XCOM: Chimera Squad: Factions guide – The Progeny, Gray Phoenix, and Sacred Coil

XCOM: Chimera Squad has you conducting investigations against three hostile factions in City 31: The Progeny, Gray Phoenix, and Sacred Coil. It’s up to you to stop their plots as you experience challenges from Dark Events. Here’s our guide to help you out.

Note: For more information, check out our XCOM: Chimera Squad guides and features hub.

XCOM: Chimera Squad – Factions guide

After XCOM: Chimera Squad‘s intro mission, you’re shown the three factions in City 31 that you have to contend with:

• The Progeny – Human rebels who want to psionically manipulate everyone.
• Gray Phoenix – Alien mercenaries who have advanced weaponry.
• Sacred Coil – Cult-indoctrinated hybrids and their robots.

You can choose one faction to investigate at a given time and the Investigation tab while at HQ tells you of your progress. Also, know that mobs get tougher during the later stages of XCOM: Chimera Squad‘s campaign.

Faction investigation and Dark Events: The Progeny

As for how the investigation plays out, there are three stages and a choice of Dark Events that can occur during missions.

Groundwork – This is a short mission that kickstarts the investigation process.

Operations – Story missions (denoted in purple) can take a while to get unlocked so you’ll need to do some side missions first. We explain more in our City 31 management guide since this is very much related to unrest and creating field teams.

Anyway, most missions against The Progeny led to encounters with telekinesis-loving Resonants, Soulfire-spamming Acolytes, and heal-happy Sorceresses:

Takedown – This is the mission that concludes the investigation. There are multiple encounters here, culminating in a fight against the faction’s leader. In the case of The Progeny, the Takedown mission involved defeating mobs and making my way to an elevator:

Once I reached the highrise, I fought Violet, the leader of The Progeny faction:

Zephyr told her to observe social distancing:

Dark Events

These are choices presented during your investigation which can lead to additional challenges during missions. You can see an example below:

In my case, I chose to have Codex mobs spawn during certain missions while investigating the Progeny. They have a penchant for disabling weapons, teleporting, causing psionic explosions, and cloning themselves. For the other two factions, Dark Event modifiers will already be present once you start your investigation, but you’ll still be presented with a choice of additional challenges down the line.

Eliminating a faction

Anyway, once you’ve finished the Takedown mission, that faction is eliminated and you’re treated to a short cutscene:

You also unlock the assembly research tech for that faction’s items. For The Progeny, you can get items such as Talon Rounds and Psi Grenades:

You can then choose from the two remaining groups and repeat the same steps as above, all while managing unrest and anarchy, until you’ve completed XCOM: Chimera Squad‘s campaign.

XCOM: Chimera Squad is available on Steam. For more information, check out our guides and features hub.