Spider and the Fly wave fight advice?

[Santa Claus Jr]

So, Spoilers for the first quest in Phantom Liberty I guess. I'm playing on the hardest difficulty and its been fine so far. Combat has been varying degrees of challenging but fair. I'm in the first quest of phantom liberty and now im at this part where I gotta wait with Myers for an elevator, and "Fight off Hansen's soldiers til songbird f*ckin does whatever" and this really feels like the first big "F*ck you" fight in the game so far.

I'm level 35, 50 street cred doing an INT/hacker/smart gun build. Stuck at 3rd tier cyberware and there was no ripper in the dogtown intro area..... this game spams like 20 bulletsponge skull/dangerous POS enemies and Ive died here like 20 times. Ive used every buff item i can ahead of time. Can kill a couple early on with reboot optics+short circuit combos and sniper rifle, then all 300 of them start globbing together and just MK walk at me, chucking grenades so i cant stay in cover. I try spamming contagion with overdrive but still dying.

F*ck this fight. Anyone have any advice on beating this with an int/hacker build? Is there any janky cheap spots or strats to cheese through this cause right now I'm feeling the limitations of the hacker stuff cause I can't just upgrade my stuff on the spot as opposed to picking up guns, and my hacks are doing like zero damage. My tier 3 hacks are reboot optics, glitch weapon, short circuit, contagion, cyberware failure synapse burnout.

[charly4711]

My advice is: Level up!
With a similar build I tried at lvl 31 and it was totally impossible. At lvl 43 with much improved gear, cyberware, perks points invested, etc. it was still very hard, used every buff and everything in my arsenal, but it was doable.

[Grenthy]

Use Cyberware Malfunction chained into Short Circuits. Each stack of malfunction on an enemy increases the amount of damage a short does.

Contagion and overheat can wittle down the skulls if you cripple movement to stop them from bulldozing your position.

I bought one of the smart songs from the vendor in the petrochem plant before going down and it was a godsend. It chews through ammo but it's a hail of micro rockets.

[Santa Claus Jr]

.... it took a long time to reach this point and i REALLY really dont feel like doing all that again so I don't want to load an old save and 'level up'. rather pray for a christmas miracle that I can get through this.

This seems to be another issue with hacking. Not only does it seem like my hacks arent strong enough to do decent damage, does it really need to cost extra now too??? People using guns don't have to spend 3 bullets for every 1 bullet it should cost and reload every 2 or 3 shots.

[charly4711]

Originally posted by Santa Claus Jr:

.... it took a long time to reach this point and i REALLY really dont feel like doing all that again so I don't want to load an old save and 'level up'. rather pray for a christmas miracle that I can get through this.

This seems to be another issue with hacking. Not only does it seem like my hacks arent strong enough to do decent damage, does it really need to cost extra now too??? People using guns don't have to spend 3 bullets for every 1 bullet it should cost and reload every 2 or 3 shots.

Wait till you're past them and you'll find that hacking isn't so bad for something that comes after, combined with charged and well aimed shots of the widow maker.
I feel your pain about having to go back that far and I didn't like it one bit. But that's what helped me. Of course you can also lower the difficulty.

This is a bit of a weakness not so much of hacking but of the guiding player expectations. People _expect_ to be able to start PL when it becomes available. But it just isn't really a good idea. In TW3 you had quest markers that EXPLICITLY told you what the recommended levels were. Something like that would have helped here, too.

[Santa Claus Jr]

oh man, completely forgot i could temporarily lower the difficulty. Yes, I do really miss the 'recommended level' indicator of witcher 3, although i figured everything scaled to you because ive been doing quests in very random order and felt evenly challenged each time.

[Pain Weasel]

I did it with a netrunner & smartgun build around the same level but with a couple smart SMGs.

I saved my RAM for the bullet sponges then used Suicide on them, let the gonks take themselves out. Then I hit Overclock, tossed out contagion and used the insta target lock and +25% damage from Smart Synergy and switched to the SMGs to kill everything I could until Contagion started to run out, at which point I tossed an incendiary grenade to detonate contagion. The SMG kills recharged my RAM most of the way so I took cover and waited for a few seconds and did it again.

If you only have level 3 quickhacks I don't think contagion detonates when burn effects are applied (need level 4 for that maybe?) so that last part may be out .

[Wisp Cat]

Originally posted by Pain Weasel:

I did it with a netrunner & smartgun build around the same level but with a couple smart SMGs.

I saved my RAM for the bullet sponges then used Suicide on them, let the gonks take themselves out. Then I hit Overclock, tossed out contagion and used the insta target lock and +25% damage from Smart Synergy and switched to the SMGs to kill everything I could until Contagion started to run out, at which point I tossed an incendiary grenade to detonate contagion. The SMG kills recharged my RAM most of the way so I took cover and waited for a few seconds and did it again.

If you only have level 3 quickhacks I don't think contagion detonates when burn effects are applied (need level 4 for that maybe?) so that last part may be out .

This sounds like good advice... though personally I am taking a break from the game after giving up on this battle.

Another bit of advice I have read involves hiding behind a pillar and letting the president fend for herself. She's no pushover.

[Darkaiser]

1) The Prez is an essential character IIRC so I don't think she can die. She can take some of the heat off.
2) Try using Cyberpsycho on one of the guys at the back. He'll freak out and begin shooting his buddies which will make some of them turn to deal with him. If you have the time to pick the target, one with an HMG works best because he'll lay total smackdown on the former teammates in front of him.
3) I concur with trying it at a higher level and/or reducing the Diff. I barely made it through on Normal because A) I was level 34 or so and B) I suck at this game.

Good luck.

[enfix]

thank you so much for this post, i had the exact same problem, being stuck here on lvl 28 max diff with hacker... and spent 6 hours on this fight losing again and again (with one rage quit) the normal diff was so easy they never got a single shot... i'll set it back to very high and hope the game gives a chance to teleport out of this insane and way too long quest.
totally forgot about the diff setting and that you could change it.

[geryboy85]

try to get behind cover and focus on enemies very close to you, not in the distance.

[kimiko025]

I wanted to add to this discussion that I am encountering the same issue as the original poster, except that I am level 48 with all 5++ legendary cyberware. I favour netrunning, pistols and bombs. I think that levelling up or being levelled doesn't help in this fight.

[Phlegios]

Originally posted by kimiko025:

I wanted to add to this discussion that I am encountering the same issue as the original poster, except that I am level 48 with all 5++ legendary cyberware. I favour netrunning, pistols and bombs. I think that levelling up or being levelled doesn't help in this fight.

Yep. I've been at this degenerate game design of an arena fight for almost 30 minutes now. ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, this is bad level design. Doubly so, because glass cannon characters like hackers and stealthers can't do ♥♥♥♥ there. Simply awful. Tried deflecting bullets, hacking, stealthing (which is completely broken and doesn't work at all in this dlc coz, apparently, npcs are all super upgraded and can spot you in picosecond), running around enemies, trying to get a flank attack on them - but none of this works. They have heatscan fire and a reaction of a Jedi. They always hit you. This is so frustrating. This small arena fight managed to surpass moronic combat design of the entire The Witcher 3. That's impossible feat to achieve, or so I thought, Unbelievable.

P.S. Was lvl 51 myself during that fight.

[MASTAXPLODER]

dont forget to use your overclock while hacking

[Hydronastia]

yeah i also thought this fight was uncharacteristically hard for the game.
the way i went about it at very hard diff and level 25 was by using the sniper you get from Panam as my primary, problem solver smg as secondary and a katana as my third weapon. after my third try or so i had kinda learned where the enemys spawned in and what positions they took so i opened up with sniper shots to the head of the enemies that first spawn up top and finishing off with smg (they would be one hit after the sniper shot). then for the heavy guys with lmgs i would play off the vulnerability spots from the relic perk. again shooting them with sniper then smg. that puts tremendous damage and being able to manage quickly pick off enemies in the first stages of the fight really goes a long way into slowing the pace of it. the katana was mainly used because of the lead and steel perk that allows you to use it for cover. that plus a lot of double jumping and dashing enabled me to go across the map and finding good cover to give me time to heal up on the couple occasions i needed to.

[Xengre]

You could just spam Contagion + Blind or Weapon Glitch (either those help dramatically reduce their threat level, preferable if you have Raven Deck / Spread middle tree perk or both). Find some cover. You don't need to stay at the side that has the elevator. Honestly, I went to the literal diagonal opposite corner when I did this and they have to actually jump down to shoot me so I can ignore everyone up top.