Shadowrun Returns

- Sniper rifles are *more* accurate the farther away from the target you are.

- Elementals will always turn on you in the end, you need to balance risk and reward. A good way to use them is to send them far into the enemy lines since when they snap they turn aggressive to everyone. I find it's advantageous to use them as high risk/high reward - always going for maximum AP.

- Your summoning is still pretty low so it's to be expected, keep at it. High level elementals get pretty damn powerful.

- Shaman spells aren't meant for offense, they're buffs and debuffs. You've correctly inferred that Haste is broken as fuck; I don't remember what spells were in Returns as opposed to added in Dragonfall and HK but the evasion buffs and wall spells are all pretty great. You should also be able to get some poison clouds and disables - anything that hits AP is powerful.

- That being said, you probably won't be able to play a pure casting shaman too effectively, consider spending some points in a gun skill. The cool thing about the system is that it doesn't cost much karma to be slightly less bad as something, the prices start adding up as you specialize. You can also grab a couple points in mage spells, that'll give you access to healing and some low-end direct damage.

- If you have the other games and are trying to play them in order, I'd suggest skipping Returns and starting with Dragonfall. The campaign in Returns is pretty bad and the combat system got improved a lot between games. If you really want to play through Dead Man's Switch, you can import it into Dragonfall or HK and play it with updated mechanics.

- Cyberware on a magic class: don't, the cooldown penalties can be crippling. If you want to branch out, guns are probably a better way of doing it. Then again, I don't recall DMS being particularly hard so if you really want some shiny chrome, why not. As for why to stick to high-end shaman magic, two words: Haste. Two.

Dragonfall

- The pregenerated builds are solid embodiments of the main "classes" but the system is essentially classless. Study each one in the second "finishing points" screen to get an idea of what attributes/skills are important.

- Seriously consider making your character from scratch however, as it will give you the maximum build points to work with and some pregens have some wasted allocation. For example, the pregen Mage has >1 Strength, which you will never need for that "class".

- For those beginners, the easiest types of characters to play at first are medium-ranged direct damage dealers, namely 100% pure spellcasting mage or quickness/ranged combat/rifles street samurai. Note that mages now need some measure of Intelligence to cast the best spells.

- Biotech of 2 is recommended to be able to see enemy HP in combat, and at 3 it enables some Karma rewards in the early game that partially reimburse investment into the skill.

- In Dragonfall you are able to avail yourself of hired NPC runners as per the base game, but you also have a team who will work for free and can cover most of your bases. You can also pick up a few optional "free" team members at different points in the game to round things out.

- Among the best (most-used) Etiquettes are Corporate, Security and Gang. Academic is also frequent (without many rewards) and the remainder are fairly rarely used.

- One of the biggest changes in the Director's Cut is that cover and armor have become much more integral to combat. Armor points are explicit and directly reduce damage dealt, so armor piercing attacks and spells are much more important. Medium and heavy cover effectively negate criticals and reduce damage taken, while light cover simply reduces damage taken. Being "out in the open" or "flanked" means minimum of 1.0x damage. The rest of these points address the DC.

- Melee strikes will "pop" targets out of cover for a round, as will certain special attacks. It's not quite X-Com but the DC changes to combat have definitely pushed it into that direction.

- It is possible to reach the 50K nuyen mark before you run out of main missions to help with the fundraising - if you like, you can go meet your contact early for some added content.

- The Lodge missions are

odious but the ultimate reward

is pretty worthwhile.

- A human mage, engaging all side missions and progressively buying attack spells to round out and fill their "spellbook", can expect to finish the game with upwards of 25K nuyen extra, and have enough Karma to max Willpower and Spellcasting and have healthy amounts in many other Attributes and Skills, so try out different things.

- Even for Magic-using classes, there is a cyberware item that costs 0 Essence and

semi-replicates Glory's ability

that doesn't affect your cooldowns so don't forget to keep checking with the clinic.

Hong Kong

- Unlike Dragonfall, any items you give your party members before / during a mission will disappear into the ether once the mission is done.

- You get any number of "urgent" missions that you can put off forever. The only one that has an actual time limit is Strangler Bao's request.

- The first few missions feature fairly worthless paydata, but latter runs will have data sales that will give you about 1/3 of the total payment for that run.

- Take Gobbet along to the feng-shui mission.

- If you want to get the best ending, make sure you complete Crafty's (the magic shop owner) dialog tree, talk to Is0bel about the Walled City until you get the Nameless King story, and remember the exact phrase that ended the argument between Raymond and Duncan.

- Useful etiquettes: Shadowrunner, Academic (mostly for bits of info rather than tangible benefit) and Gang/Corporate.

- The Auto-Loader arm is a piece of cyberware that can be purchased once you've done three missions or so. It automatically reloads pretty much every gun / grenade launcher / minigun you can find. Immensely useful for any build that relies on ranged weapons.

- The Shiawase Loader arm automatically throws back any grenades that land near you. Useful, but: you need strength to throw grenades accurately, arm cyberware slots have a lot of other neat choices, and Duncan has this as an upgrade option.

- Companion specialization notes:

Duncan: the tier 6 Magnet arm (catch and throw back grenades) is straight up silly overpowered. Cluster in groups, bait grenades, profit.

Is0bel: you can buy her tier 4 Espionage upgrade (+40% Matrix move speed) at Maximum Law's for 500 nuyen and loan it to her if you're so inclined. The 6 extra Fire damage DoT on the grenade launcher (which is great, by the way) is worth either putting up with slower Matrix movement or a nominal investment.

Gobbet: the tier 5 Plague Wall spell is actually a reusable inventory item with a cooldown, which lets you fill that other slot with any other spell you desire without pushing anything off her default loadout. There's a case to be made for the free Devil Rat token if you've invested heavily in the Spirituality track, but Plague Wall is special.

Gaichu: this may be obvious to you, but it wasn't to me; his tier 3 Shuriken Toss is a Strength attack, which means that it deals the listed 12 damage plus Gaichu's Strength and it pops cover.

Racter: Spec his drone to be a sniper or a melee beast. Mixing and matching doesn't work that well.