Once I found a source for water and food. I started putting my efforts and just exploring a couple of tiles out from my base in every direction. I wanted to make sure there was not something super useful just within my grasp that I would have wished I discovered sooner.

Sometimes while out, I would just be doing it to waste some time. As I was waiting for a couple of days' worth of unit cap increase. Other times I was just a couple of points away from something I wanted on the tech tree.

On one such outing in the forest, some creatures ended up approaching me. I thought for sure there was about to be another fight on my hands. It turns out they just wanted to join me instead.

One of them was quite massive. I would learn to hate having to come into combat against such creatures in the future. They would shoot deadly poison all over the place. Along with causing quite some trouble.

It’s a shame my time using that unit in what seemed like a never-ending wave of fights only lasted a while. It was tempting to want to look into if I could end up breeding my own. I however decided with how massive they are in combat that they were a bit bulky to use.

One type of unit I did end up heavily favoring quite early on was anything with ranged combat. There ended up just being so many situations where having a unit that could snipe came quite in handy.

Sometimes creatures I'd be dealing with would drop traps around the map that would explode if you came too close to them. Other times units would pull you in closer to them or even over a cliff. Being able to deal with such threats at range among many other things came quite in handy.

I also came across some sites that I could loot. Sometimes they were rather easy to get loot out of them. Like this one where I could just control the machine and get a fat 600 units of a resource out of it.

Other times things were a bit riskier. I’d have to put my hand down some dark hole. Often getting nothing at all or finding myself facing death itself. I would even find loot in animal dung but I try not to think about all the times I went searching through such things to come out with just smelly hands!

I was getting back to my base late one evening when I was informed by my people that they had detected creatures on the move. With the path they were taking it was quite clear my base was right in the middle of their path. At best, they felt we had 10 days to prepare.

I ordered my men to put up what turrets we had along with some walls. Our defenses in those early days were not the best. I also had no clue what I was doing or even the capabilities of the turrets we were using even had.

While it was quite all over the place and a total disaster. We somehow survived. It was clear I was not spending enough resources on upgrading our defenses. A mistake I would do my best to not repeat in the future.

Thankfully a couple of waves of creatures that attacked the base were small. I could have dealt with them just with the army I had with me. At the very least this gave me some much-needed insight into how base defense was going to work.

With how I was at least able to hold my own I decided I'd go take a second crack at a dungeon. I wanted to keep exploring south anyway since I did not have much of a direction of what I should be putting a heavy focus on next.

This place was quite grim, to say the least. Piles of bones and blood everywhere. I can only assume some kinds of sacrifice were being made on the tables above. I however did not want to stick around too long to find out myself.

Those that were inhabiting this dungeon were also not so pleased to see me down there. After running into a couple of groups I had to make a mad dash for the exit. I ended up spending part of the day hiking what was left by my army back to the base to rebuild and resupply.

We then went for another attempt at the place. I was kind of shocked at how easy some of the fights I kept running into were. I felt maybe this place was not going to be so bad after all. I also wanted to find some phat loot.

That was till I came to the dungeons boss. It quickly ate my army and sent me packing. It seems the confidence I had quickly gained would be deflated like a balloon. It would be some time before I decided to take a crack at this place again. Discovering what the boss was guarding would have to be discovered on a different day.

Feeling quite defeated I spent the next few days looking for easy fights and rebuilding my army. I also spent some time looking over the tech tree planning out what I could get to increase my survival ability in combat.

It turns out I could increase the damage to the units I was starting to use in every situation by a decent amount. Along with increasing how many of them could be in a single unit as well. The downside is I always struggled to have enough to go around. I would sometimes spend days in my base waiting for the next day just to pump out more units.

Final Thoughts

Well, things are starting to shape up in quite a strange way. I’ve had some combat success and some setbacks. At least my base survived. It’s also strange to want to go check out dung piles for loot. That was not something I ever thought I'd have to be doing. I am however on an alien planet and things are that dire.

Perhaps next time I end up facing some nasty creature I'll be more prepared for it. I kind of had a feeling that the boss would destroy me quickly. There was only one way to make sure that would have been how things ended. It would not have been my first time underestimating my units. This time however I was not wrong that things would end up going poorly.

Information

Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Xenowars (I don’t make anything from this tracking link).

Disclosure: A review copy of the game was received for free.