Ever wondered which items carry over from the base game if you import a finished save file to use in Chaos Rising?
Wonder no more! Gear that carries over is:

-everything your squads carry in the last DoW 2 mission, including the facility items like the SIgnum which become useless in Chaos Rising

-every Terminator armour, even if not worn by your squads in the last mission

-holy and corrupt gear (yes, you can find certain holy and corrupt gear like the Blighted Bolter in the base DoW 2 campaign, it just doesn't have its Chaos Rising effects yet)

Base DoW 2: https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1870867853

I don't think I would have been able to beat the campaign on Primarch without this guide.
As a Primarch survivor, let me tell you: It's hard, especially in the early game. But the more skills you unlock and the better your gear becomes the easier it gets, especially as you get used to being careful and always paying attention.

Lategame defense missions are your best friends, many give some really good gear and are doable without casualities, which usually allows you to unlock two, or at least one extra deployment, which helps with limited time missions.
I gave Cyrus the Signum, the turrets and the Melta Bomb when I was up against the Orks and Eldar, but usually replaced it with a Purity Seal with a damage reducing effect in Tyranid defense missions since you can't use the Melta Bomb on a Carnifex. Give him a sniper rifle just like in the guide and use his powerful shot ability to take care of annoying elite units, but keep Cyrus as far away from the fighting as possible since he's very frail.
Once you obtain Terminator armour for Tarkus defense missions also become notably easier, he's not invincible but he's still going to be your best tank, Avitus with his Missile Launcher should be right behind him and with both their skills activated they should easily be able to take down almost everything.
Keep the commander next to them so he takes care of any melee unit that manages to reach Tarkus and Avitus.

You can also farm gear and experience, even in the early and midgame: Just do a mission which has enemy spawning structures, there is no limit to the amount of gear and experience you can get from that, altho the experience gain from killing enemy units is very minimal, it's the wargear you should focus on. It's usually wargear that drops around your level, I farmed so much that a lot of the special gear that dropped was for the Dreadnought and Terminators, even tho I was many missions away from unlocking those features.



Chaos Rising: https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1331555706

An excellent guide, altho Chaos Rising seems to be much easier if you import your max level squads save file from the base game, I actually stopped my Primarch difficulty Chaos Rising playthrough because it wasn't as hard as I was looking forward to/afraid of. Maybe Chaos Rising defaults to the normal difficulty when you import a save file?

Credits to myself, the creators of the guides I linked, and to all the people who developed this amazing game!