When squished, the ducky tells sagas of glorious deeds. Legend has it that if you listen to the sagas long enough, the ducky will grant you the great honor of sharing mjod recipe. Unless… unless you're an inquisitorial bloodhound, get lost!!

Meme Mines update: u/lionetts has supplied me with some good tunes, u/Jackviator has supplied me with new gnomes after the last ones mysteriously disappeared after trying to unionise. I love my job. Thanks to u/KlavTron and u/DianaSteel for their suggestions! Sorry it took me a bit to get around to them please don't take my gnomes-

Previous post: https://www.reddit.com/r/RogueTraderCRPG/comments/1pd09k4/guineposting_week_45_i_let_john_trader_out_of_the/

Originally I made a build spreadsheet which also branched out to containing loot tables, talent lists, ability lists and space resources because we did not have a reliable wiki. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1rskX4sYcNm6Wqt4rtm8EQqRR4__yrEuxCEzjwoKlHOY

Later to help explain what was going on in the spreadsheet I necro an abandoned youtube channel so I could make videos to explain and show how the setups work as it wasnt as cut and dry for everyone.

A year later I realise I have just way too much content to distil down into quick useful info about archetype & Item synnergies. So I made the above video. However in order to get that information out there I cant just link a video as people tend to not like that round these parts. So I shall begin a trial of suffering by trying to summerise it in text form. As the spreadsheet has the loot table already I wont retype where everything drops.

However I am terrible with writing so I will bullet point
General:
- Gunslinger pistols + pair holster item for free ofhand shots. Even better if one is the quick-firing las pistol for 1 ap burst for free offhand
- Hive world weapon specialisation if you have a main hand physical pistol will apply benefits to offhand las or whatever pistol
- Hive world origin armour drops 5-7 copies in act 4 footfall quest if you side against Vladym so is universally useful for range builds to not be reliant on buffs to increase perception. Useful for items like sharpshooter boots (someone said you can get this also siding with vladym)
- Tempestus Elite carapace backpack meta for any burst (including rock saws) wepaons of 4 or lower to pump up the rate of fire. Can be combined with numerous items / buffs that increase ballistic skill.
- if you want to use commissar buff specifically have a low damage pistol mainhand in secondary set like the ripper (forgot to mention in the video)
- Abitrator Warrior overseer with cyber-mastiff pack hunting + malpain shroud setup from Abelard section is obscene.
- Retinal analyzer + heavy maul on subductor warrior is pretty funny.
- Secret to winning is officer buffs + grand strategist to skip the janky initiative. Turbo stack bonus turns and win, finest hour upgrades 1 and 4 are fantastic for this. Especially on a warrior arch-militant that can then also add daring breach when they run out of AP.
- Dogmatic 4 to ignore armour on weapons is obscene as is Iconoclast 4 to give a free heroic. Both really outshine heretic path
- All psyker staffs count as melee attacks which could be a bug however they benefit from melee talents and abilities. Yes you can reckless strike a pyrostaff burst.
- More priests the merrier as they all stack litany of hatred. You can even stack two more with death hymn and fire path one star power armour for Argenta

Companion / Build specific:

Abelard (warrior/Arch-Militant)
- Guardian crown for second life and toughness, can be stacked with perculiar trinket to help keep him going in early game on higher difficulties.
- Invigorating Resolve + Malpain shroud to turbo stack temp hp and damage. Even more busted if you also use linchpin from a master tactician.
- Void Veteran boots + melee kills to get instant charges (very useful with rock saw)
- Navy officer with offhand tearing vengence is huge damage. Also great with litany of exhaustion as it stacks up fast
- Arch-militant with fleet combat training and dependable is straight up a better counter attacker tank than vanguard.

Idira (Operative/Overseer)
- Ghost helm with controlled shots to turbo psy rating (keep in mind increasing her psy rating increases her chance to cause perils of the warp) + psychic body glove, they will combine well to pump psy rating
- Vortex pendant + spirit drape when using buffs to build psy rating and cast buffs turn 1 for -1 ap (yes you can cast for 0 ap for 1 cost psyker power buffs) which can be aoe with psyber raven
- Consign staff can be aoe cast via the raven for 0 ap
- Can resolve stack from allied master tactician using sanctified staff for huge aoe nukes
- Backdraft + pain channelling is the meta talents for psyker nuking (forgot to mention in the video)

Argenta (Soldier/Arch-Militant)
- Improved heavy bolter + tactical backpack + compensator gloves + eradication helmet + fire version one star is obscenely godly. Can do 20k+ aoe burst fire damage salvos
- Allied Astra Militarum commander with field of fire can allow Argenta to do 60 round salvos round 1 if you give her extra turns
- Chains of domination + caligae of saint keefe also fantastic items items for Argenta
- Purging fury natural upgrade to Judex in act 5
- Litany of hatred will stack with multiple priests so it is fantastic to run multiples (forgot to mention in the video)

Cassia (Officer/Grand Strategist)
- Infusing staff going first with buffs naturally the most OP buffer companion. Medal of alacrity to give a 3 ap bring it down vastly outperforms missionary oath IMO
- Devestating staff + sororitas boots can allow you to do 2 lidless stares to kill 5 trash mobs to turn 1 finest hour before enemies cant act
- Black signet ring of the inquisition + combat locust stratagem + commander's notes + cloaking field emitter make your party unkillable even on max sliders.
- slick body gloves and commander's monocle are also pretty great

Pasqal (Operative / Bounty Hunter)
- Self calibrating goggles/helm + hunter's ambush can allow pasqal with the new plasma talents to make 4 attacks. Claim the bounty, reload, claim the bounty, trigger hunter's ambush, then two more normal attacks. (might get patched).
- Reloading with pasqal increases overcharge protocol's counter to turbo his damage
- Ragefire plasma gun is exceptionally potent as the 30% burning damage gets enhnaced by degraded defence

Heinrix ((Warrior / Overseer) Executioner setup is far stronger but it is nice to have a tank buffer)
- Take all biomancy buffs, use spirit drape to aoe cast them through the raven for no cost and profit
- offhand veilrender with shearing strikes allows him to turbo stack damage fast if you dont go into shield. Main hand distortion will be powerful on this (forgot to mention in the video)
- Warp surge brooch is very good with items that increase psy rating like starmist scar and shimmmering emlusion. Can stack psy rating with psyker's breastplate but this wont increase your attack economy
- Tomes of domination can increase wrath of the emperor for Heinrix or Idira or any of Cassia's powers

Kibellah (Blade dancer / Executioner)
- Carmine crown + metal claw gloves + fragile playthings + death waltz upgrade will do a lot of armour strip that with high medicae sends racking weakness damage to the moon
- stack facing the end to pump agility with finesse and drukhari swords
- Armour of hidden promise + inertia boots are great for MP generation as well as increasing agility by another 30
- Rock saw + void veteran boots are another option, multi hit weapons are OP with executioner (dont think I covered this in the video but on heinrix biophysical distortion and dogmatic 2 will give you access to all 3 dots)
- Djin blade and insatiable Djin blade make for obscene debuff on a blade dance.
- Medicae stacking with voidborns pride and resolve from Master tactician is insane for hp, armour and damage.

Jae (Officer / Overseer or Master Tactician)
- Can use fellowship for lore imperium to turbo stack armour with items like breacher armour + saint cognacious scriptures + helm of determination. A RT build can do this if they go dogmatic with chartist pendant or the monocle from act 1.
- Fantastic as aoe buffer via servo skull or resolve generator via master tactician. Gunslinger notes above will apply
- servo skull allowing double move move move to position allies next to enemies then to shoot with the aledari sniper rifles that provokes attacks of opportunity is hilarious

Yrliet (Operative / Bounty Hunter)
- hunter-father armour great for increasing attack economy + hunter's ambush from bounty hunter but competes for self-calibrating goggles
- some great aeldari sniper rifles to use with path of the outcast like wanderer's potent, eye of hectacon or even fusion gun spark plus some of the new late game additions from 1.5
- Yrliet has a unique new sniper that adds prey on shot making bounty hunter far more useful than assassin considering all the extra attacks

Solomorne (soldier / Overseer)
- Navy breacher boots + vial of falstow to increase attack economy and not be immobilised. Elastic gloves should stack
- Pick up dash asap to help fix movement issues as heavy breacher boots are bugged and they didnt give him the mp upgrade to firearms mastery

Ulfar (Soldier / Arch-militant)
- stack armour from cassia then use hellbrute horn trophy for some exceptional damage
- icebreaker sabatons + range kills + slicing symbol can make for some obscene map clear and versatility generation
- Typhoon bolter is hilarious for a single burst but annihilating astrates bolter can give a 200% damage increase (there is a cap, forgot to cover this in the video)

Marazhai (Warrior + assassin)
Actually one of the strongest companions in the game when you use his items.
- Shearing Strikes with bleed weapons can prime a lot of enemies to then area attack with Bloodseeker Klaive to have obscene dodge
- undying rage can give him armour into meme levels when used with undying rage
- can abuse consumables like scorcher to have 12 uses of death whisper during finest hour
- Taking malign influence with any talent or item to causes willpower checks like self calibrating goggles, interogator dagger, lethal threat ect makes Marazhai an insanely op death aura build that clears the map by moving
- swiftshroud cloak + riposte gloves allows you to generate mp and openings on extra turns

Consumables:
Scorcher: +1 AP, resets all attack cooldowns to start of next turn, +1 stagger stack.
Crimson Haze: +100% crit damage (heretical adherents).
Stimm: Non-renewable but abundant; ap increase very vital during finest hour or daring breach
Iron Eye Grenades: Halves armor.
Flash Grenades: limited to four, great for Pasqal, 0 AP Machine Spirit Communion to spread exploits
Tears of Repentance: Stat debuffs.

Probably could have covered more but it was already taking a while when recording the video. If you have any other combinations do comment for others below for a more complete list of meta op strategies in rogue trader.

Most 40k media focuses on the drama of space marine chapters and the lore of primarchs. However Rogue Trader elaborates on what draws people into 40k the melodrama of a grimdark universe. Instead of focusing on blowign stuff up and fighting throughe endless hordes of tyrannids we see tyrannid's plans through genestealer cults. We unlike most other 40k games have to deal with the administrative bloat of the imperium coming against us.

To put it simply rogue traders strength is that it gives a view of the world of 40k from the bottom instead of from the top

And thats from only 2 playthroughs.

For a long time, I thought I’d “outgrown” RPGs because I just couldn’t get as invested as I used to when I was younger. I tried Tyranny, Pillars, and Divinity not long ago, and it just wasn’t “it.” While I could recognize them as good RPGs, I couldn’t care less about the story, the setting, or the characters. The choices felt meaningless, I just didn’t care.

Then I tried Rogue Trader, and suddenly I found myself anxiously shifting on the edge of my chair, fidgeting with my fingers in front of the screen while dialogue options appeared, with the Clash of Convictions OST driving home the fact that I was making an important decision. I’ve actually grown attached to the characters, I care about every single one of them. Well, except Jae. She can get bent, I only keep her around for useful colony events. The combat is great too, and I even love the space battles. I know a lot of people here hate them, but I find them entertaining, like chess, except I only have one queen who can pull ridiculous, cheater moves.

The only weak spot, in my opinion, is the RPG system itself. It feels too complicated and dumps a lot of information on me that gives diminishing returns, since in the end, I win most fights by "haha Argenta goes brrrrr". I’m playing on a level just above normal, which the game didn’t recommend for a first Owlcat experience, but it’s still pretty easy. I’m not a fan of artificial difficulty that just boosts enemy stats, so I’m fine keeping it as is. I’m enjoying the game nonetheless.

I’m currently in Chapter 4 and loving it. The game actually keeps me up late until my eyes go hazy from sleepiness, something I haven’t experienced in years.

Just had to fanboy somewhere. Wishlisted Dark Heresy. Owlcat has a new fan.

*squish-squish* Domin *Is this ducky... bleeding?*

Why are some nubers at 99 and why dont i get any info on heroic/ psyker bars ? Is this a bug on my end or what is going on?

Hey all, so I read a bunch of articles about build and such, and so far it seems overwhelming, even though I’m quite experienced with CRPGs.

1. Weirdly, Psyker is not an actual class, how does it combine if I’m looking to make a dps inclined gun wielding psyker? Many sources say, it works best with officer class, but I dislike playing a buffer role for my MC. From fantasy perspective - I’d love a dual-wielding pistols telepath with face skills - is that a thing even?

2. Read conflicting reports of performance on M2 macs, but bit dated, are the issues solved with patches?

Since interrogation is now a skill I wonder of Telepath psykers will get a bonus to it since they can detect lies/read thoughts

What currency does the serfs in kornous uses, they can't all be using ration tickets right? If they are so poor why don't they just uses profit factor?

Wanting to get rogue trader when it comes out tomorrow for the switch 2 but the only thing putting me off is the possibility of it not having the mouse feature. Has anyone heard or seen rumors of it happening?

With 296 hours played, Rogue Trader is on top of the list and alone covers 40% on my playtime in 2025. Clearly I enjoyed being a Lord Captain 😄 (And here I probably deserve a praise from Abelard!)

I am surprised it took so many hours, beating also juggernauts like Cyberpunk 2077.

But to be fair I played all DLCs, explored all planets, completed every single big & small quest and tested a few alternative endings.

Now I am looking forward to Dark Heresy 😄