Part 26: Real Work for Real Workers
Part 26 - Real Work for Real Workers


We're back in the 'basar once again, our karmic reward from finishing the Gesundbrunnen job amounting to 4 hits of the K-juice. This'll be a brief update to get us started with the next run as most Kreuzbasarians are still resting their vocal chords from all the yammering of recent times, but we do have some sweet level ups to go through as even the short side jobs count towards crew advancement which pops up every 2 missions (aside from the final one to lvl 6 which is story-gated).



Ah, Interdiction Shot, the great equalizer which'll tear through even the bulkiest body plate as if it were a shirt woven from the collective integrity of FIFA. What's not to love? I'll tell you what, it's the 2 AP cost which takes a machete to the poor ability's defenseless hamstrings. The fact is that taking two 1 AP shots or shooting & moving is more useful than a single armor-piercing attack in almost every situation, and most enemies only have light-to-medium armor to begin with so getting the full benefit from the effect is rare. With a whopping 5-turn cooldown on top, you'd expect a bit more bang for your buck.
Dragon's Breath Round has Eiger light people on fire with shotgun shells, which by itself ought to render this a non-contest. I mean alright, it's a bit more badass on paper than in practice since being on fire in this game is more of a minor inconvenience rather than the sizeable collection of unpleasantries we usually associate with being burned alive, but it's at least easy to weave into a normal battle plan and works in almost any situation. A bit of extra damage, a smidgeon of armor removal, cool why not.
What isn't mentioned in the perk description is that unlike other shotgun attacks, Dragon's Breath Round never hits adjacent targets at any distance. While this can be considered a bit of a downside, it also makes it safer to use around allies, in particular Glory who spends a lot of time intruding on other people's personal spaces.



One more pretty boring level before Dietrich gets his hands on the real good stuff. The bad news is that Battle Hardened is a direct stat boost perk which, as I mentioned when he was offered the Throwing Weapons bonus at level 2, are bugged and do literally nothing. The good news is that you'd probably be better off picking Nerve Spear anyway since the biggest threat for a backline support like Dietrich is ennui, and Rosa's Armor III immediately eliminates anyone's survivability issues anyway.
In practical terms Nerve Spear lets Dietrich to do the exact same thing with Nerve Bolt that he can already do with his throwing knives, but slightly more accurately (unless using Aimed Throw) and with the Nerve Bolt's innate unbalancing effect which makes the target slightly easier to hit for a couple of turns. An unbalanced and coverless enemy is very easy prey, but as with the knives the main problem is landing the bolt itself through someone's cover bonus, especially since the man isn't exactly a flanker. But well, at least it does something.



Glory gets another choice between a claw skill and a pistol skill. Between the two Hail of Bullets is definitely the more interesting ability, and while it's possible to get some decent use out of it if you're willing to micromanage Glory's equipment, you're undoubtedly better off playing a handgun user yourself if going all Michael Thorton on everyone's ass is your goal. You bring Glory when you want to tear out the page containing the word "cover" from your opponent's dictionary, and this doesn't help her achieve that goal. It's also stuck in the same 5-turn cooldown club for uncool nerd skills as Interdiction Shot, and is obviously of no use without at least three visible targets.
And if you were hoping it'd at least be visually badass, y'know taking down a bunch of bad guys like BLAM BLAM BLAM one after another, well...

...not exactly. That muzzle flash hasn't got a clue what's happening either.
Anyway, Fray Armor is one of the stronger armor removal abilities in the game and especially valuable if you don't have access to the rather overpowered Strip Armor III spell. The 2 AP cost makes it a little harder and riskier to use than Glory's other abilities as her accuracy is only average and one or both attacks can miss, but knocking someone out of cover and getting rid of their armor in the process is a solid mix and her Adrenaline Pump ensures she usually has the AP to spare.



Well, well, look at our boy Blitz finally starting to make up for his previous slacking, that's a downright impressive range of stat ups. Love the zero-effort perk descriptions though, Dietrich got a fancy explanation about the Dragonslayer providing him with +1 Armor but here it's just "yeah here's an extra point go nuts". It's very Blitz-like.
Now normally I'd declare this choice a complete no-brainer as Decking is simply more useful than ESP Control... but these are both direct stat ups, and if you've been paying attention so far you probably realize the problem here. Indeed, perk-wise this is a completely blank level for Blitz as neither choice does anything! Which I guess in a way makes it even more of a no-brainer. And unlike with Dietrich's mostly irrelevant Throwing Weapons and Armor ups, this is actually kind of a bummer as the Decking boost would actually be kind of nice to have.
One silver lining is that 5 Decking which he just now reached is enough for all but one skill check (which requires 6) until the endgame, and after the next level up he'll have enough for that one too. There are a couple of higher checks in the endgame but by then Blitz is a legitimate decking wizard and able to clear them with or without the perk.

Now then, back to the real world where our first order of business is reporting bach to Mettback. Wait, the other way around.


[A faint smile plays across the normally taciturn merchant's face.]



He's more openly pleased if you take the violent route, but the rewards are the same. Failing to bring back the shipment disappoints him and he obviously won't upgrade his wares, but he still pays you for stopping the attacks as per Quorin's promise. Finally if you don't finish the mission before paying Alice's fee and thus hitting the point of no return, he'll say the shipment's already been taken out of the city and his tracking device destroyed.



Successfully returning the shipment adds a bunch of high-tier equipment to almost every category in Gunari's store, for example the best pistol available before the run was the basic Savalette Guardian. It's definitely a high-priority mission for anyone reliant on hardware to do their killing with, but for us it's just a nice optional bonus in case we want some higher-tier body armor for ourselves or extra weapons for our companions.

Moving on, Kami is more or less the only person around who has something new to say... kind of. See, the only way to trigger this particular conversation is having your completion of the Gesundbrunnen run align with the time she asks you to trade stories, but since we already had the latter chat we're technically locked out of it now.
But worry not, in the magical land of LPs such trivial obstacles are easily overcome and just for you I've recreated the whole exchange from the game files.


[Her brow suddenly tightens with concern.]






[She exhales like the wind just got knocked out of her.]

Now there's an easily missable bit of trivia. She's unsurprisingly a bit more shaken if you decided to go on a killing spree in her home, but she gets over it in roughly two text boxes so it isn't really worth showing off.




I don't know, those seem like fairly reasonable things to want. What's her issue with truck drivers anyway?



[She taps her forehead.]



Let's hope we can manage to keep this a place worth coming to in the future as well.

We have no real business in the magic store, but since we're nearby anyway we might as well get our by now traditional dose of Absinthe's prophecizing.

[She pauses, squinting at you. Her mouth dips into a frown.]


[She nods, and the frown slowly falls off of her face. Her voice becomes dreamy.]

[She offers you a cautious smile.]

Alright lady, there's a fine line between cryptic and creepy and I think we've ended up on the wrong side of that particular divide. We're outta here.

At least we're comfortably familiar with the particular brand of weirdness that goes on within these walls.
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We told Quorin that Amsel would handle the rations we promised for the Gesundbrunnen folk. You're uh, cool with this arrangement, right Paul?






If you instead make the data tap deal then you can go chat with Altuğ about it, whose comments are more or less in the same vein but spoken more loudly.

Alright, let's for the first time actually use our mission computer for picking up a mission. We have a couple of choices, but let's just go with this one here.

[Amsel's face winks onto the screen.]


Sounds promising already.


In-game the entire conversation is in this text form, but for the sake of presentation we'll just use the traditional dialogue format.




If this were a traditional fantasy RPG instead of Shadowrun then our objective would obviously be to rescue this unlucky person. But this guy, Fuchs, probably doesn't mean that kind of cleaning.








So we're to go execute a fellow shadowrunner who's being held captive, and loud & violent is our only available method of approach? Almost getting whiplash here coming from the pacifistic do-gooding that was our last run... but the payment's on an entirely different level too, so our answer is obvious.


No sense wasting any more time here, so let's grab our cleaning tools and head off.

We'll be taking the train as usual.

As was alluded to in the briefing, this mission is amongst the most unavoidably combat-heavy runs in the game and might even top the list. At the same time it has the most crew input from any non-prologue run so far, particularly from Eiger, which makes her even more of an obvious pick. We'll also really want a decker, and on that front it's Blitz or bust. Bluzt.
As for the last spot, well, Dietrich and Glory are more or less interchangeable in this one so it comes down to personal preference. I might as well spare myself the effort of having to pick and let y'all decide, why not.