Head of the Hydra

I'm going to try the Abandoned Sewer Trial soon and I'm all ears if you have any advice. One thing I'm especially curious about: is the actual Big Giant Head subject to debuffs? Can a tar patch reduce its damage resistance and speed things along? Do the particle cannons obey the usual rules about damage buffs? Can you speed things along with fulcrum shift?

I've only tried this trial once before and it did not go well, so I'd be happy to get some advice.

The Hydra Head is immune to resistance debuff (because it has 100% resistance), as well as having 100% defense debuff resistance. You also can't really mez it: half mez duration from 100% mez resistance, and mag 100 protection to several mezzes, and mag 20 protection to others. I believe it also has PToD on top of those protections. You can't debuff its RechargeTime, Accuracy, Endurance, ToHit, PerceptionRadius, Regeneration, or Recovery, either.

On the other hand, it's auto-immobilized and it can't regenerate.

I believe the temp powers can have their damage buffed, but I'm not 100% sure on that one.

The trial is all about timing and coordination. A team that can work together getting the temps, and work together clearing around the Force Fields, and Tentacles. Then they need the ability to split off into pairs to simul kill the generators, then get back together to work on the head, and deal with ambushes.

Works best if you're methodical. Unless you're practiced, when you rush, you lose time, not gain.

First time we did it was a deathfest. Like, "couldn't get some of my friends to try it for three years" deathfest. Second time I had a plan for the vertical shaft, but not really for the bottom part. And that worked OK, after we got past the panic with not knowing where to go or what to do and there being no map. I felt like I was giving wall of text in realtime, but it pretty much paid off.

Now we went in with a ridiculously high powered team. We had kin, rad, empathy, force fields and maybe a dark. Having said that, this is what we did:

Before starting the cooking process, assemble your ingredients. The only thing I would say you NEED is someone with either good stealth or personal force field, plus Recall Friend. (vet teamports are not up enough.) Also someone tough enough to herd rikti (or "tough enough when buffed") who has either flight or a jetpack (hello, shadowshard!) and enough firepower to handily defeat hatchlings. I liked having a Force Fielder, because that's my personal security blanket, and having two people in the vertical shaft herding was faster than one.

VERTICAL SHAFT: Clear the whole thing. The old days when you could invis and teleport and grab glowies ... that doesn't work any more. At least not reliably. And then people die and fall to the bottom and everyone freaks out.

There are side corridors off the vertical shaft. Clear the top part, herding (or pulling groups if you prefer to think of it that way) rikti up to you, then stealth and port to the first side corridor. Herd the rikti to there in waves, slaughtering them as they enter. Then stealth and port to the second side corridor, herd and slaughter. I think we were using a force fielded spine scrapper and Kheld in this part. At some point someone's going to die and fall to the bottom, maybe more than once. This is why Recall Friend, single serving, is important. Once you've pretty much cleared, you set up to get the boxes. I don't remember if it matters who has the guns, but your tough taunty person (if any) should probably NOT have a gun. Also, if you have the sort of friend who cannot resist clicking the glowies, do not invite them or the friendship may suffer.

For the bottom part, if I recall there are 3 or 4 hatchlings and 4 force field generators. We eventually started referring to them by compass direction - I think they're roughly northeast, southeast, northwest and southwest. The classic trick on the force field generators, which works great, is to beat them MOST of the way down and then drop them all at almost the same time. Traditionally people split into four pairs but two 4-packs seemed to be more doable with my limited management skills. North side and south side, or whatever. We had a lot of panic at this point. Panic is your enemy.

Tentacles are easy. You don't even really need tentacle guns. I think you can do tentacles before the force field generators.

Once the generators are all down and you're shooting the head, there are two separate sets of events:
1) Rikti Repairmen come fix the generators. You need to beat the repairmen, beat down the generators, get back to the hydra. Something like 5 minutes between "first gen goes down" and "repairmen show up", but I don't know the actual timing.
2) Rikti ambushes- I think at 50% and 25% head health.

So it would go something like this:
1) Clear vertical shaft in waves.
2) Beat hatchlings and local rikti at bottom, avoiding psi head of death.
3) Two teams each take down two generators.
4) Teams get back together for safety, blast psi head of death and any incoming rikti ambushes.
5) Force Field generators come up. Teams split up and wipe out repairaliens and generators.
6) Repeat 4 & 5 till victory.

The side corridors are very useful. If you fight in the vertical, rikti fall off. Players fall off. It's a big mess and people die all over.

Good hunting!

Key item to note: there are only 4 Particle Cannons and these are the *ONLY* weapon that can hurt the head. You want these to go to the 4 toughest people you have because they need to stand right in the head's face (?) and survive multiple excruciatingly long firing animations.

You can identify exactly what each glowie contains (particle or thermite cannon) by 'clicking on it' from far away. The type of weapon will show up in your targeting window.


P.S. What server? I consistently run this in under 45 minutes but I only have characters high enough level on Infinity. I'd be happy to tag along, offer advice, run the show, whatever.

P.P.S. I have a massive set of keybinds I set up with explanations and instructions for various points during the trial. I'll post them here when I'm at my gaming system.

Not necessary, but helpful: Someone with a good strong Confuse turns Hatchlings from dangerous nuisences to extremely handy death-dealing pets.

Are the thermite cannons the only thing that can hurt the tentacles?

In my experience, you can usually tell what's inside the crates:
Orange tinted crates are usually Particle Cannon.
Green tinted crates are usually Thermite Cannon.

This is not 100% though, but if you are looking for a certain weapon, it's worth a shot. Out of the last 4 runs I did, only 1 person's crate was wrong.

I recommend that the Scrappers and Tanks take the Particles when they can because they will be less likely to die from the ambushes. The idea is to keep the 4 people with Particle Cannons focused on the head the whole time the generators are down. If they ignore everything else at that time, and can withstand the ambushes, the Head can be defeated in only 2 waves. The other tactic is just the opposite.. let the tanks and scrappers keep agro of the ambushes while the squishies use the Particles on the head.. but I've found my first suggestion to work more often. Bringing a couple Purples along never hurts either.

Wow, you really have that down to a science, Ironblade.

I really want to run this trial at some point, but haven't had much of a chnace.