While I've been progressing through the main story, I thought it be fun to do a full rundown of a side raid. I ended up having a long duration one pop up and I was interested to see the kinds of reward I could get for running it.

All I knew beforehand for Whispering Depths was every ship had an upgrade module for plus one to movement. That to me did not seem that bad as I should be able to quickly take out most of the pirates.

At the start, I went for a fireproof hull which made my crew fireproof. Most times I avoid fire without even thinking about it. I however did not care much for the two-cost cannon and it was not that great anyway.

I then spent a moment studying the routes up to the boss. If I took anything other than the far left, I'd be forced to go all the way left for most of the raid. Thankfully going left ended up having a cannon I felt would be useful to acquire. This would also leave me with the most options in paths I can take.

In the first fight, I realized I could take out all the pirates in the second round if all my hits did ok enough damage. They did not have that many crew since this was just the first fight. I decided to take the risk and go for it.

I kind of knew if my first two shots did not go well. I could always divert and take out most of their cannons at least reducing any incoming damage I'd take. Thankfully my plan worked out like I wanted. I took them all out and won the right in the second round in ship-to-ship combat.

In the next fight, I picked I was not as lucky. I realized I did not have enough firepower to push my luck. So, I took out the cannons as usual. I then was able to kill all the pirates but one while in ship-to-ship combat. Once I boarded, I sent one of my crew over to push off their remaining pirate into the water. Another easy win this ended up being.

While I was quite tempted to keep staying left. As that would keep giving me the most options. My next choice in fights the reward on the left was quite worthless. I decided to take a random event without combat instead.

The reward for doing so ended up being a glass chest II. I am in quite need of glass so this was possibly one of the better rewards I could have gotten. It is only a shame later on during another random non-combat fight I'd end up losing it.

This also allowed me to pick up a node that gave me three abyssal either. While I tend to only use one of the creature skills for the time being. This would now put me at having six others to spend. Which I could use on three different upcoming fights if needed.

The downside is this ended up taking me down a middle path. That middle path leads to the right. So, I was kind of stuck in what battles I'd end up being faced with for a while till I hit a node that opened up many paths again.

Since I am over halfway through the raid now. The number of pirates on each ship has increased a decent amount. Instead of the fights like I was having before. This time around I had three pirates to fight after the ship-to-ship combat.

One of the remaining pirates I had already killed. The ship had several modules that increased health. I also had some bad luck with my cannons. I at least managed to take out the modules making the three remaining pirates still quite easy to take out.

Next up I had a non-combat encounter. I ended up looting myself a heal at the start for the captain as a reward. While not the best reward. Since I can do quite a lot of damage. Along with moving him into higher-risk situations in hand-to-hand combat. I did not mind getting some further healing per round.

One of the nice things about hitting the non-combat encounters is how quickly they can be finished. Since I had no choice in the route moving forward anyway. I did not mind these as they were better than getting items I did not care for.

So, I quickly ran through a few of them. I ended up getting a decent amount of gold out of the remaining once I had, till, I got to my next combat encounter and a fork in the path allowing me to have some options again for what I wanted.

The next combat situation ended up having quite a nice cannon as a reward. While it was just a glass cannon with one health. The fact it would be doing three to five damage a hit and only cost one action. Along with being able to target modules, cannons, and crew. This thing would end up being quite powerful for my last remaining fights.

This is also when I knew I was getting close to the end that I wanted to start using up my special ability. I unleashed the Kraken on the backline in the hand-to-hand combat part of the fight. Taking out some hard-to-reach and annoying ranged pirates. The rest went down without much of a fight.

The next choice to move forward in the raid I did not care so much about the rewards. My cannons at this point were decent. I ended up going for a non-combat encounter. This netted me plus two movements to my crew.

In most of my fights so far that module would not have been very useful. I was however coming up to the end encounter and I expected I'd have to move around a bit to take out all the pirates. So, it would at least have some purpose for the remainder of the raid.

I then ended up picking up an insane heavy cannon. While I was not a fan of it costing two points to use per round. It had a lot of health and it did five out of five damage. Which allowed me to take out some quite high-health pirates and a nasty cannon they had.

This also allowed me to get another fight down to just three pirates remaining. I was tempted to send out the Kraken again just to speed up how fast this encounter went. I however felt like that be a waste with how easy of a mop-up this fight would end up being for my crew anyway. My crew was eager for all the killing anyway since this raid has been rather easy so far.

I then had another easy fight before hitting up the last ports in the game before the final encounter. At this point, I was loaded with 1,420 gold to spend. Since my ship was already decently outfitted, I went for the port that had crew equipment. None of it however seemed worth spending any gold on. So, I quickly left.

The final battle for the raid would be the hardest. While I had been a bit lazy in using my crew's full abilities in the limited amount of hand-to-hand combat situations, we found ourselves in during this raid. I’d be putting it all out in this one.

I first used my captain to take out with his pistol the one ranged unit that I had almost killed during the ship-to-ship phase. I then moved him over one square and attacked. This pushed one unit into another killing one and making it easy to kill the next round.

I then decided to use the Kraken to take out a couple of mid-range units on the battlefield. I could only get two kills on him. Perhaps that is why I move an ability to push pirates around. I however did not see any decent spots to try and cluster enough of them in a line that would net me further kills.

I was just then three more rounds away from victory. I only ended up having to replace one crew member who ended up in a bad position to take a few hits. Everyone else between the healing they got per tern ended back up in full health as I took out the last remaining pirate.

Final Thoughts

This ended up being quite a nice little quick raid. It’s always hard to make the choice being taking a more challenging tier of a raid for higher rewards versus being able to run one as fast as I did on a lower challenge tier.

This raid ended up giving me enough glass and blueprints to buy some upgrades. While a few of them were things like ship modules that I would not run with for the time being. It gives me more options as I fine-tune the different crew layouts into raids. It was also nice none of my crew needed to heal for a couple of raids. So, they were all ready to go again for another raid.

Information

Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Rogue Waters.

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