Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 – Gameplay Tips for Substantial and Ruthless Difficulties

Gameplay Tips for Succeeding in Substantial and Ruthless

By Artimise.

This is my tips from playing well over 230hrs, with a large portion of it at Ruthless across all classes, using nearly every weapon available to us at this time.

• Be flexible – This is rather self explanatory, but at the latter two difficulties, you will be expected to be able to handle yourself in a fight, and potentially solo entire packs or “fronts” of a wave(s) of enemies by yourself if necessary. This means, knowing how to parry with anything, yes that includes you Heavy players and knowing how to parry with a heavy bolter or multi melta. Know how to play with different weapons and different classes to fill the gaps in your squads abilities.
• Know your role, and choose your weapon(s) accordingly – Every weapon can kill, but not every weapon is the best at killing every one thing (with a few exceptions to some distinct outliers at relic tier; ie. Bolt rifle w/Grenade launcher, Plasma incinerator, Heavy Plasma incinerator, Melta rifle and Multi Melta respectively) Most bolter weapons excel at chaff clear, so that means wiping out entire packs of minoris enemies, weapons like the Stalker Bolter, Plasma incinerator, and both flavors of sniper rifles (Bolt and Las) typically are Majoris – Terminus hunters. Whenever possible focus on fulfilling that role, but do not hesitate to step into others where applicable
• Help your brothers, help you! – This goes beyond just watching for where enemies are, melee, pay attention to where your ranged are. Bulwarks, Vanguards and Assault, stay somewhat close to your ranged specialists, see if they’re getting swarmed and try to take the heat off of them. Tactical, Snipers, and Heavies, thin the packs of minoris enemies trying to sand blast the armor off of your melee, pick off the ranged mobs that like to pepper you. You can still shoot at stuff while dodging, rolling and juking incoming melee; if you got some riding up your jacksies, try running TOWARDS your melee so that they can help. Bottom line, help your squad mates so they can in turn help you. Too many times I watch a Bulwark go charging into a horde of enemies, ignoring everything around them and then wonder why they’re alone on the field and their ranged haven’t been helping him deal with the wall of mobs surrounding him.
• Know when to execute – Often times it is better for a ranged player to “prime” a majoris enemy so that the melee can execute them. This restores their armor and helps keep them in the fight. If you’re a fellow melee in the mosh pit, if you don’t need the execute, don’t take it. Leave it for your other squad mate. You can tell if they need it if they do not have a white outline and a small shield icon at the bottom of their class icon. This indicates they are without armor pips and will be taking HP damage.
• Share resources – Don’t hoover up everything you come across, be mindful of your squad mates situation. Does your squad mate have a mortal wound (indicated by a skull next to their name/hp bar), they may need that med kit to stay alive (note, if they reach max HP from a med kit, it cures them from their mortal wound).
• Be smart with your revives – You are of no use if you rush in and try to get a revive when surrounded by multiple majoris enemies, and get whacked yourself. Sometimes it’s better to clear some of the enemies to help ensure you don’t go down or take too much damage yourself instead of recklessly trying to save your team mate.
• Equip yourself appropriately for the difficulty – I get some people want to level quickly, but if you join in on a Substantial or Ruthless mission with standard issue weaponry, then you are not just added weight to your squad, you may be an actual LIABILITY to the mission. Weapons can make a big difference. Please bring at least Master work or artificer for at least some of your gear (pistol or melee) if you must.
• Learn to parry/dodge – You can parry more than just the blue markers on enemies, and some enemies require multiple parries in order to get a gun strike opportunity. A good example would be the Tyranid warriors, they sometimes need 2 parried attacks in order to be staggered and marked for a gun strike opportunity.
• Positioning – Being surrounded is never ideal, if you can fall back, do so and try to keep as many foes in front of you as possible. When you’re in the middle of an execute, get into the habit of panning your camera around to see where you squad mates are as well as looking out for enemies. A solid example is when you enter the large plaza on Vox Liberatis where you encounter the first Tzeenchian relic. This area is wide open, with very little cover. If you’re hit with a massive wave, chances are it’s going to get messy. Especially on Ruthless. Fall back towards the elevator, force the enemy to funnel in to you so that you have a way to focus fire without getting blasted from all directions.