Set at +0/*1, the Mender Silos Task Force (
5th Column Overthrow, known vernacularly for some reason as
Fall Of The Fifth) is worth roughly a quarter of a level per run. It starts at level 30.
The arc is four missions long, all at the same door. Mission one, your goal is to click three glowies, then defeat a boss (if you've set to fight them solo, a lieutenant otherwise) and his immediate minions that attempt to ambush you. The second mission, you need to find a glowie and click it, then kill Nosferatu and his ambush minions as they come to you. In the third mission, you need to find Burkholder, and kill him and his guarding minions. In the fourth mission, you need defeat Requiem, Siege, and Maestro, while finding time to kill
a hundred freaking nazis. This arc is probably one of my favourite things to do in the game, and if you're a melee oriented character with mez protection and an ability to output damage at speed - ie, any scrapper, tanker, brute, stalker, widow, or bane spider - you can belt through it quickly and reliably.
For making money, the arc's spawns start at 30 and cap at 39. Therefore, bosses in the 35-39 range run the chance of dropping Miracles and Lotgs, while everyone can drop Crushing Impacts, Thunderstrikes, Titanium Coatings and
so on. Also, 5th Column use the council drop table, so they all can drop tech and arcane salvage. Keep an eye on the market, know what's going to sell well and make sure you don't delete something useful to make room mid-mission. The last room does include literally
a hundred nazis so you are going to get a lot of salvage and recipe drops per run.
I can go into further detail if people are interested, but the most significant advice I'd offer:
- Do not set the missions to -1 difficulty. This means that in the last room, all the fodder in the opening area will be grey, and won't drop inspirations as reliably. Since Nosferatu will be chewing through them at speed, you want them to provide you with inspirations.
- When you prepare to fight Nosferatu, you will want to have enough reds to damage cap yourself (remember your +100%ish percent in your actual ATTACKS), purple shields to protect yourself from his attacks, but most importantly, at least three accuracy buffs. His attacks all do a very strong -tohit debuff, and he spawns with Vampyri that add to it.
- Nosferatu will run if you're doing electrical damage, since that floors his recovery. This is a bad thing and if you're an elec/elec scrapper, for example, you might just find it unreasonably difficult to kill him. Sorry.
- Stealth buffs from a supergroup workstation can make the first mission a lot faster.
With that info in mind I've gotten runs of this arc as low as 12 minutes, though 16 minutes with good, fast loading is not uncommon. A typical time when you stop to kill everything is 25 minutes and if you duo it at say, +1 or +2 to get a good solid amount of XP, you can expect to take 35 minutes to an hour. Mission 2 is always going to be your bottleneck - sometimes, you're just going to have to run around to a lot of empty rooms with the sound on looking for that damn glowie.
Prisons
almost never have glowies in them, and the council tank room - with the three layers of pools - is almost always a place where EBs and glowies spawn.
Good luck!
Costume pieces also do nothing, just so you know. This may come as a disappointment, but I guess you will just have to deal with the overwhelming grief to the best of your ability.
