Friends in Low Places is the first mission in the Slingshot campaign from an earlier DLC before Enemy Within. If you have never added this campaign, available in the menu options when you start a game, you should. The long-term rewards for this quest chain are incredible.
The first mission is a standard escort mission. You’re picking up a Triad member, Zhang, who has a valuable piece of alien technology. This will later turn into a powerful weapon your fighters can use against UFO contacts and Zhang will become an important squad member at an early point in the game.
The mission opens in a cemetery. I suggest you pair off a soldier, your sniper, since they are usually in the back anyway, with Zhang. Move up and take cover against the walls. The first Thin Man will drop in front of you behind some gravestones and one will drop to your left trying to get flanking shots on your squad. If you put your squad on overwatch after most moves, you should be able to deal with most of these drops before they even become a problem.
Keep your squad to one side of the graveyard. I usually go left. This will let all your troops see the oncoming enemies at the same time as the graveyard is pretty visible except for the island in the middle of the map. This will also draw the Chryssalid in to all your weapons when he shows up.
Once you proceed to the middle of the graveyard, you will hear about an “intermittent” signal. On Normal difficulty, it will be a Chryssalid. It becomes a Muton on Classic and probably continues to scale upward with difficulty. He will be paired with another Thin Man drop very near to Zhang. The aliens don’t seem to go directly after Zhang, which gives you a little more freedom in choosing targets if you need to eliminate the Chryssalid before dealing with other contacts on the map.
Once you’ve dealt with the one real big baddie they drop on you, the mission is pretty much done. You’ll come across a few more Thin Men and a Sectoid, but nothing you can’t handle. As soon as you get Zhang to the drop zone, the mission will end, regardless of where your troops are. Remember to clear out all the aliens first. Last thing you want is an overwatch killing Zhang as he runs to the Skyranger.
Rewards:
As far as standard Council Missions go, you get 2 Engineers and Scientists and $200. In addition, you get Zhang as a Heavy Lieutenant. This is a huge boon since this mission shows up pretty early in the game while most of your squad is still Corporal or lower.
Hope you enjoyed this one. I’ll list the remaining Slingshot missions as I can get screen grabs for them.
Check out my guide for the St. Johns Fishing Village from Enemy within!
