say that because sanctioned pyer has so many different options available to it that it might as well basically be its own archetype but that wouldn't really work for the way the lore of Warhammer 40K works so it is an origin sanctioned psychers are people with tremendous psychic ability which normally gives them the potential for being corrupted by demons and causing potentially planet-wide problems of Destruction some of those psychers who are normally killed are selected to become sanctioned psychers they undergo rituals to protect them from the dangers and then they can use their powers in service to the Imperium of man so as you might have gathered from that description it's not the kind of thing you can just pick up and learn it doesn't work that way which means it has to be an origin thanks to the fact that it is an origin it's like an entirely separate class on top of your class they get bonuses to toughness willpower lore warp and carouse however willpower is their main thing all of their psycher abilities are going to scale off of willpower so willpower is important if you want to make effective use of them now feature-wise we need to talk about s rating but first a sanctioned pyer has a 20% reduced chance to trigger psychic phenomenon because people who use their powers in combat can potentially cause extra problems if they use enough of it by causing a veil tear which invites demons and things to join the batt battle which adds a chaotic element to your psycher powers if you are using them wantonly but then we have our s rating basically as your character levels up at certain points they will have the option to pick their talents and at certain levels they can increase their sigh rating which affects both the access to the psychic powers they have as well as the strength of those Powers themselves so basically as your character levels up if you want their pyer powers to be useful you need to increase their sigh rating however exactly what type of psychic powers you have is also Up For Debate because there's five different types of sanctioned pyer biomancer divver pyromancer santic and telepath these feed into different archetypes with varying levels of efficiency biomancer is great for melee oriented characters thanks to their iron armor ability which grants them extra strength and toughness until the end of combat which in combination with a melee weapon which gets extra bonus damage from that strength bonus can make them really strong opponents in melee they also get an ability called biophysical Distortion if you pick it up that allows every attack they make to poison the enemy and deal damage every turn alongside a variety of other abilities and what's more is while this is what is available at character creation as you level up there's actually more stuff that will become available such as abilities based on your s rating that can further augment what your psycher available to do so the biomancer can get a healing ability it can get an ability that weakens and debuffs enemies as an example and while I simply don't have enough time to go over every single possible option for a psycher basically you want to make sure that the type of psycher you make is going to line up with the archetype you want because your archetype is almost certainly going to use a different stat than willpower which means the trade-off for being a psycher which is really powerful or can be is that you actually have a little bit of split stat spread now required alongside needing to pick up talents to maintain those pyer abilities so whereas a lot of the other orig complement archetypes just at a pretty base level psychers require more thought and knowledge of what you're trying to do specifically in order to be really effective but the other types of sanctioned psycher can also be pretty useful starting with the divver we get one of these as a companion if you want them adira and they're all about I would say mostly buff abilities they can increase the abilities of just various allies and things as you go so while they get less directly usable abilities they can make great support psychers Pyro mancer is pretty straightforward it is the ability to throw fire very damage oriented one obviously but probably worth a mention that a lot of their abilities also apply things like burning armor reduction on enemies and things like that so if you're wanting to be a psycher who just throws out damage as much as possible pyromancer is kind of the way to go and then there is sancti psychers these are people with a connection to the Emperor or The Golden Throne more specifically and this one is a combination of Buffs and attacks many of their abilities buff other allies on your team including psychers as well which can give you things like momentum bonuses extra damage so this one is an interesting blend of direct damage and buffing your team but then we have telepath telepath is all about psychic powers they get an ability to shriek at their enemies which is kind of a long range psycher based damage ability that is potentially based on your stats a very strong hit and later on when they're leveling up they can get access to the pain channeling Talent which allows them to deal extra damage to surrounding enemies based on how much they overkilled the target which can be a really cool one and they're also pretty good at debuffing enemies as well so where the santic is about buffing and damage the telepath is about debuffing and damage if that makes sense now if all of that wasn't enough for you you can actually mix and match your sanctioned pyer a little bit as you level up it is possible to pick up the other disciplines of pyer for instance adira actually has telepath and diviner and and if you're playing a psycher you can also do this but again you have to balance picking up those versus picking up abilities and things for your actual archetype which we're about to get to now that brings us to Triumph and Darkest Hour these are both a selection of three choices that detail your past glories or failures this is based on the origin you pick meaning that you'll get three unique choices for both of these options unique to each origin and these form the basic background of your character while also having other potential effects as well but effectively these are role-playing choices now that brings us to our archetypes these are effectively your class they work in combination with your home world and origin to make the bulk of what your character is good at you can see here that they are divided into three tiers which are effectively basic Advanced and Exemplar your build if you will is defined by the first and second tier with the Exemplar being a sort of final progression track that allows you to pick and choose abilities from your previous two archetypes to allow you to advance them further so the Exemplar archetype at the end is like being an Exemplar of the previous classes you have picked now right here at character creation you're just going to pick your level one archetype and you can see by mousing over it which Advanced archetypes will be available to you later so this choice is important as you cannot mix and match freely but rather each starting archetype has a choice of three of the Advanced archetypes when they hit level 16 which might sound like a ways into the game but that is effectively once you leave the First Act of the game you'll then be able to pick your Advanced archetype but I want to go over and explain all of these to some degree though most of them are pretty self-explanatory Warrior is all about melee attacks on top of movement Dodge and soaking up damage via things like endure basically if you want to play a melee oriented character Warrior is the archetype that you want next up we'll talk about the operative the operative is all about tearing down the defenses of your enemies they get abilities that apply the status condition called exploit which allows them to deal extra damage to enemies and then a few levels in they get expose weakness which allows them to remove exploit Stacks to reduce the enemy's defenses that's kind of the core of what they do so realistically you probably want at least one operative on your team just so you can have someone who can tear the defenses off of say a boss then we have Marksman this is basically your ranged option if you want to use Guns flamers Etc Marksman is what you want they get all sorts of bonuses to their ballistic skill which is their range Weaponry they get the Run and Gun skill which allows them to attack activate Run and Gun and then move and attack again and their ultimate ability military Excellence or their heroic Act is honestly one of the stronger ones because it allows you to make multiple ranged attacks and if you have a really high chance to hit it can just be absolutely absolutely devastating which is why our adepa soras companion arenta who uses this archetype is one of the better damage dealers of the game because they don't have to worry about closing distance Like a Warrior does now there is a more I would say interesting final option and that is the officer the officer is all about granting your party extra turns as well as buffing them this can combine really really well with things like the commissar origin to give you some really impact ful ways to provide serious bonuses to your allies which include just straight up giving them extra turns their ability bring it down allows them to make extra attacks without giving them any extra movement points and then their heroic ability finest hour just gives them a full extra turn and that combined with their voice of command ability which can be buffed up to give all sorts of bonuses to a specific Target which is then further increased by the other abilities that the officer is going to get makes them a really Natural Choice for a leader type character you don't necessarily need to play this on your Rogue Trader by any means but you probably want one or two officers on your team just so you can give your damage dealers just maximum amounts of damage per turn because your leaders get to make an attack and then also Grant extra turns to your allies which can just about double your effective combat potential so while it's a little more advanced in terms of play style officer is incredible but I do want to talk a little bit about the advanced archetypes here as well and just kind of explain what they're all about so you kind of get a gist for what they're good at now assassin's pretty straightforward it's all about targeting and dispatching enemies this doesn't necessarily need to be in melee specifically but it is a little better if you are but assassin's going to allow you to make openings on enemies which means if you hit them from a specific side or Square you'll deal extra damage they also get extra attacks such as the dispatch ability which deals a bunch of extra damage so while they don't have a lot of defensive options they can really tear enemies apart damage wise and then we have Vanguard vanguard's your tank option they get the unyielding Beacon ability which gives them stacks of unyielding Beacon which can lead to temporary health that they can stack up they get abilities like unyielding guard which allows them to attack nearby enemies trying to attack your allies but basically if you want to tank you want to Vanguard now then we have Bounty Hunter Bounty Hunter is all about marking enemies with hunt down the prey and then upon killing those enemies you'll get specific bonuses based on how strong that enemy was this is effectively like the ranged version of assassin where you can Mark enemies and get extra abilities such as call the bold that give them all sorts of ways to just at range really tear apart enemies then we have Master tactician this one is interesting basically as you gain momentum in combat you'll gain stacks of tactical Advantage you can then spend those stacks of tactical advantage AG on things like press the advantage which just gives you extra damage for every stack you consume and later on you even get abilities like Inspire that allow you to Target your allies and give them the bonuses of your Tactical Advantage so this feeds pretty naturally for something like officer to allow you to have other ways of buffing your allies with extra damage or even yourself to make sure you're really hitting as hard as possible now Grand strategist I would say is probably the most difficult of the advanced archetypes to play but it is very interesting they get access to the combat tactics ability which allows them to mark three specific areas of the battlefield as Frontline backline and rear basically areas on a grid that you designate will be the areas of the battlefield that then gain specific bonuses based on who is in those marked areas and then later on they get abilities that debuff enemies and then buff your allies within those zones of control so while Grand strategist can be a little tricky to play as you have to focus on moving those areas and adjusting them as needed in the middle of combat if you can get it all sorted out it can be an effective way to buff and organize your team but again it does require a bit more management so to speak than the other archetypes might lastly we have the arch militant this is your sort of all-arounder their big ability is called right tool for the job which allows them to alternate different types of attacks including like single Target versus melee types of the same weapon to gain stacks of right tool for the job and when they do this they'll gain extra bonuses to their weapon and Ballistic skill alongside extra damage when they have enough stacks and then they also get several abilities that interact and play with those stacks and also give them Battlefield control as well so that combined with some Buffs they can give themselves is what makes Arch militant I would say a great allaround damage dealer if you don't necessarily want to specialize in like Melee or range damage and you kind of want to do a little bit of everything Arch militant can be a great option for that which covers the base basics of what to expect from every single archetype available to us but remember you can combine your base archetype with potentially three different Advanced archetypes to make something that plays a little bit unique for instance the officer that is to say the archetype focused on giving people extra turns and everything can be a master tactician a grand strategist or a Vanguard which can lead to different ways to play it but that finally brings us to our characteristics which I've been referencing throughout this video and simply put these are your ability scores they determine your effectiveness at all sorts of other things they also affect secondary skills which you can see on the right here with their governing attribute such as strength perception toughness Etc now weapon skill and Ballistic skill are pretty straightforward that's how good you are with either melee or ranged Weaponry more specifically though it tends to be your chance to hit with those things so for instance a high weapon skill allows you to increase your Parry chance while red reducing the enemy's Parry chance and their ability to dodge against your melee attacks it also increases your chance at a critical hit with those weapons which is a very similar case for ballistic skill but for ranged but then we have other stats strength is pretty straightforward this gives us extra damage with melee weapons and it also affects your Athletics skill how physically strong you are toughness determines how easily you get hurt in combat in combat we can gain injuries which can then lead to traumas which is how the game can potentially lead you into failure because you normally heal after combat but you will keep injuries and traumas toughness can prevent those from popping up it also affects your chance to resist negative physical effects your overall amount of HP and the carouse skill carouse is basically your ability to handle negative substances let's say such as alcohol next up is agility this is your analog for dexterity more or less this increases your character's initiative which is to say how fast they move in the turn order as this is a turn-based game it also increases their Dodge chance and their ability to reduce the Dodge chance of enemies it also affects the demolition skill which is naturally explosives and things then we have intelligence obviously a measure of someone's intelligence this affects your lore skills logic meday and Tech use outside of abilities that specifically mention Intelligence being their stat this affects the most amount of the secondary skills as you can see on screen here from all those highlights then we have perception this affects your awareness skill which makes you more likely to notice hidden things in the environment on top of reducing enemy Dodge chance against you while not explicitly required for many builds you probably want someone with high awareness just so you can spot the hidden items and goods in a particular map so someone having high perception is great willpower is all about your psychers psychers need willpower more than anyone else because while having a high willpower can reduce your chance of getting negative Mental effects placed on you it it also increases the effect of psychic powers which means this is mostly a psycher stat as most others won't really need it but then we have Fellowship Fellowship is your ability to talk your way out of situations or Chum it up with people it's effectively Charisma important for a few different archetypes but it also affects your ability to persuade people either through financial intimidation or persuasion options now at character creation we have 30 points to put into these skills but they only increase in increments of five which means you can put 10 extra points into three skills if you want and these little tick marks next to each skill represent the number of times you've added to them these only increase in increments of five even in character creation or even when you're leveling up later some items will add an odd amount but everything is mostly dealt with an increments of five so you decide which of these skills you want your character to get bonuses to based on what you want them to be good at and then we are almost finally done with character creat cretion with the last choice being all about picking your starting void ship as a rogue Trader will be traveling the expanses of space and you can pick what you want your starting ship to look like you will be able to customize like weaponry and upgrade holes and shields later so I wouldn't really worry about the stat side of this this is mostly just a cosmetic choice and you can also name said ship and then before you start the game you'll get a summary of all your different choices so I hope you enjoyed that look at character creation and a breakdown of what some of these choices are and what they mean I will be following this up with a guide to things like combat Etc so you can see some of this stuff in a more action oriented setting but at some point once I've got all these guides done and made I'll likely combine them all together in a sort of new players guide so they're in one place but I hope this helped you get an idea of what was available in character creation for this game what some of your options were and how those options actually affect the game play what's going on everybody morm here this time bringing you a system overview for combat in Warhammer 40K Rogue Trader just a bit ahead of its release about a month or so thanks to a preview copy provided by alcat games that is only really missing the last couple acts of the title and because of its pretty complete state I'm able to bring you guides like this ahead of the game and with this particular video what I want to cover are the basics of combat and how all the systems and various properties mesh together to make the whole as such this is not like a deep dive into you should use this ability at this time kind of thing but rather what all the terms mean how all these pieces fit together with that in mind as with any real RPG a lot of this starts in character menus as you have to understand those to understand how your character is performing in combat that said this video is going to be timestamped so if you want to jump ahead to the more combat specific part feel free but we're going to start with our characteristics or abilities attributes whatever you want to call them which is probably a good place to mention that this game's core system is based off of a tabletop game by the same name though it has been modified and changed so while there is technically a source for some of this stuff not all of it is exactly one for one that said let's start with weapon and ballistics skill these are your melee and ranged weapon skills respectively however they don't really affect your damage with those weapons just how good you are with them so for melee weapons or your weapon skill increasing this will increase your chance to hit by reducing enemy parry and Dodge chance on top of increasing your ability to perform a critical hit because when you move to attack an enemy in melee in particular it's largely your weapon skill versus their weapon skill and whoever has the higher skill has the advantage in that situation which makes the enemy less likely to Parry your attack or be able to dodge out of the way so if you want to make a Melee character it's really all about weapon skill ballistic skill is much the same affecting their base chance to hit and the enemy might be able to attempt to perform a Dodge but that's primarily for area of effect abilities but if you want to use guns in any event you naturally need a high ballistic skill in terms of combat strength will give you extra damage with melee weapons whereas toughness makes your character more resilient by being more resistant to the accumulation of injuries which we'll talk about a little bit later in the healing section but it also affects your character's base amount of wounds which is to say their HP which are for some reason called wounds in this game which is a little bit awkward but whenever it mentions wounds specifically it's talking about the HP of your character whereas in terms of damage or injuries it means literally injuries or then later traumas agility will improve your character's initiative Dodge chance and the Dodge reduction you put on enemies via your melee weapons if you are a Melee character intelligence doesn't directly affect combat in many ways but it is the primary stat for a lot of abilities that you might use in in combat though it won't have any direct effect Awareness on the other hand will reduce the enemy's chance to dodge as well and then we have willpower willpower is a psycher stat your space magic if you will everyone else it will reduce their chance of taking negative Mental effects but for psychers in particular willpower is their main stat for their damage and ability scaling so unless you're a pyer you won't really pay much attention to this stat and then last but not least we have fellowship or your charisma basically this affects many abilities for the officer in particular who directs and commands their peers on the battlefield so that covers the base characteristics and what they translate to in terms of combat abilities but from there we still have quite a bit to cover so now I want to talk about the stats you're going to see on the equipment itself which is things like armor deflection Dodge parry and general things of that nature but if we take a look at our character's character screen of course we can see all these different numbers for starters the characteristics we just talked about but directly under that we have a line of several numbers that relate to various important combat numbers for starters over here on the left we have our deflection stat deflection can be gained from a few different sources but primarily heavy armor pretty much no character starts with the ability to use heavy armor it's something you have to pick up the proficiency for Via leveling up but deflection is primarily gained through heavy armor and deflection is just flat damage reduction so this particular character has one deflection so that means every single bit of damage that comes their way is automatically reduced by one which isn't significant because I'm not wearing heavy armor now the number right next to that however is our armor percentage this is the percentage of damage that is reduced after deflection is taken off the top so when we get hit and we take damage deflection reduces the maximum and then your armor reduces that amount that is left by a certain percentage so in this case 25% but obviously the more armor we have the more that can be reduced so your damage mitigation in terms of actually getting hit and taking damage is mostly a product of deflection and armor but we also have a variety of other ways to mitigate damage primarily dodging and parrying parrying is of course melee oriented so if it's not a Melee character and you're not holding a melee weapon it's not going to come up but Dodge on the other hand is pretty much for everybody everyone has a base chance of 30% Plus whatever their agility is however that chance to dodge is immediately reduced by the attacker's perception among any other form of Dodge reduction they might have so while this character does have a pretty good Dodge chance it will be reduced by whatever the enemy is doing and after all it is a percentage chance which means you can definitely still get hit but you will attempt to dodge when you are attacked though as you can see at the bottom of this text block if you are attacked with an area attack and you attempt to dodge you can only move three cells on the combat field to get out of that attack and if that's not enough you're still going to get hit but then right next to that stat we have Dodge reduction this number is how much your character is reducing the enemy's chance to dodge when you attack and then finally on this list we have our resolve resolve is how much momentum you gain when you kill an enemy or your turn begins we'll talk about momentum here in a little bit as it is a very important metric in combat to keep track of now from there let's talk about stats on weapons which can be divided into I would consider melee ranged weapons and then things like stabs so in terms of melee weapons outside of obviously just things like damage a big thing you want to keep your eye on is armor penetration this is how much percentage of the enemy's armor that we are cutting through so you can see with this very good weapon that I have equipped I'm reducing their percentage of armor by 35% so while you might run into enemies with a high armor percentage thus reducing a lot of the damage you're trying to do you can overcome that via armor penetration but then we have ranged weapons these obviously have a little more going on like rate of fire recoil range max ammo ammo and range are pretty self-explanatory but what might go unnoticed is rate of fire and recoil basically as you can see on this screen here most ranged weapons that aren't deliberately single shot weapons can fire in a burst when you do that you'll fire that weapon's rate of fire so in this case it would be six spread out over an area however this is done at the cost of accuracy because that's where recoil comes in Recoil is the percentage of chance to hit that you lose with every shot fired so with the recoil of 15% here basically every shot after the first one I am losing 15% of my chance to hit but again this is over a big sweeping area now where that can get a little more complicated is with things like flamers or flamethrowers because these also have a sort of AOE but technically it's only one stream if you will of fire so you don't have to worry about things like recoil for a flamethrower obviously so those are important stats to keep an eye on in terms of each individual weapon you might be looking at and something you might notice is when you're looking at something like a sniper rifle which only has a rate of fire of one it doesn't give you a recoil stat because you're only firing the one shot and thus recoil in the sense that it is used in this game doesn't really apply now when it comes to weapons we're not quite done because as I'm sure you've seen on all these weapons they have a variety of weapon abilities this determines how they attack most melee weapons for instance have a single target attack and then a sort of slashing move that will hit a few tiles in front of you ranged have their single shot or burst modes and then things like stabs for psychers are kind of an in between whereas they have the melee strike option because it's a staff but also they'll get abilities directly related to their pyer as well this is how psychers can use certain things like chain lightning and things with their weapons as opposed to having to know that particular psychic power so certainly something to keep in mind and all of that put together means that Beyond just the damage a weapon does how it deals that damage to the enemy is just as important and something you need to understand when you're looking at the description for individual weapons now with all that stuff out of the way let's start talking about actual combat systems and how it works I'm sure you've seen on screen and you might have guessed by some of the words I've used up to this point this is a turn-based tactical game as such when you start combat there's a few things to know right away if you are aware of the encounter you're about to get into you will enter a preparation phase where you're allowed to set up your characters by putting them in specific spots and kind of getting ready for combat if you are surprised by an enemy attack this is not an option and you're kind of just stuck with wherever your characters are it is possible to adjust your party's formation when you're walking outside of combat but for the most part that preparation in most instances makes that not a big deal another thing that happens right as combat starts though is that you all roll initiative which is to say the turn order this can be seen on the left of the screen here and as a base this is calculated by adding your agility and perception bonuses divided by two combined with a d10 roll to establish your initiative but it is a little more comp licated than that because technically initiative is rolled for a variety of groups of allies and enemies that's important because your Allied groups and your enemy groups alternate with each other this ensures that you won't just get wiped before you even get a chance to take a turn due to how the initiative role played out which is important because there's often a lot of I would say numbers of enemies with many of them really only serving the purpose to be just kind of obliterated by your big area of effect abilities to kind of make you feel powerful in classic Warhammer 40K fashion and because of that you'll run into a lot of enemies who are very much so intended to die in one hit but because there's so many if they didn't roll initiative in this way it would lead to the possibility of you being overrun before you even got to move so while your characters will be rolling initiative do keep in mind that the actual role is mostly used to determine which group your characters fall into which is then alternated with enemies so how exactly that looks might vary a little bit but from there once we are actually in combat and taking our turns and everything at that point the system is a combination of movement points and action points movement points are pretty self-explanatory this is how far your character can move indicated by the green on the screen when it's your turn and action points are of course spent on abilities and attacks however it's important to note that typically under normal circumstances once your character makes an attack that's it for their turn it will take all your movement points away and you'll be done however there are a lot of abilities and things to get around this in fact a lot of I would say the Tactical side of the combat here is setting yourself up to take as many turns as possible until you run out of action points this can be done via heroic acts which we're about to talk about alongside of special abilities you'll get as you level up that allow you to make attacks that don't count against your attack limit for that turn such as the marksman's basic run and Gun ability which allows them to move and take another attack another thing to keep in mind during combat is of course cover now a lot of this is going to change based on the difficulty settings you have the game on but at a base chance that is to say normal basically half cover will give you a 35% reduction to being hit by an enemy so it reduces their hit Chance by 35% full cover reduces that chance by 60% full and half cover is noted by either the half Shield or the full shield with a skull on it so like many tactical games it is important to make sure that you're not just leaving characters out in the open where they're going to Bear the full brunt of an enemy's attack most likely and while all of that is pretty basic as far as these systems go a lot of the Nuance here is how well you are using all of your various abilities to make this more fun for instance there's a variety of abilities that don't actually make an attack and allow you to either buff yourself debuff enemies or perform more interesting effects and those things combined with the basic rules where a lot of the satisfaction of combat is going to come in but everything I've mentioned thus far isn't your only options you do have access to consumables every character has four consumable slots which can be used to hold a variety of things like grenades throwables and of course things like medkits so outside of just your character's abilities based on all the decisions you've made about building that character you can also just slap some grenades on them and have them Chuck them at enemies now perhaps probably the most important aspect of combat is I would say the momentum bar this is the bar to the right of the character portrait when it is your turn this can either increase or decrease as you perform in combat if you're doing well it'll go up and if you're doing poorly it will decrease both of those events can lead to either a heroic act or a desperate measure these are sort of ultimate abilities that your characters will have access to depending on your performance in combat and because these activate at opposite ends of the momentum bar the worst you can do in combat is usually just okay as that will drag things out if you do incredibly well or if you're doing badly you'll get to access these really strong abilities that can turn the tide of the battle heroic Acts or Desperate Measures these abilities are typically associated with the class or archetype that your character is for instance the warrior gets one called Daring breach that allows them to make an unlimited number of attacks per turn provided they have the action points to do so and it can even be upgraded to give them movement points in between kills as well meaning that where they could only Attack One enemy before they can run and attack multiple enemies many times over and potentially kill like four or five or even more in a single turn whereas The Marksman ability is much the same but at ranged instead meanwhile the base officer archetype can use their heroic moment if you will to just grant another Ally a full turn with a bunch of bonuses there's actually a lot more of these based on the archetypes so while the four base archetypes of the game will get one of these abilities each the later archetypes also unlock more of these now how much the momentum bar goes up is a product of that character's resolve when your character begins their turn that will go up by a certain amount and then when you kill enemies it will continue to go up however vice versa when the enemy's turn rolls around and they hit you it will be reduced so managing momentum is a big part of combat and this is where all those little Canon fodder enemies I mentioned come in there are a lot of enemies that that only have enough Health to basically survive a single hit these are what those enemies are for you're meant to just kind of brutalize them build up your momentum and then use that to wipe the floor with the rest of the enemies which leads to a sort of General combat flow where you're meant to feel really powerful because that's kind of what this setting is all about which means in many ways it pays to either do really well or do poorly because that's going to lead to the sort of explosive combat that these types of setups lean towards whereas if you're just doing okay you'll kind of drag around in the middle which can drag combat out which brings an interesting Dynamic I would say to the overall combat system but that brings us two Veil tears if you've noticed opposite of the momentum bar there is another bar that will fill up when you use certain abilities this is the veil or your chance of drawing the warp the warp is the chaotic energies of the world as psychers use their abilities their psychic powers or enemies do so things like demons Etc it will increase this meter once it passes a certain threshold your continued use of psychic powers or the enemies even can lead to chaotic effects on the battlefield such as summoning more enemies being a most basic example of it which means if you're just absolutely going ham with very powerful psychic abilities you run the risk of drawing more attention to yourself from the warp which can have all sorts of detrimental effects on both the combat and naturally leads to a lot of chaotic potential though that finally does bring me to I would say the last thing I want to touch on and that is healing you might have noticed throughout all of this I mentioned healing very little and that's because unlike a game like say Pathfinder or something where resting is a big part of it it is frankly a little less so in this game but it is still something to keep an eye on basically after combat ends your characters will heal all the way to full however where you get into dangerous territory is with injuries and traumas as you take a lot of damage in combat this can lead to an injury injury the same thing with running over a trap outside of combat or even in certain dialogue events injuries by themselves aren't that bad you can heal them right away with medical kits provided you have a character who can do that for you and based on their own medic skill it's usually not a big deal to get rid of injuries though however get enough injuries and this will eventually lead to a trauma if your character goes down in combat they will still be revived afterward automatically but they will have a trauma traumas are big detrimental to your characteristic stats usually now whereas injuries can be healed with medkits and things like that in the field so to speak traumas you can only heal by going back to your ship or basically if there's a narrative reason that you'll have gotten some decent rest so while you will heal outside of combat and everything if you do poorly you run over a lot of traps this will lead to injuries and traumas which have major detrimental effects on your characters which impedes your combat Effectiveness as you continue to move forward on that map and until eventually you might lead yourself to a game over so while there isn't a rest system per se it is still an important thing to keep an eye on with how your characters are doing overall so while you don't really need something like a dedicated healer though there are healing abilities for instance the biomancer will get some abilities that actually directly allow you to heal your teammates in combat you can use medkits to heal up as well there are a variety of abilities that give you temporary HP even I would say the game isn't wildly balanced around you have being a Healer or at least a dedicated one anyway which is certainly an interesting approach for a game like this as that's not typically how those things work frankly but all of that is pretty much what you can expect from combat in Warhammer 40K Rogue Trader and as a matter of personal opinion I would say this system isn't quite as complicated as something like Pathfinder but still allows enough strategical depth and character building which you can check out via my character creation video I've already put out that it can give you a really satisfying Tac iCal experience based on the character that you've made while at the same time just being more approachable than Al cat's previous work and honestly I'm very interested in seeing people's reaction to this once they get their hands on it because on one hand it is still fairly in-depth if you watch my character creation video you'll definitely see that you have a lot of options there's a lot of stuff going on but it's also undeniably easier to get into than something like the Pathfinder games which are notoriously hard to get into with a high bar of Entry primarily because of the knowledge needed to play them effectively and this combat system at least seems to attempt to bridge a lot of those gaps in a way that I hope is friendly to newcomers and appeals to people like myself more familiar with these types of games what's going on everybody morom here this time bringing you a video on managing your trade Empire in Warhammer 40K Rogue Trader as taking up the role of a Rogue Trader involves managing a trade Empire by its very nature but how that works functionally in a game like this as well as the tabletop version is a little bit different than you might expect and given alcat games the developers pinching for adding inside systems like Kingdom management or the Crusade mode in their previous games some people have had some questions about how all of this works and I will say it is not nearly as intrusive as those previous systems they've worked on but there's a little bit to know and most of it is optional some of it will just happen simply by playing the game though but whereas many other games would simply give you an amount of gold and then that's what you have to spend that's not really how it works here because by the very nature of being a rogue Trader we have access to an immense amount of wealth we own literal planets and as such the fantasy of that doesn't exactly align with being broke so instead of giving us a set amount of currency to work with we are in instead using what is called our profit factor and both profit factor and our own reputation are the factors by which we will be interacting with vendors by and we'll discuss how that works first so as a rogue Trader trading is the very nature of our business and our reputation is very important in that regard so there are a variety of factions that we'll come into contact with as we play through the game though in many ways these reputations are simply vendors and by unlocking higher tiers of reputation will unlock the ability to eventually buy more things from them provided we also have the profit Factor but the reputation part of this is very simple as we play through the game you'll be picking up a ton of loot you have your own party inventory as well as your ship's cargo inventory cargo inventory is what you are ultimately going to be trading to vendors for reputation you don't get a currency out of selling items in this game but rather you get reput ation with the people you sold it to so anytime we pick up a variety of loot we kill enemies we just explore and find it any which way you might get it we can send it to the cargo inventory of our ship where it will automatically be sorted for us into cargo Bays of various types be that ranged Weaponry armor various different other types and that's important because these cargo bays are then associated with a percentage completion once they reach 100% is to say they are full we can trade that to someone who wants it and when we find said vendor and we go to do this we can see how much reputation we will earn by selling them various full different cargo bays and this is how we earn our reputation very straightforward you'll move up through tiers and while this might seem like a lot the sheer volume of loot you're going to be picking up if you are actually picking up everything makes this very easy to do if anything you'll have an overabundance of stuff to trade which is kind of the point personally I actually like this system quite a bit because it makes all of the useless items that you would normally find on enemies like the underwhelming gear that they were using actually have a purpose because now we can just Auto sort that into our cargo inventory and then trade it off for reputation but the other part of trading is our profit Factor like I said we don't use a hard currency as that really wouldn't make sense here rather the entirety of our wealth in our trade Empire is represented by a number called our profit Factor we can earn profit factor a variety of ways simply by completing some of the main story stuff which will see us restoring parts of our trade Empire which gives us more profit Factor we'll be able to develop colonies which we'll talk about in a bit or simply completing various quests and making certain decisions might actually Grant you more profit Factor as well say if you were to choose a particularly greedy way to end a quest that saw you coming into some wealth that would be represented by an increase in your profit Factor however profit Factor isn't something that goes away in the alpha they played around with having it sort of recharge that is to say you would spend your profit factor and then it would take a while for it to build back up to its maximum once your profit Factor reaches a certain level you can buy everything under that freely with no weit time anything like that which I think works out pretty well as we're already limited by the inventory of who we're buying from a little bit anyway and that pretty much sums up how profit factor and reputation work which is simple enough once you get used to it but it's very different from most everything besides the tabletop system that is the source material here another big part of our trade Empire is managing our colonies as a rogue Trader we will have planets and thus the colonies on them directly under us that we technically own as such we'll be able to develop those and potentially make the most out of them resulting in some unique rewards some of these colonies need to be found by exploring the star map others will be granted to you simply by completing main story objectives however either way that happens once you have these colonies under your control you can start developing them which comes down to completing various events building certain structures Etc honestly this system is relatively tame but it does require you to have various resources at the top of the screen we can see what resources we have available to us and we gain most of these by exploring various planets in a sort of Mass Effect style we can go around to planets scan them if they have resources we can set up an extractor if we have one which is one of the items we can buy from the reputation vendors and doing so will grant us the appropriate amount of material from that planet and doing this over and over again is how you build up your resources initially but once you start building up these colonies they'll start contributing to these things as well on top of your actual profit Factor however in addition to just those things we can also get other rewards like special weapons more reputation with certain vendors if we make certain choices or even get special things in combat like certain bonuses one Colony can even give you an extra ship to use in the space combat system I've already covered in a video previously so there's a lot of rewards to building up these colonies but for the most part you're left up to your own devices in that regard you don't necessarily need to do much of that every once in a while though these colonies will have events that require you to go visit them and then make a decision but even these don't really have a time limit or anything you just go there when you happen to be by and you can take care of them and depending on your decisions in those events it'll affect the various resources at play because each colony has its own individual resources it has to watch out for like security or complacency all of which kind of feeds into the projects you're able to undertake and that I would say is pretty much the important things to know in terms of managing our trade Empire but I do want to emphas ize here at the end though this is a very tame system in comparison to their previous ones you don't necessarily need to do much of this or micromanage it like I said you'll gain most of your profit Factor simply by playing the game completing main story objectives will give it to you in many cases and you'll be earning so much loot by just playing the game that you'll pretty much always have stuff to trade for the reputation you need so much of this system and being incredibly involved with it is simply going to give you extra bonuses that make your life a little easier like more profit factors sooner to buy better stuff faster better bonuses in all instances of the game really things like that however it's not necessary for you to do that in many cases especially on normal and overall it's a system I enjoy it's present enough to make you feel like a rogue Traer in the sense that you know you actually have this Empire to manage if you feel like it while also having some more Direct effects on the things that are available to you without at the same time being a very heavily involved system that you have to stay on top of that takes away from the main experience which I think is a lot of people's concern with the system given Al cat's previous work and while the Crusade mode from Wrath of the righteous didn't bother me much the kingdom management and King maker was not fun at least for me what's going on everybody morom here this time bringing you a video on void ship combat as part of Warhammer 40K Rogue Trader as alcat games have provided me a version that's pretty close to the release version of the game with basically only the last couple of Acts missing and a little bit of Polish of course so I've been using that version to talk about all of the systems and changes that play ahead of the game's official launch and one such guide is taking a look at void ship combat or space combat as it is pretty much in its final version because in the original Alpha and even a bit in the beta it was definitely Rough Around the Edges whereas now we're looking at more or less the finalized version of it though I do think some of the numbers might change and we'll talk about that a little more towards the end but to kick this off and explain what this even is essentially as a rogue Trader we'll be managing our trade Empire which involves using our spaceship or void ship as it's known in the setting to travel between various solar systems manage our worlds but as the setting of Warhammer 40K is fra with danger this often puts us at odds with all sorts of other ships which leads us to the combat however your first introduction to your Flagship your main ship that you're actually using is in character creation this is mostly a cosmetic Choice you'll be able to upgrade and customize your ship as you play through the game via all sorts of weapons and side systems such as Shields Etc but as it is a big part of the game you'll be able to pick what your ship initially looks like on top of naming it as well but you won't really get too much of a chance to actually use the ship until you're done with the prologue and find yourself in act one even in act one you really only fly between a few planets as you are confined to one solar system so your first introduction to the combat portion is right as you start act two when they give you a pretty easy fight to serve as a tutorial to it and while the combat here is a turnbas system like the base game itself it does function quite a bit differently as your ship has different movement zones and patterns alongside weapons you can assign your companions to various posts which will affect certain things so there's a good bit to go over but let's start with the basics which is movement essentially every time you go to move your ship there are three phases to it now broadly speaking these don't affect much outside of a few abilities that very specifically mention what phase of your movement they are available but that's pretty few and far between for the most part this is simply the range at which you can move and because your ship and the enemy ships are supposed to be moving at high speeds at all times which doesn't exactly translate to turn-based combat very well we see that represented through the three phases of movement and the fact that you have to take all of your movement in every turn but the initial area that is to say the blank squares with simply the green outline is your acceleration phase that middle portion is your midm movement and the last portion is the end phase again there's a few abilities where this matters but for the most part it's just the range of your movement and you have to take all of it now you might notice that you cannot move freely as your ship has a maneuverability and speed setting based on the engines your ship is equipped with which will affect the size and range of each one of these individual phases which changes how well you can say turn around because the direction your ship is facing is relatively important as each of our weapons is designed to face a certain way which means getting enemies in range of those weapons depends a lot on the direction your ship is facing as both your ship and typically enemy ships are protected by Shields and as you take damage or deal damage to any ship it's going to first eat into that Shield but as they get damag they only block some amount of it and then based on the shield you're using it might not reduce all of the damage you're taking anyway so it's not a foolproof measure to protect yourself with but one of the very basic abilities you'll get is the ability to restart your Shields should they fail you can fire them back up again but that will slow you down for a couple turns and there's also an early ability that will allow you to reinforce a section of your Shields which you want to try to do before you get hit to mitigate some of the incoming damage now the nice thing about this is that on your turn you can use every single one of your weapons once provided you're in range to hit something of course you can use it this means that if you're careful about your positioning and maneuvering you can use every single one of your ship's weapons but that's really just the tip of the iceberg so to speak because another way to give your ships abilities and options is by assigning your companions to posts there are a total of six posts on your ship each of them associated with a stat which you can see when you assign someone to it and when you start unlocking abilities for your ship here in a little bit those abilities are associated with a certain post and having an officer with a stat that is high in the associated value is going to do things like reduce turns or increase the effect of the abilities associated with that post now typically each one of your officers can utilize one of their abilities of the three per post I believe it is every single turn as well so in order for you to use a post and its abilities you have to have someone assigned to it and you have to also know the skills by leveling up because your Void ship has its own level up paths however unlike your character your ship upgrade paths as you complete combat earn experience is abilities and ultimates now each post also has an Associated ultimate ability however unlike your regular abilities which can be used once per turn and then they have a cooldown associated with them ultimates can only be used once per combat and then after combat you have to wait even longer for them to recharge based on the number of warp jumps you make though in combat many of them can be used repeatedly for a set number of turns and some of the ultimates include things like sending out boarding parties or attacking enemy ships with warp abilities such as imperion storm and needless to say these are very typically high damage high value abilities that you just can't use all the time so your companions are also going to play a pretty big role in void ship combat as you have to assign them to post to be able to use the abilities associated with said post and then they will grant a beneficial effect if they have the right stats adjusting cooldowns in the like but we are not done yet as now we can talk about Parts your ship can be up upgraded in more ways than just leveling up and this is through your ship parts your Hull and your RAM now a ship is going to have five weapon slots the port starboard prow dorsal and secondary prow weapon representing some of the directions that these weapons can face and then depending on the individual part they might have a different range for instance Lance weapons typically fire in a longer straight line whereas putting a cannon in a dorsal slot typically gives you a wider like 270° Arc whereas something like Torpedoes let you drop Torpedoes onto the battlefield which then have their own movement path independent of your ship and they kind of spawned in as like their own little unit that you'll move so what type of attacks your ship has in each individual slot and direction is largely up to you as you will be able to find and move these parts around as you see fit in addition to that however your ship also has four more slots for the engines Shields aspects and armor now for the most part these are self-explanatory but your engine affect how far and how maneuverable your ship is but your engine affects things like how far you can move how maneuverable it is and how much distance you can cover on your turn your Shields of course indicates the strength of your Shields and how they recharge your aspects is actually your chance to hit alongside your chance to crit whereas your armor is simply the base damage reduction you'll take when you get hit but then these two things over to the side here that have a little upgrade thing are your Hull and your RAM as you complete Space Battles and even purchase them from vendors sometimes you can pick up scrap scrap is effectively your upgrade material for your ship you'll spend it to upgrade your base Hull health or your RAM your RAM if you don't have weapons and an enem is directly in front of you can be used to just Ram their ship though you'll take a little bit of damage yourself from doing that and if you upgrade your RAM you can actually do a lot of damage that way but it does limit your movement a little bit though I will say it does not look like any of these change much in terms of like the visual appearance of the ship in this menu by the way which was a little bit of a bummer but you know it is what it is now I would say that's the bulk of what to know about void ship combat ahead of time but we do have a few more things I want to cover before we call it a day for starters if you're wondering if you'll be by yourself typically yes however it is possible to get a small secondary ship to a company you based on the colony management which is likely to be my next guide but essentially in Rogue Trader there will be colonies that you manage and you can complete tasks for them via development projects that kind of thing and one of those colonies has a project that will grant you a secondary ship and a couple notes on that ship so it won't fire on enemies outside of dropping Torpedoes that will then try to hit them and while it can be a little hit or miss the Torpedoes themselves will deal a lot of damage if they hit the enemy it just doesn't happen very often but both the Torpedoes that that ship lays and that ship itself will provide convenient distractions for enemies to waste their turn on rather than trying to attack your Flagship and that secondary ship doesn't need to be he or cared for you don't have to spend scrap repairing it if it dies in combat it just restarts back with you the next time you enter combat so you don't have to take care of it at all and given how rich a rogue Trader is supposed to be I like to think it's just a new ship and I would say that's the biggest upgrade you can get in that manner but in developing your colonies you can actually give both your team and your Void ship like kind of passive bonuses so you might want to keep an eye on that as well I wanted to talk a bit about where to acquire Parts you can occasionally via events and things find spaceship parts while exploring or handling other objectives but the bulk of them is going to come from a very specific Trader which is the Imperial Navy your Rogue Trader managing a trade Empire does a lot of trading and again this will be part of the colony guide next but unlike other vendors this vendor only takes very specific items from you to increase your reputation and you get said items by destroying enemy shifts in combat so when you start actually winning some of these fights you will gain their trophy and things as rewards for completing the combat and then you can trade those parts to the Navy vendor which will increase your reputation and combined with your Rogue Traders profit factor which is this game's analog to money but it works a little differently you'll be able to buy new parts for your ship which leads me into a small section here that I wanted to tack on to the end of this because I can see a couple of things getting changed here before release this is more or less the final version but some numbers Etc might change and as I mentioned earlier and in that regard there are two things I want to talk about for starters the reputation for the Navy vendor is a little too hard to get there's not a ton of void ship combat and the initial amount of Parts you have to give this guy to get your reputation high enough to actually buy anything is just too high I wasn't able to start buying parts for my ship until act two was almost over and then in act three you don't really use your ship much either which means in basically all of Act 2 despite actively engaging with this system doing my best with it and even getting pretty good towards the end I wasn't really able to upgrade much because I just couldn't get to a point where I could actually buy anything from the vendor they present to you so I'd be surprised if those metrics don't see some adjustment just to make that vendor a little more available and then the second thing is actually around your ultimate abilities so alcat has dealt with some bugs in their games before I think it's safe to say King maker was pretty rough and Wrath of the righteous had plenty of issues on its own but while Rogue Trader has mostly been better than both of those one of I would say the more serious bugs I've ran into with this game is actually your ultimate abilities and void ship combat because sometimes the cool down just doesn't ever stop everything else seems to work appropriately but I would consistently run into an issue where my ultimates would just never come off of cooldown even when it says they were done with their cooldown timer which while significant is really the only issue I had with the system as it stands but as you lead your Flagship to Victory across various Space Battles you'll be pitted against all sorts of enemies the duari the alari simple Pirates enemies from the warp and each of those ships has their own sort of attack pattern and setting and in that regard I would tell you that learning about what each enemy does and how things work can go a long way for instance jukari and alari like to shroud their ships instead of using Shields specifically so you'll have to attack them multiple times to hit and for the alari this just means hitting them more than once and for the jukari you really want to close distance as they have an ability that really reduces your chance to hit the farther away you are but if you get right up on them that mostly goes away so outside of everything I've just mentioned there is a little bit of tactics and strategy based on the exact enemy you're fighting as well but overall I would say it's a decent system I've actually enjoyed it myself with this particular version I honestly didn't care for it too much in the Alpha and the beta but here where they've cleaned a lot of the UI and everything's mostly working correctly outside of those ultimate abilities towards the end of Act 2 and I was starting to get my ship really upgraded and getting all the abilities for my officers and the ultimates and stuff when they were working were fun to mess around with so once all of those cylinders were firing I did find myself really enjoying the system and if they make some minor adjustments I think it could be a lot more fun than their previous systems such as say The Crusade battles and Wrath of the righteous which I was neutral about but you know weren't very fun to be honest either what's going on everybody morm here bringing you to the end of this guide with a quick note on the convictions options that is to say Your Story related choices that coincide with the beliefs of the character you happen to be playing which consist of dogmatic heretical or iconic class while just about any situation you happen to find yourself in will have a handful of generic outcomes or options it's possible to unlock further options based on your convictions basically the more you choose these options your convictions will grow that is to say you'll achieve new ranks in them which comes with other benefits such as abilities and combat a cosmetic change to your ship as well as of course unlocking these extra options potentially in various conversations that can lead to different outcomes than you might have expected but first let's talk about what these convictions are to start with we have dogmatic this is pretty much your standard Warhammer 40K responses that is to say burn the heretic Purge the mutant all the usual stuff it doesn't leave a lot of room for interpretation and things like consorting with zenos that is to say alien species or associating yourself with the forces of chaos and the warp are all things that a dogmatic person would simply not do so this particular path is essentially just being a zealot of the Imperium which as a rogue traitor you technically serve now on the opposite end of that Spectrum we have heretical this is of course basically just siding with chaos being lenient toward W alien species where it's possible for instance things like that could all be considered heretical but the big thing about it is of course chaos and as the name would imply doing these things will get you branded as a heretic which is especially interesting in this game because as a rogue traiter you have a certain degree of power that makes reproach an unlikely scenario in most cases though this will certainly lead to consequences but then we have the Icona clast the Icona clast is in this world believe it or not the anomaly Warhammer 40K isn't known for its good guys and an iconic clast isn't necessarily a good force in the world in many ways they can still be pretty rough the difference is that an iconic clast is concerned with conserving their own people making sure they're not just throwing lives away for no reason and they are willing to accept compromises in order to make that happen now each of these as you can see on screen has a rank associated with them 1 through five this is important for two reasons each rank will give you new abilities associated with that path but also these ranks are how they are checked if you will when you have other options available in conversation meaning that some conversations require you to be a dogmatic follower or a dogmatic adherent versus heretical or iconic clast of the same amount and given that there's a limited amount of choices to be made it's important you stick with one of these though technically a little bit of mixing is possible now once you reach rank three in one of them you lock yourself off from the higher tiers of the other two meaning that whichever one of these reaches level three first is the one you are officially locked into though you can still reach the first two ranks of the other ones so a little bit of mixing and matching is technically possible another interesting fact about the rank three is that this is when it will take a physical form on your ship that is to say it will change things cosmetically such as the banners and the Personnel you find wandering around your bridge but without spoiling anything that short and sweet explanation is pretty much what you need to know about convictions or at least as much as I could tell you without just outright spoiling things with that in mind the only other thing I'd like to say on this particular subject is that occasionally these choices overlap a little more than I would have liked them to for instance sometimes the only difference between dogmatic and heretical is how your character feels about killing the person that they are killing which doesn't tangibly change much but each of them still does have wider and bigger consequences to those actions it's just that a lot of smaller situations where you're picking those options don't necessarily lead to unique things but nonetheless each conviction still does have its own little sort of substory if you will that is to say larger choices that are only available by committing to a certain path but you'll really only see the outcomes of those in the later acts of the game so all in all I think it's a pretty cool system I think it represents the core of what Warhammer 40K is all about and if you're looking for replayability outside the Norms of just General combat approaches and playing a different build that kind of thing then the convictions are what you were looking for there as playing through the game with either an iconic class as opposed to someone dogmatic or heretical is what is going to show you the most amount of different content that though is going to do it for this video and this new players guide I certainly hope you enjoyed it let me know what you think about all this down in the comment section below I certainly hope it was helpful but regardless of all that truly just thank you so much for watching I really do appreciate it may you wander in wisdom and have an amazing [Music] day

Channel: Mortismal Gaming

Views: 172,845

Keywords: Mortym, Mortismal Gaming, rogue trader, rogue trader trailer, rogue trader 40k, rogue trader character creation, rogue trader gameplay, rogue trader review, wh40k rogue trader, wh40k rogue trader gameplay, wh40k rogue trader beta details, wh40k rogue trader companions, wh40k rogue trader romance, wh40k rogue trader game, wh40k rogue trader rpg, wh40k rogue trader owlcat, wh40k rogue trader review, warhammer40k rogue trader review

Id: hDINSaDCEdY

Length: 87min 9sec (5229 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 07 2023