LotS/Players Guide

Quick Start Guide
Some quick game play tips that may not be immediately obvious:

a) Always choose the class with the shortest timer for stamina (Lvl 6 Soldier, Lvl 100 Reaver).
b) Join us in the world 'Chat'. It's always full of raids and best chance to have your question answered accurately (beware the trolls!).
c) Join an alliance; browse for an 'Open' one in the list or ask in chat if you can't find a good one.
d) Don't buy anything in the shop that cost Gold Suns until you know more (e.g. It's a Trap).
e) Expeditions - New Item Pack does not give duplicates; Vaults, Relic and Mystery pack will give you a lot of duplicates.
f) Missions - play through all the missions on Normal first (will allow you to summon a wide variety of raids); if you need to go back and reset a mission area, there's a reset button in the upper-right corner of the mission page.

This document is intended to provide a quick way for new players to gain power.
It will likely be useless to veterans.

Updates needed to this Guide:
1. The powerful equipment progression guide (Robot Rioter -> Plasmatic/Multiverse gear from Transdimensional Operations -> Talia gear from Invaders alliance raid and/or Sian Aid from Elite Titanomachy)
2. Sakmussemm and Party Spacebus are the strongest free ships at the moment (especially Saknusemm vs. Psychic or Cosmic raids). The simplest way to search for a better ship is to go the wiki Ship page and sort by Power Bonus, scroll past all the Gold Sun ships, and look for a free ship that's currently available. Make sure to look all the way down to at least 200 Ship Power Bonus, and down to 100 when you are just starting.
3. The way to hunt for Officers to fill your ship, is to sort the Officer wiki page by SP (Ship Power) and then by the Race/Role/Ability slot that you need for your ship. For example, scroll down to the Human section and they will be listed by their SP. You can do a similar sort on the Crew page to help fill restrictive slots (e.g. Piscarian).

1. Save your Golden Suns (GS) - If you don't intend to spend money on this game, you should never spend GS on anything other than front page ships (e.g. The Demoiselle and premium officers/crew (the ones that cost 150 GS). Spend them on anything else and you'll probably end up regretting it. There are some very few exceptions to this rule, you can generally see people mentioning said exceptions in chat when they occur (Best Item).

2. Hit raids with 1 Stamina (AKA tagging) - The links people post in chat are generally all raids. In particular you should target the following raids (the more common ones are noted with *):

• Galactic Reaver*
  
• CC Councilor
  
• Crush Colossa*
  
• Storm Commander*
  
• The Hat*
  
• Fleet Commander
  
• Sludge Serpent
  
• Robot Uprising
  *Hit Robot Uprising only if it has the tactics Better To Receive or Teachings of Wu on it. Otherwise wait till you can hit the first dmg tier of 5m and 7.5m before hitting this raid.
  

Since Robot Uprising is a great first raid, you should either ask someone in chat or in your Alliance to give you a private Robot Uprising raid so that you have enough time to reach the 5m and 7.5m tiers (after you have a few levels under your belt and built up a sufficient supply of stamina to be able to hit your tier within 1-2 levels). Or you can gamble and try to hit a Public raid in time before it dies. Also, while you are wearing/using the gear for your raid damage, be careful not to craft the gear for stat points in your Lab.

These raids give you early access to some solid gear (the Sludge Scale gear). As soon as you have enough stamina and raid damage to hit Fair Share (FS) on early raids like Colonel, Sentinel, and Warmaster, you should stop tagging and strive to reach the Fair Share damage mark on as many lower FS raids as possible.

On the other hand, avoid Trulcharn, Hao, Quiskarian Temples and Space Pox (not the World Raid), these raids require you to deal a specific amount of damage (Usually 10s to 100s of millions) for any sort of loot and have very limited space, if you cannot hit said mark but hit it anyway, you may cause the raid to fail and make a lot of people angry or waste a lot of stamina to 'save' the raid.

Keep in mind that tagging will not always give you what you want from a raid. The loot system is set up so that dealing increasing damage up to the raid's Fair Share (FS) will give an increasing chance of 1 Epic tier loot drop that is guaranteed at the FS mark, which is total raid health divided by the maximum number of participants possible. Some raids go past that to an Optimal Share (OS) mark, which is a theoretical point determined by players that maximizes the damage per epic loot ratio.

A new feature that the developers have been providing on some of the newer tiered raids is a 'new player' tier at 5m and 7.5m. Current examples of raids with these beneficial tiers include: Krakak Plague, Infected II, Mothership, Hwang, Death Flora II, Tourniquet 7.5, Hyper-Con, Sapphire, Multheru, Bonderbrand, Noir (III), A G Attack, A G Monster, and Robot Uprising. The 5m tier typically provides 1 epic and the 7.5m tier provides 2 epics; with the 7.5m tier being the highest value tier on the entire raid. Veteran/strong players will typically hit to the Optimal Share loot tier of 500m to obtain a far greater amount of loot for a reasonably similar value to the 7.5m tier as these tiers are mainly designed as a means for a new player to quickly gain access to powerful items early in their career.

Typically, hitting fair share will give you 1 epic loot; and optimum share will usually give you 2 epics. Hitting far beyond fair share/optimum share on a 'general' raid may give you 3-4 epics, but at a loss of common tier loot ('diminishing returns' that peaks at 5-10x fair share depending on the raid). Over damaging small/rare raids is generally frowned upon.

Therefore you should target hitting OS on a raid and then using your stamina to hit another raid unless you need to save the raid (something you shouldn't be worrying about if you're reading this). The Fair Share and Optimal Epic damage marks are listed on the zoywiki.com/LoTS page. If you login through Kong and have the raid script, you can ask RaidBot what FS/OS is for any raid by typing "/raid (partial raid name) (difficulty 1-4)" into Kong chat.

Examples:
/raid colon 4 = information for Psychic Colonel on Nightmare difficulty.
/raid tele 1 = information for Telemachus on Normal difficulty.
/raid colo 3 = information for Psychic COLOnel AND Crush COLOssa on Legendary difficulty.
/raid gene = information for CC General on all 4 difficulties.
/raid 2 = information for all raids on Hard difficulty (Don't do this!)

A further caution regarding hitting raids and healing. The below raids will hit you back hard (e.g. 1-100 damage) and you should not attack them until your average damage is over 2-3 million on a 20x stamina hit. Essentially, don't chase epic loot from a raid that has an OS over 3x your 20x hit.
- Dule's Robot
- Quiskerian Temple
- Space Pox
- Sky Commander Bethany
- Vunlac
- Reichsmarschall Dule
- Master Hao
- Noir (II)
- Subjugator

3. Join an Alliance - Your honor bar is wasted unless you join one. Just ask in chat, most alliances are happy to take active players. Note that the player recruiting/inviting you to join their alliance in chat may not be an officer or otherwise have the delegated power to accept your application. So plan ahead and allow several hours (or even days!) for an alliance officer to login and check for applications. The button doesn't glow so there is no automatic notification an alliance's officers that you've submitted an application. Ideally, ask the recruiter in chat if they have the power to accept you in to their alliance if you're short on time (maybe check first to see if the alliance in question is set to 'Open' recruitment in which case your application will be instantly accepted).
Additionally, alliances give you more raids that you can tag for good gear:
Myriam & Steelstrike (96/67 Gloves)
Wahsh al-sahraa (special raid - always hit)
Rabid Reindeer (2.5m fair share with 108/150 Main Hand/Trinket/Utility, +15 honor leveling gear)
Santa's Workshop (5m fair share with 108/150 Off Hand/Trinket/Utility, +15 honor)
Ship of the Damned (26/24 Helmet/Gloves)
Genesis, Mecha-Wyrm (30/30 Helmet/Gloves)
Shock Trooper and Tank (ability crystal)

4. LSI. On level up, spend all your stat points on Energy or Stamina, do not consider any other stat until you reach Leveling Speed Index (LSI) 7. Additionally, there is no LSI cap until you reach level 100 (an additional reason to allocate 100% towards energy/stamina as quickly as possible). The XP ratio is slightly in favor of energy vs. stamina (1.66 vs. 1.5 ~11% better); but allocating energy vs. stamina becomes a personal preference. Stamina will allow you to farm more stats from raids, and energy will typically allow you to level faster plus deal more damage to Rare Spawn and World Raids. The achievement system of the game suggests a balance of 2 energy to 1 stamina.

5. Get a good ship - Ship power is a VERY large factor in the early part of the game for deciding how much damage you deal to raids. Good free ships drop from:
The Blue Drake (Professor Bonderbrand: 5m or 7.5m*)
Flying Saucer Mothership (Tourniquet 7.5: 5-7.5m*)
The S.S. Suck It, Humans! +Human (Robot Uprising: 5-7.5m*)
The Orbit Racer (level 200 Evolving Hero Vault)
The Human History Museum (Besalaad Exhibit Rampage: 100-500m)
Smythe R&D Vessel (Fungal Invasion: 100-500m)
Vengeful Pinata +Mechanized (Pinata's Revenge: 200m-1b)
Legacy of the Ancients +Cosmic (Ruins of the Forgotten: 500m - 6b)
The Saknussemm +Psychic +Cosmic (Shadow Parasites: 1-5b)
Party Spacebus +Elite (Elite Titanomachy: 100m - 6b)

It is also important to hunt down the officers Anita (from the Rylattu Exterminator alliance raid), Svana Spunbracher (from crafting word axes dropped from Blobs), and crew that synergize with both of them (Zombie Rautha and Zombie Ragnar from the Haunted House alliance raid, Mecha-Drakes from the Mecha-Wyrm alliance Raid).

Before you become able to seriously pump stats, your ship power will be all your damage. Eventually you should upgrade to a GS ship, one will generally be posted on the front page every few months and available for typically 1 weeks You will also need crew to fill your ship; you might look for a Noir 1 raid with BtR/ToW on it as this raid has some of the best free crew that are reasonably available to a newer player.

Other powerful, free crew include:
Lineage - Zone 22 (133 ship power with full equipment set and Officer) will fit in Any class slot.
Fawkes - Zone 15 (Shop for 1m credits)
Scalding Sussurran - Kleptotherms RS
Huk-Kral Juggler - special mission event
Piranha - Shadow Parasite raid (Saknusemm ship)
Corrupted Paragon - Hard Transdimensional Encounters Operations
Arcade Bots - Arcade Gas Attack and Monster
Gallassa Diver & Sussurran Biker - Hard Cyan Sea Operations

6. Raid Difficulty. If you summon a raid, make it either Normal (N) or Nightmare (NM) difficulty - Hard and Legendary raids are (with a few exceptions) worthless. Normal raids cater to stat farmers and NM raids cater to AP farmers, either way they will ensure your raid gets hit if you post it. For the early raids that you get, it generally makes more sense to summon them on NM difficulty, otherwise they simply die too fast. And these are also some of the smallest and rarest raids that almost always have epic loot that is available on NM only, therefore a newer player should typically summon all their raids on NM.

7. Spamming. Do not spam the same raid in chat - Common sense, this is just annoying. If you see others 'spam' it's because they're all different raids, that's what we call a raid train. If however it actually is just spam, kindly link them to this guide and tell them to read #7

8. Public Raids. Posting raids to the 'Public' list is the primary means of raid distribution (and you get rewards for making it Public). Note that small raids with low health will typically die within seconds or minutes of posting (e.g. Void Killer, Telemachus, CC Commander). Click the 'Post Red Alert' button inside the raid or the green satellite button in the raid list; then select 'Post Public' from the pop-up menu. To join a raid, click 'Raids' and then the 'Public' tab. Note that the search function is tied to their internal raid name so there's a few that may be hard to search for: 'Blood Alley Gang' = 'China'; Vorden = Seth; Dule = Emperor; Harlot = Scarlet Harlet; Blob = Shuborunth; Fleet Commander = Xarpa; Symphony = Where Music Meets; Councilor = Dule Warmaster; CC General = GeneralRahn; Cybersmash = Natasha; Psi-Echo = Sun Xi; the others should be intuitively named.

Historically, there were various raid sharing websites/tools for each platform used in the 2-3 years before 'Public' became an in-game feature:
Facebook: FB farming groups and the forums here http://www.legacyofathousandsuns.com...-Help-Requests
Kongregate: cconoly.com/lots/
Armor Games: http://citevirtuelle.fr/lots/tools/raids.php

9. Shortening links. The profile message character limit is lower than an actual raid link, meaning that if you try to paste a raid link on someone's profile, no one would be able to get to it because the relevant parts get cut off. To fix this, use a url shortener like preview.tinyurl.com or bit.ly or goo.gl etc. or alternatively you can do this:

Start with the full link pasted onto some place you can edit it, e.g. a new tab
http://www.kongregate.com/games/5thP...ash=VSk8Org9Nq

Remove everything before "kv_raid_id":
kv_raid_id=5118950&kv_difficulty=1&kv_raid_boss=sp ace_pox&kv_hash=VSk8Org9Nq

This is already short enough to post, but because the profile message chat space is limited in height and scrolling it is obnoxious, consider reducing it further to:
kv_raid_id=5118950&kv_hash=VSk8Org9Nq

IN essence, you only need what follows "kv_raid_id", an "&", and what follows "kv_hash" to join a raid. Copying this much reduced string and pasting it directly to your raid list will work just as well as the full link. This is also useful for sharing raids cross-platform.

10.Tactics.(http://zoywiki.com/LotS/items/Tactics) There are only a handful of usable/acceptable tactics. Using anything else will generally get you yelled at. An important note is that if you don't know/understand tactics, it is best to not place one and either ask for advice in Chat or just let other players place them. Tactics are extremely powerful and an important part of the community's raids. Puny tactics on larger raids will often cause them to be ignored and ultimately fail since optimal tactics often double or triple your damage.

Before the introduction of Bull/Gorgon Stare/SUH (more on this later) the most commonly used by brand new players and their abbreviations were as follows
Suppressive Fire (SF)
Esprit de Corps (EdC)
Flank Attack (FA)
Preparation (Prep)

The above 4 are collectively known as the EdC chain, due to all of them having synergy with each other. A full EdC chain adds +87% on every hit. As such, these were the most commonly used tactics. If you are very new player and do not have these tactics, ask politely in chat and someone will be glad to help you (e.g. you most likely will have Suppressive Fire, but will need another player to apply EdC for you to obtain the +45% damage boost).

Two new GS tactics that have outclassed EdC are Bull in a China Shop and Gorgon Stare. They nullify the effect of EdC and should not be combined on the same raid. Individually they add +28% and together they add +112%. The Zone 19 raids (Vunlac, R. Dule, Bethany, and Noir II) essentially require these tactics due to the fewer tactic slots and high damage required. Other useful tactics that you may see on raids include:

Legacy Forge (LF) - Granted upon reaching level 2500
Master Wu's Gambit - Obtained from Zone 20 on Nightmare difficulty, one of the best free tactics
Trojan Horse - Crafted in the Lab from collections obtained from Zone A5

Asymmetric Warfare (AW) - Only effective on small (10 man) raids, plus Pox/Temple/Luna/Reindeer/Termynx Parasite/CC Commander
Stan's Undying Heroism (SUH) - Granted upon reaching level 5000

Bull in a China Shop / Gorgon Stare(Bull/GS) - Effective when separate, especially effective together (Gold Sun tactics)
Collision Course - Gold Sun tactic
Broadside Cannons and Out of the Drift (Drift/Cannons) - Effective when separate, especially effective together. (Gold Sun tactics)
Take a Chance (TaC) - an old Gold Sun tactic with a fan following for it's 1.75% chance to double experience

Better to Recieve... (BtR) and Teachings of Wu (ToW) - Should only go on raids that are going to die soon as it doesn't contribute damage, or in the case of ToW, not significant damage. Raids that are certain to die regardless of tactics can have it on immediately (e.g. Bashan, Cake, Colonel). Note that these are only useful on older non-tiered raids. Everything from Trulcharn and newer is likely a tiered riad, and Quiskerian Temple and Space Pox are about the only examples of older raids with tiers.

In smaller alliances where Gold Sun tactics are not available, the EdC Chain, Teachings of Wu, Gambit and Legacy Forge are still often the most useful tactics. You may also see some of these other tactics: Plan 10 and Plan 11 - should only be used on a Huk-Kral raid, such as Subjugator and the alliance raids, Storm Trooper and Tank (but not on an Elite Subjugator because LF/gambit is 5% better and readily available).
Biological Warfare (BW) - Effective against organic humanoids and alien beasts.
Trick or Treat (ToT) - Effective on Nightmare and Legendary raids
Angel of Death (AoD) - Effective on Normal and Hard raids.

Quiskeran Psi-Eye (QPE) - Only effective on the Quiskeran Psi-Hound
Secret Weapon (SW) - Only effective against Genesis
Purge - Only effective against Space Pox and Infected Squad (Beaten out in power by Bull/Gorgon/BW/ToT/DfD)
Final Assault (FiA) - Old Gold Sun tactic, but still effective
Applied Scholarship (AS) - Effective against Alliance raids
Death from the Darkness (DftD/DD) - Effective against non-Alliance raids

Taking all of this together shows that tactics choices will vary greatly depending on what raid it is. A quick reference guide is shown here: tiny.cc/tacs2add. A detail overview of some good choices for tactics, sorted by number of tactics slots:
1 slot - AW +45% (if Small: Hao) or Gambit/LF/SUH for Plague (Medium raid)
2 slot - Warwalker, Hyper-Con, R. Dule and Vunlac: Bull/Gorgon +112% > EdC+SF +45%
2 slot - Small 10-man raids like CC Commander and Ragebeast: AW+ToW +45%+10%/loot > EdC+SF +45%
2 slot - Pox/Temple (Bull/Gorgon if available or AW + Gambit/LF/SUH)*
3 slot - Sapphire, Mothership, Bethany, Noir II (Bull/Gorgon + Gambit/LF/SUH) +157% > EdC/SF/FA +68%
3 slot - Low-health Medium 50-man raids like Void Killer, Carnus, Bashan (ToW+BtR+bull/GS)
4 Slot - Bull in a China Ship/Gorgon Stare/Legacy Forge/(either Gambit or SUH)
5 Slot - Bull/GS/LF/(gambit/TaC/SUH or Drift/Cannons)
6 Slot - Bull/GS/LF/(gambit/TaC/SUH or Drift Cannons)

It's inevitable that some bad tactics will be used though, if you are the owner of the raid, you can remove any tactic by double-clicking on. If you see Bull/Gorgon placed on a raid, do not place any part of the EdC chain. If you accidentally place a bad tactic, you can double-click to remove your own tactic on a general raid (non-alliance). Note that certain end-game, high FS raids like Weiqi, are almost guaranteed to fail if anything less than the best tactics are placed on them. For example, Suppressive Fire or Teachings of Wu placed on a Weiqi raid will cause it to be ignored and ultimately fail.

For alliances where bull/GS tactic owners are not available, typically the EdC chain plus Gambit and ToW are the most commonly used. The order that the EdC chain is placed is important to maximize damage while the raid tactics are incomplete (even more important for alliance raids). EdC+SF gives +45% and should always be placed first. EdC+FA will give a further +23% boost; and Preparation gives a +19% for a total of +87% (45% + 23% + 19%). If Flank Attack is placed on Bashan first, this is less than ideal as typically it will end up with FA+EdC + BtR; which is a +23% boost versus a +45% boost if it had SF for it's first tactic. On Telemachus, the most common 100-man raid, ideally EdC + SF + FA are placed with BtR to fill the 4th tactic slot to give it a +68% damage boost plus an extra epic loot. In a mixed alliance where Bull/GS are available, but not always at the same time, one idea to to have the Bull/GS holder place their tactic (28%) and then add Prepartion + SF (15%), this takes up 3 tactic slots but provides 43% boost similar in power to the 45% that could be provided with EdC+SF, especially if Gambit and LF can also be placed in other tactic slots. That way when a holder of the other tactic logs in, they can remove the Prep+SF to add their Bull/GS.

On low-health/valuable 'General' raids typically ToW and BtR will be placed and the last spot saved for a moderate tactic like bull/GS/Drift/Cannons. For example, Gambit should typically not be placed on Bashan, the most common 50-person raid, but rather just ToW/BtR/(something moderate) to fill it's 3 tactic slots because Gambit has a high damage spike and could prematurely kill the raid before 20-30 people have a chance to hit and share in the loot.

• Pox and Temple are small raids that need a lot of damage, Bull/Gorgon are the best if both are available (+112%), but if they are not available, AW+Gambit (45+45=90%) or AW+LF (45+60=105%) are effective and quickly available. Other spike damage tactics like ToT/BW provide a 4.1% chance at +645% on a single hit; or +26.5% on average over the series of hits it takes to hit a target loot tier (in other words, Gambit is stronger than these older GS tactics: 45%>26.5%).
  

Special note - Newbies and World Raids
A World Raid (WR) is just what it sounds like: a raid that everyone can join in and hit. World Raids are differentiated from regular raids in a number of ways.
1. Rarity - Only developers can summon world raids, and generally speaking, only 1 World Raid is summoned per month.
2. No health - World Raids are time-based. Where normal raids fail when the timer reaches 0, World Raids can only succeed at that point.
3. Ability to use all resources - WRs let you use Energy, Stamina, and Honor on it with an addition to the usual raid interface at the bottom.

A Rare Spawn (RS) is a 24-hour long World Raid that is not announced ahead of time, and is generally tied with the month's WR in some way. There is typically an in-game scrolling message when a RS appears and the game's home page will provide the link in bright-green text.

All information regarding timing of the WR and RS will be noted in the monthly State of the Game here: http://www.legacyofathousandsuns.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?2-News-and-Announcements

or in the weekly patch notes here: http://www.legacyofathousandsuns.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?4-Changes-Update-Logs

WRs require you to do a specific amount of damage to it in order to receive a specified amount of loot. To see what damage level yields what loot you should consult the loot table that is linked next to the raid on the game's home page. See the wiki for a list of World Raids and Rare Spawn.

As a newbie you will likely not do much damage to the WR, but if you use all or most of your stamina to hit the raids specified in #3, you should be able to pick up enough gear and ships to increase your damage output exponentially.


For Kongregate-specific players:

LoTS guide for DotD players: http://www.kongregate.com/forums/120-legacy-of-a-thousand-suns/topics/289847-lots-guide-for-dotd-players
^Some things to read when you are a bit more experienced.

If you plan on playing the game on Kongregate for a while, get the script. They make the game infinitely more playable.
Main script ("doomscript"): http://bit.ly/doomscript
Installations instructions: http://www.tinyurl.com/doomscript-docs

On Firefox, you must install Greasemonkey (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/greasemonkey/) for these scripts to work.
On Google Chrome, you must either add it from the Chrome store or install Tampermonkey and then the script.
These scripts do not work for Internet Explorer.

SPECIAL NOTICE TO KONGREGATE BADGE HUNTERS
If you do not intend to continue playing the game after getting your badges, only #3-8 apply to you. And you should ignore #2 completely and spend all your free GS to maximize your damage. Consider buying an expedition or one of the equips on the main page to that end.

Link to GodBot3000's original guide from November 2012: bit.ly/lotsqsg http://pastebin.com/mAKW1qUV