Kill them, kill HG…take over the city…destroy the Farm :>
Tho… Daniel, he’s the only person I’m not sure I want to kill 
I feel that little shit will be a complication for my MC in future books.
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Noob question:
Is still possible increase your mind stats (force and subterfuge) in book 2 or you are stuck with the one you’ve already gained in book 1?
I think Lady Argent would be the biggest threat to a mass murdering Step considering her big secret
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Maybe if you open gates? I frankly have no idea since I’m still fighting trying to figure out how to see game code from steam releases 
I have… so many hours in these games that I’ve nearly memorized most of my ‘typical’ choices and so I just want to be able to see what changes damn it!
Response to @Nm6k :
Man I love the scene where Step can admit to being unnerved by her eyes.
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I didn’t mean that kind of threat for my MC 
But I agree that she seems the most dangerous of all the Rangers.
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She is your biggest threat. Full stop.
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Y’all make me resent myself for not having done a full Argent playthrough. If I do one though I have to make it sapphic, idk why but it feels fitting. [IG because if I go out of my comfort zone in one way why not just say fuck it and go all out? ] I’d never consider a woman RO if it wasn’t for Malin’s impeccable writing, damn you! [Nothing against women, obviously, I am just a masc/nonbinary attracted person. ]
Response to @vera :
Spoopy! Bugger, you folks have my curiousity now. I am going to do an Argent playthrough today fuck it. 
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I’ve tried to kill Argent, but it isn’t going well. She is annoyingly indestructible by telepathic means and I ought to keep my skills under wraps, so I mainly force her to kill people herself.
Forcing her to kill a civie herself is the best feeling in the world, honestly. Knocks her down a few pegs for sure, she has stolen my bloody cloak! It complements my alien armour amazingly!
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We can handle her, just wait until book 4 . But I have to admit that fair fights and flirting with her are fun, even if I’m not romantically interested in her.
Even as a NoKill Sidestep Argent is the only I tried and try to kill, I don’t like her, she’s too dangerous
Is Mortum the only RO that trusts you less if you don’t end up sleeping with them btw? Because Mortum wouldn’t tell me their secret base location when I didn’t, and did when I did sleep with them? OR is that tied with a threshold for their closeness with Puppet?
Response to @Nm6k :
They were definitely above that at the time, but Mortum hadn’t told Puppet the location. Odd… (I am referring to before the gun btw). Thanks for the clarification , I have no idea how their relationship gets that high in time without doing the nasty though, bugger. [Also, anyone else love fun expletive choices? Mine are Bugger, Fritz, and Frell, though it does make it feel weird that nobody points out they use the same obscure swear.]
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For them to tell you about the secret base in the nightmare/psychologist chapter your relationship has to be at 75 or above. They auto tell you in the chapter where they tell you about the gun as long as the relationship title isn’t businesses associate or frosty
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To add on to this: There’s a passage about how pain affects the mind that I think sheds some light on the whole “more trauma = more gates open” thing. (As well as why the people who experimented on the MC and Heartbreak wouldn’t want a pain gate limiting the pain their subjects could feel.)
You don’t really need Carter, just the information he has. Luckily his mind is just the right amount of terrified and in pain to let you slip inside easily.
It’s hard to keep mental shields up under torture. You should know.
You do know.
[…]
Pain makes it easy to slip inside because that’s the brain’s priority alarm. Unlike panic, which can shut things down, or fear, which can lock things into loops, pain opens everything up. All the gates. All the hidden rooms. Enough pain, and it’s impossible to focus on anything but, leaving defenses crumbling and hidden secrets crawling out.
A bunch of the game’s gate/scar-related text similarly suggests a) that the gates are some sort of internal defense/shield/seal against something*, and b) that the more power your scar from the Heartbreak incident has over you, the weaker your ability to maintain those defenses gets. The most obvious example is the text you get for reaching the endgame dream sequence with all nine gates open (which ends with you forcibly closing the eighth and ninth again):
spoiler
Seven doors gape open. Two stand closed. They are cracked. Leaking darkness. A breath, and they would fall.
You cover your face with a groan. Why did you think you could do this? He told you. He told you…
You didn’t listen.
no
The first word of power you learned. The one that never was supposed to apply to you. Used against you. Until you said it.
No.
They won’t fall. Two doors closed. No cracks. No leakage. Solid hinges and locks and chains, and you told him “no,” and your world changed.
Like making fire for the first time.
No.
* The something in question most likely being the mysterious “him” mentioned in the above scene and the Farm flashback you can get in the last chapter, but that subject is a whole rabbit hole of its own.
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It is said to be possible. But only by small percentages. However, i remember reading on this forum that Malin will look into it to make it a bit easier. So maybe next update? But i never saw an actual statement from the writer themselves. But there is a discord and all that so yeahssss.
Edit: hah, found the statement! Took me quite some digging XD
Fallen Hero: Retribution release thread! (Book Two) (Spoilers Inside!) - #1606 by Nm6k
I’m going back to read through with a completely reckless Step who flirts with everyone and oh my god it’s genuinely amusing to read through the interactions. [I haven’t even started retribution yet but I’m imagining the mess only gets more interesting]. Might update with funny quotes when I get there.
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Speaking of different Steps, do you guys prefer the good guy in disguise route or the unhinged ticking bomb on a killing spree?
I have the backbone of a chocolate éclair and can’t be fully mean to Ortega, even if I do have a fully unhinged Sidestep file, but I’m curious to hear which narrative people tend to pick for their “main” Step, if you have one you’d consider so 
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As you all can see from my comments… “unhinged ticking bomb on a killing spree”. I tried to play the nice guy, but it’s not fun.
Soo… massacre at the museum. Almost kill Ortega. Damage Herald and then enjoy seeing how he is trusting and attracted to MC. Killing Blaze by throwing him out the window. Manipulating Mortum by making her think the puppet loves her. Testing nanovores on mods…
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My Sidestep didn’t sleep with Mortum but have a friendly relationship betwenn them and the puppet. I was able to know the lab location being friends with them. Since the only way for them to interact was through the puppet, we can surmised that it depends on your puppet’s relationship with Mortum.
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My MC is too pragmatic to be killing random civilians or destroying public property and prefers to do things sneakily whenever possible. For now is genuinely enjoying the time spent with the rangers but will kill them (or anyone else) if they prove to be a real threat to his plans
Maybe not Herald, but still
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My Sidestep would probably stop whatever she’s doing in order to help old ladies across the street. The woman has a savior complex. She’s surprisingly stable considering she tried to force Herald to drop her to a certain death…
And she can’t be mean to any of the Rangers, but especially Ortega and Danny. She loves fighting Argent, though, but that’s just because it’s fun. Is there such a thing as a sismance? She’d totally have that with Argent.
But yeah, good guy in disguise all the way.
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