Into the Breach: Tips and Tricks for Beginners

Protect Your Buildings at All Costs

Into the Breach Beginner Tips

Your main priority in Into the Breach is always to keep your grid power up. Each time the Vek take a shot at one of your buildings, your grid power loses one unit. Once that bar reaches zero, it’s game over, and it’ll be time to jump back into the breach and into another timeline.

Here’s the thing: grid power carries over between stages. On the other hand, your mech HP resets in between each stage. If you can protect your buildings from taking a hit, do it. Even if it means putting one of your mechs in danger, it’ll almost always be worth it. Things get a little dicier later on in the game, when you start recruiting pilots for your unmanned mechs, but just remember that all you have to do is last until the stipulated number of turns run out, and you’ll be good.

Grab the Time Pods

Into the Breach Beginner Tips

Speaking of pilots, you have a chance of recruiting new ones with every time pod that drops into a stage. Time pods seem to be random, as far as we can tell, but if you can protect them until the end of the stage, you’ll be rewarded with a few valuable goodies.

You’ll almost always get a reactor core, which is used to upgrade one of your mechs in Into the Breach. And you also have a chance of finding a pilot. You’ll start the game with one pilot, and your other two mechs will be unmanned. Make sure to assign a pilot to one of those mechs once you’ve recruited them, as they often come packed with unique abilities to help you out on the field. Don’t let the Vek destroy the time pods on the field, and make sure you don’t accidentally knock them into the sea or into an obstacle either.

Try to Clear the Optional Objectives

Into the Breach Beginner Tips

This will probably be a bit of a tough one if you’re just starting out in the game, but each stage in Into the Breach provides you with one or two optional objectives you can try to meet for extra rewards. If you can clear them, you might get a bonus to your grid power, or you could earn reputation points, which are used for purchasing useful items and upgrades once you’ve cleared the island.

These optional objectives can range from anything like protecting a train or a couple of tanks until the end of the battle, or keep a volatile Vek alive for the entire stage. You won’t suffer any overly negative consequences or penalties for failing to complete these objectives, and you certainly shouldn’t make any compromises on your grid power while trying to fulfill them. Go for the objectives if you have the opportunity to do so, as they’ll help you out a ton in the long run, but don’t take any unnecessary risks.

Always Save Your Strongest Pilot

Into the Breach Beginner Tips

Look, you’re going to die. A lot. Into the Breach isn’t quite as punishing as FTL, but you are most certainly going to fail in a lot of these stages. When this happens, you’ll be given the chance to save one of your three pilots to start a fresh game with. If you’re still early on in the game, you’ll probably only have one option, with your other two mechs being unmanned. But if you’re unfortunate enough to lose about two or three islands in, that decision becomes a little more complicated.

The general rule of thumb is that you should always pick your highest leveled pilot. More likely than not, they’ll have accrued better stats and upgraded abilities by this point, and having them on your team will make your subsequent runs much easier. Try not to get too attached to your weaker pilots as you progress through the game.

Study Your Enemies and Surroundings

Into the Breach Beginner Tips

Into the Breach is a special kind of strategy game in that it gives you all of the information you need to win a battle. The Vek’s moves are all telegraphed nicely for you at the start of each turn, and you can even mouse over them to see their movement range. You even have the option to redo an entire turn once in each battle if you happen to screw something up really badly.

That being said, don’t be too hasty in trying to take out easy targets. Take your time to check the positioning of your units and the Vek before committing to any moves. Every turn, new Vek will spawn from the ground, but you’ll have time to knock one of the existing units onto the spawning title to block them and deal damage at the same time. In cases like these, it’s often better to simply knock a unit away instead of going for an easy kill.

If you’re playing on a map with environmental effects, don’t forget to keep an eye out on affected grids as well. Air strikes and lightning storms will decimate any unit instantly, and this includes your mechs. Always prioritize getting your mechs out of the danger zone before pulling any fancy moves.