View source for Lobotomy Corporation Essential Beginner Tips script

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! Script !! On-screen extra blurbs !! Additional notes
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| Alright so here's the list. Out of all the tips I could give to new players, these are the ones I consider absolutely essential to learn ASAP. ||  || 
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| While most of these tips fall into your usual “tips I wish I knew before playing [whatever]”, I do have to point out that a big part of why I even have to make this list  - is because the tutorial doesn't give enough focus on important mechanics, while the manual is vague on others.  ||  || The videos are: </br>
Trupen - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tD2nOjn3ffs  Things I Wish I Knew Before Playing Factorio (Tips And Tricks Tutorial)]
Pr1vateLime - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMOxhT9SFPE  Top 10 Things I Wish I Knew Before Playing Project Zomboid Build 41 2020] </br>
Pestily - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8yYwbUMWrk 5 Things I Wish I Knew Starting EFT - New Players Guide - Escape from Tarkov] </br>
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| And this has been a recurring problem in the franchise.  || Library of Ruina manual entry for "Speed" - severely downplayed, poorly explained</br>
Limbus Company Absolute Resonance tip - GREATLY misleading, though the tutorial has been updated to correctly say that Resonance is more for activating Skills than the Attack Level bonus 
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| To be fair, Project Moon was and is still a small dev team, and having a weak tutorial is better than having nothing at all. Though I have to admit, getting to figure things out on your own is part of the charm of these games. || <nowiki>*</nowiki> we really do like figuring things out on our own, it's definitely not Stockholm Syndrome
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| Before we proceed, a quick warning: While I won't spoil anything story-wise, I can't avoid showing early game stuff.
So if you're planning to go in fully blind, consider yourself warned
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<nowiki>*</nowiki> if you’re avoiding spoilers, maybe come back after 3-5 of playing
to check if what you figured out on your own matches with the tips
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|colspan="3" align="center"| Tip #1
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| Tip #1: Keep an eye on the Kelipot Meltdown Gauge.
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|A lot of new players ignore this UI element, but I can't really blame them as it's only briefly mentioned in the tutorial, and it really isn't important until a few hours into the game.

For experienced players, however, this may just be the most important thing on screen.

So what is it?

Basically, this bar fills up every time one of your Agents starts working on an Abnormality.

And once it's full, the game will throw something at you depending on what's displayed here: either you get Qliphoth Meltdowns, or Ordeals.
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|As to why you should keep an eye on it, there are two main reasons:

First off, Meltdowns are the main source of tension in the game. By Day 11, the game will be more than just deducing how to handle Abnormalities and extracting enough energy - you'll also have to be ready for the ever increasing challenges as the  day progresses. And then there's the tough decision between ending the day early, or taking the risk and try to farm a bit more.

And the other, more important, reason, is you have full control over when the Meltdowns will take place. Or in more blunt terms, it's all your fault if it unexpectedly pops, most likely because you sent too many Agents to work at the same time and you didn't see the bar was gonna be full.

So yeah, keep an eye on this, and play accordingly.
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|colspan="3" align="center"| Tip #2
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|Tip #2: Pause and 2x speed are your friends.
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|If you've played a decent amount of Real Time with Pause games, especially those with lots of multitasking involved, feel free to skip to the next tip as you already know this.
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|But if you haven't, here's a quick rundown.

These are the game's speed controls.
| 1.5x and 2x speed are unlocked through research
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|Normal speed is the default, but outside micro-ing situations, there's few reasons to stick with it.

Pause is well, pause. 

With all the stuff happening at the same time, Normal speed just doesn't cut it.

So stay paused and give out orders at your own pace, just make sure you don't accidentally trigger a Meltdown.

The hotkey for toggling pause on and off is spacebar, and that will be your panic button for when the BGM changes.

Spam toggling between pause and normal speed for combat micro also works well in this game.

As for 2 times speed, it's useful not only because most of the time you'll be waiting for your agents to walk or work on Abnormalities, it's also because all it takes is one mistake and you'll be doing a day all over from the beginning.

Sadly there's no hotkey directly going to 2x speed, only E and Q to speed up and slow down by one tick.
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|colspan="3" align="center"| Tip #3
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| Tip #3: Check the logs in case you forget or miss something.

Don't want to keep track in your head what type of work you've already tried on a new Abnormality? Just check the logs.

Want to be reminded that you screwed up again by sending the wrong unit while you weren't paying attention? Just check the logs.

The game doesn't log everything though, though. For example, using Tool Abnormalities isn't logged so if that's where you screwed up, the logs won't say what caused the problem.
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|colspan="3" align="center"| Tip #4
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| Tip #4: Get to know the quirks around controlling units.

There are 2 ways to control your Agents:

Clicking or selecting them then right clicking to move, work, or attack. This should be familiar to anyone who has played an RTS or a MOBA.

Then the opposite, clicking the target first, then choosing the agent to perform the action.

Going over the tips and tricks here can be a video on its own, so for now we'll just cover 2 of the most important ones.

First is how the select - move stations the selected units to the target room. This means that after finishing their next task, they'll return to that room instead of the Main Room.

This is great if you want to work on an Abnormality over and over again. You can just send them back once their health is low.

The other important tip is about how you can browse through different Departments in the work UI. While this is meant to allow you to give orders to Agents in other Departments, this is also a quick way to browse through all of your agents, say it's the end of a Day and you want to check if there's anyone panicked. It's also the only way to check your Agent's HP and SPs if you haven't researched HP UI yet.
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|colspan="3" align="center"| Tip #5
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| Tip # 5 - Your default order for unlocking Abnormality info should be:

Management Tips - Work Preferences - Basic Information - Escape Information

Management Tips should be the first because they will tell you important stuff like “IF YOU DO THIS, YOUR AGENT WILL DIE”

Work Preferences next so you know if you're doing the right work and using the right agents.

Then the Basic Information to get the rest of the important details 

And finally Escape Info last because it's mostly redundant.

Note that this isn't a hard recommendation, you're free to change this order around as you please,

For example, if you're planning to retry the day anyway, you can unlock a couple of Work Preference first, then retry the day until you find the easiest work.
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|colspan="3" align="center"| Tip #6
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| Tip #6 - Pick your battles

This one overlaps with the next two tips, but I think it deserves its own entry.

Simply put, you don't have to work on all of your abnormalities every day, unless of course if they're melting down.

Similarly, if an Abnormality escapes or Ordeals arrive, you don't necessarily have to all suppress them; only those need to be suppressed ASAP before they can do more harm to the site.

You get a LOB point penalty for having free roaming Abnormalities when you end the day, but that might be a price you're willing to pay. 

However, there's NO penalty for having active Ordeals when you end the day, so you can trigger that meltdown even though you don't plan to deal with the Ordeal.
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|colspan="3" align="center"| Tip #7
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| Before I can explain the next tip, we must first talk about farming stats.

When an Agent works on an Abnormality, the Virtue they used for the work grows at the end of the day.

Here's how that is calculated. Looks complicated, but it boils down to this simple equation:

You get more experience per PE box the riskier the Abnormality, but there comes a point where it becomes too risky that the XP becomes negative

which is a roundabout way of saying that your agent is dead.

So it's all about finding the sweet spot, in other words,

Tip #7: Work on the riskiest Abnormalities that you can handle.

Look, we all love Skull Bro, but you shouldn't waste your meltdown gauge on it if you've got other Tet and He around that you can farm just fine.

On the flip side, if you still have trouble with Waw and Aleph, you can just avoid them until your agents have leveled up, crossing your fingers every Meltdown that they don't get pinged.

But what if you get an Abnormality that can't be ignored, and you're out of LOB points to pump an agent high enough to deal with them?

The answer is...
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|colspan="3" align="center"| Tip #8
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| Tip #8: Lobotomy Corporation is a rogue-like.

To this day, it still baffles me that this key aspect of the game is hidden in an easily missed part of the Manual.

Basically, you're NOT meant to play the game in a single cycle, but through multiple cycles and sub-cycles, via the First Day and the Rewind to Memory Repository options, respectively.

Unlike the Retry option which does a full reset like the day never happened, both of those options retain some of your progress, namely:

Unlocked department tech

Researched Abnormality Info

And your EGO Weapons and Suits

These let you do things like play the first week with 2 times speed and HP display, see abnormality names in the pick screen to give you a better idea which to choose, and overall be in a better position than the previous cycle.

What you don't retain is your Agents, for Rewind to Memory Repository, all your agents are rolled back to their saved Memory Imprint state.

For First Day, your roster is wiped clean and you're given a new first employee.

While this may seem to reinforce the idea that all your Agents are all expendable, it's actually the opposite, at least for your top Agents.

You want your strongest, best equipped Agents to live to the end of the cycle so you can farm info and EGO efficiently.

You'll also find yourself restarting days not because you want to save your Agents, but to save their EGO, especially if they were extracted from another cycle.

Some of you might be thinking, can't I abuse this mechanic and just keep looping back trying to get the easiest Abnos for my run?

Yes, you can, but remember the previous tips - by avoiding Waw and Aleph, not only do you slow down your agents' growth in the current cycle, the low PE box output also means that you're more likely to have to face harder Ordeals in order to reach the daily quota.
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| And that's it for this video. This is more of a personal challenge if I can make a short video with the tips I've given to new players recently, and I'm not happy with how I have to add so much text on screen so I could squeeze this down to around 11 minutes.

Maybe I'd make a proper non-squeezed version later, and if I do, you've been seeing it recommended on the right.

Either way, on the left is my older run of the game where you can see most of the tips in action. Skip the first video to go straight to the action.

Anyway, thanks for watching and see you in the next video.
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