Part 172: Abormality Roundup 12
Abnormality Roundup 12Normally this is where I talk about my feelings on how the facility is doing, but that's sort of no longer an issue. Instead, I have a silly contest to announce the winners of: the Retry Count guessing game. Let's see where the Retry Count wound up as of the end of day 50.
Retry count: 17
Yes, that does mean that day 47, 48, and 49 were all clean 1st tries for me. I did keep swearing I was good at this game.
Anyways, that means our winners are…Nanimani, Maigius, Sage Grimm, minutepiratebug, ConfusedPig, and azren
Congratulations to all six of you on your
ULTIMATE BRAGGING RIGHTS!!!Crumbling Armor
Crumbling Armor looks like a good early-game Justice trainer, but in practice this will lock earlygame Agents out of training their Temperance and make their lives more difficult. It actually works best as an Fortitude trainer for any Agent with 2+ Fortitude, and since its E.G.O gift is unquestionably the best in its slot for Agents who prioritize Justice over anything else it's a good plan to have Agents who are done with training work Repression on it to get the guaranteed gift drop.
Between this, its inability to ever breach, and its early game Pale damage weapon Crumbling Armor makes for a solid pick for any facility-at worst taking only 1 extra LOB to make an Agent have Fortitude 2 to handle it.
Der Freischütz
Once we've either Suppressed Hod or gotten a basic Justice trainer to get our Justice up to 3, Der Shooty here is nothing but a benefit to any facility. His GUN ability allows us to remove Clerks quickly and cheaply before we get Execution Bullets, his Black damage type lets us train efficiently using any of his 3 available work types, and his weapon and suit are great for making a single Agent into a solo operative capable of dealing with Amber Dusk by themselves. His E.G.O gift is also one I value highly for its high Justice boost and the impeccable taste of having a pipe. There's very few reasons not to take this particularly nice Abnormality, and the only situation where I pass him over is when there's something else I want more, like a Bird or WhiteNight.
Beauty and the Beast
Remember way back at the start, everything I said about 1.76 MHz being a great Justice and Prudence trainer? Beauty and the Beast is the same, only rather than letting us pick between focusing one or the other it basically forces us to consistently go back and forth between them. Because I prefer being able to focus on Justice in the early game, this makes it slightly worse in my opinion. Still, it can't breach and it gives out far better gear than 1.76 MHz so there are upsides to taking it. Either one is good in the early game for getting our Agents' Justice stat up and running.
You're Bald...
All Bald Agents working with You're Bald… get an 85% boost to their Work Success rate.
You're Bald… is a meme and I love it.
Old Lady
Old Lady is a very demanding Abnormality, as any time an Agent enters a containment cell while she isn't being worked her QC will decrease by 1. At 0 she's mostly harmless, though, so this makes her overall a very safe Abnormality to keep around. She deals White damage, making her a good Insight trainer, and her Attachment rates can be helpful for getting a new agent up to Temperance 2 or 3 quickly. The biggest selling point for Old Lady, though, is going to be her E.G.O weapon. It's a White damage gun, which can be invaluable when dealing with Wander-type panics in the early game. She's not very threatening, so there's little reason to avoid picking her if the alternatives are things that pose a higher risk.
Fragment of the Universe
Fragment of the Universe's Black damage type and good Attachment rates make it the hands-down best Temperance trainer in the early game. Its damage type can be a problem for Agents in the basic suit, but even equipping Penitence from One Sin is enough to make it a relatively safe work. On top of this it's a relatively nonthreatening breach for Hod's early missions, its Spear is one of the earliest sources of Black damage in the game, and Spears as a whole are generally very good weapons between attacking fast and having decent range. Moreover, a 0.6x Black multiplier on its suit is excellent up until we start regularly handling WAW Abnormalities, and can work fine even with most of those.
I was actually hoping for Fragment relatively early on in the run, but we didn't happen to run into it until it was well past the point where I'd grab it. Still, it's a solid pick.
Schadenfreude
Once we know Schadenfreude's trick, it serves a singular purpose in the facility: boosting our Agents's Justice stat into the stratosphere. It's very good at this trick, as it's got one of the best success rates for Repression work in the entire HE level. On top of that, its E.G.O suit is well-rounded and has a 1.5x Pale resistance with an additional defensive bonus to help break into working Judgment Bird. It also breaches for Hod/Gebura's missions, and is a completely free suppression so long as we just look away.
The hardest part of Schadenfreude is figuring out the initial gimmick behind it, once we've done that it's pure profit. It's really that simple.
The Lady Facing the Wall
Due to how the work success rates are calculated, that Attachment number ensures that each box has a 95% chance of success. Setting that aside, The Lady Facing the Wall is… interesting. She's a decent Justice trainer to get up to 3, which is where we want to be for things like Der Shooty, but other than that her numbers aren't great for her damage type. Her QC decreasing on Attachment works also means that any low-powered Agents and Clerks in her department are doomed if we go for her best work type. Her jumpscare is nowhere near as bad as it used to be back in the beta, though, so that's really the only penalty.
Her weapon is a HE-level ranged White weapon, which sounds good until it's been equipped on an Agent with less than Fortitude & Prudence 3 and it makes them panic. Once we've finished Hod's suppression it's remarkably solid, though, and more ranged White damage is never bad. Overall she's a fairly safe pick since even at her worst she's doing mostly chip damage to our Agents-she's only really dangerous when she goes off and panics a bunch of Clerks while we have CRA's in the facility.