XPiratez Information Compilation, Starter Guide & NPC Guide (N12 UPDATE!)

[eharper256]

As I'm that guy who automatically writes guides and summaries for things as I go along (I have several Steam Guides for that reason), this topic links to a big 26 32 38 page compilation of information to help you start playing XPiratez!
Testimony from the Mod Author themselves:

I had a lot of fun reading your guide myself, especially the Captains' descriptions, it's really rewarding when the love I put into making the mod gets returned and spread around It's also probably the best researched guide I've seen, I didn't see a single false claim.

Last Updated: 07/05/2025 for the new N12.1 patch
Get it here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qmALl2Xud7xOIjLpRXaf_Xz6IfusINrA/view?usp=sharing

Notably Includes:
>> All of the Starting Locations and what they give in one place (events & regional bonuses too). Updated 07/05/25.
>> Captain Ideas, Aspects, and then each as a whole including all of the types. The events and bonuses in summary that they get. Updated 20/10/24.
>> All four Codexes and their bonuses in summary. Updated 07/05/25.
>> Craft and Interceptor Progression. Updated 19/04/25.
>> Recruitment choices comparison for routes (i.e. Male/Gals/Cats/Peasant/Sectoid). Updated 07/05/25.
>> Reference charts for shields, armour terminology, and captain progression. Updated 16/11/24.
>> Details about Bounty Hunting, and all the potential prizes, with my personal ratings of each. Updated 16/04/25.
>> Hints and Tips for both newer XPZ players and some more advanced ones as well. Updated 07/05/25.
>> Suggested Tech-Tree progression chunks for the early game. Updated 07/05/25.

Includes a lot of my thought processes on each of these as well as pretty formatting.
If you want a FULL look at ALL of the Dr. X/Aurora/Red Mage/Witch Princess NPC plotlines in detail,
with HOW-TO's and implications of the different branches and rewards, this is not in the main guide due to massive spoilers,
but the N12 version of this can be found AT THIS DOCUMENT INSTEAD.
(Last updated 18/04/2025)
Additionally, the online XPedia is WAY out of date (2 years or so), so here's a re-compiled one for N12.1:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1x4q6Y85TWucgCbajoDbKvWYSdJ8rx5Sf/view?usp=sharing
When it opens on Google, click the Down Arrow to Download it and place in your \Dioxine_XPiratez\ root for the images to work.
Recompiled 07/05/2025.
Finally, there is also a Weapon Comparison Excel Sheet (now a bit outdated~ 11/09/24):
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1eFMsh58jxKg9YgsLlsvEX9mg4qCC34Ck/
This includes comparison between fire modes (Snap/Aimed/Auto), Damage expectations, accuracy, and range, catagorised by weapon type, and presented in the order I found a copy of that weapon.
This is INCOMPLETE, as I obviously haven't tried everything.
Hope you all find it useful.

[Delian]

>N9.5.6
But there's N9.7.7 out now hehe

>increase base storage capacity by 18 Tonnes
1 unit of storage space doesn't equal 1 ton. It's got more to do with volume than weight, but even then it's never been clear how much of what it's supposed to be

>Gnomes are fantastic pilots
No, they really are not. For pilots, the only thing that really matters are reactions and firing skill. Gnomes have 130 firing cap, but only 70 reactions, which is worse than ubers with 100 reactions and 120 firing. The best are outlaw catgirls with 131 reactions and 130 firing caps.

>Samurai Training Book. Pretty great for Peasant army
Wrong, it's the best for catgirls, because the book allows you to instantly buy Fuso Plate Armor for catgirls, which is otherwise a mid-late game tech.

>get instant access to Fireball Launchers
Researching countries is easy, researching Contact topics is hard. In other words, no, you don't get instant access to those.

>free research for one cowboy related item.
The Sheriff's Handbook can be researched continuously until you get all its topics.

>Flame Cannon Uses Chems to reload
No, it uses Hellerium.

>Non-Profit Lab
Lazy-ass (later through Voodoo: Excess), Rational or Progressive captain. Mage can't get it because Might disables the lab.

>but gets some unique ones
Ultimate Captain gets no personality-specific events, except one. Every month there's a 63% chance you get 666 score and 666k funds. Should also mention that this captain can't progress through any advanced Dr. X storylines.

>Illusion & Destruction Magic
Excess, Illusion, Destruction. Each codex gets 3 types of magic, not 2.

>Admiral Outfit has 40% resist everything
31%

>EL FUEGO
Is sub.

>It’s bad
Each ground battle with the Little Bird starts with extra 12 Glamour, which also gives +144 mission score at the end, assuming you finish before any decays. There are many other crafts that bring extra glamour or other items with them, but you don't mention these important bonuses.

>so not sure when this is used
The whole point of Piranha is that you can obtain it very early if you have enough tokens. I use it extensively because with a trained nekomimi pilot it's untouchable.

>Carries 24 (!)
You know what also carries 24 hands? CONVOY. It's my favorite ground transport and you can get it super early. You never mention it tho.

>Below shows max on-spawn stats
The recruitment max stats are basically meaningless, so I dunno why you're showing those. What matters the most are the gym training stat caps (the stats you can reach through passive training in the hideout), and the final stat caps, the stats you can reach with enough ground battle action.

>36 accuracy lol, and that is the MAX
Again, those stats don't matter at all. You don't show what the actual stat caps are.

>the online XPedia is rather out of date
The mod zip file comes with Xpedia 2.1.zip file. You're supposed to extract it, and then run xpedia.bat to run a local version of xpedia.

[eharper256]

• And I just updated to 9.5.6 lol, ah well.
• Eh, semantics, it helps my brain to think of tonnage. As you say, not really clear to begin with.
• The approach speed from the super bravery is very important earlier when everything has a tiny range and you've got a Tiger with 4x 14mm. But yes, early on I had a Gnome and Catgirl, then switched over to two catgirls later. The 8 Gnome squad is now the elites of my second base.
• Fair enough, I missed that, will update that.
• Well, I tended to get Captain Rank way quicker than I researched countries. Not enough Scouting Expeditions I realise in retrospect, but eh.
• Missed that, will update.
• Think that was something that snuck in from the very old Codex reference on the online UFOwiki. Will fix.
• In game shows needing prerequisite as needing either Excess or ?None-Of-The-Above?, and then NP lab itself has requirement of Odiousless Captain. You're right about Mage not having it, though, didn't see Might disables. But Lazy-Ass shouldn't get it either, unless I'm horribly reading that wrong?
• Hmmm... this is where I got into a bit of a loop, I've intepreted ?Leave-Me-Alone? Captain as being the Ultimate Captain. But that's also including Flawless Captains, isn't it? i.e. "Furry Friend" as an example event. Will amend. Still, Ultimate doesn't disable ?Leave-me-alone-Captain!? as far as I can see so the prequisites should still activate.
• That was just running out of space lol.
• That's me being a Tax-Trainer and automatically rounding 9 down to a 0 when I'm not paying attention lol. Will fix.
• I think that's the old wiki creeping in there again. Fixed.
• I was viewing it purely as an interceptor there I think. But actually that's not mentioned at all on the wiki entries that I can see. Don't think I ever dropped with it as I went straight from Airbus to Big Bird so I wouldn't have noticed.
• True, this is probably a bad statement; I didn't get Car Thieves until after I got Tiger, and I prioritised Jack tokens on Silver Snake because it's amazing on Gnomes, so by the time I got it, it  became kind of useless there.
• I entirely ignored Ground Stuff other than as prequisites. At the early stage, Convoy seemed useless as I had like 9 hands total.
• To me, I wanted to see the immediate potential benefits. Yes, anyone can be good in the long run, but the less feeding and reloading RNG rolls required, the better.
• Yep, I did that, and then provided it for people to use. Just thought it would be handy to include. (shrug)

Thanks for the feedback, but it's good it's only fairly minor stuff. Will amend and update for tomorrow, but it's now 1am lol.

[Psyentific]

I really like your rundown of the aspects and personality types.

[eharper256]

I really like your rundown of the aspects and personality types.

Thankyou, glad you like it!

I've just updated the PDF with corrections just now. May need to F5 it if viewing online, or download it again.

[Vakrug]

Great work!
Can I, please, request a "What to do with with Dr. X" analysis? I know, this is tough request, I tried to figure that out on my own with mediocre results.

[Delian]

>But Lazy-Ass shouldn't get it either
Yeah, you're right. Lazy-Ass doesn't get the required Odiousless Captain. Sorry about that.

>I've intepreted ?Leave-Me-Alone? Captain as being the Ultimate Captain
The way I see it, they are:
None-of-the-above Captain=Odiousless Captain
Doesn't-Like-This-Game-Captain=Classless Captain
Leave-me-alone-Captain=Flawless Captain
All-of-them-Captain=Ultimate Captain
But I was also wrong here in that, besides that one special event, the Ultimate Captain also gets all the events of the Flawless Captain, which are quite good. Plus some events related to the idea you get from researching a codex.

>I went straight from Airbus to Big Bird
I don't think anyone uses Big Bird, because in the beginning you only have 2 hangars. So you gotta use 1 hangar for a vehicle with weapons, and one hangar for a troop carrier. And for a troop carrier, the Big Bird doesn't have enough range. Basically, AIRBUS can get farther and faster (reach more mission sites), which is more important than having more crew space. Once you get more hangars, options expand, but until then, Big Bird is a Bad Bird.

>I entirely ignored Ground Stuff other than as prequisites. At the early stage, Convoy seemed useless as I had like 9 hands total.
I mean, GUNWAGON is the earliest interceptor you get and with a Nitro it takes care of most early-game bandits. Only got 9 hands? Try putting them on Hyena Mounts then. Or fill the craft with dogs. CONVOY is slow, but nothing beats a whole platoon of units lol. You know, some armors bring glamour on a mission? Even 2 Glamour each? Put 24 of those on a Convoy, and that's 48 extra Glamour per mission hehe. Or WINTER QUEENs with their 5k credit chips, or BRAINERs with Personal Database. Greed pays~

[eharper256]

SNIP Stuff on events

Jolly good, at least I got some of that right lol.

I don't think anyone uses Big Bird

  I used it for MONTHS (like March Year 1 to Oct Year 1, and sold the Airbus. From Germany area, could reach all but Australia, and about 1/2 of South America, so it could nearly everywhere. Then went Catgirls path, and around June it it moved to my second base in Japan for the beta team whilst Firefox became my main transport. Bought a second Airbus briefly in second base to do the X-Lab mission, though that wasn't a huge priority since I already had books from Mutant Alliance Favours since they were always spamming me with missions.

I mean, GUNWAGON is the earliest interceptor you get and with a Nitro it takes care of most early-game bandits. Only got 9 hands? Try putting them on Hyena Mounts then. Or fill the craft with dogs. CONVOY is slow, but nothing beats a whole platoon of units lol. You know, some armors bring glamour on a mission? Even 2 Glamour each? Put 24 of those on a Convoy, and that's 48 extra Glamour per mission hehe. Or WINTER QUEENs with their 5k credit chips, or BRAINERs with Personal Database. Greed pays~

Sure, I can see that strat working, though I'm all for elite small teams just to save on the admin overhead myself. I obviously took a weird tech route compared to what some do. Didn't have Hyenas until after my Flagship (and already had an Armoured Car at that point). Briefly had one girl ride one with UAC Chaingun for lolz.

Great work!
Can I, please, request a "What to do with with Dr. X" analysis? I know, this is tough request, I tried to figure that out on my own with mediocre results.

Haven't actually done the X-Stuff yet myself, but sure, I might add it when I do. Glad you like it! 

[Vakrug]

I don't think anyone uses Big Bird

The main usage of Big Bird is "Mansion Invasion" mission. Other large crafts allowed there are mush farther away in tech tree.

Glad you like it! 

And this is another tough request: analysis of allowed vehicles in special missions. I mean not just a long list, but some important and unintuitive use cases like with Big Bird.

[eharper256]

The main usage of Big Bird is "Mansion Invasion" mission. Other large crafts allowed there are mush farther away in tech tree.And this is another tough request: analysis of allowed vehicles in special missions. I mean not just a long list, but some important and unintuitive use cases like with Big Bird.

Yeah that could be good.

I actually didn't unlock Manion Invasion until like Jan Year 2, so I could use Fortuna (and I could use my Firefox which I still have too). I see it also allows Snake and Shadowbat and Airvan; think this one is less requiring an Infiltration Vehicle like some of the bounty missions, just that it has to be VTOL, since you drop through the glass roof of the mansion (or at least that's implied in the map design). But yeah, it's another point for Big Bird.

It's just the outfits that are more limited. Fortunately again for me I had two Catlooters and my ace melee catgirl has an Unipuma with Nekomimi Blade and Spypistol as her default anyways, and a couple of Witch girls at this point.

[ontherun]

Dear  eharper256, thi is really great! Might i advice to chance the thread title in "xpiratez quick reference starting guide" or some thing? Please keep it up and updated, moreover, i'd be very happy if you please join the discussion in often in " Extended Piratez general FAQ/Strategy Guide"!. Heavy loads of thanks!

[eharper256]

Dear  eharper256, thi is really great! Might i advice to chance the thread title in "xpiratez quick reference starting guide" or some thing? Please keep it up and updated, moreover, i'd be very happy if you please join the discussion in often in " Extended Piratez general FAQ/Strategy Guide"!. Heavy loads of thanks!

Glad you like it.

Feel free to pin this document or add a link to the FAQ if you credit me, though that seems more like an extended Let's Play thread with extra tips at the moment? Me and a chap on one my discords have been keeping a few fun visual records for that sort of thing, though.

It's not purely starting stuff (and I'll probably add more as time goes on) so I think it would be a bit misleading to change the title to that for now.

Incidentally, if people are interested, I've also been doing a weapon comparison spreadsheet in Excel that I can upload for people who have it. Since this has been more popular than I first expected. It's obviously incomplete at the moment since I only add a weapon when I have access to it (right now, 120 rows of guns with all their stats).

[ontherun]

Glad you like it.

Feel free to pin this document or add a link to the FAQ if you credit me, though that seems more like an extended Let's Play thread with extra tips at the moment?

Sort of, i see more an hybrid between playtrough and a guide, kinda intercative, but i happen to like it 

It's not purely starting stuff (and I'll probably add more as time goes on) so I think it would be a bit misleading to change the title to that for now.

OK, a more straightforward title would be more easy to rmembre and searched through the forum 

Incidentally, if people are interested, I've also been doing a weapon comparison spreadsheet in Excel that I can upload for people who have it. Since this has been more popular than I first expected. It's obviously incomplete at the moment since I only add a weapon when I have access to it (right now, 120 rows of guns with all their stats).

Oh, yes please! 

[eharper256]

Here's the Weapon Comparison Excel Sheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1eFMsh58jxKg9YgsLlsvEX9mg4qCC34Ck/

Compares the Snap/Aimed/Auto/Damage including the Accuracy and Range and stats involved. Also includes lots of my thoughts about each one specifically and uses my usual colour coding (Purple S/ Blue A / Green B / Yellow C / Red D).

As mentioned above, not fully complete (I'm at late-laser tier right now, and I've been adding stuff as I've got it/used it). Will update it in time.

[John___Doe]

Here's the Weapon Comparison Excel Sheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1eFMsh58jxKg9YgsLlsvEX9mg4qCC34Ck/

Compares the Snap/Aimed/Auto/Damage including the Accuracy and Range and stats involved. Also includes lots of my thoughts about each one specifically and uses my usual colour coding (Purple S/ Blue A / Green B / Yellow C / Red D).

As mentioned above, not fully complete (I'm at late-laser tier right now, and I've been adding stuff as I've got it/used it). Will update it in time.

Blackmarch.

I have to question the value of grades when they are so dependent on availability, which is highly variable in piratez. The combat shotgun, for example: often unused because by the time you encounter enemies with them you have something better, but it only requires Merchants to buy. If you do get one early it is probably the best shotgun you can buy (and buy ammo for). Similar case with the domestic shotgun: it has many superiors, but when your choices are the domestic and the ol shotgun, the domestic looks pretty good.

I do think you are significantly underrating the double barrel shotgun. 20x10x2 for 32% tu is basic security armor killing firepower anyone can use.