Hail Commanders o7

My name is Madouc and this is my guide for you to help you building viable ships in order to farm the currently most difficult endgame content in Everspace 2: Ancient Rifts at Lunacy 500 and higher. Why 500? Because this is the point from where on a legendary item drop is guaranteed. While you do not have all the items to play one of my builds I recommend you are playing at difficulty (Lunacy) 0, 200 or 350 because these are the steps where chances are increasing. Once all items are available there is nothing in your way to clear 500 and work your way up towards the peak of Lunacy 1.000!

The guide is sorted by ship classes from heavy over medium to small ships and to be perfectly honest with you this is also the difficulty level, especially at the beginning the heavy ships are more forgiving and easier to pilot than the medium and small vessels.

So here is my first recommendation, if you are at the very beginning of farming gear and equipping your ships, maybe even still playing the storyline and side missions, get yourself a heavy ship like the Vindicator or the Gunship to have an easier time.

All of the shown builds are also able to clear High-Risk Areas (HRA) at all difficulty levels and 'Nightmare' game difficulty setting. (Nightmare will be available after you've finished the main story) In fact it is much easier to farm the first items in such HRA zones before entering Ancient Rifts.

All right, let's dive in...

A few words in advance: This is general knowledge and applies to all sections of the guide, unless I explicitly say otherwise.

You always want to wear the items available with the highest possible rarity and once you arrived at the "superior" items you want to have starforged over protitype over normal. For weapons you normally want to have "powerful" in the name and complete them with kinetic or energy catalysts, sometimes Barrage makes sense, sometimes you want EMP that depends, but be careful you can overwrite the feature a weapon already has. For example you find a "Marksman" Rail Gun, and you apply a "Powerful" Catalyst on it, the name changes and the extra range is gone. But if you add an "Energy Damage" catalyst, the range stays and you added more damage on top.

When re-rolling your gear for stats, these are some very usefull results you should aim for:

General rule: Most builds and mechanics in this game revolve around critical hits, hence going for Precision and Critical Hit Chance (CHC) is always a good idea - Firepower is of equal importance, I like to think that these are actually the only real necessary stats, everything else can be considered 'nice to have'.

Primary Weapons:

• Critical hits have a 40% chance to recharge weapon energy by 2% (most important)
  
• Chance to slow enemies (very important because of Perks)
  
• 20% increased damage against Ancients and Ancient-controlled units (always in Rifts)
  
• 20% increased damage when your ship is exposed to sunlight (always in Rifts)
  
• 20% Bonus against Capital Ships
  
• parts of damage are bypassing armour and shields
  
• chances to disableing shields an weapons

Secondary Weapons:

• On primary weapon critical hit: 20% chance to fire a free missile..." (all but the Bomber)

Energy Cores

• High Weapon Energy Output
  
• "Starforged" and "Optimized"
  
• Catalyst: "Optimized or Tuned"
  
• your desired stats (3)
  
• there are no really good specific prefixes on this item

Shields

• High values
  
• "Starforged" and "Overcharged"
  
• Catalyst: "Optimized or Primed" if the item already has that, then use "Restore Protocol" as this wont override your already existing bonus.
  
• your desired stats (1-2)
  
• Fires an EMP blast with a 500m radius that stuns for 2s when the shield enters shutdown state.
  
• Instantly starts recharging when depleted; can only occur once every 20 seconds

Plating

• You want high armour value and a high 'repair on kill' value 20% is max.
  
• Optimized or Bulkhead as prefixes "Repair Protocol" catalyst if it already has a prefix
  
• prefered stats (3)
  
• there are no really good specific prefixes on this item

Sensor

• You want high stats depending on your activity
  
• your desired stats (2-3)
  
• Scanners can have a +20% damage bonus for a specific primary weapon, this might be worth a shot.

Boosters

• High stats as always
  
• your stats (3)
  
• only exception is the Scout sniper build which wants 2 stats and: "Weapon damage increases by 20% when standing still."

Cargo Units

• High number of Cargo Slots
  
• your stats (3)
  
• regarding the "Dismanteling Qualitiy" I have never seen getting more than 1 "Starcharged Conduit" and these are the ones we really need so not sure if this stat has any meaning at all in the game. I still always dismantle with a high cance, because you never know...

Sometimes there is a roll for 1% to 5% "Critical Hit Chance", which always is worth considering when you are playing the "Slow & Crit" setup especially when it comes with Precision and hence boosts your CHC twice! On the other hand, "Critical Hit Damage" is not a very good stat, unless you have rolled 2 main stats or CHC already and it comes as the third prefix.

If you find a rare (blue) prototype item, re-roll it for your stats first, then upgrade it to superior (red), this saves you from wasting the "Starcharged Conduits"

Rift Choices
avoid these modifications when rifting:

• Overheating Equipment
  
• Healing 20% on death
  
• Buffing 5% on death

Moving on to the builds, here comes the first:

The Vindicator is a very special ship, it totally differs in playstyle from the others, and this is because it can 'resurrect' dead enemies and build drones out of their remainings which will fight on your side. The most crucial advantage is that you are getting fired at much less than if you are flying alone. Enemies' fire is split amongst you and your Drones. You also do not need to aim as much as with other ships because your Drones are doing the work, and they're quite good at it, which kind of is an 'Easymode' to be fair. This build also features the heat seeking Thermo Gun to make things even easier for you and to give you a good chance to master your very first HRA and Ancient Rifts without the need of special piloting or gunner skills.


This ship and build is my recommendation for beginners, it is the easiest build to play in the game and comfortably make progress in rifts. I have completed my first Lunacy 1000 in this vessel.

Build Summary

With this build you're mainly applying debuffs onto enemies, especially the Corrosion Injector, while your Army of Drones is taking out the enemies. You are also holding your left mouse button down constantly fireing your Thermo Gun, which will always hit, applying EMP debuffs and Slow debuffs on your prey! Debuffed enemies will take much more damage and this will snowball and makes you scale with the increasing life and damage they'll do in higher levels.

From a defensive standpoint this build features the Commander-Set, not only giving your drones more damage and durability but renewing your full shield if one of your allies expires. This in combination with the legendary Cargo Unit "Wrath of the Fallen" - which has a 40% chance of turning killed enemies to fight for you for 10s - will actually hold up your shield without you doing anything almost all the time.

This build also makes use of the very popular "Slow & Crit" method aiming to apply a slow debuff on enemies and profiting from higher crit chances.

Preferred Stats

Expertise > Firepower > Precision > Utility

This is what I meant in the introduction, the Vindicator wants and needs Expertise because this offensively and defensively strenghthens your drones and increases your reach for picking up wreckage parts, only then we're looking for Firepower and Precision which are normally the main stats for every other build.

Preferable Passives

"Maximum number of active drones increased by 1" - this is a straight forward 20% damage boost.

"Drones violently explode on death damaging and slowing nearby enemies" - this one gets important from Lunacy 750-1000 where finally your drones sometimes die. It causes huge area damage and more importantly slows your enemies which works together with your chosen perks

The other ones are optional I prefer these:

"Collecting wreckage restores 10% shield" - sometimes you need to manually top up your shield and this is the tool.

"When a drone is destroyed, the drone has a 20% chance to be instantly reconstructed" - so every 5th death of one of your drones is just a 'free explosion' damaging and slowing enemies.


Equipment

Legendaries

"Visions of Decay" Sensor - one of the very best legendaries in the game, it doubles your corrosion damage from Corrosion Injector and makes it spread out up to 3 more times if viable targets are within 300m

"Wrath of the Fallen" Cargo Unit - as mentioned, it turns dead enemies to fight 10s for you and when they finally die they will trigger your shield back to 100%

Setitems

Full "Commander Set" Weapon, Shield, Armour and Booster. The Gauss Cannon will be used with the Catalyst "Barrage" to kill bosses, big and slow ships. The booster helps enemies targeting your drones first, the armour perk is hardly needed, because the shield is up almost all the time.

Other

This leaves 3 Slots open, the other primary weapon should be a Thermo Gun with the Catalyst "EMP Charges" and the trait of giving a 2% chance to slow enemies. Your secondary weapon must be a Web Missile with 20% chance to be fired while shooting with your primary weapon. Then equip your best possible Energy Core preferably with huge weapon output.

Devices & Consumables

"EMP Generator" & "Hard Reset" - Stuns everything around you with EMP buying you time to destroy.

"Corrosion Injector" & "Mercy Kill" - Key choice for this build works insanely good with your legendary Sensor enabeling you to fire it every few seconds, and the Perk "Play it safe" to keep complete immunity up as often as possible.

"Annihilator Virus" & "Smptomatic" - More damage and debuffs on everything around you, while casually reducing their damage by 50%. Very helpful in higher tiers.

"Front Shield Generator" & "All Day" - Always useful shielding you from frontal damage completely and an efficient wayx to keep your weapon energy up.

Consumables are "Energy Shield" & "Nanobots" These two work like a "Oh shalala!" button when things went south, plus 2 of your personal choice I like "Damage Booster" for bosses and extra "Combat Drones" because that's the theme of the ship... to be fair the Drones suck and maybe it's better to have simple "Energy Injectors" in conjunction with the "Damage Boosters"

Perks

"Exit Strategy" - the 'late game choice' mostly for all builds, while getting into the game I recommend "Close Call" to have an extra life.

"Play it safe" - this one basically grants immunity for 5 seconds, since the corrosion injector has the mastery "Mercy Kill" it's always ready after every single kill you have, if it takes too long, there is still the "EMP Generator" and in this build even the "Annihilator Virus" - this combined with the other defensive features of this build (100% shield reset from Commander Set) keeps you comfortably
alive even in Lunacy 1,000.

"Crit Happens" - Crits will happen a lot! This is a key feature of this build and actually most builds in this game.

"Critical Faculty" - It's nice how fast this charges up your ULT while permanently fireing a very fast weapon like your Thermo Gun or Gauss Cannon.

"Exploitation" - this is why we want Web missiles and slowing chances where ever we can get them it makes you crit more often and thus it makes you trigger...

"Symphony of Destruction" - this often clears a full pack or cluster of opponents, just clearing the screen with a huge BOOM, especially if you pick the 'fat' targets first.

Tips & Tricks

Bind "Target nearest enemy" on a key you can easily reach because you will need this one a lot to immediately afterwards fireing another Corrosion Injector - you can even bind both on the same key and mindlessly spam it in rifts. (be aware this affects other ships, so maybe reverse that when changing ships.

Always use your ULT immediately when it is ready, stop using it at 90% in the third wave to have it ready for the Boss at wave 4/4.

If you ran out of Drones you can use your ULT when you near some opponents and immediately explode all your drones by stopping the ULT (press G again) to create dead opponents and new wreckage to make new drones. (needs the mentioned passive)

Make sure you have locked the Boss before hitting your ULT.

Time your warfare devices well, let 5 seconds pass in between two usages in order to maximize the effect of "Play it safe".

The Gunship is a huge ship which features two extra hardpoints doubling your damage output and also your energy consumption. Its ULT is a turret which fires at everything around you. It's basically a flying Panzer on steroids, and a lot of fun.


My currently strongest build, not as easy to play as the Vindicator but with huge firepower and awesome damage potential.

Build Summary

We are making use of the "Vigilante Set" to constantly softening up our main target and dealing damage from a comfortable distance charging into close combat when our ULT is ready. This build works around the higher weapon energy consumption enabling you to fire your Coil Gun and Blaster for as long as you want without pausing while providing you with one of the most powerful defensive setups I have found so far: the legendary Not-A-Shield "SH-8495" reducing incoming damage up to 60% in combination with the Perk "Unyielding Assault" repairing instantly 50% of your Armour. For further offensive potential we're using the legendary "Omni Manus" Armour which turns your Missile Defense System into a second turret next to your ULT, while enjoying the huge Armour bonus it provides. This gives the ship a comfortable 90k+ Armour value which almost permanently takes reduced damage and which you can repair by 50% with your ULT, and up to 100% with the Temporal Nano Compensator and depending on your aim maybe another 100% with the Nano Transmitter. This thing is near unkillable!

In order to quickly restore ULT this build also features 2 pieces of the "Tides of the Siren's Sea" set.

You start killing stuff from a distance with your Rail Gun, often this is all you do, because things just die. Once enemies do come closer you switch to the Coil Gun and when you are ready for close combat (ULT charged) you jump in using the Melee Gun - Autocannon is best, Blaster second or Scatter Gun for extra playstyle and fun - and your Missile Defense System - if your Armour drops you hit your ULT and you repair 50% of it in an instant! Your Expertise will also provide you with 'armour-damage-reduction' effectively increasing your armour value even more.

Preferred Stats

Firepower > Precision > Expertise > Utility

Preferable Passives

There are no crucial passives to make the build work or not, but these ones I do prefer in order of importance:

"20% increased armor repair per kill" - obviously good, since 20% of over 90k is quite a bit of extra HP per kill!

"After 10s of not being hit, gain 2% armor recovery every second, up to half total armor" - same as above, our Armour is our lifeblood.

"Coil Gun Turret" - it simply hits more, and has a higher dps output.

"15% increased boost speed" - the Gunship is a Tortoise and this one makes it a bit easier to maneuvre.

"When hull is 50% or lower, gain 40% hull damage reduction" - will hardly ever occur, but still good.

Equipment

Legendaries

Shield: "SH-8495" Removes the shield bar completely but granting you 10% damage reduce per enemy within 800m up to a maximum of 60% effectively more than doubling your armour and hull.

Plating: "Omni Manus" Provides the highest armour value in the game while turning your Missile Defense System into a second turret, with acceptable DPS output.

Setitems

Primary Weapons (2) and Secondary Weapon (1) from Vigilante Set, stacking up a destabilization debuff on your locked target, making it explode to disable everything around them. You want all weapons to be 'powerful' & 'starforged' and then add 'kinetic' and 'energy' catalysts to optimize them.

Energy Core and Booster are from the Set "Tides of the Siren's Sea" to get the 30% increased ULT build up for obvious reasons. The passive treat from the core fits perfectly into this build since it has reduced shield output which we do not need but increased weapon output which we want.

Other

This leaves one primary and one secondary weapon slot open for your choice, I have currently mounted a Blaster, but since you already have good enough energy-damage you could also go for an Autocannon or Scatter Gun to increase kinetic damage-output. Secondary always need to have the 20% chance to autofire, and I like either Rockets for Bosses and large ships or Homing Missiles for the occational boost if something needs to go down quickly. But anything is good as a second secondary, go and experiment with that slot.

You can also choose a Sensor and a Cargo Unit freely and just take the best things your Storage offers.

Devices & Consumables

We use 4 Support Devices because of the Perk we will use. These are:

"Missile Defense System" & "Sustenance" - of course the synergy to our legendary plating, I have not found out if it gets an extra second when it kills an enemy, but it's still good enough when it just kills missiles.

"Front Shield Generator" & "All Day" - the only build where I do not use "Avenger" as mastery simply because this build needs the weapon energy to sustain fire.

"Temporal Nano Recompensator" & "Resurgence" - simply restores more Armour than you have lost over the last 16 seconds, use it before you trigger your ULT.

"Nano Transmitter" & "Carefree Package" - again, more HP but you need to shoot and hit stuff in order to repair.

Perks

"Exit Strategy" - the 'late game choice' mostly for all builds, while getting into the game I recommend Close Call to have an extra life.

"Downtime Warrior" - you want to be able to shoot without pauses and this one is the key, since your devices are almost always on cooldown.

"Relentless" - we have 4 support devices installed, and this mainly covers the doubled energy costs of the gunships weapons.

"Unyielding Assault" - the ULT repairs 50% of our Armour. Insane!

"Retaliation" - this build is one of the very few that does not rely on the "Slow & Crit" combination, hence the 30% reflect damage, we can heal up our armour anytime, they don't.

Symphony of Destruction - still the best ultimate even with less crit and no "Exploitation" perk.

Tips & Tricks

Remember to turn off the ULT after a few shots so it will be ready only seconds after using it, to heal you for another 50%.

The damage of a full charged Rail Gun shot is extremely strong, and if it crits, it kills, which triggers "Overkill", so it is basically a vialble playstyle on its own, you can clear complete waves without ever going into close combat.

First things first, this is not the strongest Bomber build but it is totally diffrent and big fun to play compared to all the super boring Cruise Missile spamming Bomber builds out there. Intrested? Then read on, or skip to the next ship...


Dominating the close combat area with a Bomber, spamming Bird's Nest mines and turning your immediate surrounding into a deadly laser show.

Build Summary

This build features the legendary mines "Bird's Nest" and aims to maximize the close combat damage potential with adding the "Stormchaser Set" and since everything caught in the laser mines counts as 'webbed' we use the standard "Slow & Crit" perk setup. In addition to that it's using the Omni Manus Plating in combination with Missile Defense System to shoot down the pesky fast flying drones that swirl around you.

Preferred Stats

Firepower = Precision > Utility > Rrest

Preferable Passives

"Target lock-on duration reduced by 50%" - relevant and adds with shortened lock on duration on your missiles.

"Take 50% reduced damage from ARC-9000 explosion" - allows you to risk fireing your ULT even with enemies being quite close.

"ARC-9000 damage increases by 2% every second after being fired" - nice ramp up

"When ARC-9000 is manually detonated, gain 40% increased ARC-9000 shockwave damage" - once you've mastered using the ARC-9000 this one really hurts.

"Convert mines instead of triggering tehm when flying close without boosting" - allows you to always pick upm the "Mines on Death" feature in rifts and turn it into your advantage.

Equipment

Legendaries

Mine Launcher "Bird's Nest" - Mines burst into a cluster of nodes creating a mesh of laser beams that web and damage enemies passing through them. The bread and butter skill, you always want to have mines between you and your enemies, and when they trigger one you finish them off quickly.

Plating "Omni Manus" which turns your MDS into a strong turret helping you to dominate the close combat range against somewhat faster and nimbler enemies.

Setitems

One secondary slot aswell as Energy Core, Shield and Booster is for the "Stormchaser Set" which provides lots of Energy Orbs to constantly repair Shield and Armour during battle and more important build up damage reflection stacks and damaging everything within 800m around you with them.

As a Scanner I prefer the "Dogmatic Scanner" from the "Redemtion Set" because of its unique special "Critical Hits web targets for 3s" again, everything that webs or slows enemies triggers the whole perk setup chosen.

Other

This leaves both primary weapon slots and the Cargo Unit open for your preferred choices, while I'd simlpy take the best items I have for the modules, the weapons should be chosen by personal preference but also the fact that this ship wants to be close to the enemies, so you can make good use of the high damage but low range weapons like the Blaster, Scatter Gun, Autocannon or Gauss Cannon.

My current setup is a starforged "Powerful" Gauss with "Barrage" catalyst. and a starforged "Powerful" Blaster with an "Energy Damage" catalyst both over 10k DPS combined energy/kinetic.

There is also a free secondary weapon slot, I like things there, that help against bosses, like rockets or high kinetic dps missiles. Choice is yours. (And yes of course you can put the almighty "Poweful Cruise Missile" with added "Kinetic Damage" in there)

Devices & Consumables

Pretty standard:

"EMP Generator" & "Hard Reset"

"Front Shield Generator" & "Avenger"

"Nano Transmitter" & "Carefree Package"

"Missile Defense System" & "Sustenance" - make sure to NOT chose "shoots at mines" when your ship can turn enemy mines.

And again "Energy Shield" and "Nanobots" as an emergency reaction when unplanned stuff happens.

Perks

This build uses the standard "Slow & Crit" perks.

"Exit Strategy" - the 'late game choice' mostly for all builds, while getting into the game I recommend Close Call to have an extra life.

"Downtime Warrior" - you want to be able to shoot without pauses and this one is the key, since your devices are almost always on cooldown.

"Crit Happens" - Crits will happen a lot! This is a key feature of this build and actually most builds in this game.

"Critical Faculty" - Nice and fast charge-up of your ULT.

"Exploitation" - this is why we want slowing chances where ever we can get them it makes you crit more often and thus it makes you trigger.

"Symphony of Destruction" - this often clears a full pack or cluster of opponents, just clearing the screen with a huge BOOM.

Tips & Tricks

You do not need to hold the right mouse button down and spamm as much mines as you can, it's often better to place them wisely in the way of the opponents rather than using them as confetti.

Although you'll end up with >60k shield, >95k armour and >100k hull you need to be aware of your restore, rebuild and repair mechanisms and time them wisely.

You're like a spider, and everything in your webs are easy prey, don't waste time hunting speed looping flying ennerving drones, let them hit your web then kill them, or leave them to the MDS.

We're now coming to the mid sized ships and my favorite of them the "Sentinel". This build is stronger than my Bomber and - although harder to pilot - probably also stronger than the Vindicator and probably equal to the Gunship.
Also flying such a mobile and fast ship is super fun compared to the slow moving heavy ships. I can also recommend this ship as your allround ship progressing through the storyline.

Build Summary

This build is completely relying on your shield, building up a huge amount of shield-value and giving it tools to keep it up, while dishing out damage from a comfortable range of 3250m and 1800m with the Vigilante Set also featured in the Gunship build. The shild mechanic is dominated and altered by the "Tides of the Siren's Sea" Set and for the first time in this guide we are using all set bonuses and not just the first bonus for 30% increased ULT generation.

These bonuses work like this: you get an extra 100% shield capacity, but you do not regenerate shield any longer. Only when you activate your ULT, your shield is restored back up to 100%, while you also get 20% increased primary weapon damage from the set and 20% increased fireing rate from the Sentinel itself (all depending on your current shield charge).

Preferred Stats

Firepower = Precision > Expertise > Rest

In addition to the usual Firepower and Crit you want Expertise because this boosts your shield by reducing damage taken by a certain percentage. If you get that stat to 50% you would effectively have doubled your shield HP.

Preferable Passives

"15% increased shield hitpoints" - vital for this build.

"Collecting an energy orb deploys an energy shield for 2s" - protecting your shield HP

"Killing an Enemy using Static Overload restores 10% of shield hitpoints" - while your shield is at 100% when you enter your ULT mode, this one ensures it stays up at 100% until you end it.

"Static overload has a 10% chance to apply EMP to affected targets" - also nice to have, EMPed targets do not shoot back and are easy to hit.

"20% reduced cooldowns for warfare devices" - nice to have

"Each kill reduces the cooldown of a random device by 1s" - nice to have

Equipment

Legendaries

Shield: "Castiel's Protection" - this one spawns two clones of your ship and they draw enemy fire on them, giving you the break you might need in this situation. Not sure if it is intended but the clones stay until they die becuase your shield never starts recharging even if you use your ULT to bring it back to 100% the clones stay.

Cargo Unit "BOB" - a friend, a companion, a drone fighting at your side. It is quite strong and it divides enemies' attention from yourself. Bob is cool!

Setitems

Energy Core, Plating, Sensor and Booster from Tides Set and both primary weapons and one secondary weapon from the Vigilante Set.

Other

This leaves you only with the choice for a second secondary weapon - up to you.

Devices & Consumables

"EMP Generator" & "Hard Reset"

"Front Shield Generator" & "Avenger"

"Nano Transmitter" & "Carefree Package" note this can also recharge your shield

"Teleporter" & "Parting Gift" although the shield mechanics of this build are truly incredible there are situations where you want to gain distance and reposition yourself to go back 'railgunning' stuff from afar. This is my favorite tool for such a purpose but could be easily be substituted by "Energized Boost" or "Fusion Hook" whatever you prefert as a movement tool.

Consumables I use two "pairs" the usual "Energy Shield" and "Nanobots" for repairing and the "Energy Inejctor" and "Damafge Booster" to have a burst damage phase at will 4 times per rift if needed.

Perks

This build is using the standard "Slow & Crit" setup with its perks:

"Exit Strategy" *

"Downtime Warrior"

"Crit Happens"

"Critical Faculty"

"Exploitation"

"Symphony of Destruction"

*Note: "Defensive Massacre" does not work, it won't trigger your shild back to 100% - guess that would be far too overpowered then.

Tips & Tricks

Use your ULT to restore your shield, kill a few enemies around you then end it and do not fully deplete it so you can use it more often. The ULT damage is only good if you have quite some opponents packed together, once the pack is dead there is no point in keeping the ULT running chasing single ships.

Make use of your Weapon set, use your Rail Gun to take out enemies at a great distance, in fact, you can permantently thrust backwards (no boost) and keep this phase up until your weapon energy is depleted, but even then remember you have 4 charges of Energy Injectors and damage Boosters.

The interceptor is also a superb ship to play through the game and level up, it has 6 weapon slots, so you can always fit in a mining tool (a Beam Laser or a Flak with a "Mining" Catalyst) or some experimental secondaries, and it is fast and nimble to outmaneuvre most opponents.


To make this ship viable for 500+ rifts was a bit of a task, but finally I did find a setup which was able to dish out quite a punch while not being obliterated in an instant.

Build Summary

This build combines power of three sets and relies on corrosion and EMP damage with the two legendaries it uses. We're using weapons which are allowing us to fight at any chosen distance, the "Vigilante Executioner" for 2,500m range, the "Vigilante Judge" for 1,800m range and the "Rogue Rattler" for close combat, combining the powers of both sets and making maximum use of the 6 available slots for weapons. There are also 2 pieces of the Blightmonger Set in the mix to increase corrosion damage by 20%.

Both devices the EMP Generator and the Corrosion Injector are significant sources of damage, while the Interceptor itself (Special and Expertise) and the ULT are providing solid base damage from primary shots.

Preferred Stats

Firepower > Precision > Utility > Expertise > Rest

Preferable Passives

"10% increased primary weapon damage" - mandatory.

"Critical hits have a 20% chance to recharge Weapon Overdrive by 1%" - good

"Primary weapon hits refund 30% of energy cost" - good

"Collecting an energy orb grants +1% increased critical hit chance for 6 seconds up to 20%" - nice to have

"When flying towards a locked enemy target beyond 1500m range, gain 15% increased speed" - nice to have

Equipment

Legendaries

Energy Core: "Thunder Core" - turns every enemy that is affected by your EMP into a tesla coil buzzing everything around them cascading itself by 5% more damage per target affected. This will make you want to create as many EMP hits as possible while at the same time strictly avoiding every "No EMP environment". I suggest to put the EMP catalyst at least on your Judge.

Sensor: "Visions of Decay" - again, the probably most useful legendary in the game, allowing you to hit up to 4 enemies with corrosion and dealing +100% more corrosion damage. Not to mention this is 'auto aim' you cant miss!

Setitems

As already mentioned the Vigilante Set and the Rogue Set on the weapon slots and two pieces of the Blightmonger Set (Plating and Cargo) for further +20% corrosion damage.

Other

This setup leaves the Shield and the Booster as well as one secondary weapon slot up for choices, my current ship runs non-set starforged items on it and an experimantal "Scorpion Missile" with autoshots (of course) but I think using a webbing missile is stronger due to triggering "Exploitation" more often.

Devices & Consumables

"EMP Generator" & "Hard Reset" - of course, we want as much EMP as possible.

"Corrosion Injector" & "Mercy Kill" - our second feature of the build, this is a vital part of your damage output, even better than the EMP.

"Front Shield Generator" - "Avenger" totally negating frontal attacks is crucial especially when you play hit and run, usee the shield to approach a pack and then thrust backwards to gain space maintaining the shield in their direction.

"Nano Transmitter" & "Carfree Package" - universal repair and restore HP tool. make sure to maximize its use by actually making damage when hitting it.

Consumables again the trusted combination of "Energy Sield" & "Nanobots" plus anything of your choice on the third slot, I have another bunch of Nanobots thee, just to be sure...

Perks

This build is using the standard "Slow & Crit" setup (again) with its perks but an exceptional exception in the Ultimate slot! (First time, and I am still not sure if it is really better than "Symphony of Destruction"... to be continued)

"Exit Strategy" or "Close Call" - depends on your piloting skills

"Play it safe" - again immunity for 5 seconds with two warfare devices and not to forget the fast reset through "Mercy Kill"

"Crit Happens"

"Critical Faculty"

"Exploitation"

"Ride the Lightning" - this applies EMP charges triggering the skill of your legendary energy core and turning opponents into tesla coils for 3s damaging everything hostile around them. (I think it's still a bit worse than SoD

Tips & Tricks

This is not a tank, avoiding damage is more important than dishing out.

You can use hit and run attacks, charging into a cluster of ships, fireing your devices, shoot as long as everything is stunned and then gain safe distance afterwards.

Use your ULT whenever ready, no point in saving it apart from the very last bits of the 3/4 wave so you have it ready for the boss.

Avoid "no EMP" areas at all costs.

To make the striker work at Lunacy 500 - without just reusing a build I have made for another ship - was quite a project. To be perfectly honest with you I barely made a 500 rift with this, but that's because I ran out of top gear and using the left over sets was sub par.


Nevertheless I really liked the idea of a designated ship for close combat, using low range / high damage weapons and the unique ULT truning single target damage into area damage when needed.

Build Summary

OK how is this working? I am using the Bloodstar Set and the Union Eclipse set mainly to get a 30% and a 25% damage boost on my "Starforged Powerful Decimator" with "Kinetic" Catalyst - a weapon dishing out 11k combined DPS without any buffs.

Unfortunately you need to boost and switch weapons every 5 seconds in order to keep both buffs up and running, and I must admit this is quite beyond my abilities as a pilot and especially as a gunner - after all, I'm well over 50 years old, but when it works, and when the "Decimator's" bullets hit, there's not much left from my opponents but scrap metal!

Supporting damage is corrosion damage from the well know "Vision of Decay" legendary and as a denfensive tweak I am using the SH-8495 like in the Gunship to rely on Armour only and have tools to bring up Armour quickly. Unfortunately the Bloodstar Set Plating has the lowest "repair on kill" rating in the game, which is a bit of a bummer to be honest.

Also the obligatory and often used Webbing Missiles together with the Perks that support the Crit-Fest on slowed enemies is used.

Preferred Stats

Firepower and Precision > Utility > Rest

Preferable Passives

"Locked enemy targets suffer 20% speed reduction" - to also trigger the Crit-Fest mentioned above, mandatory.

"Enemies within 300m cannot regenerate shields" - good

"Enemies within 1km range deal 20% less damage" - mandatory, it's basically -20% damage because you're not getting hit from ships more than 1km away, you are moving to fast.

"Activating Quantum Tether instantly repairs 50% of armor" - combined with "Unyielding Assault" that is a full repair of your complete Armour. - mandatory

Equipment

Legendaries

Shield: "SH-8495" - giving up to 60% damage reduce

Sensor: "Vision of Decay" - the often used corrosion damage enabler.

Setitems

Bloodstar-Set, Union Eclipse Set

Other

Open slots are one secondary weapon slot, where I use rockets aswell as the Booster and the Cargo unit where I slapped on my best remaining starforged items with the desired stats. I used an "Eco" booster to be able to boost for a long time and keep up my bonuses from the Bloodstar Set.

Devices & Consumables

"EMP Generator" & "Hard Reset" - just to stun stuff

"Corrosion Injector" & "Mercy Kill" - to dish out the boosted corrosion damage

"Front Shield Generator" - "On your left" this time we're using the shield that turns towards the closest opponent, just because we often have a lot of them around us.

Perks

"Exit Strategy" - the 'late game choice' mostly for all builds, while getting into the game I recommend Close Call to have an extra life - medium ships are quite fragile.

"Downtime Warrior" - you want to be able to shoot without pauses and this one is the key, since your devices are almost always on cooldown.

"Crit happens" - yeah, you know the trick meanwhile right?

"Unyielding Assault" - the ULT repairs 50% of our Armour. Insane! If you also have the passive on the ship it is double insanity.

"Exploitation" - if you have the passive, then your main target is automatically slowed! In this case also remove the webbing missile and use one with serious damage or a destabilizer.

Symphony of Destruction - nuff said.

Tips & Tricks

This one is mostly for me: Learn to play! - seriously this is one of the hardest setups to actually hit stuff, boosting around while trying to hit with an autocannon, who tf came up with that build?!

Ok, I was really unhappy with my first Striker build, it was hard to play and way beyond my modest piloting skills. So, I decided to give it a second try, and my oh my, this one is really much better.


Build Summary

The main idea was to use the strong Vigilante Set but not really use the weapons, have it just for the debuff and AoE explosion of the main target, while permanently using my favorite weapon, a Gauss-Cannon.

Since my Striker has the Passive "Activating Quentum Tether instantly repairs 50% armor" I love to combine that with the perk "Unyielding Assault" for a full 100% repair.

OK that is it I thought, all I need to do is sustain my Gauss for permanent fire, maximize its damage and keep the ships armor intact. Easy...

Preferred Stats

Firepower = Precision > Utility > Rest

Preferable Passives

"Activating Quentum Tether instantly repairs 50% armor" - Mandatory

"Locked enemies have 20% reduced movenment speed" - Necessary

"Enemies within 1000m deal 20% less damage" - Very Good

"Enemies within 300m cannot regenerate shields" - nice to have

"20% hull damage reduction" - nice to have

Legendaries

Energy Core: Thundercore, this item turns EMPed enemies into tesla coils damaging their friends, snowballing by +5% for each ship affected. A well timed EMPs into a small group does significant damage.

Shield: "SH-8495" , sacrifices all shield power for a damage reducing shield based on nearby enemies. Since the Striker is a Melee-Combatant there are always things around you, giving you up to 60% damage reduce.

Setitems

Weapon 1+2 and secondary Weapon 1 is occupied by the Vigilante Set. I just love the softening up debuff and the final explosion, can't help it. Also the Jury comes with 30 missiles and you can use 10 of them each wave, they do nice damage if trigger-fired and of course I also took autofire for some more free shots.

Cargo, Booster & Plating: Opulence Set. +2% damage to devices and weapons for evey starforged item is good. But more important is the 100% more armor, and that it comes with an "Eco" booster.

Scanner: Dogmatic Scanner from the Redemption Set, because it webs things that received a Crit.

Weapon 3: the "Shredder" Gauss Cannon from the "Commander Set" - mighty badaboom!

Other

This leaves the second Secondary slot open, I found "Powerful Rockets" with "Kinetic" catalyst are just the perfect close combat boss killers, just hold both buttons down and huge ships explode faster than you can trigger your Damage Booster. (@500)

Devices & Consumables

Pretty standard:

"EMP Generator" & "Hard Reset"

"Front Shield Generator" & "All Day" to sustain perma-fireing the Shredder

"Nano Transmitter" & "Carefree Package" to bring back low damaged armor

"Temporal Nano Recompensator" & "Resurgence" to bring back heavily damaged armor

And again "Energy Shield" and "Nanobots" as an emergency reaction when unplanned stuff happens.

Perks

"Exit Strategy" - the 'late game choice' mostly for all builds, while getting into the game I recommend Close Call to have an extra life.

"Downtime Warrior" - you want to be able to shoot without pauses and this one is the key, since EMP and Front Shield are almost always in CD, this is 30% minimum reduce.

"Relentless" - I needed it because I did not want to change weapons mid fight, now the Shredder truly shreds!

"Unyielding Assault" - as mentioned in the intro this stacks with the passive of the ship to repair 100% armor, remember to deactivate the ULT at ~75% so you can use it faster and more often.

"Exploitation" - this is why we want slowing chances where ever we can get them it makes you crit more often and thus it makes you trigger.

"Symphony of Destruction" - this often clears a full pack or cluster of opponents, just clearing the screen with a huge BOOM.

Tips & Tricks

Always have an eye on your armor and use one of your 3 tools to bring it back up.

Hold your EMP trigger for the "perfect Moment" when you can stun as many opponents as possible, but use it, no point in saving it up.

Try to time your EMP and your Front Shield, to maximize the time where there is a lot less damage incoming. Using them one after the other instead of at the same time is often better.

The Scout has two very special abilities, increasing your range by quite a margin and increasing your damage by 4% for every 100m between you and an enemy, resulting in a very unique build and playstyle: A true sniper which is invisible and far far away from the enemy oneshotting them without them knowing what happened.


This one carried me through most of the game's storyline and side quests, a truly amazing ship!

Build Summary

The build features everything that supports the ships speciality "Ranger" and the "Expertise" feature of the Scout: More range and more damage per range turning invisible with the legendary plating "Pango's Pride" and using the Vigilante Marksman Executioner Rail Gun to shoot things from many Kilometers away!

Example: if you have a Marksman Executioner with 3,250m range and 1,800 Expertise giving you 65% more range and the pasive with 30% more range, that gives you a max range of 6,337m and a damage boost of 253.5%!

On top of that you will turn 40% of all killed enemies into allies for 10s distracting all opponents attention away from you.

Preferred Stats

Firepower = Precision > Expertise > Rest

Preferable Passives

"30% increased weapon range" - crucial!

"50% reduced spread for all primary weapons" - this makes your rail gun shots almost hit at 100%

"Gain 5s invincibility after your ULT ends" - the time you need to become invisible again

"100% increased boost energy regeneration during Shadow Strike" - nice to have

"25% reduced enemy detection range" - nice to have

Equipment

Legendaries

Plating: "Pango's Pride" - turns you invisible after 3s of not boosting, turning you into an assassin.

Cargo Unit: "Wrath of the Fallen" - turns 40% of all killed enemies into allies for 10s distracting all opponents attention away from you.

Setitems

The well know Vigilante Set, but this time you want the "Marksman" prefix instead of the "Powerful" rounding it up with Energy and Kinetic damage catalysts.

Other

This build leaves a lot of room for choices, you have one secondary weapon slot, where I love to have Cruise Missiles for the bosses and you can experiment freely with any combination of set items on Energy Core, Shield, Sensor and Booster. I like using no further sets and pack it with the best starforged non-set items I have.

Your Booster could come up with a very special combination of prefixes: "Weapon damage increases by 30% when standing still." and "10% increased primary weapon damage when cloaked" these two are both preferable over the main stats, the dream would be to have them both and a 500+ Firepower roll... at this point let me tell you this game has almost infinite re-roll possibilities, to find the perfect item on every slot for every build seems to be a lifetime grinding task.

Your Sensor should have +20% damage for rail guns.

Devices & Consumables

Let's start with the consumables because in this build they're not trivial: you will need 2*4 Energy Injectors and 4 Damage Booster.

"Front Shield Generator" & "Avenger" - important for the Boss fight

"Nano Transmitter" & "Carefree Package" - you can often 100% all your stats with one Raigun shot...

"Temporal Nano Recompensator" - by far not so powerful like in my 'armour heavy' builds but since this build uses weapon energy and damage as consumables, it's a better safe than sorry tool for 'special occasions'.

"Teleporter" & "Parting Gift" - Again, this is my preferred mobility tool, feel free to use any other if you want.

Perks

This build is not using the standard "Slow & Crit" setup, finally something fresh:

"Close Call" - overall the ship is a glass canon and sometimes things can get weird, and since you don't want to boost in this setup to remain cloaked, "Exit Strategy" wouldn't make any sense anyway.

"Downtime Warrior" - you need to remember yourself to actively put some devices on cooldown because you hardly ever really need them in action.

"Excessive Force" - since you are railgunning from >6km away, your shield usually remains untouched, I have completed whole rifts without taking a single hit before the boss. Adds another 30% damage!

"Critical Faculty" - remains, we want to use the ULT on cd because of its whooping +300% damage

"Exploitation" - if your Rail Gun has a slowing prefix if not: "Preparation" and shooting secondary missiles manually every now and then.

"Symphony of Destruction" - remains the best Ultimate, even in this build.

Tips & Tricks

Change your moving direction every second shot for two more shots, example move backwards and left and then swithch to backwards and up before going back to backwards and left. This will make sure that the AI does not extrapolate your course and permanently flies in the wrong directions.

Teleport every now and then to change your position.

Do not fly towards the enemies, keep your distance all the time, value repositioning over the risk of being shot at.

The Stinger is a little bit of a surprise I must admit. While reading its specials and abilities I was absolutely not overwhelmed, quite the opposite to be fair. But then it turned out to be insanely strong, since you all know by now how strong the devices "EMP Generator" and "Corrosion Injector" can be and how strong the 2 extra hardpoints at the Gunship are, this little fella has one extra harpoint and adds a +50% damage output! It ony has one weakness and that's being a small ship with tiny shield, tiny armour and tiny hull hitpoints, not being able to tank much damage.


But on the other hand it is fast and nimble enabling you to dodge most incoming damage easily by sliding from one side of the screen to the other. All right, let's delve into this amazing build

Build Summary

The Stinger is called "Device Master" and a true master of devices it is indeed! Like in the Interceptor build we're using the EMP Legendary and the Corrosion Legendary to dish out huge damage with our devices, this build features the "Opulence Set" increasing device and weapon damage for ech equipped starforged item by 2% (max would be 16% i currenly have 12%) also 2 pieces of the Blightmongor set but this time I feature the "Sustained Deteriorator" Thermo Gun with EMP Charges from the set and the shield to get the first bonus "+20% increased corrosion damage" - also the weapon applies critical hits as corrosion damage and it has a catalyst with EMP charges, also a 2% cahnce to slow targets, the full range of mean things to trigger lots of extra damage!

Preferred Stats

Utility > Firepower = Precision > Expertise > Rest

Preferable Passives

"Using a device restores 15% of shields" - mandatory, and it is triggered by a single use Teleport or Fusion Hook, which means you can actually shield up quite some percentages with multiple use of these devices.

"Become cloaked for 5s after shield is depleted" - mandatory, the small ships are weak and the actual task is to keep them alive, while dishing enough damage is hardly ever a problem. This one is excellent.

"20% reduced cooldown for warfare devices" - very strong

"Void Swarm radius is increased by 25%" - strong

"25% increased EMP duration" - strong

"25% increased corrosion damage" - strong

"20% reduced cooldown for support devices" - nice to have

Equipment

Legendaries

Energy Core: "Thundercore", turning everything EMPed into a damage source for you.

Sensor: "Visions of Decay" wins the price for the most used legendary.

Setitems

Full "Opulence Set" (Cargo, Booster and Plating) make sure to have a million in your account to maximize the unique trait on the plating.

2 pieces of the "Blightmongor Set", Thermo Gun and Shield to get 20% more corrosion damage.

Other

I am using an Rockets, powerful, starforged, superior, with kinetic catalyst and on the first slot of my secondary weapons for bosses, and some homing missiles of course one that fires automatically on a primary weapon crit.

Weapons, again my preferred choice for the free slot is the Gauss - but you can choose freely here.

Devices & Consumables

"EMP Generator" & "Hard Reset" - of course, stun and huge source of damage

"Corrosion Injector" & "Mercy Kill" - of course of course, the real damage source especially on this ship with this build!

"Front Shield Generator" & "Avenger" - again a very useful tool to approach packs of opponents to safely close the gaps and then fire the first two devices into the pack.

"Teleporter" & "Scurry" - together with the Passive tis one can restore at least 60% of our shield charge if not 75% or even 90%, all while gaining a safe distance in no time. Very precious!

4 Consumable slots allow the trusted double combo of "Energy Shield" & "Nanobots" for defense and "Energy Injector" & "Damage Booster" as the pair for burst damage. I also found out that cloaking devices are especially good on the Stinger, to buy some additional time when needed.

Perks

This build is also using the standard "Slow & Crit" setup with its perks:

"Exit Strategy" - although the fragility of this ship justifies to take "Close Call" because there can always be a sniper hit combined with something else and then you've basically been one shotted.

"Play it Safe" - this one is mandatory especially from Lunacy 350+, you even stop using your damage sources at the same time in order to stretch the time where you are invulnurable. So basically you fire your corrosion injector, and if after 5s the target has not died and the CI resetted you plonk in your EMP and then after 5 more seconds the CI again.

"Crit Happens" yes

"Critical Faculty" yes

"Exploitation" yes, of course

"Symphony of Destruction" what else.

Tips & Tricks

Hit and run is viable with this build.

Hold your left mousebutton pressed until the projectiles of the Thermo Gun are not bending towards an enemy near you.

Follow your projectiles to find the neares enemy.

Use your ULT on cooldown.

Always be aware that your ship is a glass cannon, dealing highest damage but breaking easily. Teleport away as soon as your shield is down or even slightly before that.

Try to keep your extra harpoint active, but to be fair this happens almost automatically.

Sorry lads, the Vanguard is my ship for Racing and currently not fit for farming Ancient Rifts. I may want to try it one day when I have won "Platinum" at all race tracks because I think due to its ULT it has very good chances to beat all difficulty levels.


If you want to know more about my "racing layout" let me know, I may add it.

As already mentioned I strongly suggest the Vindicator for all Commanders that have no access to a packed up storage of legendaries, setitems and starforged equipment.

So, here is what I did, I crafted everything manually in blue, resetted my mainframe expansions and went to farm some rifts:


Beginner Setup - Key Factors

I personally think Gauss-Cannons are the best weapons. For two reasons, you can almost always fire them endlessly without depleting your weapon energy and they come with a fairly decent DPS, my second weapon is the Thermo-Gun, because I am a lazy old fart.

Web-Missiles with autofire perk with this gear the only way to slow things, I did not reroll my weapons for the slowing prefix.

Ship Passives: I think for a Vindicator you want the extra drone and the explosions on death, all the rest is optional.

Devices:
EMP / Hard Reset, to use it more often
Corrosion Injector / Mercy Kill, to use it even more oftener
Annihilator Virus / Symptomatic, to reduce incoming damage
Front Shield / All Day, to be able to permanently fire longer in tense situations
(three warfare devices because of Perk)

Perks: 1-3-2-3-2-3 The usual "Slow & Crit" Setup but with "Play it Safe" to be immune for 5s after fireing a warfare device, without sets, I think this is the most you can squeeze out of the basics.


Result: I started from Lunacy 0 and went up step by step 50 more per run, and without changing anything of this setup I managed to quite easily arrive at Lunacy 350. On this journey I collected 3 pieces of the Commander Set and three Legendaries, so I think this build is indeed a valid starting point for building up your fleet.

Avoid these mods of possible inorder of importance: Overheating, 20% heal on death, 5% growth on death, Mines on death - explosions and corrosion on death too, but they're often the lesser evil to chose.

I am now rating my builds as I have experienced them, and how effective they are progressing from Lunacy 500 to 1000:

S-Tier: Gunship, Sentinel
A-Tier: Vindicator (but: best starter vessel)
B-Tier: Stinger, Scout, Bomber, Striker II
C-Tier: Interceptor, Striker, Starter
Out of Competition (currently): Vanguard


That's it guys, I hope this guide can help you building up some ships to master the endgame, but Don't take me strictly literally, be flexible, if you have an idea, try it out, rebuild these loadouts, tweak them and improve them wherever you think you can do so.

Let me know the results in the comments I am always greatful to hear about improvements.

CMDR Madouc
Over and Out

o7