n00b here. I've been playing this game for a few weeks now, and I thought I was doing pretty well so far. I have most of Europe and Asia, and I stormed through Area 51 without serious injury. I thought I was going to settle into the monotonous X-Com phase where you're killing everything in sight just waiting to plow through the research tree.

Then I had my first encounter with Death Bellows last night and got wiped out in about five seconds. It seems like every time you think your squad is strong enough to take out everything in its path, the game introduces something new to kick you in the nuts!! I love it!!

Welcome to ALTAR's twisted world . Glad to hear you're enjoying yourself!

Thanks!! I played X-Com for years and years, though I found TFTD way too monotonous. Looks like ALTAR finally came out with a X-Com like game with the proper pacing. I can't wait to see how insane it gets towards the end.

The game has ridiculous changes in difficulty initially - but it kind of stagnates after a point. Although it was quite concerning that the Reticulans hit a point where they could wipe you out your entire team effortlessly before you even had a chance to start the mission. I blame their missiles mainly.

Luckily, I soon discovered the wonders that are the deployable weapons, one of several of the game's great equalisers. I found that they made the initial entry into the battle a lot easier. Mind you, since I was already using plasma rifles by then, I didn't particularly care about the deployable weapons until I learned how to properly deploy them!

- NKF

What do I need to research for those? I'm stuck waiting for a mission to appear over BioMass.

If I'm not mistaken, you gather them after recovering some bases and should be available for use right away. So if you haven't found any yet, just keep going and check your stores to watch for the appearance of power armor and for any deployable weapons. You need the armor in order to carry the deployable weapons, so the two are inseparable.

- NKF

I've been replaying the game a bit and although not sure if I should continue as software rendering doesn't seem to be showing the biomass? Well it's only just been announced so I might wait a bit. Anyhow I've encountered the deathbellows again.

Here are a few thoughts on tackling them in the early game:

Deathbellows sends out its swarm when you are within firing range. This seems to be the minimum range for the Remington sniper rifles. So one method to defeat them is to rush into firing range, fire off a shot or two and run back out of range before the swarm gets there. Repeat after the swarm breaks up. This is slow however and quite useless if the deathbellows are set up in such a way that you cannot get a clear shot of them from a distance - such as just behind and off to the side of a gate that's flush against one end of the map.

One particularly effective strategy that I've found was to just toss an incendiary grenade towards the deathbellows. Only one grenade is needed and you'll easily be out of harms way by the time the swarm arrives. Acid grenades can be used in this fashion, but aren't as effective and may require more than one. (edit: Actually, it might vary with incendiary grenades - at times it kills them outright, at other times they need a few bullets to be finished off)

Another strategy would be to get a very fast runner and just outrun the swarm and throw grenades or take potshots at it as you get a break in the swarms. Very risky but possible - and one good way to deploy the previous strategy.

I haven't checked, but are the swarms able to spread out and do damage before they reach the point they were fired at, or can they start attacking early? It just occured to me that it might be possible to rush towards the swarm to evade it - but this might not be useful if they are able to attack before reaching their destination. Also, can the deathbellows attack several units at once, or just the one? I was thinking that if the runner can distract the deathbellows, another team could get into firing range and fire some RPGs or assault rifle rounds into it.

Deathbellows are nasty, I'll give you that, but I don't hate them as much as I hate the chrysalis. The recovery for paralysis is way too long. Also if they're the only ones left, they they can keep you in a state of perpetual stun forever, with reloading or quitting the game being the only means of breaking the endless cycle.

- NKF

The Deathbellows swarm weapon works like in-game incendiary rockets. They will only "explode" on ground impact and have a small AOE. Note that while I compare them to incendiary rockets their attacks is NOT fire-based but "Hard" damage based. If you can deal with them one at a time and in urban conflict, they're usually quite easy to deal with grenades and force ground attack from one of it's blind spots. They become quite annoying to deal with in the wild due to a lack of cover or when several of them appear bunched up.