Fast Virgil SF - Rare Recipe in 40 minutes or less

The Fast Virgil SF
or, How to Fix the Villain Market

The Virgil Tarikoss SF is the fastest strike force that villains can access. Doing the bare minimum and getting a little lucky, the Virgil SF can be completed in a little over 30 minutes. The fastest time I have clocked is 35 minutes and that is because I run in PuGs and the team composition is never perfect. This is still a very fast time to get a rare recipe and I consider any run under 45 minutes to be a success; above 45 minutes means something went wrong, in a pretty bad way.

The Team: For the fastest run, team size should be 5 or 6. If there are a lot of regen debuffs and high damage, four can do it; sometimes the AVs take too much time though if the team size is small. Over 6 team members and spawns become larger making stealthing the glowies in the final mission more difficult, and the ambushes more...plentiful. I usually don't put a restriction on team composition. Any AT/powerset can contribute but as usual Brutes and Corrupters are the most helpful; MMs are fine but for the fast stealth missions don't bother to wait for them to set up.

Finally, at least one member must have Invisibility (of any sort) and Recall Friend. This person should also memorize the maps and learn how to click glowies without being seen using terrain and geometry. The stealther can be a Stalker but any AT works; I use a Cold Corrupter - a PBAoE stealth power is very useful when you must port your friends with spawns all around. It's fastest if the Leader and the stealther/TPer are different people. To run a Fast Virgil SF, the only person that needs to have experience is this person, everyone else can be completely new to the concept of Fast Virgil (but of course it helps if everyone knows what to do).

A word on inspiration load: My standard insp load is two greens, two awakens, and the rest purples leaving one free spot which I keep open. The purples are helpful at multiple parts of the SF - mainly for the hostage escort mission and the glowies in the last mission.

Note:Some people I have teamed with suggest the log out trick, but I will not cover that technique here because I think a.) it saves only a nominal amount of time and b.) it's lame to cheat the system like that when you can operate within the bounds of the system and still get a great time.

Note:For the fastest time a min/maxed team will work best. I don't run this way because 5 minutes doesn't matter to me and I don't want to exclude someone for such a small amount of time. However, if you're running with an SG you could create a team to farm Virgil. I would think one brute and four corupters would be fastest. The corrupters will have good -regen and AoE damage, and the brute will have good AoE damage. One corrupter will have some form of invis + super speed + recall friend.

The Missions: (told from the stealther/TPer perspective)

Stop the Legacy Chain Auguring: A kill all. So kill 'em all! There's also a glowie, usually near the named boss. Before the SF starts I usually wait in the area where this mission starts, and teleport the leader to the door so he/she doesn't have to run. After this mission I immediatly head to the North side of the zone, where I wait at the next door and port the leader after he talks to Virgil.

Find Reason behind Circle Attack: This mission gives beginners a lot of trouble, but is actually very easy once you learn it. It is set in an outdoor map and you must 1.) release the foreman and 2.) defeat the strike leader. There are three hostages, but you only need to release the foreman and there are only ever three mobs around him. The first thing I do is find the foreman; there are three spots where the hostages always spawn so just memorize those and it is then a quick deal. Once found, quickly free the foreman by yourself - there should be 1-2 minions and 1-2 lieuts, easy work. Then, you find the strike leader who also only spawns in a couple possible locations. Teleport your friends to the leader and take out his spawn; careful of ghosts fleeing they can delay mission completion. Total this mission should take about 5 minutes or less. To make it quicker, have one person scout/tp to the leader while another rescues the foreman.

Retrieve Padre Henri's Journal from Legacy Chain: Another stealth mission. You must defeat a boss spawn and get a glowie. There are three possible maps for this mission, two with many floors and one with only two floors. Depending on which map you get, you will know where the boss will spawn - it's the same (or very close) every time. Stealth through till you find the boss,
port your friends to him, take him out. Then find the glowie which is always very near to the boss. Again, around 5 minutes max for this mission including travel time. After this all missions will be at the portal by Virgil, negating any travel time.

Prevent Circle from Controlling Bat'Zul: My favorite mission because it is so easy. A simple defeat boss and minions and click glowie mission. The CoT boss always spawns in the same room, and the glowie is always in that room. After you enter the mission just keep going South (down on the map) until you get to the room, port your friends there, and take out the spawn. Careful of possible damage crystals when you first stealth into the room. 3 or 4 minutes tops for this mission.

Find Method to Pierce Barrier: This is the second mission that has the potential to cause a lot of problems. It is a "escort hostage to glowie" type mission and longbow ambush you after you rescue the hostage. There's different ways to do this, but my favorite (and the fastest IMO) is to just rescue the hostage right away and power through the ambushes with purples or demonic. Just to be safe, it is sometimes a good idea to scout where the computer is before rescuing the hostage. However, this mission has a ton of floors, but the Hostage and the Glowie are always on the first two floors. Doing this mission dozens upon dozens of times I think the hostage was only ever on the third floor for me once.

After you take out the spawn with the hostage make sure all PBAoE stealth powers are off and then sprint (no travel powers!) towards wherever the glowie is - a yellow arrow will guide you; usually you need to take elevators. Eat three purples (or more if you want) before any longbow start shooting at you; do NOT wait until after you get hit a bunch, because the LB attacks debuff your defense and your purples will then be useless. Then just trot through the spawns until you get to the glowie. It's helpful if your teamates throw themselves into the spawns and ambushes so they soak up most of the agro. It's really best if a brute leads the hostage, but I've done it tons of times on a corrupter too. With luck you can do this mission in 5-10 minutes; if you're unlucky it could take a half hour.

Bind Bat'Zul: For this you must get 5 glowies, then defeat Infernal (a Hero) and Bat'Zul (an AV) This is the mission that many people like to use the log-out trick on. Feh on that, I say. There's two ways to do this: the first is to kill Infernal and the legacy chain, stealth the altars, and then pull Bat'Zul into the corridor to defeat him; the other, better, way is to stealth all the altars and then pull Bat'zul into Infernal. They will start to fight and then you can wail away on them safely, with only minimal agro.

The altars: Be careful not to fall in the lava and stealth down each corridor. I use raptor packs for this because with SS it's hard to not fall in the lava. When you find an altar use the geometry of the tunnel to hide yourself from the Bat'zul minions; for some you hide behind bones jutting from the walls, others you hide below rock ledges or hovering over lava. All of the altars can be gotten in this way except one, where they see you 95% of the time. For this one, use 2 or 3 purples first so you can get it without being hit. (At this point, make sure all of your teamates are far down the starting corridor, near the portal.) After all 5 alters are clicked you must still "trigger" Bat'zul. You will notice that at the end of each corridor, after you've gotten all the altars, a lone Bat'Zul minion will appear. Just kill one of these and Batty will rise out of the lava. At this point just pull him with a ranged attack and run down the starting corridor, past infernal, and back to your group.

If you're lucky, Batty will come down the hall and Infernal and him will start fighting it out. If you're unlucky, the ambushes that come will prevent Batty from coming down the hall, and you will have to help Infernal clear them out (carefully). After some finagling you should be able to get Batty and Infernal to fight each other, or at least come down the corridor a bit. Then, engage them. Go for Bat'Zul first because he is much more powerful, Infernal will help you kill him and shouldn't attack you. After Batty goes down (possible with some annoying running) take out Infernal.

For the AV fights, spam immobs if you have them and don't use your caltrops/rains/area denial powers. Batty is an annoying runner so it's best to keep him slowed and immobed. Also, of course, spam -regen if you have it. Shivans/nukes are not necessary but I carry them in the off chance the team buckles and can't take out the AVs.

Good Job, you're done! Collect your LotG +recharge or Crap of the Hunter recipe and go home! Or, run the SF again and let the reward screen hang on-screen while you log out and play an alt. If you've never done the SF this way, it may take a while to get into the groove of it, but after you run it a couple times it should be no problem to finish in 40 - 45 minutes and maybe less!

Also, make sure to put your recipe up on the Black Market if you don't want it; us villains need everything we can get. The more villains we have running these SFs, the healthier the villain market will become. Take the lead if no one else will, and put a team together!

If you have your own tips or tricks feel free to chime in, or if you disagree with any of my methods let me know.

Actually, there is an even simpler method of doing this.

You start the TF, than everyone but a well built Brute logs on to a different toon. Than the brute proceeds to solo all of the missions, up to the AV mish.

This cuts down a good deal of time during the first mish, and it means that you do not need a TP/Stealther for missions 2-5, as a brute can EASILY just run past the mobs without any worry for his health.

In addition, another thing we like to do is run double or triple versions of this.

For instance, we start 1 TF, log on to a different set of toons, and start another TF. Than 1 brute on each side soloes the missions, than we switch toons for the AV mish.

We can usually bust out 3 TF's in 45 minutes.

Woohooooo..... double or triple....... try quadruple or a sixtuplet? Fun times
THIS is exactly what I didnt want to happen with the thread and why I posted a dummie guide to derail the interest.

On the other hand? Villians have 5 compared to Hero's whatever the number is.14? I doubt they can give it a KH nerfbat swing. At least without providing more sf content villianside.

OP,

I know people that run these easily 4 times a day times 6 times 3 seperate groups having at it and it hasn't made a whit of difference in the bm yet. Even if people run more sf's those same people will keep their drops for down the road and whatever character they have currently in the works.WHY? Because villians are more poor than hero's enfamy vs influence. A villian will think " If I sell this what are the chances I will have the enfamy to procure my drop again later when I need it?"a hero says " I dont need this and have plent of influence if I need one down the road." THATS why there are fewer recipes on the BM than the WW.

very nice and well thought out guide and thank you for taking the time to post.

Candle?
The runner needn't be a well built brute as you put it. I know stalkers that have the whole thing set up in 20 mins. Sometimes less.

Theoretical 'cat is out of the bag" Might as well be constructive

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Candle?
The runner needn't be a well built brute as you put it. I know stalkers that have the whole thing set up in 20 mins. Sometimes less.


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Oh I know, its just been easier for us to use Brutes, because most of the Stalkers I team with are PvP based.

I never considered the possibility of running multiple SFs in parallel. Seems very productive but also requires a core of pretty hard-core gamers who are very organized. I don't think PuG groups could do that; the problem with katie was that any random PuG could gather up and plow through it in less than 15 minutes.

I posted this guide because I was hoping that more casual players would pick up on the idea that it is possible to run an SF in a short amount of time, and maybe SFs would then become more popular. More SFs completed means there are more recipes out there, whether people keep them or sell them it has an effect on the market; each numi +r/+r someone gets and keeps is one less demand for that item.