The Underground

With Issue 21 coming up and the new Underground Trial, I thought I would start a thread for everyone to celebrate the thrilling VICTORIES and share stories of the INEVITABLE DEFEATS.
If any one is looking for strategy guides or a map of the new trial, its in the player guides section in a thread started by VooDooGirl.

Here are the Badges we are after.....

Regenerate This - Defeat the Self-Repairing and Lichen Infested War Walkers within 8 minutes of starting the fight.
Tour Guide - Don't let Desdemona's health go below 50% during the Underground Incarnate Trial.
Preservation Specialist - Don't let any of the IDF bombs detonate in the Underground Incarnate Trial.
Avatar Assassin - Defeat the Avatar of Hamidon at the same time as an IDF bomb in the Underground Incarnate Trial.
(Master of Underground Trial) - Earn all four badges for the Underground Incarnate Trial.

Being as server transfers are going to be readily avaliable, if anyone is interested, I will be getting runs at these together on FREEDOM in pocket D at about 630 pm EST on Tuesday 9/13 and running most of the day on Weds 9/14. I am pretty easy to find...its @Kotchie for my global, and the toon is the same name, or just look for the slow Stone Brute if we are in the middle of the trial, just give me a few minutes and I will get you on the next run. Just a heads up, for the first few trys I will be running an Open League, but as the trys get serious, the league will close (not that all trys are not serious, its just degrees of difficulty)

As most of the hardcore know, its WAY easier to get these badges when they are still fresh, as everyone wants to try them out. With the degree of difficulty this trial has, it will probably NOT overtake the BAF/Lam for constant runs, so as they say, get it while its hot.

...however

With the sheer amount of threads earned, iXP (people were reporting between 75 - 80% of Physical and Psychic iXP unlocked on one run), 2 Emp Merits, and, well... drops galore - I think this trial will be run somewhat frequently.

Too true. I'm going to try a couple runs tonight, just to start working towards those badges.

I went on a run last night that got everything except the Preservation Specialist badge. Just one bomb went off before we got to it. (Hint: They hurt, badly).

I like this trial better than Keyes. It's a bit on the tedious side, but it rewards a comparatively immense number of Astral merits, has lots of stuff to fight, and the "boss" foes aren't as gimmicky as Anti Matter in the final fight of Keyes.

I think maybe one reason it feels more tedious (other than that there is a lot of fighting and travel involved) is that there's actually no time limit on a lot of the phases, meaning that there's not as much of manic feel to the fighting that at least I get in the other trials.

I have to say, the our league steamrolled our first live trial rather nicely. It was very much not a PuG, though. There were a few pickup folks, but the majority of the league was composed of experienced players, most of whom brought +3 incarnate shifted characters with high-end builds.

Edit: By the way, in addition to lots of iXP, this iTrial rewards a comparatively huge number of Astral Merits. In addition to two Empyrean Merits, we got at least 9 Astral Merits. (That's just adding up the rewards I remember - I may have forgotten some.) Most of the "boss" opponents reward more than one Astral as a single drop.

Hooray! I'm finally able to post on the forums!


Having said that....

Just finished an Underground Trial here on Liberty (23 out of 24 peeps in it). We steamrolled through it like it was nothing.

I was really surprised...the Avatar of Hamidon got off 1 Will of the Earth and even then, I don't think more than like 5 people got confused and if so, not for long (clarion ftw!). Took down the Avatar in about 2 mins. heh...reminded me of when back in beta the Avatar had 0 powers and we took him down.

But the best part is that we all got the Avatar Assassin badge!

3 badges out of 4 for the Mo badge...nice! Only one we missed was the bomb one (Preservation Specialist)...a few people got scrapper-lock (and/or didn't listen/see league chat) but...ah well...still had fun

Main badger (EI) is up to 1277 badges!

3 Questions about the UG badges-

Where does one find the bombs that you shouldn't blow up, and how do you prevent a horde of MM pets and other hooligans from exploding them?

For the bomb/hamitoad badge, does someone have to wait by the bomb and hamitoad and kill/detonate simultaneously?

I found the UG trial to be fun. It can be challenging, but it was:

1. More interesting than the BAF
2. More leisurely than the Lambda
3. Less stressful than the Keyes

To me, it shows that the devs are learning from previous trials, and are making them better. I hope the trend continues.

Okay so my badge text for Avatar Assassin says:

"You took a risk and managed to defeat the Avatar of Hamidon in the Underground at the same time a Detonating Seedling was about to go off."


Sooo...I guess there's a timer before the seedling blows up...kill the AoH before that.

Ran it twice tonight. First time, we only missed Preservation Specialist. Besides the bombs in the the direct path, there are 4 in the side tunnels in the curved section. Second time, we got all 4 badges so some people on their first run of the trial got Master. Not as hard to get as some of the other Master badges.

The second Avatar fight, he went down fast. But I didn't enjoy it much because I spent pretty much the entire time confused. I would target him, queue a punch, then suddenly be targeting another player. I don't think I actually hit him at all that fight.

This may be a bug..I do not know..but when we were doing Preservation Specialist, the area where there are 4 bombs were empty, only doubles near the spawns (who were all EB's btw). The only thing we did different was we took the main path...skipped all the bombs "in the circles" , did the double bombs...then went back to get the circle ones. We did not detonate any bombs at all.

On subsequent runs, where we did main path and circle bombs, the quad bombs were there, and the the double bomb spawns had EB's, but they were not ALL EB's like before.

I petition'd it (on the ones where we did path/circle bombs, we always got hit by at least one during the quad bomb phase, so i was not expecting badge for that, but the ones were we did not get quad bombs, no one detonated any bombs at all, and we got no badge)

I am positive 100% that no one ran ahead and no one detonated any at all. (refering to the "bugged" run)

Also, nice little tip. Don't let people bring Rebirth...a single one can take hami from 2% back to 100 on regen :/

Ran with a PUG today, failed when the Avatar killed Des. Somehow it was dragged into the tunnel, almost halfway to the zone entrance. Certainly made it fast to get back after faceplanting, but made for a very cramped and confusing fight. Not an organized group at all. But it was still a fun time, even if we didn't finish it off.

Its not that bad. Run it 10-12 times, failed littel less than half the time. Couple times do to a Non-Paying attention team during the WW fights, couple times to the Avatar fight (once a few people die that contribute a great deal, and a clarion is not recharged, and those people get confused....look out, it isn't pretty), couple times due to Des dying.

Its not a hard trial at all...just LONG...and if you get a halfway competent team, it goes pretty smooth. I would like to see what a minimum league with decent players can pull off.

done it 3 times with a group of 14. We seemed to have little issue. Got all the badges as well. I do wonder about some of the AV warwalker powers that seem to happen without a reticle that I can see. Which is a little odd. Otherwise a fun slog of a Trial.