My lambda guide.

Lambda Sector

Stage 1

Objective: kill 60 enemies

Strategize! (Highly recommended actions)
• Clear out all enemies on the road for extra iXP and thread drops
• Take out all the turrets on the wall of lambda. So people who die will be able to get back in.
• Clear the courtyard.
• DO NOT OPEN THE MAIN DOOR. Doing so may allow Marauder to escape, which means failure.

Be a leader not a wiener (what, if you are leadering, you need to do)
• Since this portion is not timed I think it is a VERY good idea to give people a rundown of the plan for the entire raid, and of course you will be giving those instruction again.


FAIL! (how you can fail the trial during this stage)
• It is not possible to fail this stage. However, if someone opens the main door you *might* fail during the Marauder fight.


STAGE 2

Objective: Kill security team, prepare for stage 3.

Strategize!
• Make sure NO ONE goes up the elevators, doing so will surely result in failure if your team is unready.

Be a leader not a wiener!
• This is the last time the trial is not timed. So once again you need to go over the instructions.
• Make sure both teams are balanced to have equal numbers of melee and squishy toons on each team.
• Make sure everyone is in position and knows where to go. Generally have team 1 goes to the warehouse and team 2 go to the training facility, but as long as each team goes to the right spot you will be ok.
• Make sure to tell everyone to stick with their team leader and STAY TOGETHER.
• Choose who will be the designated acid mule (all Molecular Acid will be give the them in stage 3.5) and the grenade mule (all Pacification Grenades will be given to them).
o I personally like to get the acid myself and then have a tank get the grenades, they will be less likely to die and thus will be there to use grenades. But really as long as it’s a good player who knows what to do you should be fine.
• Give a countdown as you prepare to finally enter

FAIL!
• Someone goes up the elevators before you and your team were ready.


Stage 3.1 This is the most important phase, **** up here and you failed the trial.

Objectives: destroy weapons cache in warehouse and containment chambers in in training facility.

Strategize!
• The weapons caches and containment chambers are always in the same place, use this to your advantage.
• Do not attack anything but the objectives.
• There is a 5 minute time limit. However, each time both teams destroy an objective you get an additional minute.
o I’m going to quote Garent because he explains this extremely well. “If team 1 destroys two objectives, and team 2 hasn't destroyed any, there is no time bonus. Once team 2 destroys their first objective, there will be a time bonus. It is possible to gain time instead of losing it if you move fast enough."

Be leader not a wiener.
• Again, make sure everyone knows what to do.
• Make sure the teams try and stay together. It is best if each is following someone who knows the locations of all or some of objectives.
FAIL!
• Either team fails to get enough of the temp powers before timer runs out. Does not end the trial outright, but makes success much more difficult.

Stage 3.2 (This is technically part of stage 4. Thus you now have 20 minutes remaining for the rest of the trial)
Objectives: All you do here is make sure the acid and grenade mules get all their temps.
Strategize!
• That’s it
• Hopefully it doesn’t make longer than 1 minute.

Be a leader not a wiener.
• That’s it

FAIL!
• If someone on your team fails to give the temps to the mules you can end up losing A LOT of time


Stage 4.1
Objective: Close portals and destroy Marauder's buddies.
Strategize!
• Have the acid mule close all the portals.
• IF you were unable to get enough temps you may need to destroy the extra weapons caches and containment chambers. This of course it something you do NOT want to end up doing.
• Marauder will be surrounded by a very large mob, it’s size can range from F*CKING HUGE to very large depending on how long it took to close the portals. You must clear this mob before you finally engage Marauder. Make sure everyone is staying together as a team.

Be a leader not a wiener.
• There are two possible “orders” you can give to the rest of your team. It is up to you to choose what if best
o 1: have them stay back until the portals are closed
o 2: have them begin clearing the surrounding mob by marauder while the portals are being closed
• Make sure the grenade mule DOES NOT use any grenades until the mob around Marauder
• Let people know that if they die go to the hosp immediately and GET INSP. It is in the zone. On return they should not open the main door but jump or fly over the lambda walls.

FAIL!
• You take too long and don’t have enough time to fight Marauder
• If someone opened the main door marauder can escape very easily.

Stage 4.2
Objective: engage and destroy marauder.
Marauder’s abilities:
• NOVA FIST, if you see “Nova Fist” (similar to the orbital lance from tin/apex) in red letters flash in the middle of your screen back the **** up or you likely die.
• ENRAGED, this gives Marauder insane def/res. If Marauder is enraged the grenade mule must use a Pacification Grenade on Marauder before the team will be able to do any dmg to him.
• Every now and then he will use super jump, this appears to happen at HP intervals.
• At low health he will use Unstoppable, you will want to try to keep on as many regen debuffs as possible so you can still work on killing him during the period.

Strategize!
• If someone did open the doors to lambda (mentioned earlier) try to move him away from it. If the doors are left closed all you need to do it punch him until he is dead and follow him when he uses super jump.

Be a leader not a wiener
• Its pretty simple. Just make sure people are only attacking Marauder, the grenade mule is using the grenades.
• Make sure people know to go to the hosp ASAP (or tell them to wait a few seconds for veng to be used etc) when they die. And to NOT return using the main door, they should fly/jump of the walls where you cleared the turrets.

FAIL!
• The most common way to fail is to run out of time. This is almost ALWAYS due to a stage 3 failure. If someone was hording temps you may also lose too much time.
• If Marauder should leave Lambda you will fail. This most often happens if someone opened the main door.

Macros
When it comes to lambda there is a lot of info the people need and very little time to tell them. For that reason I use quite a few macros, which I use during the 2 rundowns and the section of the trial they are about. I expect they may eventually be unneeded in the future once people generally know what to do already, and when everyone is +3 >.<

/Macro 1, say Phase 1: clear road, turrets (clockwise), courtyard. In that order. DO NOT open the main door. Opening the main door will make failure much easier.

(Notes: The direction you go to clear the turrets doesn’t matter, as long as people stay together.)

/macro 2, say phase 2: kill security team, do not enter elevators until I say to.

/macro 3, say Phase 3: move quickly and focus on objectives, stay together. 5 minute time limit. For each objective that both teams destroy, there's a time bonus of an additional one minute.

/macro 31, say Team 1: weapons cache in warehouse. Team 2: containment chambers in Training Facility. If one team should finish before the other, go help out the other team.

/macro 32, say Phase 3: temp powers: Molecular Acid is dropped for every containment chamber destroyed. Pacification Grenade is given away for each weapons cache destroyed. They are given away at random. Check if you have any of either under temporary powers.

/macro 4, say Phase 4 prep: Give all Pacification Grenades to $target. All Molecular Acid to me.

/macro Mar, say Phase 4: Hold at entrance until portals are down. Once they are down, we need to clear the mob around Marauder before we attack him. Stay together as a group target thru me. Then and only then do we attack Marauder.

/macro fight, Say Marauder’s abilities: NOVA FIST, if you see “Nova Fist” in red letters flash in the middle of your screen back the ***** up or you may die. Every now and then he will use super jump. At low health he will use Unstoppable.

/macro die, say If at any point you should die go to the hosp immediately. It is in the zone. Do not open main door of Lambda on return, jump or fly over walls.

And there you go. That’s my first attempt at a guide, hope it’s helpful. I will *hopefully* end up adding a map of the objective locations, at least for the warehouse as test facility is a lot easier imo, but that is going to be awhile if it even ever happens.
If anything can be made better or you see a typo I didn’t see please let me know.

Solid effort, easy to follow, thanks.

Hadn't thought (though it's fairly straight foward idea) of going over the wall from the get go to avoid opening the front door, but I have been on at least one failed attempt where the fighting grew intense around the open door and Marauder did exit (I think chasing someone he had aggro'd on) to fail the Trial.

Two other toughts, first as more folks have multiple higher tier abilities I have seen Team One circle the outer road while Team Two handles the turrets (then meeting up to go inside). Second, again with folks more familiar overall, perhaps 2 characters going (1 left and 1 right) with Acid to seal the portals rather than 1 doing a circuit or other even less optional tactics).

Now you just need to add the maps for the warehouse and training facility for the crates, etc.

I really don't get the acid mule strategy.
At a minimum two ppl can close the portals faster than one. Four players splitting up and doing the work is faster than that....

mule the 'nades, sure. acid mules - maybe for the first runs when only a few ppl had been on beta and knew what was going on. Now? I do not agree.

The rest, pretty solid guide.

Fair enough concerns.

Quote:

Originally Posted by flipside I also agree that throwing all the acid grenades at one player to do the work is more work than it needs to be. But, I have found more often than not that there is at least 1 player on a team who is oblivious to the fact that they got the temp power, and then spending 1-2 minutes narrowing down who that person is and trying to convince them to open up their temp powers window and get the thing.

I'd say you'd spend that same time and more trying to get the person who doesn't even know they have the acid temp to find it and trade it away then it would take to pop the container in the courtyard.

Quote:

Originally Posted by flipside Also, and this has occurred only one time in about a dozen Lambda runs, but we managed to use two acid grenades on a single door, leaving one untouched. It must have been lag and/or a timing issue, but there were two players who went to the same door and tossed their acids at the same time. It seems hard to duplicate, but it's possible.

Yes, that happened in beta a couple times, too.
Same solution though, grab that courtyard container (so nice that decided to add that option) and close the remaining door.


Again, just my perspective. It runs fine using this when the leader insists on it. I just think you end up with some extra adds.

Thumbs up from a relatively new player. I had no idea what to expect going into Lambda, except that knowing that BAF was easy as pie so Lambda was bound to be harder, and people saying similar stuff in various chats.

Having this guide helped me have a little foresight as to what I was getting into, and I was actually able to contribute to the run. =)

work in progress (missing 2 Pacification Grenade locations)

This is a dumb question...but are there stairs up to the turrets for those w/o SJ or Fly (including those with TP who have a hard time controlling it...)?

Good guide, you hit the points well and those maps are great.

I think you were overly strong on a couple points though. Having said that, if I was on your trial I would certainly do it your way, I just want everyone to know that there are other options and you don't necessary fail if don't do it that way.

1) Opening the gates - every lambda I have done we open the gates and I have yet to have Marauder leave. Is it a possibility, yes, but not likely. And without temp powers those without fly and super jump may not be able to do it.

2) Mule for acid and grenade - I also don't get this part for acid, pacification OK (make sure they are not used early, are used when needed, and only one is thrown) but acid? It doesn't really solve the problem of people not knowing they have acid as they are no more likely to know they have it to pass as they are to know they have it to use. I don't mess around with inventorying the stuff, I call for people to check temps then just hit the acid in the courtyard to get what is needed.

The only time I see this is if you are going for the badges in which case I highly recommend it to avoid anyone accidentally using one but that is not a fail of the trial.

Thanks for the guide!

Great guide, and the picture of the crate points is worth real money!

Tsumi, awesome pic, thanks
Ultrawatt, here are some suggestions:

"Do not attack anything but the objectives."

Attacking more than the minimum could be useful for iXP and threads. It also could result in better team survivability, since squishies are more likely to survive if areas are more effectively cleared before moving on. Finally, it may affect Individual/Team/League participation scores. Once people have become familiar with the locations, it's not really a race against time. Most Lambdas I've done in the last week have been fine on time at the end.

"Choose who will be the designated acid mule (all Molecular Acid will be give the them in stage 3.5) and the grenade mule (all Pacification Grenades will be given to them)."

A few comments. One, passing acids takes time and it also means that one person has to hit all 10 locations before ambushes. Two, if either mule disconnects, you could be hosed. What's worse is if you pass to someone who doesn't understand what's happening OR the person griefs the League.

There is a chance that you could waste two pacis or two acids by having two players click the powers at the same target very close in time. So you could suggest people look before using acids and call out nades in advance.

Another helpful leader tip I've found is to ask the League to call out "x acids y nades" in League. If you find some say nothing, then those are the ones a leader might wanna send a tell to, use /b, /l, /req, team chat, whatever to get them to pay attention.

I think at Stage 4.2, my observation is that he normally jumps at 20% HP intervals, although sometimes he doesn't and it throws off the interval.

He tends to Enrage at least one time per 20%. He tends to do it within the first 5-15 seconds of a jump. Someone with a paci spamming it can usually result in a pacification immediately upon enraging. Spamming a paci only works against enraged Marauder, so it won't be wasted by the player accidentally, unless two people do it. Even then, I think it's pretty safe from what I understand. That is, I've never heard two people claim they pacified at the same time when it was instantaneous like that.

My experience is that he attempts to Unstoppable around 25%. He doesn't always do this, and sometimes he does it twice (I think it's rare, but I believe I saw this on a Lambda that ended with 0 seconds remaining, so he had time to recharge).

Some have suggested using Seer Lore pets around that point. With teams where I notice a good amount of DPS in the first 20-40%, I recommend dropping Lores around 50% in so you get some before and after Unstoppable DMG from pets.