Gaining resources | Game mechanics XCOM 2 Guide
Last update: 11 May 2016
Available resources in the game can be divided into few groups. Those are:
- Power - used to construct new facilities.
- Contacts - used to make contact with the resistance.
- Staff - engineers and scientists, which are used to increase the effectiveness of all of your facilities, as well as impact the speed of your research.
- Supplies and other resources - supplies, alloys and elerium.
- Intel.
Power
Power Relay facilities are the source of power on the Avenger. Each one of those increases the overall power output of your base, allowing you to construct more and more facilities. Power Relay can be further upgraded and staffed with engineers to increase its performance.
Contacts
Probably one of the most important resources in the game, without which you will quickly lose the entire campaign - by having a limited amount of contacts you won't be able to contact the resistance, meaning that you won't be able to counteract the AVATAR Project.
The amount of available contacts can be increased by building Resistance Comms. Each one of those increases the amount of contacts by 1, and those can be further staffed with Engineers (up to 2), which increases the amount by 2 (for first engineer) and 4 (for the second one), summing up at 7 new contacts.
Staff
The process of staff acquisition can be found in the "Staff - Engineers and Scientists" section of this guide.
Supplies and other resources
This group consists mainly of supplies, elerium and alloys. Those are used to construct new facilities, develop new types of equipment for your soldiers, or to make said tools. The main sources of their acquisition are:
- Excavating the Avenger ship - each time you complete an excavation, you will be given a hefty amount of resources.
- Mission loot - during missions you will sometimes stumble upon places in which you can hack a terminal, which will give you a small (or a large, if you are able to hack it) dose of resources.
- Completing missions - as a reward for completing various missions.
- Collecting them on the world map - you will be informed whenever there's a resource available on the map, and after a number of days of scanning the said resources will be added to your bank.
- Receive from the Council - this is the case with supplies only. Each month you will be given a large amount (the exact amount depends on the number of continents you've established contact with), but you will have to scan it as well as any normal resource.
Intel
Intel is used to establish contact with the resistance, to counteract the AVATAR Project, or to simply purchase things off the Black Market. There are various sources of Intel in the game, such as:
- Mission loot - during missions you will sometimes stumble upon places in which you can hack a terminal, which will give you a small (or a large, if you are able to hack it) dose of resources.
- Scanning at the Resistance HQ - for each day of scanning at the resistance HQ you will be given a small amount, about 8 points (which can be further increased by purchasing the appropriate upgrade at the Resistance HQ).
- Completing missions - as a reward for completing various missions.
- Collecting them on the world map - similar to the other types of resources.