RE: Villians Strike Force Lengths

Over Memorial day weekend, I planned and played some of the CoH Trials/Strike Forces. Some of these trials were outrageously long.
Simply, they blew away my original gaming schedule.

I'm planning 2 more events for July 4th and Labor day but I want to play on the Villian side on one of them. Does anyone know how long these trials are? Also, when you agree to a Trial/Strikeforce you can logoff and come back later that night or the next day, right? Just curious, how long will the system hold the team information? It would be very nice to be able to plan breaks of an hour or so for regular people who can't play continuously because they have to cook breakfast/lunch/dinner, massage the kids, eat, etc.

I play with the maximum number of members at 8.
I need a rough estimate of the game time needed.

CoV Strike Force Name
The Beast Beneath the Mountain
Pirates of the Sky
The Temple of the Waters
The Spider Weaves his Web
The 5th Column Overthrow
The Crystal of Serafina
Time's Arrow
Lord Recluse's Strike Force
The Lady Grey Strike Force
Thus Spoke the Reichsman
Trading Places
The Abyss


CoH Trial Name - How much time is ACTUALLY needed to complete these trials?

Firebase Zulu Trial - I started this trial at 10pm and we played until sheer exhaustion until roughly 6am. We got to a mission were you had to activate 4 computers and the 4th user feel asleep at her terminal. We waited, and tried to activate the computers with 3 users, from 4:30am-7am for her to wake up.

Abandoned Sewers Trial -We cut corners everywhere we could to get this one done....it was fun but we still weren't able to beat the clock. We made lots of mistakes. We started at 4pm and went to 8pm. I was the healer in this trial and I worked my @$$ off! The team I had refused to load up on awakens or go to the hospital so I was Tping, rezing, cauterizing, etc. I was so tired afterwards I canceled the next three events. Also, I contemplated the meaning of life for my Gravity Controller.

Eden - Didn't even get to do this one because of the runover from the Sewers TF. I booked an 1/2 to 1 hour but I couldn't find a leader in the 39-41 level to run this.

Hamidon Raid - Aborted Trial, I heard this requires 6 hours and is like the RWZ Raid but you really need teams to go at the target. I saw someone recruiting teams for this on one of the channels and decided to pass on this one.

Rikti Warzone Raid - This was another aborted Trial. I've done this in the past but I have never successfully completed it. I can get as far as the mothership but we fight and fight and fight and never break into ship.

The Beast Beneath the Mountain, Virgil Tarikoss
Been done in as little as 15 minutes, usually closer to an hour. All depending on team and experience and luck of the map

Pirates of the Sky, Silver Mantis
About an hour or so possibly up to 2 hours I suppose.

Providing the TF/SF team logs off and doesn't quit, the team will be kept. So you can continue at a later time. However, the character on the TF can't join another team/TF/SF unless they quit. So that character will be effecively limited to marketting and playing with their costume.

The Treespecs (SF Respec trials) can be done in 15 mins at a push with stealthing. They aren't that long even if you don't. Unlike blue side you don't stand around for 30 minutes waiting for an ambush.

Like all of the TFs/SFs and Raids, it really helps if the team leader knows what is going on.

The Hami and Mothership Raids are usually organized events (the Mothership raid is cooperative). Check your server for details of regular raids. Time depends on how many teams you get in. I think the Mothership Raids I've been on were about an hour a run from pylonds down to shields up.

The Lady Grey and Mothership are cooperative hero/villain. Check if the LG is fixed yet or you could have a problem with the Mitos. LG can take 30 mins or five hours. Should be no more than two though even if you deliberately fail mission two.

As for the rest; none of them should be horribly long. A couple of hours at most. Without stealthing.

The most difficult will be the LG, the LR and the Reichman.Debuffs are your friend on all of them.

most all of the villain sfs dont take longer than maybe 2 hours, the only one that can run over 2 hours occasionally is silver mantis and the cuda sf (cuda sf is more variant depending how fast you kill ambush, mantis is fairly long in general)


tarikoss sf: speed run time is about 15-20 min, average time is 45 min to 1 hour

silver mantis sf: speed run is about 1.5 hours, average time is 2 to 2.5 hours

renault sf: speed run is about 45 min to 1 hour, average time is 1 to 1.5 hours

ice mistral sf: speed run is about 45 min, average time is about 1 to 1.5 hours

LRSF: speed run is about 25-40 min, average time is 1.5 to 2 hours

ITF: speed run is about 20-45 min, average time is 1 to 1.5 hours

LGTF: speed run is about 30 min, average time is about 1.5 hours

cuda sf: average time is 1.5-3 hours depending how you deal with ambush

mender silos sf: with a good team, maybe 20 min, duoing it with AVs can take 45 min to 1 hour, this isnt even a true sf as it does not have diminishing returns


for the hero trials you were asking about

sewer trial: almost always will take about 1.5 hours unless you take a long time on the hunt mish

eden trial: 1-2 hours is average time for this


for the raid type things

hami raids: a good down pat group of poeple can do a hami raid in about 1.5 hours, a PuG raid takes 3-6 hours if everyone cooperates

RWZ raids: usually take longer to form, pylons take 10 min average and then once your on the ship you only have about 30 minutes of fighting time

All of your links are broken. You're linking to /wiki/___, rather than paragonwiki.com/wiki/___.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Residentx10 The Spider Weaves his Web, Mender Tesseract The 5th Column Overthrow, Mender Lazarus Trading Places, Mender Silos

These can be more like story arcs than task forces, especially since you can start them without a team. Lazarus is exactly the same between Heroes and Villains, and Silos is almost the same (same storyline, different sides of the story). Tesseract is not available to Heroes, and Twilight's Son is not available to Villains.

Tessercat's arc poses no significant challenges that I can recall. Twilight's Son has an EB/AV at the end that can be a challenge for some people. Lazarus can be difficult without a team due to multiple simultaneous AVs at the end. I recommend against soloing Silos as a Villain, due to multiple simultaneous AVs at the end (you do get AV allies, though). The Hero version doesn't make them simultaneous.

Depending on your skill and other factors, I wouldn't expect any of the Menders' stories to take much more than 90 minutes.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Residentx10 Firebase Zulu Trial - I started this trial at 10pm and we played until sheer exhaustion until roughly 6am. We got to a mission were you had to activate 4 computers and the 4th user feel asleep at her terminal. We waited, and tried to activate the computer with 3 users, from 4:30am-7am for her to wake up.

I assume you're talking about Dr. Quaterfield's Task Force? It's the longest TF in the game, has multiple identical missions in a row, and has more than one simultaneous click objective in it. Even with everyone being on-the-ball are ready throughout the TF, it can take 4 hours.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Residentx10 Hamidon Raid - Aborted Trial, I heard this requires 6 hours and is like the RWZ Raid but you really need teams to go at the target. I saw someone recruiting teams for this on one of the channels and decided to pass on this one.

Hamidon absolutely does not need 6 hours. But you definitely need multiple teams. The game won't let you throw more than 50 players at Hamidon, but you could probably get by with half that for a successful raid.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Residentx10 Rikti Warzone Raid - This was another aborted Trial. I've done this in the past but I have never successfully completed it. I can get as far as the mothership but we fight and fight and fight and never break into ship.

There is no breaking into the ship. Once the shield comes down, you start planting bombs in top of the ship. After you've planted enough bombs (5? 10? Don't recall), U'Kon Gr'Ai spawns in the center of the dish. That's it. If you've beaten U'Kon Gr'Ai and you've gotten a bunch of Vanguard merits, you've successfully completed the RWZ raid.