Aliens: Dark Descent How To Survive Nightmare

Hello, and thanks for taking a moment to read.

In this guide are the methods I used to clear nightmare/no one can hear them scream mode.

The tips herein will help you maximize your chances to one-shot missions. Why one-shot you might ask? Simple. If you can clear full missions on the first try, you will maximize the experience for the marines on that mission, so your classes will level up faster. You will also give yourself the breathing room between missions to let your core squad rest and recover so that you bring your best team into every mission, thereby letting them gain more experience.

Higher level marines have access to better skills, more perks and passives, and better weapons. Which translates directly to you having an easier time when the missions get harder.

There will be some spoilers in here, so read on at your own peril.

The first and most important tip for this game is that the game is trying to get you to hurry up.

Yeah, you have a doomsday timer. And you don’t want to take extra days. But in the middle of a mission, when Harper asks you if you’re looking for a good spot for a picnic? You have zero time limit. Relax. Sit back. Watch enemy movement from a concealed location. Wait for your opening and sneak from point A to point B. Wait for that roaming enemy to leave earshot range (your squad lead’s motion tracker) before blowing up that wall.

The fastest way to end up dead is to run in guns blazing.

The second most important tip is that motion trackers can be placed wherever you want. They cost one command point, and command points regenerate. Place motion trackers. A lot of them.

Motion Trackers

Yeah, they get their own section.

If you stick a motion tracker in a relatively out of the way place, they’ll do two things.

1) They will allow you to overload them, and draw enemies in (useful in a pinch, especially when placed by ARC/APC locations — just be aware that the ARC/APC can run them over and destroy them).
2) They will let you see anything that moves in a 60m radius of them.

Since the map is persistent, if you place motion trackers so that their vision ranges cover the map, you can see where every single enemy is at all times.

Controls

It’s important to keep a few things in mind.

1) You cannot pause/slow while the map is open.
2) Opening the map cancels the pause/slow state.

Your first line of defense should be to pause. Even if you need to escape, you can plot your escape while the command menu is open and you have all the time in the world. Open the map and your marines will stand their ground and do their best.

Explore every nook and cranny. The goal is to never have to come back to a map. Clean out supplies and ammo. Take as many tools, sentry guns, and med-packs back to the Otago as you can.

The map is your friend. If you’ve been in a room, you can zoom in slightly and see if there are any pickups remaining.

Extract survivors as a priority. Engineers passively give you supplies every day. Medics mean you can get your squad back on its feet faster.

Complete every secondary objective that you can. Experience is not gained by killing xenos, but by surviving onslaughts, and completing objectives.

Until you get a level 6 sergeant, when you start pushing north of 65% stress, start making a plan to get to a safe room and rest. Mitigating stress damage is going to be the name of the game. So for the first few missions, rest often, and try to avoid gaining trauma.

The sergeant gets the best ability in the game at level 6: Reprimand. Reprimand stops your squad from taking any stress damage for 30 seconds. Hunted? No stress. Onslaught? No stress. The hardest thing in any mission is when stress/trauma start accruing. Your squad loses accuracy, starts to get negative traits, and the downward spiral begins. Reprimand stops that before it can even start.

Even better? Liberal usage of reprimand will stop your marines from ever accruing enough stress to gain trauma. My entire playthrough of nightmare ended with exactly one marine having exactly one stress pip. All game long.

I’m going to underline this again – sergeants = longer in-mission time because stress gains far more slowly, and less downtime between missions because you don’t need to wait for your main squad to reduce trauma in psychotherapy.

Sergeants are also amazing because they increase available command points by 1, and increase the rate at which they regenerate.

Recon has three important abilities – Silencer, Infrared Goggles, and Passive Fast

Silencer is all over other guides. Your sniper shot makes zero noise. Careful movement lets you take out entire patrols of human enemies, roaming xenos, even eggs without making a single sound. Remember how many times I’ve harped on mitigating stress damage? There’s no easier way to mitigate stress damage than to silently kill an enemy before it ever knows you’re there.

Infrared goggles let you see any enemy within 10m of your squad when using the flashlight. Through walls and doors. Even enemies that don’t show up on the motion tracker, like sleeping drones. If you hear one of your marines whisper that a drone didn’t see them, but you’re not seeing the drone, you can sweep using your flashlight and any nearby enemies will glow green.

Passive fast applies fast to your squad, but doesn’t stack with other fast perks. Functionally, you get fast without having to actually pick it as a perk.

The Tecker, I will admit, was a class I slept on my first playthrough. Don’t make my mistake. The Tecker can bypass doors for free at level 10, as well as repair synthetics for free.

But more importantly, the Tecker gets a drone.

The drone can be upgraded to weld/unweld doors. The drone can be moved independently of the squad. And the drone can be used to make noise.

Xenos do not react to seeing the drone. While humans do, it’s still the line that slowly turns red, so you can maneuver away/out of sight.

Using the drone, you can scout most maps in full. And much more fun, you can use the noise from the drone to lure enemies where you want them to go. For instance, away from a crucial point where you need to sneak. Or maybe into a dead-end corridor where you have cleverly placed a small army of sentry turrets.

Note that this won’t work always, as some enemies are scripted to be in certain rooms. Especially in the Montero this is something of a coin flip.

The gunner has one important ability – High Impact Rounds. Your squad’s suppressive fire ability slows down enemies even more. This does not require the smart gun to perform.

Give your squad more time to kill the things before the things reach them. Simple as that.

The medic has some useful abilities. It’s nice to passively regain health when you rest. But I don’t use medics anymore. Your squad will likely take damage, but every other class gives your squad a much more beneficial ability than healing faster.

For your squad, I recommend two sergeants (one initially, until you get the APC), a recon, a tecker, and a gunner.

For the sergeant, take the upgrade that gives you an extra command point and the upgrade that regenerates command points faster.

For the recon, take silencer, and IR goggles.

For the gunner, take high-impact rounds.

For the tecker, take the drone, and give it the ability to weld.

Side note regarding the battle drone upgrade: I don’t recommend it. It gives you another submachine gun, but it requires manually reloading and takes an ammo clip to do so. It runs out of ammo too quickly to make much of a dent in an onslaught, and ammo clips can be in short supply early on.

Once your core abilities are in place, I recommend giving at least three marines an extra starting clip, and three marines extra storage pouches. Give everyone wider clips. The less frequently you have to reload during a gunfight the happier you will be.

When giving your squad the individual level perks, prioritize them accordingly:
Accuracy, Crit/Dismember, Unbreakable Will, Hardened, Quick Hands, Resourceful (try for at least 3) Tough, Avenger, Enduring, Looter

Redemption is a judgment call. It’s generally easier to not use a marine with a truly negative trait (like Gloomy, where everyone takes stress damage even when undetected). But the game also forces the initial four squad members on you, so rather than climb the level ladder with a different marine, it might be easier to just get rid of a negative trait.

Don’t bother with Fast, as your Recon marine will automatically get it at level 6 and any Fast you’ve taken won’t stack with it. Looter is also not super useful, nor is the passive trauma reduction as using Reprimand means you won’t accrue enough stress to have any trauma in the first place.

I’m putting this here because it’s the best weapon you have. It does not draw aggro from enemies, and is invulnerable. And it can move to certain set points. If you’re taking my advice to put motion trackers so that you can see what’s happening on the map then you can see where large patrols are heading. And send your death truck to meet them.

If you know an onslaught is coming, you can return to the AR/PC, let a xeno see you, and set up your defenses to have a huge cannon helping your marines and your sentry guns deal with the wave.

Strong weapon. The reload time is relatively short. The real star here is the grenade launcher. Grenades are excellent for clearing eggs before you get the Incinerator, and great for dealing AOE damage to enemies.

Just be aware that grenades cause damage to your squad, too.

The clip size is nice. The reload time and unimpressive damage are not. Yeah, it’s deployable as a sentry gun, but that means that you’re willingly limiting the angle at which you can fire it, and you’re relegating your gunner to their secondary weapon.

Not worth the investment.

More impressive damage. Good clip size. Takes a full calendar year to reload. Removes the grenade launcher. Net negative.

Not worth the investment.

Fantastic damage output. Decent clip size. Good reload time. The secondary fire is a wide beam that pierces all enemies and deals strong damage. Just be aware that there is a cool-down on the secondary fire that makes the rifle unusable for 30 seconds or so. Your marine will swap to their sidearm.

Must buy.

If I’m honest, I never used this weapon.

Not worth the investment. 6 round clip, 1-3 damage per bullet. That means one clip deals somewhere between 6-18 damage, and on average 12. That’s the same as a pistol.

Solid performer. 48 round clip, good rate of fire. Incredibly useful as a sidearm when you have recently microwaved a bunch of xenos with your secondary fire on the Plasma Rifle.

Absolute life-saver. Always keep one in your party, if not more.

Absolute must-buy. Along with the silencer upgrade for your Recon. Generally speaking, if you have 3-4+ inches of yellow line between you and an enemy, that enemy will die before they see you. When it’s silenced it makes zero sound.

Be advised that it will not one-shot Praetorians or Crushers (or Queens, obviously)

Phenomenal in two roles. Area denial, and egg removal.

Enemies will not walk through fire. This puts fire down in a rather wide area if you click and drag. You get to set the path an enemy has to take to get to you.

Also, eggs die quickly to this.

Useful against category 2 xenos and queens. Deals significant damage.

Just be aware that it takes a moment to fire, and the RPG has travel time. If an enemy is moving toward you, they’re an easy target. But at any kind of angle, it takes some practice to reliably hit them.

I don’t buy this until/unless I’m running 5 level 10 marines with Plasma Rifles. Then, and only then, it’s useful as a replacement to the Pulse Rifle grenade launcher.

I have never used mines.

I would rather use command points on Reprimand, Motion Trackers, or Sniper Shots. Sentry guns are a better option if you want to lure enemies into harms way.

In my opinion, there are two xeno-techs that are life-savers, one that is very nice to have, and one that is kind of nice if you’ve got extra samples (and you’re sure you do).

Essential. Y’know how xenos are walking, biting, grumpy acid balloons? If you have even one pip of armor remaining, you take zero damage when they pop on you now.

I cannot overstate how useful this is to have. Your armor will last MUCH longer into missions (I was able to regularly extract marines with armor remaining having 100%-ed the map). Combine this with Hardened. As soon as you can.

You get this a bit later in the game, but it’s worth keeping some extra samples around for. 10 samples per application and it reduces the infestation level on the planet by 1 pip. As near as I can tell, the number level of the infestation matter, the pips do not. So if you’re at max infestation (5), and you apply this once, it takes it back down a full level to 4, even though the next day the level will go back to 5.

This makes later missions much more manageable.

Aliens take longer to notice you. It’s helpful, but not necessarily essential. However, if one of your core squad has the Clumsy trait, this offsets that debuff and becomes MUCH more impactful.

The Hive aggressiveness builds more slowly. This is far from the worst thing in the world, but taking your time, and understanding how to stop hunts quickly can kind of make this redundant. On the last mission, this is VERY useful however.

Drones – will try to get in close and do damage. The shotgun is your friend when lots of drones are around.

Runners – fast little suckers. Ideally, you can find a long hallway/open area and let your Recon snipe them.

Warriors – they jump. And knock down everyone in the area they land in. If you see a small cone appear on the ground, move your squad out of it. Fast.

Praetorians – screamers. They’re irritating because they’ll run away when they’re injured and then scream to summon reinforcements. The best way to deal with them is to trap them with sentry guns and lure them in. They’ll take damage all the way to the guns and then all the way as they run away, and hopefully die before they escape the kill zone.

Crushers – big, beefy, lots of health. Sentry guns are incredibly useful to give you some extra damage. If they charge, move perpendicular to get away from them. Suppressive fire is helpful to give your squad extra time to kill it before it gets to you.

Queens – usually surrounded by eggs. Again, set up some sentry guns and lure them into your kill zone. Have a command point or two ready to launch grenades/lay down some fire to kill the Facehuggers.

Cultists – melee or ranged. If ranged, get behind half-cover IMMEDIATELY or they will chew through your armor/health. If melee, keep your distance and take them down quickly.

Guardians – same tactics for ranged cultists, just more health, and faster to chew through your health and armor.

For all ranged humans, suppressive fire isn’t helpful, because they’ll just duck behind cover and you waste a bunch of ammo.

Eggs get their own category because they have an odd peculiarity in their behavior.

Eggs don’t trigger hunts. The eggs have a yellow line that turns red before they notice you. Then they open. Then the Facehugger that comes out has its own yellow line that has to turn red.

So you can walk into a room full of eggs, lay down some fire to kill them, and leave as they notice you and open. You still have a bit of wiggle room before the Huggers can trigger a hunt. If you’re back out of sight as the Huggers leave the eggs and die in the fire, you’ll remain undetected. Just have a backup plan in case things go sideways.

Hunts are bad. They increase the amount of xenos roaming around in the map, and start spawning onslaughts and category 2 xenos for you to deal with.

There are a few things to keep in mind about them.

1. Hunts are immediately interrupted if you take an elevator to a different floor
2. Hunts are immediately interrupted if you weld all the doors in a safe room shut
3. Onslaughts will reset hunt timers to maximum.
4. The spawn point that the onslaught will spawn from will be highlighted on the map once the onslaught is announced.

Let’s say that you notice that your next hunt is guaranteed to trigger an onslaught. It might be a good idea to set up a trap and lure a xeno into it so that it triggers the hunt and therefore the onslaught. That way you can handle the onslaught on your terms rather than have to scramble to find a defensive position on the fly.

Also plan for the fact that onslaughts reset the hunt timer. If you’re getting toward the end of an aggression level, it might be wiser to prioritize interrupting the hunt rather than let the onslaught trigger and reset the timer.

On the flip-side. If you’re already in a hunt, you can’t trigger a second one. So you have some more ability to make noise, or clear out an egg room. Just keep in mind where your nearby spawn points are so that you don’t have a xeno show up at a bad angle or bad time.

I advocate having one squad and bringing them on every mission. You get the most experience the fastest this way.

The notable exception is the “Defend the Otago” mission. You don’t really need your A-team on this one. You can get away with sending in some randos to take care of it.

Healing occurs passively as well as actively. If you have a marine who is tired, it takes 2-3 days for them to lose the debuff. Focus your active healing elsewhere until the tired effect is removed. Otherwise, even if you heal them, you still have to wait for them to not be tired anymore.

At a certain point, you’ll gain the ability to bring a 5th marine along. Once you get to the Atmospheric Processer, you’ll get the APC and the aforementioned upgrade.

So plan for it.

When you get the ability to train marines, Put everyone in training. Then pull the marine you’re going to be adding into your primary squad before launching that mission so that they can rest. This way you minimize the gap in levels from the primary squad to the newbie.