Part 1

Your first steps into XCOM: Enemy Unknown! Learn about setting up your game, understanding Second Wave mods, and choosing your starting country to begin your fight against the aliens.

Alright, let's get you started with XCOM: Enemy Unknown. This first part is all about getting your game set up just right before you even drop your first soldier into the field. Think of it as prepping your gear before a big mission – crucial stuff!

First things first, when you fire up a new game, you'll see a bunch of options. You can randomize soldier stats, pick which DLCs you want active, decide if you want the game to be a bit more forgiving with saving (called 'save scumming'), and even turn off that sometimes-annoying tutorial. If you're new to this, I highly recommend enabling 'Second Wave' and the 'Save Scum' option. Turning off the tutorial is also a good shout so you can learn at your own pace. For this guide, we'll assume you're playing on Classic difficulty, with all DLCs enabled, and no extra difficulty-spiking Second Wave mods.

Now, about those 'Second Wave' mods. Some of them just tweak how the game plays, but others can really crank up the difficulty. The 'Save Scum' mod is a lifesaver, especially with XCOM's sometimes wild random number generator. Basically, XCOM decides if a shot hits or misses *before* it even happens. Without Save Scum, if your 90% shot misses, it's just missed. With it enabled, reloading your save lets the game re-roll those dice, giving you another chance to avoid those frustrating moments where all your soldiers seem to miss every single shot. It's a reference to the gaming term 'save scumming,' where you reload to get a better outcome. If you're okay with accepting the occasional bizarre failure, you might not need it, but for a smoother ride, I'd keep it on.

There's also a mod called 'Aiming Angles.' This one gives bonuses to aim if your soldier is flanking an enemy. In the original XCOM, sometimes bullets would just magically hit cover instead of the target, which was a big complaint. This mod helps make combat feel a bit more logical by rewarding good positioning.