I went on my second Abandoned Sewer Trial today.
I'd just gotten on for 30 mins in the wee morning hours to pound some tenacious CoT for a relaxing time, when out of the blue, this peacebringer sends me a tell 'sewer trial'
That's it. Two words. No question mark, no nothing. I smelled a big bad rat, but... dammit, it was the sewer trial. Rarer opportunity than Sally, and someone else was doing cat herding.
So I went.
I got in on the second mission, which I suspect resulted in me not getting a recipe pop up option at the end, but I did get the shiny badges and some solid learning in, and that's better than a trial recipe - especially since respecs are easier to do for recipes.
Anyhow, I get ahead of myself. We had, surprisingly, 4 lvl 38-41s and 4 lvl 50s.
After stumbling around trying to remember where a sewer entrance was, I got to the Abandoned Sewers in time to see that two people had already run up to the room, and another four were midway through, traveling at the slow plodding pace that can only mean spawn by spawn killing, and there was me and the pb leader coming in way later than me.
Naturally, I asked for a TP.
There was one TP'er. An empath without a clue. *sigh* Not a single fort, CM, or even HEAL from this woman. Just RA announcements every now and then. Great, not even a healbot, an endbot.
Obviously, the TP drug me right in the middle of the scrimmage of fighting people, where I find a lvl 50 tank who didn't have invincibility on, but used taunt, and made a special point of wading into each and every spawn between here and the destination sewer room.
*sigh*
So we fight. No one offers me a SK. Then the lvl 50 tank sidekicks the empath who only RAs.
Meanwhile I'm hitting the lvl 38-40 Rikti for equal amounts as the lvl 50 tank. Ok, fine, whatever.
The PB doesn't ask for a TP and naturally doesn't get TP'ed, and so he wanders into a spawn and he goes red and then dies. He lies there for a good five minutes before the empath figures it out and tps him over.
In the meantime, one guy has quit the team. (Smart chap.) So the PB leader hires another lvl 50 blaster who comes in and blows shit up and hastens the tedious wading towards the sewer room.
At abovementioned place, it becomes obvious that none of us have a real clue of what we're in for, through the garbled information and snippets of facts that come from this and that person. The PB leader has never done it before.
I shift my mouse surreptitiously to the other monitor and pull up a sewer trial guide to read, but all my talk about special weapon temp powers in chests is absolutely ignored and veto'ed out by the lvl 50s, who are positive that no, you don't need the weapons and we can just drop down straight onto the hydra head.
We are, by the way, exemplaring the lvl 50s at this point because they were wondering why they hadn't auto-exemplared and had taken steps to fix this on entering...
So we drop down onto the hydra's head...
(Cleverly, I decide to straggle a bit and drop down onto a chest. Luckily, the very near Rikti do not look at me because they are facing away, and it is good because they are =PURPLE= +4s. Even more luckily for the happy ending of this tale, I get a particle cannon, though I didn't know it at the time.)
Then I join the others into dropping onto the hydra's head.
The lvl 42 PURPLE hydra's head surrounded by many many tentacles.
The hydra looks up bemused at the rain of corpses falling down.
Of course, only the lvl 50 tank who had argued so vehemently for the dropping notion survives. Pretty amazed, since said tank was exemplared at the time.
It's about this time that everyone decides to reverse exemplars in the opposite direction, and we now face grey mobs. We're not allowed to go to the hospital, says the team, so it happens to be rather lucky that most of us happen to have an awaken. The party member who stays dead the longest before using an awaken is the supposed rezzer (aka RA RA empath).
Things degenerate into about twenty minutes of running around destroying Rikti and generators in all directions. Me, I'm just struggling to keep up with my blaster mentor who has the most annoying tendency of zipping off and leaving me surrounded by purple Rikti and get a Hydra psi DoT in the back, to boot. And I'm the blaster with superspeed. He was just sprinting.
Most of us who have an inkling regarding the trial are all thinking we're doomed, when the PB leader surprisingly manages to pull out a stentorian commanding tone and stops everyone from fighting and regroups the entire team onto a rock around him.
There, he and the guy who's done it before patiently explain that we need to kill all the Rikti first, without touching the generators. Except they do it in a very unclear manner. I finally pick up what they are trying to say, and diplomatically echo it in plain English back to the whole group.
Problem 1: They want everyone to follow them in a big group of 8. This lvl 50 scrapper guy is off by himself, and my lvl 50 blaster is just as independent and likes to solo grey Rikti at the other end of the room. I'm left with little choice but to trail the blaster.
Problem 2: They are quite convinced that they can hurt the Hydra once the generators are down, without the temp powers, and walk all over my suggestions that we get the lvl 38s some guns - which we missed dropping dead on top of the head, if you'll recall. Ok. Whatever. One problem at a time.
Miraculously, the team finally gets on the same page about killing Rikti first and leaving generators alone, so that more Rikti do not spawn in. All, except the lvl 41 RA RA empath - who now has a tendency to send bolts into the generators leaving it hanging precariously at half or a quarter health. Fortunately, she only hits for like 40-80 damage.
We regroup with all the Rikti cleared. The simultaneous destruction of the generators seem quite obvious to me, but our glorious leader has some strange convuluted plan about each sk pair hitting one generator and then going to the one on the right.
Eventually, we manage to pound it in his head that there are only 4 generators. He doesn't trust us. He has to go count for himself.
Meanwhile, I've diplomatically suggested that each pair just park at a generator. We're all parked when the PB finally announces, Oh yah, there are only 4.
Somehow we struggle through the first somewhat simultaneous gen destruction and go wail on the Hydra Head.
Shortly, in the first few hits, it becomes very obvious to me that I'm not hurting the thing at all. I flip to my combat pane. Yep, hitting for 0 points of damage. Oops. So I bring out the trusty particle cannon. Woot, 163hp ticks over and over, lookatit go!
(All this while, the other seven members of the team are flailing away at it on automatic, blind to the fact that the only orange numbers floating above the Hydra's head are my cannon's.
I uncomfortably check the amount of charges on the thing. Oh dear, only 18 of them. I'd wasted some earlier testing out how the gun worked, but at least I had it all figured now.)
The Rikti respawn. Immediate chaos breaks loose again as one or two vigilantes start flailing at the generators, missing one, while others are hitting the Rikti and I waste a particle cannon shot on an Unaffected hydra.
Somehow, miraculously again, the PB (and I'm on his side by this time) restores some order and knocks it into people's heads that we just need to kill Rikti, stop worrying about the generators.
The grey Rikti are cleared. I prompt everyone to park by the gens and this time, send another diplomatic question for someone to count us down. One of the 50s does so. Things are more organized this time. Gens go down. Hydra head hitting resumes.
And as I click the cannon and watch it go, I silently marvel at the fact that neither of the others has a single clue that they're not hurting the thing at all. However, my single cannon is dropping its hp rather significantly, so I'm starting to have a little bit of hope.
Rikti respawn. We rinse and repeat, and now we're getting the hang of it. On the next gen-down Hydra takedown, I've worked out the way to test-fire my cannon shots for conserving its charges. A fire blast into a gen-protected Hydra is UNAFFECTED. A fire blast into an unshielded Hydra hits for 0 points of damage in the combat pane.
My curiosity also gets the better of me and I "wonder" in a remark if the others are doing any damage at all? The other blaster finally figures it out too, and he's going, hey i'm not doing any damage. The PB goes, no, his hp is going down, we're winning! The lvl 50 tank adds, we can do this!
I try not to die laughing. It would put a crimp in my particle cannon fire rate and prolong the agony.
To the tune of seven others merrily firing their powers into the Hydra for cool sound effects, I start to measure how many shots I can output per shield-down session. About 3-4.
We do this about once or twice over before me and my trusty lucky particle cannon put the Hydra down. Jus me and my lil friend... Rowr!
(In the last session, the pb finally checks his combat pane or something, and remarks, hey, i'm not doing any damage!)
Ok, granted, the PB had a good organization role to play, in that he managed to herd us into some semblance of order, even if his facts had a few gaps and his observation skills were nonexistent. And the lvl 50s were useful for sidekicking so that everything was grey.
But I'm still kinda tickled pink that I single-handedly did all the damage to the Hydra. *grovels to the wise designer who put 20 charges on that gun*
And I finally understand the sewer trial now. Which is really the ultimate reward.
(My first round was a chaotic race to destroy generators. We never did the precision Rikti destroy first method.)
Now in theory, I can actually lead an Abandoned Sewer Trial successfully. If I ever was insane enough to herd cats, that is. At least I'll now be able to act intelligently on future trials.
It might be nice to do it as part of a SG that's got it together. Could probably do it even without the cheating use lvl 50s method if everyone's on the same page and understands the strat...
No comments:
Post a Comment