Hey folks.
I have completed Steamworld Heist 2 twice (once on Veteran, once on Elite), and wanted to capture some of the information I learned across that time. My hope is that this will help players that are struggling so they can get over whatever hurdles they’re currently stuck on.
The basic breakdown of the guide is as follows:
- An overview of Skills that most crew members will benefit from
- Basic Skill synergies for many common problems in Steamworld Heist 2
- Character builds, and recommendations for which crew members to use them on
- Miscellaneous notes I didn’t have a proper section for
It probably goes without saying, but there will be spoilers throughout this guide. I did try to keep it to a minimum though. Potential spoilers are outlined for convenience.
Additionally, I do check comments daily, so if you have any questions, I can try fielding them below.
With all of that out of the way, let’s get into things.
Table of Contents
Useful Skills
Spoiler Warning: I’m going to discuss the upgraded versions of some of the Skills during this section of the guide. I also talk about a level 4 Skill for one of the classes, which is only notable because Steamworld Heist 2 hides all of the level 4, and 5 Skills.
Slot Machine
If I were to include a tier list of all the Skills in Steamworld Heist 2, then Slot Machine would be in a tier by itself at the very top of the chart. Slot Machine is the only Skill in the game that every single crew member should, without question, have.
Slot Machine provides crew members with an additional equipment slot. By default, everyone has a single equipment slot. This can be upgraded to 2 equipment slots once players enter Shiner’s Cove. Slot Machine provides access to the third, and final, equipment slot.
It should go without saying, but there are a ton of benefits to having a third equipment slot. It gives you more room to stack passive boosting items, healing items, or offensive sidearms like pistols, and grenades. This has the effect of making every member of your crew more flexible in combat, so everyone should have Slot Machine equipped at all times.
It’s also worth mentioning that Slot Machine can be upgraded once players reach the Frozen Fjords. Slot Machine+ doesn’t cost any cogs to equip, so it will always be enabled.
Rage
This is easily my favourite Skill in Steamworld Heist 2.
Rage allows crew members to deal 1 additional point of damage when they’ve lost 3 Health. This is one of the only ways to provide a near constant source of additional damage, and will often help push a character’s damage to the point where they can consistently one-shot enemies.
Rage becomes even better once you unlock its upgrade: Rage+ stacks indefinitely. This means that you gain additional damage output for every 3 Health your character has lost. Late-game enemies on Elite difficulty have just enough health to be annoying to scrap, but Rage+ completely flips the script allowing your characters to deal 3 to 5 extra damage every single time they attack. This does come with the trade-off of needing to play on the razor’s edge of death, but the additional damage from Rage is absolutely worth it.
Hardshell
Hardshell reduces the damage from the first attack that a character receives every single turn by 1 damage. The benefits of that should be self-evident. Hardshell greatly extends the survivability of every single crew member, and will allow them to soak additional hits.
If you’re concerned about how this will scale into the late game, don’t be. Hardshell can be upgraded to block 2 damage, which helps it continue to function during the back-half of Steamworld Heist 2’s campaign.
Backbiter
Backbiter is a fairly straightforward Skill: you shoot someone in the back, and deal additional damage. The damage boost is always 1 point, which is very strong in the early game, but lacks the same oomph by the mid to late-game. Regardless, it’s never a good idea to turn your nose up at additional damage while fighting enemies with inflated Health on higher difficulties.
Once you unlock the Skill Upgrade Station, Backbiter is the first Skill that you should upgrade. This is because Backbiter+ ignores all enemy armor. This is the only Skill in the game that has armor penetration, and is one of your only meaningful ways to fight against armored foes. You don’t need to run Backbiter+ on everyone, but, once you make it to Shiner’s Cove, you’ll want to have someone with it equipped in every single level. Armor is way too common for players to enter a level without a solution to deal with it.
Amped Up
This is the first of 3 more fringe options, but Amped Up can be quite useful. It provides 1 point of additional damage to all nearby allies. When an ally is under the effects of Amped Up, the caster also receives the benefit. Ergo, it’s an easy way to boost your damage output.
The only problem with Amped Up is that it requires you to keep your squad bunched up. Sometimes that’s not possible if you need to separate your different crew members to complete a mission’s side objective, or you may find there isn’t enough cover for your squad to hunker down somewhere.
Regardless, having the ability to leverage Amped Up when it is convenient to do so will provide your entire squad with much needed additional damage output.
Free Sidearm
This is another favourite of mine.
Free Sidearm allows all pistols to become free actions, so they won’t cost AP to fire. This means that you can move, and shoot twice in a turn. This, as you might imagine, has a ton of application, and makes clearing reinforcements, or an entire room of enemies a lot easier.
It also synergizes quite well with a handful of different Skills, but I’ll touch on that later in the guide.
Squeeze
Finally we have Squeeze. It allows you to bring an additional charge of any equipment item that has charges into battle. For example: instead of bringing a single grenade into battle, you’d have 2. There are a lot of handy applications for this, but the most notable is that you can use fewer equipment slots to bring more equipment into each level. This opens those slots up to contain passive stat boosters, or additional sidearms. What you decide to bring is really up to you.
I’m aware that this Skill requires you to reach level 4 as a Boomer in order to unlock it. That’s a pretty sizable investment, but a lot of characters benefit from having access to Squeeze. It lets you get a lot more mileage out of your existing items, while also freeing up pocket space on all of your characters. Besides, having additional grenade charges always makes for a useful panic button response to enemy reinforcements.
Useful Skill Synergies
Spoiler Warning: I’m going to discuss the upgraded versions of some of the Skills during this section of the guide. I’ll also be mentioning several of the hidden level 4, and 5 Skills from various classes.
Rage and Thick Plating
I’d argue that this is one of the most essential Skill pairings in Steamworld Heist 2. Late-game enemies have a lot of Health, and Rage helps give most characters that extra bit of damage to secure kills without needing to rely on chance based Critical Hits.
As already mentioned, Rage provides an additional point of damage when a crew member has lost 3 points of Health. This is one of the most consistent ways to boost a crew member’s damage output across an entire level. This becomes even more potent after Rage is upgraded into Rage+, which allows it to stack. That can snowball into a huge 3 to 5 damage boost every single turn depending on how much Health your character has lost.
Thick Plating simply increases a character’s Health by 1 permanently. Normally you need to get a class to level 5 to get this Skill, but the Boomer class also has it at levels 2, and 3. As such, getting any crew member to level 3 as a Boomer can help to give them a nice boost to their Health.
The synergy between these 2 Skills should be self-evident: more total Health means you can stack more Rage damage buffs. This will put you on the razor’s edge of death, but you’ll be doing so much damage with 3, or more stacks of Rage+ that most enemies won’t even get a chance to shoot at you.
Build Cover and Fortify
This one is fairly straightforward, and easily the best set of support skills you can throw on a character.
Build Cover is self explanatory. It lets you build cover nearby as a free action. This can allow you to reposition your crew members far more aggressively, while still allowing them to crouch behind cover to mitigate some incoming damage. There are rarely moments where you’ll get a free turn on Elite difficulty, so being able to cover your approach to either a main, or side objective is extremely useful.
Fortify simply allows adjacent cover to survive a fatal hit every single turn. Best case scenario, Fortify protects you from 2 attacks as it maintains your cover through the first one. That’s not very flashy, but it’ll provide a mountain of defensive utility across Steamworld Heist 2, and makes this Skill combination a clear standout.
War Cry and Wide Aura
The former, War Cry, provides a buff for the rest of the turn that increases the damage of all nearby allies by 1. This can be upgraded to increase damage by 2 later on in the campaign.
Wide Aura simply increases the range of all Skills, which have proximity based properties. Ergo, using these 2 Skills in tandem allows War Cry to affect a much wider area around the caster, which can allow you to buff allies from further away.
It isn’t essential to pair these Skills together, but Wide Aura makes it way easier to get more value out of your War Cry casts. It also helps with dealing increased amounts of damage, which has been a bit of a running theme so far in the guide since Veteran, and Elite enemies have higher Health values.
Nimble Feet and Shifty
In general, Nimble Feet is just a good Skill. It grants 1 additional move. It might be Fire Emblem bias, but I’d argue that movement is one of the most important stats in Steamworld Heist 2. Almost every level puts players on a timer, so being able to move further allows the player to complete map objectives at a much faster pace. This can help them to finish a level before the reinforcements completely overwhelm them. Alternatively, extra movement will also give you the opportunity to outrun gunfire. Either way – high movement is very strong.
Naturally, having increased movement works well with Shifty as it is a Skill that is linked to a character’s movement stat. Shifty allows you to move for half of your total movement after scraping a target.
What’s really neat about this combo is that you can use it to line-up multiple kills in a turn. If you’re able to one-shot a weaker bot with your sidearm, then you can use Shifty to reposition for a shot with your primary weapon. Alternatively, you can take a shot at point-blank range, scrap your target, and retreat to cover afterwards. Either way, your increased total movement will allow you to cover more distance while using Shifty.
Cool and Anything with a Cooldown
There are a handful of different Skills in Steamworld Heist 2 that have cooldowns, and every single one of them benefits from Cool. This Skill reduces cooldowns by 1 turn. For example, normally Perfect Aim has a 3 turn cooldown, but with Cool it has only a 2 turn cooldown. That’s huge as, in the majority of cases, Cool is going to reduce the cooldown of a Skill by 20% or more. This gives you far more flexibility in when, and where you use your different Skills throughout a level.
It’s also worth mentioning that Cool affects equipment cooldowns as well. That means that items like Box of Pistols, which has a 3 turn cooldown will also have its cooldown reduced.
There’s a lot of potential uses for Cool, but here are a few of my favourites:
Perfect Aim: 2 turn CD to have full aim lines on every single shot a character takes
War Cry: 3 turn CD to provide a damage buff to all adjacent allies
Fully Loaded: 4 turn CD that allows your primary weapon to fire twice
Box of Sidearms: 3 turn CD to fire an infinite use, 8 damage pistol
Trusty Sidearm: allows for this Skill to be used every single turn, which helps to patch up one of the Brawler’s biggest weaknesses
Harvest and Loose Cannon
Easily one of the most broken combinations in Steamworld Heist 2.
Loose Cannon lets your primary weapon fire twice simultaneously, and Harvest lets you fire your weapon an additional time whenever you scrap something. This means that you can use both of these Skills together, and demolish an entire level’s worth of enemies with a single character. It’s actually insane.
This gets even more ridiculous if you use this on an Engineer. Pistols fire twice, with some late game pistols firing thrice, and each time Harvest triggers, you’ll gain an additional 2, or 3 shots. This combo makes all of the late game bosses an absolute cakewalk, as you can mow down all of their summoned helpers before laying into them for 10 or more consecutive shots.
Here’s an example of that in action. Note, this video does show Steamworld Heist 2’s final boss, so consider this a spoiler warning if you want to go into that unsoiled.
Character Builds
There’s 3 kinds of build styles that I tended toward while playing Steamworld Heist 2. I’m not going to lie to you, and call them the best builds. However, I do think a lot of the Skill combinations that I used, especially in my second playthrough (the elite one), helped tremendously with overcoming most of Steamworld Heist 2’s more challenging obstacles.
Having said that, I also believe there’s room for further optimization with these builds. That is to say: you could make them even better if you wanted to do a little grinding. I limited how often I would replay missions as I wanted all my recommended builds to be compatible with earning the Running at Full Steam achievement, which I earned on both of my playthroughs.
To that end, I’ll be listing some optional Skills that I think could improve the builds. I only obtained a handful of these optional suggestions myself, so don’t feel obligated to unlock all of them. It’s just there to further improve an already completely workable build idea.
Damage Specialist
Mandatory Skills
Boomer:
- Slot Machine (1)
- Fortify (2)
- Loose Cannon (5)
Reaper:
- War Cry (1)
- Rage (2)
- Harvest (4)
Engineer:
- Build Cover (1)
Optional Skills
Brawler:
- Shifty (4)
Boomer:
- Squeeze (4)
Engineer:
- Break (0)
- Amped Up (2)
- Feel the Burn (5)
Sniper:
- Perfect Aim (1)
Reaper:
- Critical Damage (1 & 3)
Flanker:
- Backbiter (1)
- Cool (2)
- Nimble Feet (1 & 4)
Overview
The basic idea here is to utilize the natural synergies that exist between the Reaper, and Boomer classes. Boomers provide an additional 3 Health once you get it to level 5, and unlocks access to Loose Cannon. This pairs nicely with Rage, which increases your damage output by 1 point for every 3 points of Health that you’re missing (once you’ve upgraded it). That will buff this character’s damage output so that they’re consistently doing high volumes of damage, and one-shot the majority of enemy bots.
Where the build really comes alive is once you unlock Harvest. This will allow you to repeatedly chain kills together, which is an excellent way to clear out an entire level’s worth of enemies all in a single turn. This works especially well on bosses, which is where these characters will shine brightest. You can kill all of the reinforcements that a boss spawns before laying into them. For an example of this in action, you can check out this video that I included earlier in the guide.
It’s also worth mentioning that this combo works fairly well throughout the early, and mid-game before you’ve unlocked all of the different pieces that make it truly sing. Boomers, and Reapers are both excellent damage dealing classes, and levelling up Boomer first will give you much needed additional Health to accentuate Rage while you’re levelling up Reaper.
The only other note is that I strongly recommend grabbing 1 level of Engineer immediately. Build Cover helps a ton as it lets you create cover in spots that normally don’t have any cover. This can give you a defensible place to deal damage from without having to blind fire halfway across the map to hit your intended target.
Ideal Candidates
Rose
Rose is the obvious one here because her second personal Skill, Double Tap, is just a pocket Loose Cannon. In fact, it’s actually the upgraded version of Loose Cannon. This allows Rose to do some absolutely bonkers nonsense by the time you reach East Caribbea. That can be very helpful for dealing with the higher power of enemies in East Caribbea, and for punching a hole through the area’s various bosses.
Daisy
Daisy is technically good at everything because of her second personal Skill, Studious, but I find she’s uniquely well suited to acting as one of the crew’s main sources of damage. That’s entirely because Studious allows her to equip a ton of extra Skills since she reduces the cog cost of around half of Steamworld Heist 2’s various Skills. Loose Cannon, and Harvest aren’t cheap, but Daisy makes equipping them both a cinch, while still having room for a variety of additional supporting Skills.
Plus, you don’t need to recruit Daisy, so you can start working on learning all of the required Skills immediately after completing Steamworld Heist 2’s tutorial.
Judy
Judy is the only notable for utilizing this build because her default class is Boomer (hilariously). This means that she’ll have some amount of proficiency in the job regardless of when you recruit her, which helps with getting Loose Cannon. Otherwise, Judy doesn’t bring anything especially noteworthy to the table that would make her uniquely suited to taking on the mantle of one of your crew’s main damage dealers.
Sola
This is my softest recommendation, entirely because I recruited Sola very late in both playthroughs. I think Eldritch Beam is very interesting as a personal Skill, however it directly conflicts with maximizing the value from Rage as it heals Sola whenever it kills something. However, it does give Sola an easy way to soften up several foes before unloading their primary weapon into them.
Plus, Sola will already have Build Cover regardless of when you recruit them.
Mobility Specialist
Mandatory Skills
Brawler:
- Hard Shell (1)
- Free Sidearm (3)
- Shifty (4)
Boomer:
- Slot Machine (1)
Flanker:
- Backbiter (1)
- Sidestep (2)
- Cool (2)
- Pay Day (3)
- Nimble Feet (1 & 4)
Optional Skills
Brawler:
- Payback (2)
- Second Wind (5)
Boomer:
- Fortify (2)
- Squeeze (4)
Engineer:
- Build Cover (1)
Reaper:
- War Cry (1)
- Rage (2)
Flanker:
- Wheel ‘N Deal (0)
- Flanked Step (0)
- Light Step (4)
Overview
Again, I realize this is probably the Fire Emblem bias, but mobility is the best stat in Steamworld Heist 2. I consistently found that crew members with higher mobility were more useful than those crew stuck with lower mobility stats. If nothing else, having higher movement makes it easier to reposition, while working your way across the map. This makes completing many of Steamworld Heist 2’s various main, and side objectives substantially easier.
To that end, having a few levels in the Flanker class is always a good thing. This increases the base movement of a character by up to 3, while also giving them Sidestep to help cover even more horizontal distance. Pay Day also allows crew members to move, loot, and shoot in the same turn. This makes their turn highly efficient allowing you to get more done with fewer action points. I’d actually argue that you always want to bring a character with Pay Day along in every mission once you’re able to. That’s how good this skill is for clearing out the loot within a level.
Shifty, and Free Sidearm are a favourite combo of mine as they potentially unlock even more additional movement options for a crew member. You can use a sidearm pistol to scrap a weaker bot, move to a new location thanks to Shifty, and then use your full 2 AP. Using this strategy makes it a lot easier to clear out the deluge of weaker foes, while providing someone with a ton of mobility.
The only other thing to call out here is that Hard Shell can be an effective way to mitigate some incoming damage. I found that the enemy AI tends to target whatever crew member is closest to them, so my mobility experts frequently had a massive target painted on their back. Rage might also be a worthwhile investment for much the same reason.
Oh, right. I forgot to mention Backbiter. This Skill is the only way to mitigate armor outside of stacking numerous damage buffs onto a character. Flankers get it at level 1. Having this Skill available across the bulk of your crew gives you a very easy way to deal with armored foes, which you will be drowning in by the mid-game.
Ideal Candidates
Poe
Realistically, anyone benefits from increased mobility, but Poe goes crazy with it. Her first personal Skill gives her an additional 2 movement, so, by end game, she has almost double the movement of crew members with no mobility buffs. As you might imagine, this makes it very easy to weave her around a map, and pick off remote side objectives.
Her second personal Skill gives her a flat 50% chance to dodge all incoming attacks, which ends up giving her a ton of additional survivability. Honestly, there’s a very real case for Poe being the best crew member thanks to the sheer utility provided by her frankly absurd movement stat.
It also helps that Poe’s default job is Flanker, so, regardless of when you recruit her, she’ll have some of the mandatory Skills listed above.
Crow
Same as above: Crow’s default class is Flanker so she’s always going to have some proficiency with the class when you recruit her. That makes grabbing all of the necessary Skills for this build a lot easier.
Aside from that, Crow doesn’t bring much else to the table, but her first personal Skill does allow her to navigate vertical space more easily than every other character. Unfortunately, there aren’t a ton of places where having improved vertical movement actually makes a perceptible difference. Regardless, Crow can still scoot around easily picking up loot, or completing side objectives.
Cornelius
Similar to the other 2 suggested candidates, Cornelius comes with some proficiency in one of the classes that contributes important Skills to this build. However, Cornelius doesn’t provide the more important of the 2. Instead, you get some levels in Brawler. This does help with getting Shifty, and Free Sidearm, but you’re going to want to pick up at least 1 charge of Nimble Feet, and Sidestep before continuing to level up Brawler as they benefit a lot from having that extra mobility.
Beacon
Beacon is a bit of a sleeper pick here because his default class of Sniper might convince players to take him in a completely different, arguably worse, direction. However, his personal skill is a map-wide teleport that he can use every 5 turns. That allows him to reposition to an absolutely insane degree, while easily clearing out far-away map objectives. It also pairs nicely with Cool, which lowers the cooldown of his teleport to 4 turns.
I’d recommend trying to pick Beacon up earlier so he doesn’t end up having a bunch of Sniper Skills. This is because I don’t find Sniper Skills synergize particularly well with the rest of the game’s Skills and classes.
Support Specialist
Mandatory Skills
Boomer:
- Slot Machine (1)
- Boom Boom (2)
- Squeeze (4)
Sniper:
- Perfect Aim (1)
Flanker:
- Backbiter (1)
- Nimble Feet (1)
Optional Skills
Engineer:
- Wide Aura
Overview
There’s not really a fantastic way to make a dedicated support bot in Steamworld Heist 2, nor would I recommend it. You certainly can stack a bunch of supporting Skills onto a single crew member, but that limits how you can move your crew. Most support skills work based on proximity, so you’d be stuck moving everyone as a giant blob to consistently take advantage of support bonuses. This will likely get your entire crew killed because you won’t be able to finish a level without being completely overrun.
No – when I say support here, what I mean is that these crew members deal with weak, fodder enemies. This will allow your damage, and mobility specialists to focus on what they do best without having to waste AP taking out trash mobs.
To that end, there are a couple different things that you could do, but what I found most effective was loading someone’s pockets with grenades (or pistols), while handing them an AOE weapon. This made it very easy to clear out rooms filled with enemy bots, and also dealt with waves of reinforcements.
You can also have these folks carry a healing item so that you’ve got a fallback plan just in case of emergency.
Obviously, with all of this focus on equipment, Squeeze is the real star here. It’ll let you bring even more grenades (or healing pouches) into a level.
Otherwise, what you decide to do with these characters is largely up to you. Personally I liked having Wide Aura, and War Cry so I could periodically buff the damage output on nearby allies. Backbiter was also nice for helping to soften armored targets.
Ideal Candidates
Wesley
This is the most obvious recommendation in the entire guide. Wes’ first personal Skill allows him to use a grenade every single turn for free. This helps to give him an impressive kill count throughout Steamworld Heist 2’s campaign as he can clean up weaker enemies so fast it’ll make your head spin.
I don’t actually find he benefits that much from the later levels of Reaper, so I’ve preferred swapping him to Boomer almost immediately (as he is the other character you don’t have to recruit). From there, you’ve got a lot of flexibility in how exactly you choose to build him out once you’ve given him additional pocket space.
Tristan
Maybe an odd pick, but Tristan is the other character with a personal Skill that benefits greatly from Squeeze. He can use a healing item for free every single turn. I don’t personally find that to be super useful in the majority of cases as I subscribe to the notion that the best defense is a good offense. However, Tristan can help players to easily recover from mistakes with those free heals.
Miscellaneous
Why Do You Hate Snipers So Much?
Great question. Glad you asked.
The main reason for this is because of how reloading works for Snipers. Every other class in the game reloads their weapon automatically. Snipers do not. This means that you have to choose between moving, shooting, and reloading every single turn, which greatly limits both a Sniper’s potential combat contributions, and their ability to effectively navigate the map.
It has been my experience that Snipers are rarely able to pull their weight thanks to this, frankly, absurd AP restriction. They’re almost entirely dysfunctional in levels with 2 or fewer deployment slots, and I frequently find that they completely fall behind the rest of the group in wider maps.
There’s exactly 1 mission in the entire game where I’d recommend using a Sniper, and you could easily use another class provided you’ve already got Perfect Aim available to slot in on whatever characters you decide to use for this mission.
Do yourself a favour, and limit your use of Snipers whenever possible. They’re simply not worth the headache of trying to use.
Okay. I think that is everything. I hope this guide was actually helpful, and answered whatever questions you had about Steamworld Heist 2. If not, or there’s something you’d like me to elaborate on, please feel free to hit me up in the comments.
Thank you for reading.
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