Worth in having High Anarchy

[Shatner]

Advancing up the Anarchy skill path gets you the following benefits:

[400cr] Level 2) Can steal from guards

[500cr] Level 3) Steal 15% more credits from guards

[600cr] Level 4) Steal 20% more credits from guards

[800cr] Level 5) Increased chance to find additional items while stealing

 

My question is, is it ever worth advancing into the upper tiers of Anarchy?

 

 

First off, I make sure all of my agents get Level 2 anarchy; the ability to lift items and cash off guards without having to escalate things with violence is invaluable. Additionally, there are some nice items that require a little bit of Anarchy skill to function: most notably buster chips and paralyzers.

 

 

However, I have yet to find the direct benefits of Anarchy 3+, nor the indirect benefit of gaining access to superior anarchy-related gear (e.g. Accelerator Chip III vs. Accelerator Chip I) to be worth the expense. There are games where I invest heavily in speed, strength, and/or hacking and they've proven to be sound investments. Anarchy, not so much.

 

 

What do you, the forum, say? Am I overlooking things/failing to play in a style to benefit from high Anarchy or is it actually a weak skill?

[BenjaminLewis]

Buster chips and shock traps also require anarchy.  I haven't used shock traps much but some here seem to swear by them.  I found buster chips to be super useful on my Archive Prism run, but I was using 2 of the weakest version which only requires 2 anarchy.

 

(oh, I see you mentioned buster chips in your OP, didn't read carefully)

[HumanKirby]

Anarchy 5 is super useful if you use weapons with ammo (it is 5% normaly and 25 with anarchy 5) and to get some extra items (even a new weak disrupter can save your life). The procentage is definite not worth it in the campaign.

[Joopac]

I think that to gain from Anarchy upgrades, you need to get it upgraded early on so that you can get paid back... but hey, nothing like a Shock Trap Mk. 3!

[Cyberboy2000]

If we assume that a guard has on average 90 credits and you steal from 4 guards each level it would take 9 missions for level 3 anarchy to pay off and 8 missions for level 4. If we also assume that level 5 anarchy gives you an extra item on 20% of looted guards worth roughly 175 credits each that will pay off after 6-7 missions.

 

Note that these are not exact numbers and also does not include the other benefits of high anarchy such as being able to use higher tier items or that you can keep the items you get. The benefit also greatly increases when used on a financial executive, which have large amounts of money.

[warfreak2]

A few thoughts:

• Anarchy is usually worse than speed. Most strategies benefit from fast exploration; also, an extra AP or two really helps to go from one safe spot to the next.
• Anarchy 2 on at least one agent is mandatory. On Expert Plus I will rarely upgrade Anarchy on more than one agent, and I prefer to have somebody on my team who starts with some Anarchy so that I can use it in the first mission and won't have to pay 400 credits for it.
• On Expert or lower difficulty levels where money is easier to come by, Anarchy 2 on everyone is a reasonable price for the ability to steal from all guards (especially getting passcards) without sending one Anarchy agent all the way around the map.
• Upgrading Anarchy to 3 or 4 for the money alone is basically never the right play, even if you can do it early in the campaign. Other upgrades or buys will be better investments. These upgrades should instead be considered largely as the cost of using items like Buster Chips (which would be very good value without this added cost) or Shock Traps (which generally aren't unless you have no other way to deal with armour - Shock Trap 3 excepted).
• If you've already gotten to Anarchy 4 for the above reason, then Anarchy 5 can pay for itself after ~3 missions, fewer if the items you're stealing are things you'd otherwise be buying at full price (rather than selling at half price). This compares well with the Econ Chip (~1-3 missions if you max it out, depending on Hacking skill) and Microslam Apparatus (~2.5), two of the best investments in the game.
• In Endless Mode, getting everyone else to Anarchy 5 is the second-last thing you should spend spare money on, the last being getting everyone else to Hacking 5.

[zharmad]

 I believe high anarchy on one agent is very useful for some strategies, mainly through the items they enable. The benefits of the skill itself are more benefical for endless mode where you will need the money to max out your agents, rather than just pass the final mission. In any case, I normally choose to have one agent upgraded to Anarchy 3 early in campaign games, and arrange to have them steal from all guards.

 The 4th level comes when I find a relevant item that's not an accelerator chip III, usually for free from the dispatch mission.

 

 High anarchy is useful when:

 

 - standard Internationale is not on the team. *cough* Only situation where 1 accelerator chip III can be critical.

 - Standard Sharp hasn't been powered up yet with full augments (Paralyzers).

 - you want to save power for your agents, rather than for Incognita's hacking. (Buster Chip III is 4 firewalls every 4 turns, or 3 with a Torque injector.)

 - you want to activate all your consoles for money (Buster Chip). The econ chip pays for the anarchy upgrades, and the buster chips fill in the hacking.

 

 - Missions regularly hit higher alarm levels (Shock Traps), because e.g. you wanted to wait for econ chip cooldowns. It turns out that you can also shock trap the red elevators where the reinforcement guards come in though. Notably in Endless mode you eventually get two guards at once at Alarm level 3.

 

 = = =

 A max economy strategy, for example, starts with archive Bank's econ chip, one high hacking agent for all the consoles, and one high anarchy agent to hack everything and delay all the guards on the level until all consoles have been hacked.

 - Agent with hacking: Torque injectors, Bank's econ chip, standard econ chip, EMP.

 - Agent with anarchy: Torque injectors, two buster chips, Paralyzer, two shock traps.

 - Archive Nika for bonus cooldown (Archive Nika + Archive Banks).

 - Incognita focuses primarily on hacking cameras, tagging guards, and cracking safes while chips are on cooldown. Observing guards helps a lot with shock trap use.

 

 

[Kuirem]

My strategy is simple : I only upgrade my agents when I got an item with requirement. So Speed will be upgraded if I get Cloak/Stim, Anarchy for Buster Chip/Paralyzer/Shock Trap, Hacking for Portable Server/EMP Pack and Strength when my inventory is full.

 

Where will I get those items? It could be from a Security Dispatch, a Nanofab or even from stealing (Sankaku missions are great to get Buster Chip). The main reason I don't upgrade Agents unless I have +3k CR is to be able to buy good items if I find one in a Nanofab and then upgrade to the requirements.

 

Now for Level 5 there is no items that need it but they often give a better boost than lower level (+2 PWR from console, Steal extra items, +1 Running Speed, +1 KO Damage). So if I have spare CR it will first go from level 4 to level 5 and then in order : Speed > Strength > Anarchy > Hacking. The priority is mobility.

[ik1ne]

Anarchy 5 is really good, since you can get 2~3 Ammo/Medgel per mission.

Which means you can get at least 400~600 additional credit per mission if you sell them.

Also, +35% credit stolen is also good.

[wwarnick]

Buster chips and shock traps also require anarchy.  I haven't used shock traps much but some here seem to swear by them.

 

I never thought much of them until I did a run with Xu, and I found myself buying more of them.  If you have a shock trap, there's always a way around armored guards, no matter the armor.  Maybe I'm biased, but I love shock traps.

[Adamuchi]

Anarchy 5 is really good, since you can get 2~3 Ammo/Medgel per mission.

Which means you can get at least 400~600 additional credit per mission if you sell them.

Also, +35% credit stolen is also good.

 

Thanks for the precision, I was wondering what kind of loot we could have. 

[Cyberboy2000]

I ususally upgrade a few levels in anarchy the first thing I do, then a few levels into speed and then more anarchy. Strength you only need to upgrade if your inventory is almost full and hacking is only important if you are lacking power or you find a good emp.