Complete Beginner’s Guide in Warhammer 40K Rogue Trader

We get it, Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader is overwhelming for a beginner. Owlcat are known for making extremely deep and complex RPGs, after all, such as the Pathfinder series.

Starting out in this game can make anyone’s head spin, and the game is hard even for veterans in the genre!

In this guide, we’ll try to give you some key pointers aimed at helping beginners enjoy this game!

Beginner’s Guide | Tips For Rogue Trader

Think About Your Character Build

This is a bit of a tough one for beginners, admittedly, but you should be careful with your character-build choices. In particular, you should be most careful during character creation.

Homeworld, Origin, and Archetypes cannot be reset at all, at least as of this writing. Homeworld and Origin make enough sense due to them being part of a character’s identity.

However, Archetype is a strange omission from the Respec feature, as it only determines the role your character takes in combat. You’ll get to choose an Advanced Archetype once you reach a certain level, too.

Carefully read the descriptions the game provides and select an Archetype that actually fits your character. It’s a big commitment, so think it over!

Similarly, you should be careful with your choices of Abilities and Talents when you level up.

The game has a recommendation system that highlights choices that might work well for you, but it’s not ideal to just get recommended abilities.

Just like with the Archetype selection, read what the abilities and talents do before committing to them!

On the upside, the Respec feature does allow you to reset points spent on Abilities or Talents. You can freely change them later, unlike your Archetype.

Equip Your Consumables

There are many extremely helpful consumables for you to find as you explore, such as grenades and the like. These can come in handy when you’re overwhelmed in combat!

The thing is, you need to manually equip these to your characters before combat even starts. If you don’t equip consumables, your characters won’t be able to use them!

Ideally, you should get into the habit of checking your characters’ inventories after every encounter. Just make sure that you keep useful items at hand and you’ll find yourself having a much smoother time with Rogue Trader.

Loot Everything

While we’re on the topic of consumables, you should make absolutely sure to loot everything you can. There are no carry weight limits of any kind in this game, so feel free to hoard everything!

We do mean everything, too, even items that seem like junk. Weak outdated gear that you never plan to use can be traded to various factions, improving your reputation. After all, you’re the Rogue Trader!

So, don’t leave anything behind, it’s as simple as that. Anything not bolted down belongs in your pockets in this game.

Switch Up Formations

The default formation has your party walking in a single line, which is less than ideal once you have enough party members.

The thing is, this formation is also what’s used at the start of combat!

The game’s tough enough as it is and your movement is limited, so you should make sure to optimize your formation to give you an edge in combat.

Of course, the ideal formation depends on your party’s composition, so you’ll need to experiment.

Generally speaking, though, you should aim to have tanky melee units like Warriors in front while your frail ranged and support units are in the back.

Save Often

This should be an obvious tip for most gamers, but it’s one well worth noting. Rogue Trader autosaves very rarely, and you can’t save during combat at all.

Saving rarely can quickly lead to tragedy, as one sudden combat encounter can end your game!

You can save from the pause menu at any time, but PC players also get to quicksave by pressing the F5 key.

We also recommend saving to different save slots every now and then, just in case you want to return to an older save for any reason. Better safe than sorry!

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