Cassia Orsellio is the one and only Navigator companion inWarhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader, capable of guiding your massive ship through the warp, enabling you to efficiently and safely move around the Koronus Expanse.
As the sole playable Navigator in the game, Cassia has several unique abilities and talents that set her apart from the rest of your crew. Below, we’ll take a look at a few of the best talents to choose for Cassia as you level her up.
7Strange Vitality
The Navigator heals 5 wounds at the beginning of every turn and gains +1 additional wound for every Navigator talent taken. The healing increases by +1 for every creature killed in between the Navigator’s turns.
Strange Vitality is one of Cassia’s strongest talents, allowing her to consistently heal each turn. This healing only gets stronger as you level up and slot in more Navigator talents, and can even get stronger during combat as you kill enemies.
Due to the limited options for healing you have in Rogue Trader, especially in the early game, Strange Vitality is almost essential for keeping Cassia alive, and shouldn’t be overlooked. This talent also synergizes well with the overall objective of the Navigator Origin, which is to focus entirely on Navigator talents and abilities.
6Mind Over Matter
The Navigator makes all resistance tests with their Willpower if it is higher than the base characteristic for such test. If the Navigator’s Willpower is higher than their Toughness, the Navigator’s wounds are calculated according to their Willpower.
Mind Over Matter drastically increases Cassia’s survivability, allowing her to use her Willpower for resistance tests and for determining the damage she takes from attacks. Most Navigator abilities scale based on Willpower, meaning you’ll want this to be Cassia’s highest stat anyway.
Because Cassia’s Willpower will almost always be higher than her toughness (or any other stat, for that matter), Mind Over Matter essentially allows you to pass resistance tests and reduce damage taken from all sources.
5Threads And Faults
Whenever an enemy fails a resistance test against a Navigator’s power, attacks against them gain +20 + 2 x PER bonus) % critical hit chance. The effect stacks but is reset by a critical hit.
Threads and Faults is a very strong talent that can greatly increase your entire party’s damage output through critical hits. This talent makes it much easier to score critical hits on enemies affected by Cassia’s Navigator abilities, which she can use frequently.
When paired with Open to the Warp, which we’ll take a look at below, Threads and Faults will activate even more often, thanks to the penalty inflicted by that talent against resistance tests.
4Open To The Warp
Enemies affected by the Navigator’s abilities suffer the stacking -10 penalty to the next resistance test from the Navigator’s powers. The penalty is lost after such a test is made.
Causing enemies to fail resistance tests is one of Cassia’s unique abilities, and Open to the Warp only makes it better. This talent is best used with Navigator abilities that don’t make a resistance test, so you can stack the Open to the Warp debuff before using your high-power Navigator ability to finally make the test.
As mentioned above, Open to the Warp works especially well with Threads and Faults, further increasing the damage dealt of the resistance test-passing ability by increasing its chance to deal a critical hit.
3Blood Augury
Enemies damaged by the Navigator suffer +(2 x Navigator’s PER bonus)% additional damage from warp damage. The bonus damage stacks for each hit.
Blood Augury provides a massive damage boost to all of Cassia’s Navigator abilities, causing enemies to suffer even more damage on top of a successful attack. This talent works best with attacks that hit multiple times, like Immolate the Soul or Scourge of the Red Tide, allowing you to trigger Blood Augury’s bonus damage more often.
This talent can greatly increase the damage of Cassia’s abilities, but doesn’t do much if you’re building Cassia into a support role, focusing on her Officer talents instead.
2Stable Routes
Whenever the Navigator uses a Navigator’s ability, veil degradation is reduced by -1.
Stable Routes is a simple talent with a profound effect. Every time Cassia uses a Navigator ability, veil degradation will be reduced by one. Veil degradation has the potential to cause extremely detrimental effects to your party through Perils of the Warp, or even just make things a bit more difficult with psychic phenomena.
Having a consistent way to reduce veil degradation is very important, especially when fighting with or against Psykers. If you’re also using a Psyker with the Stabilising Factor talent, you’ll almost never have to worry about veil degradation.
1Pass Unscathed
If the Navigator’s Perception is higher than their Agility, their dodge is calculated using Perception instead.
Alongside Willpower, Perception is one of a Navigator’s highest stats. Pass Unscathed allows you to calculate dodge chance based on Perception rather than Agility. Cassia’s Agility will always be pretty low while her Perception is high. This means that Pass Unscathed offers a straight upgrade, allowing Cassia to dodge attacks with greater frequency.
Because of her weaker Toughness stat, dodging attacks is even more important for increasing Cassia’s survivability. This makes Pass Unscathed almost essential, especially during difficult encounters.
