There are many things that can kill you in Aliens: Dark Descent, not the least of which are the many xenomorphs stalking the game’s various missions. Stress might be the biggest killer of all though, as it can give your Marines some much unwanted nerfs in the middle of combat and lead to long-lasting trauma.
Stress is accumulated in Aliens: Dark Descent quite easily, owing to just how stressful it really is to take on hordes of creatures who want to use you as an incubator. Generally, stress worsens when you fight more enemies and suffer wounds. The more stressed you are, the quicker you accumulate stress damage per second.
There are four distinct levels of stress during a deployment: Relaxed (White), Anxious (yellow), Panicked (Orange), and Terrified (Red). Each time you reach a new stress level, you take on a new stress effect that ranges from your accuracy being reduced to your Command Skills. All of this can also lead to traumas, which are basically even further negative effects on your Marines that can result in phobias and efficiency nerfs. Basically, your job will become much harder if you’re taking any traumatised soldiers into the field.
Your Marines will carry over the highest stress level reached into their trauma meter, with three bars on the trauma meter giving them a trauma. Essentially, if they ever reach the Terrified status in a deployment, they will then suffer trauma. If they suffer three more, they will get another worse effect of that trauma, and so on.
Just from reading that, you can probably tell why stress is such a big deal in Aliens: Dark Descent, but luckily there are a few ways of reducing stress levels.
The first way is to make a shelter when out in the field by welding doors. This can be done in most rooms with doors that also do not have any signs of alien infestation, such as a nest. You will need a Tool per door; text at the top of the screen will tell you how many doors need to be secured. Rest once done and you will recover 100 stress damage, which will lower your stress level.
The second method of lowering stress in Dark Descent is to pop a Naproleve, which requires Medical Supplies. Select the Marine with high stress and then choose Naproleve from the options to relieve 100 stress, effectively lowering their stress level.
Another way of lowering stress is to get your Sergeant to use a special ability. Sergeants can be chosen after you get a Rookie to level 3, but you get a choice of two classes at random. Once you have a Sergeant at level 6, they will then unlock the Reprimand skill as a class attribute, which allows them to to use a Command Point to stop all stress for 30 seconds, which is ideal to use just before an onslaught starts.
Finally, Bravery also defines how much stress damage a soldier takes. If your Marine’s Bravery is 15%, they will take 15% less stress damage. Bravery can be boosted with upgrades like Honor Ribbons and Common Attributes like Bold, which have a chance of appearing every time they level up.
Aliens: Dark Descent is available on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X & S.
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