The 30 Minute Sewer Trial Guide (LONG + spoiler)

So my SG has just finished up perfecting our technique on this trial (we can no longer get the mission any more, having all hit 41), and there are a few tricks that can be immensely helpful to finishing this up pretty quickly. By the end, we were finishing the final mission of the trial in ~30-45 minutes with just the 4 of us (DM/Inv scrapper, BS/Inv scrapper, Rad/Elec defender -- me, and Ill/Rad controller). Those who think controllers are useless here could not be further from wrong, once you discover the "trick" to bringing down the force field permanently, as described later on.

The keys for us finishing the trial quickly were: 1) high mag AE holds (and not for the reason you might think ), 2) someone with recall friend and high stealth (our controller had SS + group invis) who can move about vertically easily (our controller had hover 6 slotted for speed, which is about as fast as 0-1 slotted flight), and 3) grantable stealth (again, our controller provided this with group invis) if anyone can't become become invisible on their own (with stealth + SS, or whatever).

For us, Phanton Army and Phantasms were invaluable for drawing aggro at the Hydra (there were only 4 of us, and no one with any psi resistance ), but anyone able to draw aggro and take the psi damage should do for this role. Obviously, our scrappers did the majority of the damage dealing (and doubled as the tanks against all the villains who were not doing 900+ psi damage attacks ) with some help from Phantasms (and even less help from my occassional Ball Lightning/SC/TB ). But really any balanced team with good tanking/defense/damage should do for these roles. Our controller turned out to be the only absolutely essential component in being able to complete this trial so quickly, although other AT's with good hold powers (some ice blasters and rad defender builds come to mind) might also be able to bring down the force field (but probably without bringing as many other tools to the table as our controller did ).

Getting to the Mission

Anyway, so the first part is easy. Talk to Maren McGregor in Founder's Falls (a bit north of Penny Preston in the southwestern dock area) to get the first mission. THE ENTIRE TRIAL IS DONE AS A REGULAR MISSION IN A REGULAR TEAM, NOT AS A TASK FORCE. I believe you must be 38th to get the mission from her. If you want to do this a lot (we did), everyone in the team who can should get the mission. Each time you complete or fail the final part of the mission, you can come back to Maren to get a new access code for the maintenance door and try it again, until you hit SL 41, at which point she will no longer give you any missions (but you are still free to join teams with lower level heroes who have the mission).

Now you all head off to the abandoned sewers to defeat 150 Rikti. After that is done, everyone with the mission goes back to Maren to get the "real" mission. Now head to the center of the abandoned sewers, find the maintenance room access door, have someone use their access code to start the 90 minute timed mission, and let the fun begin!

Keep in mind, ALL villains in the mission will be level 42, so anyone below SL 38 is fairly useless unless they get sidekicked up. A small group of SL 38's might have a hard time finishing this in time unless they used every shortcut presented here (we never managed to finish it successfully until we hit 39, but we also didn't REALLY know what we were doing until we were nearly 40th about 5-6 attempts later; yes, you get XP REALLY fast in here ),

Getting the Weapons

After entering the maintenance room, you run around (right or left, doesn't matter) until you get to the opening to the big main central chute area, with it's maze of downwardly spiraling catwalks (the first Rikti group should be hanging out at the lip of the chute entrance). Now your first step is to equip your group with the Rikti weapons.

Our controller was able to do this for us in about 5 minutes (after a lot of practice from our first few attempts which we failed due to time ) using his hover + recall ally + invis, although it was a little tricky avoiding the drones (the invis + SS really cuts down the drone aggro range, but they can still see you if you get close enough). You can tell what is in the Rikti crates BEFORE you open them by targeting them (right click a crate, or left click and move before you finish opening it). This was quite helpful to us once we discovered it, as we could quickly get everyone particle cannons and not waste time on the thermite cannons except for those without decent attacks for the tentacles (in this case, my defender and the controller).


If you don't have any means of sneaking past this part, you'll probably have to waste around 20-40 minutes fighting your way down through the Rikti groups (everything is level 42, with lots of bosses) until the 4 particle cannons have been secured.

Keep in mind the 4 thermite cannons are purely optional for your poorer damage dealers (they can use them to help out on the tentacles), whereas the particle cannons are absolutely essential (you cannot damage the hydra without them). There are 2 Hatched Krackens (monsters) on the way down, which are worth tons of XP (at level 38, the 4 of us were getting ~88k each per Kracken), and are treated in more detail in their own section below.

Clearing the Generators

After everyone has a weapon, you're ready to head to the bottom of the chute. This is easy for anyone with stealth abilities (just jump down and run to a wall when you hit the bottom, and try not to get stunned by a drone shot on the way down ), or you can just wait for your teammate with recall friend to get down and summon everybody to a safe spot.

The layout of the bottom is simple, there is a central area with a giant eyeball (the Hydra) surrounded by tentacles (both minions, and lieutenant versions that split into 2 underling tentacles). The central area is circled around by some broken up boulderish terrain, with 4 equally spaced and partially separated areas containing 1 force field generator apiece between these rocky barriers and the walls. Each force field generator area has a group of 6-7 Rikti (mostly Chief Soldiers with a few Mentalists, Mesmerists, and Headman Gunners thrown in), with a Hatched Kraken (monster class villain) positioned somewhat nearby (although easily outside of aggro range from the generator groups if you are at all careful) at a gap in the rocky barrier, presumably guarding the way from the generator to the Hydra. Everything is level 42.

The first step is to clear the Rikti from the force field areas. This is quite easy and should only take 5-10 minutes. Our strategy was to start doing this at the same time our controller was getting us the Rikti weapons: as each scrapper got a particle cannon he would jump down and start beating up a generator group, and be eventually joined by my defender and the controller once we got our Rikti weapons, at which point a group or 2 would already be dead. This might be a bit tough with less durable (and/or lower level) scrappers than ours, but the invuln scrappers didn't have much trouble defeating groups with 6-7 +2-3 boss/lt's all by themselves (they occassionally died to bad timing and/or poor attention when Unstoppable dropped though ).

DO NOT DESTROY THE GENERATORS YET. If you do, more Rikti will spawn in about 1-2 minutes and repair the generator. If you were wise enough to bring a good controller along with several holds, you won't have to mess with these generators at all, saving a large amount of time later when you start working on the Hydra.

Defeating the Krackens

After the Rikti groups are gone, it's time to start putting down some Krackens. The important things to know about the Kracken are 1) it does a nasty AE foot stomp that hits everyone within 10-15 feet of it for ~800 phys damage at level 40, 2) it has a nasty AE spit attack that does ~500-600 untyped or poison/psi damage over 4-5 ticks (invuln doesn't protect from it, for sure ) to everyone near the target, 3) it's other attacks are run of the mill big single target physical attacks that only your tankers/scrappers should have to deal with.

Defeating these is pretty easy once you get the hang of it. We used a pretty standard pulling tactic: our scrapper would aggro one from range with TP foe (hiding behind terrain to avoid getting spit on), and run to our pull spot behind a large squarish boulder situated kind of in a "corner" of the wall near one of the generators (perhaps using TP foe reacquire aggro if it was a long pull). This allowed him to avoid getting spit on while the Kracken was closing to melee range.

Then after the Kracken was engaged with the scrappers at melee range, the controller and I would debuff the crap out of him. So, after he was inside a bunch of ugly green clouds (moving at a crawl, attacking maybe once every second or two, doing around half damage, and ~50% more susceptible to damage), me and the controller then just let the scrappers and pets hammer the crap out of him until he was down, staying well out of melee range except for the occassional ninja heal or buff right after a foot stomp. After we got good at this it would only take about 10 minutes to defeat all 4 Kracken, and a fair chunk of that time was spent waiting for Unstoppables to drop or for the Kracken to run up to our pull spot.

At ~88k XP (4 level 38 heroes) to ~55k XP (4 level 41 heroes) each per Kracken, you can level in a hurry here, so make sure you're done with any contacts and/or story/badge missions you wanted to do before spending much time down here (I missed 4 of my arcs, but I can't really complain much since playing around down here and figuring out our strategem was the most fun any of us had playing CoH in ages). We all went from 38 to 41 inside of 20 play hours while honing our technique, despite dying alot and even spending some time in level 39-40 acruing intentional debt so we could get more of the special enhancements to play with (which turned out not to be as cool as we had hoped).

Clearing the Tentacles

Okay, so now everything at the bottom should defeated except for a huge eyeball floating in an ugly green sea of sewage, surrounded by a bunch of upright tentacles waving lazily in the air. The Hydra itself has an assortment of high damage, very long range, psionic attacks. One is a big dot that does 5 tics of 90+ to an unresistant level 40, and the other is a big nuke that does about 900+ damage to an unresistant level 40. So, keeping this guy busy is one of your main priorities . The tentacles come in minion and lieutenant varieties; both shoot long range spit attacks for ~100 damage + 5-6 dot ticks of ~10 (I never noted the damage type, but I think our scrappers were resisting it); the lieutenant variety split into 2 underling tentacles when you defeat them.

Now, first things first, have someone occupy the Hydra (in our case this was our controllers Phantom Army and Phantasm decoys), and you will see a shimmery blue force field spring up around him (if it wasn't up already). The Hydra is immune to all damage while the force field is up.

While the Hydra is occupied, commence beating up tentacles. Our approach to this evolved from carefully (and VERY slowly) doing it at range with only myself and the controller blasting while the indestructible pets played with the Hydra, to basically everyone just free for alling tentacles until the Phantom Army was about to expire, then running behind some rocks until the controller could drop in another PA (about 10 seconds down time between PA's), and then wading back into the melee. With a perma army, or any kind of full time aggro drawing tank, the run away and regroup part could obviously be dispensed with, and everyone could quickly clear all the tentacles while the hydra was being kept busy (nearly any paired defender and tanker/scrapper duo should do for Hydra duty, or possibly any regen scrapper all by himself).

Towards the end, we were more or less only clearing a patch of tentacles (about a 1/3 arc around the Hydra) from which to stage our assault on the Hydra, and then blasting the Hydra to death from our clear patch after taking the field down permanently (see below), with me or the controller taking breaks as appropriate to heal and/or EMP/flash the tentacles and Rikti waves out of the action until the Hydra was banished, leaving us free to mop up any remaining villains at our leisure. All told, after getting the Krackens out of the way, we would generally finish the mission 10-20 minutes later.

Defeating the Hydra

Okay, so after the tentacles are out of the way, it's down to just you and the big guy, with that annoying force field in the way. This is where your holds can save you A LOT of time. For us, all it took was this: me and the controller would go stand within range of the Hydra, and do our EMP + EMP + flash, and voila the field was gone and never came back.

I have read elsewhere gravity controllers can knock down the field using singularities, but we didn't have much in the way of strong single target holds to see how effective those were (but presumably enough of them stacked together on the Hydra would eventually achieve the same result). Once you knock the field down this way, you can basically just shoot the Hydra until it's dead, leaving a few members (in our case, me or the controller) free at the key points to deal with the Rikti summonings.

Anyway, after the field is down, you can pull out your particle cannons and begin banishing the Hydra. These things have a HUGE animation time (about 20-25 seconds) during which you can do NOTHING, so be sure the hydra (and tentacles, if you left any) is occupied while you're standing there ghostbustering it's [censored]. I would estimate it takes about 25 particle cannon blasts to finish him off when you are all level 41, probably more like 45-50 shots if you are all level 38.

After The Hydra hits 50% health, he will summon in a large group of Rikti (almost all Headman Gunners, 12-15 or so of them, perhaps 3-4 per person if more are in the team?), so be sure a few folks are not stuck in the particle cannon animation to deal with these (our controller would stop shooting sometime around when the Hydra was about 55-60% health and wait for the Rikti to show up and then AE hold them all with flash + EMP).

At ~25% health, the Hydra will summon another group of Rikti, about the same as the prior one. Again, someone should not be locked into ghostbuster mode who can deal with these (like someone with a big AE hold). After these are dealt with, you can finish off the Hydra, clean up any remaining Rikti and tentacles, and the mission will be completed.

If you are unfortunate enough to not have anyone who can knock the Hydra's force field down permanently, you will have to do it the old fashioned way, which might add anywhere from 10-50 minutes to your trial time, depending on your group's level (affects how much damage you can do to the Hydra in the time the field is down, and hence how many times you will need to knock down the fields) and teamwork (affects how long it takes you to take down the field each time it goes back up).

The field is maintained by the 4 generators you cleared of Rikti earlier, and if you destroy all 4 generators simultaneously, you will get a ~1-2 minute "window" in which the Hydra is unshielded and you can damage it with the particle cannons. After that, Rikti groups will spawn at all the field generators and repair them, bringing the shield back up (at which point you may have done from 1/4 to 1/2 the Hydra's life, depending on the levels of the cannon wielders and assuming they got in about 2-3 shots each) and leaving you to bring them down all over again.

Back before we figured out how to KO the shield for good, our scrappers would "soften" all the field generators by knocking them down to 1/4 or less health without destroying them, to make it easier for us to bring all the generators down simultaneously. If you kill a generator prematurely, Rikti will gate in there and repair it a minute or so later, regardless of whether any of the other generators are down or not. We only experimented with the generators a little before we discovered our far superior strategy, so I'm not sure if there is a better way to deal with generators or not (i.e. if you leave a small team at 1 generator to keep it down permanently, will this keep the field down, or is only 1 generator required to bring the field back up?).

Completing the Mission

Sometime after you banish the Hydra and defeat all it's tentacles, and all the Rikti at the bottom (summoned or otherwise), the mission will complete. I recall at least once the mission completing before all the tentacles were dead, but I think those were only underling tentacles (not entirely sure about that), so I'm not EXACTLY sure when the mission completes after the Hydra has been banished.

Anyway, the special Hydra enhancements are awarded at the time the mission completes. BE SURE YOU HAVE OPEN SLOTS IN YOUR ENHANCEMENT INVENTORY OR YOU WILL NOT GET ONE. I would recommend keeping several open enhancement slots just before killing the Hydra until the mission completes, just in case you get a few from random kills right before the mission ends (I missed getting a few of these from bad inventory management, and/or from getting a few normal enhancements just before the mission completed). For whatever reason, the person whose mission the trial is will not get his enhancement until everyone has left the mission map.

The Rewards

Okay, so what is this Anti Proton Exposure thing you just got? Basically, all the Hydra enhancements seem to be +25% enhancements to several aspects of a power. The Anti Proton Exposure, for example should provide a 25% bonus to defense debuffs, accuracy debuffs, and endurance reduction (read the ingame info on the enhancement to see what it affects). The more useful ones I have seen are +acc/dam (for almost everyone), +heal/-end (useful for many), +acc/mez (mez is a bonus to ALL status effects except slow, highly useful for controllers obviously), +range/dam (for blasters), +accbuff/defbuff/-end (for some defenders), +accdebuff/+defdebuff/-end (for rad/kinetics), +accdebuff/+defdebuff/+acc (for dark/kinetics).

Officially, I have only tested the damage component of one of these enhancements, but it was exactly 25% at even level (all the Hydra enhanemcents are level 40) when I did, and this led me to believe what I have read elsewhere that they provide a 25% bonus to whatever their description says they affect. At level 41, I tested it again, and it provided only a 22.5% damage bonus, so these enhancements also degrade at the standard 10% per level below yours (and presumably increase by the standard 5% per level above yours). Also, I can say with authority that identical Hydra enhancements will not combine, so you can not extend their useful lifetimes via that route.

Hydra enhancements are also reputed to work if your level is within 5 levels of theirs (rather than the standard 3). But basically they provide little to no benefit over a regular +3 SO (which is +38.3%) after they become -2 (only +20% bonuses) unless it was providing at least 3 bonuses you wanted (for example, Anti Proton Exposure is the only one I will be keeping slotted after I hit 42, since it provides 3 useful bonuses in Radiation Infection).

So, they are kinda cool, but very hard to get on your own until level 39 (unless you team with higher level folks), at which point they are only useful for a couple levels unless you have one that is a 3-point (or better) match for one of your powers. Obviously, if you only like one of the bonuses these enhancements provides, you are much better off using a standard +3 SO. These enhancements could make very nice gifts to a level 35 hero who had a well matched power, however.

Possibly, more useful than the Hydra enhancements you get are all the L41-42 SO's you will get from killing all those Rikti bosses, to patch up your ailing L40 SO's until you can replace them with shiny new L45 SO's at SL42. And of course, you can't overlook the ridiculous amounts of XP you rake in from killing all those Krackens (each member of a well constructed 4-man team could easily level every 3-7 hours from SL38-SL41, depending on how quickly you can get all the tactics down pat).

Very nice. And good find on the exploit.

One thing to add to this:if you have enough melee power you can beat out the FFs without mezzing or destorying generators.This may or may not keep the shield down all the time but it is pretty nice to let those controllers save their end for particle gun/mezzing

I can fill in a couple of blanks from my experience with the trial.

The Ritki spawns when the head is at 50% and around 25% health appear with 2-3 on top of each player in the area. I never count how many since they just get hit with some kind of AoEs right away. So they spawn in direct proportion to the number of people you have.

If one generator is up, the shield is up. My theory on how the generator repair works goes like this:
When the first generator is destroyed a timer starts (about 90 seconds I think). When this timer runs out, all 4 generators will respawn if destroyed, and all 4 generators will get a repair crew of Ritki.
If all 4 generators are down, the shield is down.
So the time you have to shoot the head is the time between the last generator going down and the timer running out.

I have been told that using the thermite guns actually prevents the tentacles from splitting when killed. Don't know if this is true - I usually just fight them.

With issue 3, the increased XP on Ritki bosses should make this trial even more lucrative, assuming the increased HP doesn't wipe out the gain.

The Hydra enhancements are kind of disappointing since they get out-leveled so fast.

I would bet that you had a controller in your group who was using holds on the Hydra, and that took down the shield rather than any melee damage. When we first noticed the shield going down prematurely, we thought the Illusion pets were taking down the shield because we had read that Gravity singularities also did this (we figured the shield was maybe an untargettable entity, but the pets could hit it for some reason). Later on we happened to notice that it went down right after we were EMP/flashing the tentacles near the Hydra, and no meleer had bothered touching the Hydra yet. Finally, we would just lead with EMP + EMP + flash at the Hydra, and the shield would be down right away. I have also watched scrappers beat on this thing for a fair amount of time with no effect (but admittedly we only tested this a couple times before we figured out the holds were doing it, and never bothered meleeing with it again).

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The Ritki spawns when the head is at 50% and around 25% health appear with 2-3 on top of each player in the area. I never count how many since they just get hit with some kind of AoEs right away. So they spawn in direct proportion to the number of people you have.

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Good to know. I should have mentioned that it can be helpful to keep your teammates all near enough one another for group heals/buffs during the Hydra blasting (excepting whoever has Hydra harassment duty, of course ). This also tends to keep the Rikti summonings in a tight enough pack that you can hit them all with one decent AE hold.

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With issue 3, the increased XP on Ritki bosses should make this trial even more lucrative, assuming the increased HP doesn't wipe out the gain.

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Unfortunately, with the change to monsters, you will probably only be getting even level XP from defeating the Krackens. As I understand it, the change is that a monster class villain always fights YOU at YOUR combat level, even while it is fighting other nearby heroes at THEIR combat level. I imagine that means you will also get XP from it as if it were your level, which would be a significant hit from the XP we get now beating them as +1-4 monsters. The way the trial stands now, you easily make 70-75% of the XP in the trial (if not more) from defeating the Krackens, so losing 40-50% from that chuck of XP will hurt the overall XP quite a lot.

I've thought about this a bit, and I don't think it's an exploit as much as a shortcut. I mean, someone had to intentionally program the shield to go down to holds, since I don't see how that could happen by "accident" otherwise. It's probably just something the designer thought up to encourage people to bring along controllers.

Really good to know. Had a good effort this morning, but we got bugged out of 1 of the Particle Cannons, and then we ran out of time. Someone's pet destroyed a generator before we had all 4 of them ready to destroy. Now I'll recurit some holds and to hell with the generators. Much better plan.

And yeah, better get it done before issue 3 hits. Although I think they said the monster thing is limited to outdoor spawning monsters. Babbage in the Clockwork TF is supposed to still be lvl 19 or whatever he is. So hopefully the Krakens will still be the great xp they have been in this mission. Could always try it on test server to see.

From what I read (and I could be wrong...)....Monsters will still be the same. It is Giant Monsters (Named) that will have the change......

Not sure if that will effect the stuff on Monster Island though....

muffinlad

One thing to add...I don't know if this is the case for everyone, but it was the case for me.

If you are the one who took the Hydra Trial mission from the contact, and you have beat the trial once, the next time you go back to the hydra trial contact to get a mission from her she will immediately offer you the final mission in the arc thereafter--no more "kill 150 Rikti".

This can be quite convenient for if you want to bang it out a few times for the XP.

and something on the hydra's psi damage:

grab a dark armor scrapper and/or a dark/* defender. da can just turn on obsidian shield and tank the psi hits while the dark defender can put up shadow fall and give everyone pretty good resistance to them (granted he has it slotted up well).

Well got a team together last night on guardian with a tank, a blaster, 3 controllers, and 3 scrappers. Unfortunately the controller with tp/invis hadn't done it before, so the first part took us quite a while, and we had a couple of accidental deaths on the way down. Wasted time with people running to the hospital and back since our rezzer went down.

But, on the ground, we got things going, and cleared out only a quarter of the tentacles, since we were low on time. But sacrificing the phantom army to the tornado worked wonderfully!! Then the controllers went out, throwing out holds and BAM, shield down. It was really awesome. We beat the hydra, but ran out of time after that.

So, what all do you have to clear to actually beat the mission? Is it all 6 krakens and the hydra? Or does the whole map have to clear? It can't be the whole map cuz you guys just tp-ed down too. Anyway, we're going to try again today, and hopefully everyone can move along faster. But your strategy is definitely good. The generators are way too much of a bother.

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So, what all do you have to clear to actually beat the mission?

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More or less, you need to defeat everything at the bottom: all the Rikti at the generators, the 4 Kracken, the tentacles, and the summoned Rikti. The tentacles sometimes flee up to the lowest level of catwalks, so check above to see if you missed any up there.

This may not be entirely accurate, since we finished the mission a couple times while still fighting a couple Rikti and/or tentacles at the bottom, but more often than not we didn't get a mission complete until the bottom was scrubbed clean of villains.

Also, I don't know that we ever even went for the Hydra without first clearing the generator Rikti, since it was fairly easy and it's always nice to have some "safe" areas to pull or retreat to. But if you're looking for every shortcut, it might be you don't have to defeat the generator Rikti to finish the mission, possibly allowing you to clear just one generator for a safe zone for pulls and rezzes, and squeeze in another 5 minutes of Hydra/cleanup time. If you do try that, be sure to let us know if it works .

Beat it tonight, with about half the same group. We fought our way to crates, since we only had one person with tp + invis, and that was the same person with rez. Couldn't really afford to risk them dying. But we got particle cannon on 4 of the first 5 crates, so then we dropped to the bottom after killing the 2nd kraken. Cleared Rikti, cleared maybe 5 tentacles, the controllers dropped the shields and we went to town. After Hydra was down, we were in the middle of clearing tentacles and the mission complete happened. Still mabye 5 tentacles left when we got it, and 43 minutes left! We were quite happy finishing in half the time, and at level 41 at least I will get to enjoy my Enhancement for a couple levels.

Congrats! All it really needs is a bit of practice so that everyone figures out their roles, and finishing it in under 45 minutes is a piece of cake. =)

Great post! I was inspired and my buddy and I started it last night. We did the first part, but it got late, so we will not attempt the beast til Thursday I think. Luckily he is an illus controller with prot friend He does not have levitate (only teleport) will he have much trouble getting the crates? Also what would be the optimal teamates for us. I am DM/Regen and he is Illus/Empathy.

THz

Your friend should be alright with getting the crates using TP/invis/recall friend, although it may take him a while to get the hang of avoiding the drones (I would recommend he use discipline inspirations while doing this ).

If you don't have resilience and a maxed tough on your regen scrapper, you may want another scrapper/tank to help with tanking duties if your illusion/empath friend doesn't have a perma Phantom Army (perma hasten + 5 recharge SO's); 3-4 chief soldiers can put up some big numbers without any phys resistance, which will KO you if they get a few hits in back to back before you can regen the damage.

Otherwise, I would say all you need to add is some more damage to your team, whether blasters or scrappers is up to you; I tend to prefer scrappers as pick up members, since they seem a bit less likely to run around wantonly aggroing stuff with big AoE's (only because they don't have them, I'm sure ) and are less likely to get killed. A defender or controller who can boost your damage output with buffs and debuffs (rad/kin/dark/storm are the best at this stuff) might come in handy also. Make sure you have 4 in your team (or more I suppose, but I prefer as few members as possible for most situations), so you can make use of all 4 particle cannons at once when you get to the Hydra.

When forming your group, be aware that pretty much any Blaster under level 39 will be one-shotted by a Kraken foot stomp. Instruct your Blasters to stay at range... tell them NOT to use their short range nuke on the Krakens. Ice/Fire Breath have slightly longer range than foot stomp, all Blasters should pretty much stay at the max range of their medium-range cone attack.

/37 Blaster, one-shotted twice last night.

Well I have had tough 6 slotted and resil 1 slotted for quite some time, and I also have perma-DP, so I should be in pretty good shape, assuming I can find someone to SK me up a bit (still only 38). I can generally tank 3 soldiers up to +2 or so, but +4 would be pushing it. I was figuring we needed either a controller or rad defender for EMP. Will just flash bring down the FF? My buddy has had PA slotted purly for recharge ever since we took on the Envoy of Shadows. I just love having those guys tank for us. So one more controller/defender and one more scrappers sounds perfect. Things may be delayed by family oblgations though and last night we did the CWK with your junior Alts.

Cheers

THz

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The Hydra is immune to all damage while the force field is up.

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Untrue. Hydra can be killed with the forcefield up but it is extremely resistant to damage and very hard to hit. We had a lvl50 scrapper friend come in and kill our lvl43 Hydra head without the forcefield down. It took about 15mins of slashing away, but it got done.

Well I finally got to give this a go last weekend. Friday I was home with a sick kid during the day, and my buddy and I wanted to try this, but there were no people on at all, so we went in with 2 mostly to scout it out. To recap, I was a level 38 DM/Regen and he is a level 40 Illus/Emp controller with port friend and GI. First off with only port and GI, it is tricky getting the cannons. My buddy died a handful of times over our three runs when either GI dropped, or a drone spootted him. With SS/Stealth and IH, I could wander with impunity and shrug off any pot shots, but I couldn't port people to me. I ended up clearing his body a few times so he could rez. Anyway, we got our cannons and hopped down. To make a long story short, we could barely take down the Ritki gaurds. At 38, you are at about 1/3 of your normal damage vs 42s. I could survive and eventually kill stuff, but it was SLOW. The second thing I learned is it is tough to take out the Ritki, but not the generators using pets (you have to carefully pull and lay pets towards the edge). So we cleared the geneators, and managed to drop the FF using only Flash, so a single controller is enough. We took out one AV, but it was slow. We died one to many times and we declard it a success End of try one.

Later that night I recruited the perfect team: the two of us plus and invuln tanker, plus a level 41 Rad-Rad defender who could SK me. Let me tell you fighting at level 40 was just great, I was much more damage and the Ritki and AVs went down much easier. In this run, our problems were all minor, but they added up. First out tank ran into the mission and then went AFK forever. This costs us 10 minutes while we waited for him. Then I got disconnected from the map server. I ran back quicly, but I didn't notice my cannon was gone. We had a little trouble again getting the cannons, but nothing big. We dropped down and cleared out the Ritki with 4 or 5 deaths between the two squishy characters. The rad defender did not have EMP, which was too bad. We then took down one AV with little problem. I was not fighting at 40, and EF makes a big difference. We cleared the tentacles, though we had a couple deaths here from the big psi attack from the Hydra. So it took us another death to figure out the proper attack cycle: Drop PA on hydra and take exactly 2 shots then run back behind the rocks (repeat). About this time, I noticed my missing cannon. So I spent much too much time locating the ramp back up to the Ritki (I was tired by this time). So time is ticking, and we only have 12 minutes remaining when the big guy goes down. We then start to clear the Kraken, and we get to the last one with 4 minutes to go, and our defenders dies accidently, AND we had no more awakens so time runs out and we failed.

The third try was last night. I got a Fire/FF controller (level 41) and I dinged 39 on the previous run killing the Krakens, but we couldn't find a tank or scrapper which we knew would make it very easy. So after spamming for a while we went in as a trio. It took a while to convince our friend to leave the imps behind and skip the upper Ritki We had only one death gathering cannons due to lag. Imps are a little tricky as they tended to want to womp on the generators, but we cleared stuff OK. Also fighting at level 39 is OK, but not nearly as good as 40. Both squishy types died twice I think. We took out one Kraken ane the tentacles, with a couple deaths from the psi attack when the PA dropped. The big guy went down fast enough and this time we cleared the tentacles first. Well it turns out you DON"T hav to kill the AVs! So had we just cleared the tents first on try two we would have been fine. Worse still once the mission is over the tmer stops and you can kill the Kraken at your liesure. So I got my Dual SO, but it was not too usefull (damage-hold, which I gave to my controller buddy). The xp was still awesome. The time we duo'd the Kraken it was 130 kxp to me The last trip through was worth more than two bubbles to each of us despite 4 or so deaths for the squish ATs. Being level 39 and dying less I got a bit more. We are hoping for another run or two before we outlevel this stuff. Anyone on Triumph late at night shoudl give me a tell.

This was a great guide; thanks so much. This TF is awesome. Limited time is good for me as I don't often have 4 hrs, there was plenty of challenge and death, but the reward xp-wise and dual SO wise is well worth it.

THz

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The big guy went down fast enough and this time we cleared the tentacles first. Well it turns out you DON"T hav to kill the AVs! So had we just cleared the tents first on try two we would have been fine. Worse still once the mission is over the tmer stops and you can kill the Kraken at your liesure.

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Thanks for the report about not needing to defeat the Kracken for the mission to complete, that could certainly be a helpful shortcut if you're getting tight for time. Hmm, it may remain forever a mystery exactly what you need defeat to complete the mission, but at least I'm pretty sure the Hydra is mandatory . Congrats on the success, and I'm glad you found the guide helpful.

I think you have your terms messed up? You don't have to kill the AV? you mean the Monsters (Kraken) right? Then you say you got over 100k xp for the kracken but I'm sure you mean the AV Hydra right?

I did mess up saying you don't have to kill AVs, I ment the Kraken, whihc are monsters. However, I did get 130 kxp for the Kraken, and not the Hydra. I think you could powerlevel very effectively just jumping down and killing the hydra with a small team and doing nothing else.

Last night we did the mission a fourth time. This time it was just the two of us (Level 40 and then 41 illus/emp controller and a level 39 DM/regen scrapper). We figured to try duo'ing it to avoid the pick up partner mess. It turned out to be our best run yet, in part because we knew what we were doing, and in part because there were no pick-up yahoos. My buddy died twice, and I died not at all. One of his deaths was to the Ritki gaurdians and the other to the psionic attack while clearing tents. It took us about 45 minutes to kill one kraken and the hydra, then we cleaned up the last threee krakens for xp. The entire hour and change netted my 4.5 bubbles of XP! This is farm or xp than I could get anywhere else. If we had a tanker, who knew the drill, there would probably be no deaths at all.

I noticed a few things last night. You definately do not have to kill any Krakens to complete the mission. I think you only have to kill the original tentacles and not the babies they spawn (90% sure on this). Also, the first time we succeeded in the mission I got my dual SO when I exited, and last night I got it when the last tentacle died. I think the person who gets the kill on the last tent (or hydra) to complete the mission gets the dual SO right away and his teammates upon exiting.

I highly recomend this trial as fun challenge, that is the fastest way to level from 36 (SK'd) to 41 or so.

THz

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Hydra enhancements are also reputed to work if your level is within 5 levels of theirs (rather than the standard 3).

...

Obviously, if you only like one of the bonuses these enhancements provides, you are much better off using a standard +3 SO. These enhancements could make very nice gifts to a level 35 hero who had a well matched power, however.

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I don't know where this rumor of 5 levels got started. I have a 35 Dark/Dark Def, and RJ45 gave her a 40 damage/mez Hydra-Enhancement. And it's red, and it says she can't use it 'til she hits 37.