Just stopped working, good run though.

Sounds like a really intelligently designed enemy. Well done :0

It is immune to the stun portion of sting grenades but can be disoriented. I left it in because controlling the riftkeeper is one of the intended ways to deal with it. Suppression is also a good way to preevent Rift usage.

Have you made it immune to flashbangs, like the rest of bosses were in LW 1.5?

thanks

If you didnt do any changes, the max. number of enemies he can summon per turn is 4 (for the riftkeeper mk2) and his big rift ability has a large (!) cooldown so its not something he can do willy nilly. Also remember: a suppressed Riftkeeper cant summon units. I played with it on my own legend campaign, so I know its on the level i want it to be. If you want it to be weaker anyway, have a look at the mods inis ;).

Your enemy is cool but ...alowing him to call twice in one turn enemies ..makes the enemy un balanced. The calling twice would be ok ..if he only called 1 enemy per teleport but you can end up with 4 -7 enemies per turn over and over ..each turn. would suggest tuning it down a bit since he has a major hp/armor number.

I had a Rift as a reinforcement on a smash and grab mission. the rift kept summing enemies everyturn plus every turn the mission would also bring in new enemies. If you could, would suggest keeping the Rift from being able to spawn in as reinforcement on smash and grabs or limit the number of summing to 1 enemy

Hmmm... I think I don't have a save but I'll make one if it happens again. About the corpses, I didn't know it was by design so OK, I'll take it. Can't say I wasn't disappointed to lose some good corpses. Better yet! I must compliment you on the spawning system. It was very random but not "take a sectopod to the face" and even spawned some rare enemies from all the mods I have (and I run with like 500+ active mods) that I barely (or almost never) get to see with the crazy spawn weights this situation is making. Great job :D

Or it works like the chronosphere in the first Red Alert game: It ports the enemies to the Riftkeeper, but ports them back to their original place after some time, even if they are dead.

@teh1archon
Disorient works, I just tested it again. If you mean the particle effect is missing above the riftkeepers head: yes, he is too fat for that apparently. But the debuff is displayed correctly in the debuff list, and he cant use his psionic abilities. I also didnt notice anything abnormal for the summoned units. I could target them normally with shots and abilities. Maybe your case is special for some reason? I would need a savegame to further investigate, why it isnt working for you.

As for corpses: The interdimensional rift makes corpses desintegrate after lethal damage blabla [insert lore reason here]. The simple thing is: making those reinforcements farmable would be bad, like really bad for game balance. Cant make an enemy that is supposed to provide an additional challenge and then turn it into an endless loot fountain.

@LeaderEnemyBoss , you sure disorient works? I threw flashbang at a riftkepper and I didn't see the disorient icon.
Also I had a mission with a riftkeeper throwing tons of enemies at me. Much to my disappointment they didn't leave bodies at the end of the battle. It was troop column ambush so all the bodies are recoverable. Also at the turn the baddies were summoned they were un-targetable by abilities. I don't remember if I could shoot them or not but if I wanted to heywire, suppress and perform other non-standard shots I couldn't choose them as target until my next turn.

Riftkeepers are not immune to disorient from flashbangs (being blinded from physical sources doesnt count as mental damage internally). However I just tested around a bit and zombies get killed properly when flashbanging the riftkeeper. Stasis however doesnt get removed, which is intended. Its not a channeling effect, and when the players psi ops get disoriented/stunned/killed it doesnt remove stasis either.

You programmed this wrong. The riftkeeper unlike every other psychic in the game including the Avatars, continues his statis and zombie raise effects even if he is stunned or disoriented.

Awesome! Thank you for implementing it. :D

Released an update that includes the "Rift Anchor", an Item that has no use in tactical missions but lets you prioritize soldiers to be summoned by the Rift Beacon. Idea by Oberfuhrer-Raziel.

Thanks for considering it.

Huh ... thats actually a neat idea and programming wise it shouldn't be too hard. I'm currently a bit too busy to do anything more than normal bugfixes, but I will keep it in mind ;)

I wonder if it'd be possible to properly designate your rift reinforcement. As in, possible within your ability to code/program such a feature. The idea I had would be having a free item after researching the Keeper's corpse called "Rift Transmitter". Just have it equipped on the Operative you want to join the battle.

You could still keep the "High Rank Priority" feature in but to choose a specific Operative to be called in, I guess using up one utility slot seems like a good price for that. Otherwise, you could have the transmitter be single use and buildable.

Released a small compatibility update for LW2 1.3, since my old fix to sting grenades' interaction with mental immune units disabled the new 1.3 feature where some enemies are resistant to flashbangs/stings. Note: for now i didnt add a flashbang resistance to the riftkeeper since i feel it is important to be able to control it with more than just suppression. May change in the future if I ever feel its too weak ;)

@Felesmiki no, Nexus makes small updates a hassle and the process is unnecessarily complicated for little gain. You can also use the steam workshop version in your local mod folder, if you dont want to stay subscribed.

no chance u upload it to nexusmods?

(Goes to battle loaded with bluescreen rounds, emp grenades, and with as many explosives as he could carry.)

"I'm a genius."

-ALuX shortly before being murdered and reanimated by a giant floating eyeball

Very strong alien

@vuzgarm74 just post it in the discussion board, its also better for when you may have to update it for patches etc.

If you give me your mail I can send you the russian localization that I made for myself )))

Small update: there can now be two riftkeepers in the final mission to make it a bit more challenging. Also: fixed an old bug where riftkeepers affected by stasis would try to use their rift ability and waste their cooldowns.

An easy fix for now might be to just place two riftkeeper together in the final mission, should be a suitable challenge.

Well the final mission in general is a bid on the easier side. I may give him an escort there, but i cant really make him OP as a solo enemy against a full squad, if I also have to account for players running into him while they are fighting 10 other enemies on a supply raid ;). As far as i know pavonis plans to make the final mission a bit more challenging anyway.

ofc, i encountered a mk2. but i'm talking about final mission with 12 highest rank soldier + commander avatar. i have a ranger with shredder perk. and i bring assault who specialize in arc thrower. he just stun the riftkeeper 4 turn 100% hit (which easier to hit than gatekeeper). and that's it, coz he always be a solo pod? i think.

Did you encounter a normal riftkeeper or mk2? The normal one may indeed be a bit weaker than a gatekeeper effectively (has more hp, but summon lesser units and has weaker stasis than mk2). It is meant to be the "introduction" to this type of enemy until it gets replaced by the stronger version a few weeks later. In my current campaign i feel like at least the mk2 version is in a good place, but maybe a small defense buff is necessary.

with 25% defense (on veteran). it might be considered as weaker than gatekeeper, imo.

Minor Update: Units summoned by the Riftkeepers no longer drop corpses. I noticed that keeping the riftkeeper alive more or less makes them become lootpinatas. Can't have that.

The item was designed for vanilla where it was a goldsink for a time when gold was readily available. I may lower the cost in future updates for LW2. Also if you used it once per campaign: that is exactly how the item is intended to be used ;).

As much as I loved the riftkeeper as a sizable threat and enemy i had to deal with, the reward of the rift beacon just never feels worth the cost of the supplies it takes to build a one shot item which is destroyed after use, the most i might do is build it for the final mission.

I have enough difficulity with the LW as it is without having my old arch nemeis returning

Small Update:
My custom fix of Sting grenades actually broke blue screen protocol for them. This update fixes this issue.
Also small balance adjustments:
- The Riftbeacon now costs 3 corpses on all difficulties
- Riftkeeper spawn slightly more often on non-timed missions

Thanks!

it summons one soldier

How many soldiers does this summon?

Yeah, you can make incredible spell-like effects in games that act as real game-changers if you limit their use so that they're not happening every mission. I totally get that you'd need to make these expendible.

New Update just got released. Sting grenades now properly disorient riftkeepers. Suppression prevents them from creating Rifts, but not from using their Psi Abilities!

Fair enough, I can appreciate that reasoning.

What use would an Item be that is intended to bring reinforcements, when you can bring less troops in the first place? Look, I know not everyone likes limited items, but I know exactly why I did it this way. Limiting Items allows me to create unique new ones that would be OP otherwhise. If you want the game to be easier, fine, you are free to edit around. But I will probably not change the basic design of it.

Why not have a hefty (maybe 2, 3x?) infiltration time cost?

Just FYI: there are currently two issues. 1.: Rikftkeepers are immune to stinggrenades (not to flashbangs!) ..this is actually a bug in LW2 (Avatars are the same), 2: Suppression doesnt prevent the Riftkeeper from using its abilities. I will probably make the Rift abilities suppressable, but not the psionic abilities (stasis and Consume) as psionic abilities typically arent affected by suppression.

You mean you want it to be usable every mission? Will not happen (because it would be stupidly OP). If you want to spam it you can also just make it cost nothing.

Can we get an ini setting to not remove the Beacon from the inventory outright?

yes these are the templates

@Forest_noir thank you for your feedback. I will do a big playtest session tomorrow and will see. In general I dont want to restrict the rift ability (or it just becomes a big non threatening hp ball). I would rather nerf its stats somewhat or make the summons weaker. Also remember that you can blind/suppress it to prevent ability use.

@LeaderEnemyBoss - Out of curiosity, what are the enemy templates?

"Riftkeeper" and "RiftkeeperMk2"?

@Kexx - How do you go about that, unlocking bosses for its rifts? I'd imagine you went through the missions.ini. Would you mind if you shared your custom values? The idea sounds fun. And maybe I can use them as a reference to tweak in my own preferences.

I have played with Riftkeeper in vanilla XCOM2 in legend difficulty with ABA2, Grenades Damage Falloff mod and Non-Mimic Beacons house rule. Its a cool and tough Boss enemy. I could handle it in vanilla game, but it can beat me in legend diffculty LW2 campaign. Becasue there is so much things reduce alpha strike and increase difficulty in LW2, such as graze mechanism, cover bonus improvement and nerf for cover destruction, yellow alert attacking, noise attract pod etc. Due to sumoon ability every turn by Riftkeeper, this make unlimited times mission become impossible.

I suggest rebalance the summon ability. Such as 1 turn cooldown or a check system to activate summon when there lack of enemy around him.