For what it's worth, after this mission things only get better.
I felt it was the absolute low point of the game as it is the one mission that seems completely luck based. If an enemy decides to go after Mindfire because they can't reach Doctrine, you lose.

I'm also stuck at this point in the game, must have played this mission half a dozen times by now and can't manage to kill more than half the enemies before dying. (am playing on casual difficulty and not trying for any optional objectives.)

The first phase of the battle shows how badly outmatched my Level 3 Mindfire is at this point in the game. It takes six rounds for him to kill three mooks: (vunlerable + telekenisis to do some damage, then move to avoid getting hit. End Turn. Repeat. It takes two hits like this to kill each mook.)

Then in phase 2 you're supposed to fight fifteen mooks, plus three Wukong, all at once?

Doctrine can theoretically tank forever, but he only has four adjacent squares for enemies to melee him from, so he can't draw all the aggro away from Mindfire.

Enemies have a lot of hp relative to the damage Mindfire and Doctrine can do, so at best you can hope to kill one enemy per turn. Or less than that if you're spending an action to disarm.

What ends up happening is: Doctrine tanks half the mob of enemies while Mindfire gradually moves back in a fighting retreat, being chased by the rest. I kill a handful of enemies before Mindfire has nowhere left to run and gets swamped.

Originally posted by HandyVac:

I'm also stuck at this point in the game, must have played this mission half a dozen times by now and can't manage to kill more than half the enemies before dying. (am playing on casual difficulty and not trying for any optional objectives.)

The first phase of the battle shows how badly outmatched my Level 3 Mindfire is at this point in the game. It takes six rounds for him to kill three mooks: (vunlerable + telekenisis to do some damage, then move to avoid getting hit. End Turn. Repeat. It takes two hits like this to kill each mook.)

Then in phase 2 you're supposed to fight fifteen mooks, plus three Wukong, all at once?

Doctrine can theoretically tank forever, but he only has four adjacent squares for enemies to melee him from, so he can't draw all the aggro away from Mindfire.

Enemies have a lot of hp relative to the damage Mindfire and Doctrine can do, so at best you can hope to kill one enemy per turn. Or less than that if you're spending an action to disarm.

What ends up happening is: Doctrine tanks half the mob of enemies while Mindfire gradually moves back in a fighting retreat, being chased by the rest. I kill a handful of enemies before Mindfire has nowhere left to run and gets swamped.

Same thing happened to me. Usually when swarmed by mooks, you can use Facet (especially with Mercurial) to cordon off areas to give you protection and then divide/conquer.

My Mindfire doesn't have such ability. I think there is a Push power but, even then, even with Focus you have only three power uses (with limited ranged) and Capes throws far too many characters (included elites who you have to "kill" multiple times) to deal with.

While I understand that this is a tactical game, it really limits your tactics quite often (pre-determined characters or limited number for example via plot). Also, it misses the superhero aspect; the power fantasy. The devlopers needed to lean into that a bit more. Even appropriate stat buffs at leveling up (movement for Rebound and Mercurial, Health for Facet, damage for Weathervane and Mindfire, etc...) would have done ton a lot of good.

Oh, just skip this level.

Straight up.

This is the level that the creators have already said they're putting eyes on, and for good reason. While there are some strategies you can learn to make it easier, you will get more than enough skill points and experience points elsewhere you just don't need to do it right away. Come back when Mindfire is level 5.

There are techniques to make this easier-focus fire the Wukongs the moment you have Barrage up, Use vulnerable on people you know Doctrine will counterattack or focus on and Advantage so he can get two attacks off per turn to take them down... and yeah, get the ability that lets you give someone initaitive boosts because letting Doctrine handle this fight for you is the way to go.

but for now? With an underleveled Mindfire?

Just skip it. You get enough other benefits from other missions you do not need to 100% all of this your first go through.

Its 4 devs and this game had no early access. this is exactly the type of thing a broad player base exposes. Capes will be a much better game in 3-6 months imho, just like almost every game these days.

The game doesnt suck, and this is not a testing problem. The mission is optional and the entire game is designed around returning to missions once you get stronger. You didnt upgrade Mindfire? Then you are going to have a bad time on this mission. Return once you invest some points into him, OR just dont do the mission.

This aint rocket science. Leave your ego at the door.

This is by far the worst mission in my opinion. Which can be good news, because then you can look forward to every other mission. It's possible to beat it on hard with all the optional objectives, but that's not a great way to spend your day. The first part is incredibly easy and you should have your ultimate charged at the start of part 2. But the scripted conversation combined with Doc repeating his line every single time will break your brain if you need to restart. Which you will.

The goon horde is annoying, but the real threat is the Wukongs. Normally they wouldn't be too tough, but the horde can make it tricky to target them. And if you aren't able to keep disarming or finish them quickly, they'll end up getting too many turns in a round and beat the snot out of you.

This gets combined with not being able to control Doc, who is liable to run off to the side and leave a clear lane open for enemies to flood towards MindFire, or just a punch a goon towards MindFire, makes the mission frustrating.


To make things easier, you can just turn down the difficulty. There's no reason to actually play the game on hard, and there's no achievements for doing so. It will ironically actually prevent you from earning some achievements. If you play on Hard, it's going to be game over with a mistake or two. Normal and easy allow for a few more slip ups and will make it feel less like a puzzle.


Then make sure to use the quicksave, load quicksave, and load checkpoint options. There's going to be a lot of experimentation to get the NPCs to move into ideal positions. Doc will charge at the nearest goon, so make sure you leave him a good option to run at. I would also recommend nuking one of the Wukongs early on. Then it becomes easier to disarm the other while still whittling down the horde, and dealing with the gun goons in particular. You can quicksave each round or two and load it up again if it didn't end how you wanted. If it turns out it's impossible, load the checkpoint and try something different.

Maybe it's cause I DID upgrade Mindfire, but I didn't have all that issue on this mission. Failed once, revised strategy and All in One'd it. Had MF's ult ready as soon as phase 2 popped and using the debuff was able to oblit the first wukong.

The trick, at least for me, it to focus the Wukong's if they're in range, or the melee if not. Do not disarm the gunners since that just leads to more melee. Once you have your super up again, burst down the Wukongs if still alive. And dont rush the Advantage optional if you have it. Focus on clearing the map as much as possible first.

Yeah dude, it was frustrating - took me like 10 retries. Just have to watch their positions, focus on the enhanced mostly - unless Doctrine is surrounded, then kill at least one of them to open up one side for him to be engaged. Completely forget about the disarm objective until you're down to the last enhanced. Just vulnerable and kill them ASAP - oh and get lucky that they don't kick doctrine into a corner, because one the melee sides are occupied, they focus on you

Yeah, luck being such an important part of success means it is terribly unbalanced. Luck should not be the primary factor in the completion of a mission.

I found the level beatable, one needs to grind mindfire to level four (but i made sure to revisit levels a few level laters to play them with upgrades)

One needs to end the first phase with mindfire fully charged, full health and far away from the foes.

Prep is key, once one did it, one uses the doc as meat shield.
casting vurnable on the people Doc going to punch can be quite effective, If you have a super ready, one can one round the suoer, vunerable, super, attack, attack.

Do not be afraid to move back, time is your ally, because of your meatshield. Do not worry too much about the Wukong foes, if they are the only ones left, they will just bully doc. and if one two charges away from a super, vurn, attack attack super.

I was able to beat this level after playing it several times. The key for me was to stay far away from the enemies and hold your ultimate power charges to only use on the Wukongs.

I agree it's the worst mission in the game, but I had no trouble with it. I guess I just upgraded Mindfire more?

Either way, the issue wasn't the difficulty for me but rather that it's just boring.
It takes a huge amount of time to just take the enemies one at a time while also losing actions for the bonus objective.

There just isn't much to do with just a single controllable character.

I spent 4 hours, but I still couldn't complete this mission. The top of the imbalance. The Wukuns make 6 moves per round! And they just don't let Mindfire or Doc act.

Yeah, at launch this mission was my biggest complaint. It's just a bad mission. I'm pretty sure the devs have a specific strategy in mind that prevents the enemy from getting out of hand, but with the fragility of Mindfire you are pretty much forced to hang back and pray you don't take aggro, which causes most players experience to devolve into waiting literally 10-15 minutes per round while Doc gets his head caved in. At best there needs to be a cap on the wukongs speed ability. At worst they need to scrap the level completely.

I can't honestly recommend any way to improve it. I'm glad I don't have to do it anymore, but seriously devs you messed up on this mission.

Originally posted by Just Another Gamer:

Well, the game has finally broken me. I am on the awful mission "Home Target" an am wondering "WTF were they thinking?!?!?!"

Seriously, Mindfire and Doctrine vs literally over a dozen agents, including super powered ones that take multiple "deaths" to overcome. Doctrine fails to impress beyond his "too stubborn to die" while Mindfire continues to be too weak to kill someone outright.

Even with Focus, MF can not disarm three Wukongs at once. And they get bored of killing Dotrine over and over again to instead come after Mindfire. Wow, what fun. Doctrine really show his tactical accumen when he decided to only bring himself to a gangfight. Apparently you are supposed to use an ability MF has to jump an ally ahead. Well.. don't have it.

Capes relies too much on hordes of mooks, the heroes are too weak, and it just isn't fun. Nor is the story that engaging. Also, what felt like unfair/unintuitive stealth.

I give props to the developers (all four, which is impressive) for creating the game with such limited resources. It just wasn't optimized well for gameplay, at least for me.

I wish the developers best of luck with their next game. Sadly, I won't be buying it without exceptional word of mouth.

We completely agree with you on this mission.
The next update will address this mission and bring it to a place that is far more manageable.