Why I choose Parasite; a Daemon/RNG story.

[JamesFactory]

I use parasite, I find it to be the single most useful thing in the game, and there's a major reason behind it - Daemons.

Daemons tend to have terrible repercussions, Locking you out of Incognita, spawning more guards, raising alarms. A question that's been asked over and again has been how people deal with them, and many answers have been given, here's my solution.

Find every hackable that you do in fact want to hack on the map with a daemon, and hack them ALL simultaneously. This can only be done with 100% reliability (on unknown daemons) with parasite. When hacking simultaneously, this means you need parasite, it will trigger every daemon, often negating many of the downsides of hacking, or at least lessening their problematic features to a few turns of hellish repercussions. The great thing about hacking daemons simultaneously, is that a decent amount of the daemons do things to slow you down in one way or another, specifically in incognita. If you're solving all of the problems at once, things like +firewalls, -3turns of incognita, random daemons spawned etc. become a non-issue.

I've had quite a few floors where I get locked out of incognita by three different daemons, though they're all ticking down because I hacked them all on the same turn, thus negating two daemons for example.

I feel that a parasite start is almost mandatory for my playstyle, and I encourage others to try it, because often - the waiting game/alarm buildup seems to not really matter, and the utility of being able to bypass many of the problems of daemons seems to outweigh this cost (for me at least).

I'm also a firm believer in introducing less RNG into my games, which is a reason I rarely go for consoles. On a good day, they give +2-4 power, on a bad day, they give 0pwr and raise your alarm by 2. I feel that the benefit of consoles is outweighed by the possible downside, so for me personally, I tend to avoid consoles when possible (which parasite is almost mandatory for as well, since it's so much more efficient than lockpick).

What do you bring on missions? I tend to favor Fusion/Parasite with the intent to pick up a lockpick AND (hammer OR dagger). Do you trigger multiple daemons simultaneously? If not, I suggest you at least play around with it, and see if you think Parasite is as good as I feel it is.

[HolyDeath]

Fusion is very powerful. Almost too powerful. However, I am taking Lockpick with me. While Parasite is more efficient - and I like it - it's also requiring of you to wait 'till ICE breaks down, costing you time while you can make up for PWR with consoles and Fusion. I favor consoles, because they have the potential to lower your alarm tracker or give you ammo/money. I either try to avoid daemons on kill them. I find it too risky to break a couple of daemons at once.

[Yarrr]

Fusion is very powerful. Almost too powerful. However, I am taking Lockpick with me. While Parasite is more efficient - and I like it - it's also requiring of you to wait 'till ICE breaks down, costing you time while you can make up for PWR with consoles and Fusion. I favor consoles, because they have the potential to lower your alarm tracker or give you ammo/money. I either try to avoid daemons on kill them. I find it too risky to break a couple of daemons at once.

Lower it? Is that the bribe option? If so I'll try that one more often when I'm good on cash.

[Raaaahman]

I agree and I'm using parasite the way you explained, except I still hack consoles in hope to find some money event. Very powerful with minor downsides IMO. And parasite is always good to have even when you have other more costly programs (I like to have parasite + hammer). Whereas lockpick become useless very quick when you buy some other programs...

 

Also, with parasite + hunter, you can totally start the hacking with a signle pwr, find some more and then kill the daemon before parasite finishes its job. So the time downside become kind of negated at a point.

 

 

Lower it? Is that the bribe option? If so I'll try that one more often when I'm good on cash.

 

Yes it is, but you're not sure it will work as intended though...

[TheUglyStick]

I think this is a good idea for popping a two or three daemons that happen to be close together, but exploring the whole level and then backtracking to get all the goodies while dealing with multiple validate guards and/or labyrinth sounds painful. 

[psluuther]

I think the choice between lockpick and parasite is purely a matter of taste. Lockpick is unquestionably better in the early game, and parasite is unquestionably better in the late game, with some gray area in the midgame. I tend to go with lockpick and pray that I find parasite on day 1. But I also think that parasite is way better in the long run. So for me, going with lockpick is a pure gamble. 

[JimThePea]

I think the choice between lockpick and parasite is purely a matter of taste. Lockpick is unquestionably better in the early game, and parasite is unquestionably better in the late game, with some gray area in the midgame. I tend to go with lockpick and pray that I find parasite on day 1. But I also think that parasite is way better in the long run. So for me, going with lockpick is a pure gamble. 

 

Well, I wouldn't say Lockpick is unquestionably better, it depends on your playstyle. Pairing Parasite up with Fusion means you can completely ignore consoles early-to-mid game (I find them a gamble to rely on) and leaves you lots of PWR for a Volt Disrupter (if you're into that kind of thing). Another thing about picking Parasite is that all nanofabs likely have same-turn breaking tools and/or other programs that make use of all that spare PWR.

[psluuther]

Oh right, I forgot about the volt disrupter. I haven't actually tried that out. But regardless, I'd say the lockpick is more useful on early missions when you haven't had a chance to pick up more equipment and it gives you just a few extra turns to clear out those first missions really well and try to get a good snowball effect going. But it's definitely a gamble.  

[JamesFactory]

@TheUglysStick it's worthwhile to pop every daemon with lootables/ you want to break at once, if for example your team is spread out in a way that you can have 2-3 people grabbing loot on their way to the exit, it depends on the situation, but mainly it's better to be able to break the last ICE on a daemon machine simultaneously than to be unable to is what I am trying to spread the good word about

As @JimThePea said, the chances of getting a multi-daemon breaking tool vs a single breaking tool is very different, as only parasite fills the role I am specifically talking about, while other things can fill the same role as lockpick.

I kind of find parasite to be unquestionably better both early and late, but that's mainly because of non-reliance on both consoles and elevator sitting.

@psluuther Lockpick seems to me to shine more on 2 ICE devices than on 1, as on most 1 ICE devices, you don't have enough movement points to get safe usually after spotting said device in a previously unexplored room, super early game lockpick pretty much == parasite, except for having to wait to enter past turrets and cameras, which I don't really see as a huge drawback most of the time. You can absolutely get 100% loot, in the last 10 story modes (post patch) I've missed 4 safes total.

I hope my post didn't sound too preachy, I hope everyone plays how they enjoy, I was just trying to illustrate a possible benefit of parasite that some people may have overlooked.

[Palpetinus]

I really love it when there are four or five daemon-secured things with the same hacking time and a parasite on them.

Next round, when it all gets hacked at once hell breaks loose

Also that's a great way to detect bugs. We already discovered that effects don't stack properly by it, it's like stresstesting the game by just triggering ALL of the events

[psluuther]

Oh, actually the benefit of being able to hack all the Daemons at once seems very useful and I'm glad you pointed it out. It's just that I have almost always been able to get parasite pretty early on anyway, and maybe I have just gotten very lucky with it and it's not actually as common as it seems based on my playthroughs. I would absolutely start with parasite if I felt like there was a good chance I wasn't going to find it pretty quickly.  

 

But as for getting 100% loot... well sure, it is *possible* to do that in pretty much any circumstance and kudos to you for doing so well. But some folks may appreciate some extra time in early levels, even though it is not strictly required for success.