Motivation for hacking Daemons

Question

In Invisible, inc. daemons trigger debuffs on either characters or Incognita but given this is the case, why access them at all?

From my experience, they are not accessed by accident -- they are marked -- and there is not Risk/Reward mechanism that I've seen -- they are just debuffs. So why access them? There must be a reason to... Do they unlock something I'm unaware of?

Answer 1

Daemons are installed on mainframe devices, so the risk/reward mechanism is whether or not accessing that device is worth incurring the debuff for whatever you're trying to accomplish. While you may be willing to forgo a safe, for instance, the same might not be true of something more critical to the mission objective.

Determining whether or not the penalty is worthwhile can be made easier by hacking Daemon Mainframes prior to breaking the firewalls on the relevant devices, as it'll expose the name and impact of the resident daemon. You can also use INCOGNITA's Daemon Sniffer program or the Scan Chip item to more selectively scout daemons, if you have them.

Note too that there are actually a few "reverse" daemons which have positive effects:

• Attune, which decreases program PWR requirements by 1
• Fortune, which gives you an additional 200 credits
• Order, which increases agent AP by 3

I'm not sure exactly how common these are, but I've gotten Fortune at least once. They occur a small percentage of the time as a result of hacking a normal (malicious) daemon, and you receive their benefit instead of the debuff.

Answer 2

In addition to the answers already mentioned here, which stress the point that you hack items with daemons because:

1. You want (or need) to hack the item
2. You are hoping for a helpful daemon instead of an abusive daemon. Especially when playing with Brimstone and you have extra chance for reversal.

There exists a additional reasons to hack a daemon:

1. When playing with Central, to get the +5 power she gets when a daemon is installed.
2. When you know what daemon it is, to install the daemon (for example, authority alarms safes so you can lure a guard towards a safe when you need him away elsewhere)

Answer 3

Daemons are never alone, but always connect to an existing hackable item, like a safe or a security camera. They only trigger once the firewall of the said item is disabled completely.

Here's a usual example:

Here we can see a Corporate Safe, guarded by 1 level of firewall and one hidden daemon. To open the safe, you need to crack open the firewall, but this will also trigger the daemon (which is revealed when triggered).

So, why would you hack a daemon? Maybe you want whatever is in the safe. Maybe you want to disable that pesky security camera. Maybe the daemon is on your mission objective and you have no choice but either to hack the daemon or abandon the mission.

There are ways around this. Sometimes you can knock the daemons out. Sometimes you can disable the device some other way. But most of the time, you'll either have to bite the bullet with the daemon (usually without knowing what it is beforehand) or just leave the item be.