I always play Wolfen.
In Eridani I'll do a mission for one of the commonwealth residentials, quick run through all of the planets, the inner asteroid belt, and asteroid clusters, wiping out all of the enemy stations, then I'll loop through the outer belt wiping out centauri stations, and avoiding Arco. Once I've destroyed all the Centauri stations, I run to Raisu station, and then make a beeline for Arco, taking him out quickly with my missiles. If I did this all fast enough, I'll have managed this using nothing but my starting fuel rods.
I then sell most of the loot, keeping anything better than what I have, and holding on to the centauri rice for now. I try to sell it to an ice farm, but if I don't find one in the next few systems, and I need the money, I sell to an enclave.
Then I'll methodically continue onward, clearing out enemy stations, until I reach Charon. At this point I'll try to have a 100MW reactor, and Class III or monopole shield at least. I should always have a dual turbolaser + collimator by now, I'll stockpile damaged turbos and tinker them, if I need to.
Then I'll backtrack and complete all of the Korolov missions, avoiding the Kronosaurus, I'll aim to get the Class V deflector. Once that's taken care off, I complete the battle arena and use the +50% shield rom on my Class V. Then I assemble my Charon and beyond set.
Primary weapon: x-ray laser + collimator, dual flenser + accelerator, dual particle, I prefer the other two.
Secondary weapon: A mark III howitzer, I'll settle for a mark I if I need too.
Launcher:NAMI missile launcher, of course. I should have plenty of missiles for it by now.
Shield:Class V +50%, of course.
Armor:Heavy blast plate.
With this build, and with a lot of missiles, I've successfully defended the Charon Korolov about half of the time, and the rest of Charon is pretty easy.
If I'm lucky, I'll find a Bushido merchant in St K's, regardless, when I finally find one, I'll purchase a full set of carbide carapace, 300 HP each, and order four barrels of dyon dust to protect me from those irritating Dwarg masters.
With that set of equipment, I'll survive until I reach Ares space, where I'll upgrade to a mammoth 100 + molbidium crystal, Katana star cannon + Bushido enhancer, and a Fussionfire howitzer + speed loader. I'll order tritium injectors to get the FFH up to 150%, and upgrade the katana with +fast.
Eventually I'll hit the rin economy, and work on acquiring my endgame equipment.
Primary weapon: Lamplighter archcannon +fast.
Secondary weapon: FFH +150% +fast.
Launcher: Ares launcher, if I can get it. Otherwise I'll just skip the launcher, nothing else is worth the weight in the end game.
Shield: Taikon 200 +150%, I'll use found longzhu spheres and diamond field crystals for this. I only need a total of 14, so it's not hard to acquire.
Armor: Quadrocarbide + orthosteel nanos. 600 HP
In Heretic I'll aim for the Commonwealth Anomaly mission, the Ringers Huygen mission, and the Taikon Xenophobe mission. I'll use all my stored up gems of contrition to make the xenophobe mission easier, and protect stations from the lobsters, if necessary. They don't work on the command ship so I might as well use them now.
I've played through, and won, almost a dozen permadeath games with this strategy. I've never lost once I've made it to Rigel Aurelius.
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