I beat FTL on Hard with all ships in the game ★

For 2023 I wanted to do something different than usual—I wanted to start playing computer games again. So I gave myself a late Christmas gift and bought a Steam Deck (and like any self-serving gentleman I took care to pitch it as being for my kids) and I started loading it up with loads of emulated games and more modern ones from Steam.

But then I saw that FTL: Faster Than Light, one of my favorite games of all time, had gotten an “Advanced Edition”, with new systems and weapons, new ships and a brand new “Hard” difficulty. Having played the game upon release a ton, but on the “Normal” difficulty, I figured I’ll try to beat it again but on Hard.

And that ruined my plans, as FTL has since then been the only game I’ve been playing. It’s so good.

But honestly, it’s a bit too good and addicting, so I’m glad that after 231 hours I’ve finally achieved my goal of beating Hard mode and I might be able to put it down and play some other games for a change.

I didn’t start out doing this, but after a while I figured it’d be fun to take a screenshot of my victories, so future me can look back and relive these memories.

FTL is hard

If you haven’t played FTL before I just want to say that the game is hard. Even beating the game once on Easy is a big accomplishment as on Easy this game is more difficult than most games (and Hard is a big step up in difficulty!).

But there are plenty of great resources out there if you want to get good at the game. For example:

• Mike Hopley’s FTL ships guide and YouTube channel
• neozar, Crow Revell and Holoshideim

If you’re an older player like me (or even if you’re not), this video on how to use scrap on Hard in FTL was a big game changer for me. The idea that you shouldn’t focus too much on “value”, but on maximizing your win probability was super helpful for me.

Some stats

• Playing time: 231 hours
• Longest Hard win-streak: 6 (Mantis B, Kestrel B, Fed A, Rock C, Slug A, Engi A)

Bear in mind that I started from zero without any ships unlocked (I didn’t play FTL on Steam the first time around, and I didn’t find the save file). The save also got corrupted when I had beat around 2/3 of all ships, so my FTL stats are not complete:

It feels pretty good to have an almost 50% winrate, although it’s not really true as a bunch of those wins were me unlocking ships on Easy (and abandoning the run if I had gotten my achievements).

Some notes on ships

My focus was to just beat the game with all ships, so after I got the victory screenshot with a ship I didn’t replay it again, so my thoughts on any ship might change after future playthroughs.

• Most fun: Stealth A, Stealth C, Slug A and Slug C.

  I love the efficiency of the weapons on the stealth ships and that I have to pay more attention as they don’t have shields. Slug ships are just weirdly fun (not Slug B though).

• Most painful: Rock A, Slug B, Federation C, Mantis B

  Rock A just stinks. It’s a bad ship, but it’s also not fun. Rocks are slow and missiles being consumables is not a design I like.

  Boarding with slugs feels super brittle and it’s not so fun to eat early game damage with Fed or Mantis.

• Biggest achievement: Stealth B

  I almost won with Stealth B on my first try, but I think I needed 8 attempts or something to win with the “worst ship in the game”.

  Weirdly enough I never felt nearly as frustrated as I did with Rock A or Slug B.

• Easiest win: Lanius B

  I played the ship twice and won easily both times. Almost felt a bit boring after being so far ahead the whole time.

• Most stressful win: Zoltan C

  Got a rough start and played a long time low on hull. But it sure feels good coming back when you think it’s all over.

  

A memory of my victories

Unfortunately I only started taking screenshots of my victories after finally winning with Stealth B, so I had to replay around a third of the ships.

And if you have a keen eye you might see the “Federation Victory (Normal)” achievement on the Kestrel. Unfortunately there’s no Hard achievement, but I did in fact beat it with the Kestrel as well.