First shot at 52V

[x_equals_speed]

Wondering how everyone's first shot at the new level went?

I had a blast :) Took my altruist team along and they definitely benefited from good sight lines, daylight, and starting in a group.

Without knowing the map my plan was to sweep clockwise around it and end in the middle, to keep a map wall to my side until I was nearly done in order to avoid getting surrounded and overwhelmed.

Irene had a bad start, I like joy of burning Irene, but the first crabs we met were in water surrounded by rock and the second set exploded and put out fires when killed. That's fine though, she shouldn't be all powerful, I like that it's situation dependent. The others more than made up for it, we blitzed our way to the top left corner without an enemy getting a turn.

Going along the top wall is where it started to go wrong. I got cocky because it'd started so easy and we got strung out, stopping everyone getting everyone's altruist triggers and slowing the group a little. Leton wound up engaging the crabmits at the top right before the witches had moved far past the top left. Somehow we left a couple of crabmits behind us there and at the same time the horde in the middle of the map started boiling over the hill and hitting everyone in between.

I'm not sure how it happened but a regular Jade crabmit somehow inflicted confused on Bianca who proceeded to overdrive Anne into dust. She tried it with Kylie too but Impulse Fields saved the day. Irene finally got it together and charged the top of the hill which was mostly flammable flammable grass and finally got a serious burn going.

About twenty turns and two action units later Leton realised he was firing ice at fire beasts and was doing a pathetic job. Sion went to help him and everyone else charged the hill. Right at the start we'd wounded and webbed the first boss crabmit we saw and sent Giselle to catch it - but it had disappeared underground. She'd painfully slowly been trying to catch up with the group when it emerged from the ground and ate Heixing (who'd previously been doing great) with a single bite.

This turned out to be a recurring theme in the battle that followed. Whenever the things went underground we couldn't target them and they'd emerge and kill, sometimes in groups emerging one after the other to bite someone. Irene died first. Then Bianca. Then Irene again. Then Irene a third time. Then Kylie. But Irene avenged her before being killed. Irene made that life last till the end of the level though. Altruist + Phoenix is a trip, no room for meaningful defences of any kind, but free turns, buffs and overdrive for all allies whenever you die. I think I'll keep that on non altruist team builds.

Reading the enemy profiles after the battle I realise exposed state pulls them out of the ground, so maybe using Kylie's scanning protocol or Giselles flare is the trick here. I didn't know that during the fight so if something went underground it just got a free hit on whoever was the most vulnerable.

Giselle had a hard time of it. I'd switched her to an old hunter build so she could catch legendaries and it was slow and bad. She didn't fire a single shot. All of her turns were double moves, move and captures, or wait actions trying to get the capture cooldown to come back. So many cool beasties to try to get!

We made a priority of capturing the flower one. It did something really really odd - when Giselle approached it with another captured crabmit it proclaimed that the captured crabmit would somehow be its saviour. I kept them around each other for a little while but nothing else special seemed to happen. Could there be some sort of plot or special cutscene trigger there? The flower crabmit has a "commune" ability, if we bring it along in captured form and make it commune with itself will something happen? I've no idea but I'm gonna try on the next play!

Grabbing the flower thing turned out to be a royal pain. Just as capture finally came off cooldown it burrowed underground, where it stayed for 120 action units before finally surfacing and almost being accidentally killed by an overenthusiastic Ray (Wow its ESP defences are terrible) but fortunately saving itself with that molting thing. Giselle bagged it and we all called it a day.

The final score was:
Enemies Defeated: All
Action Time: 775
Friendly Casualties: 4
Legendary Captures: 2

Pretty sure I could do better with knowledge of what the level's like, but that felt alright for a first run at a new level. If anything it's maybe slightly disappointing that we didn't lose and need to do a drastic rethink like we sometimes do for violent cases ;)

[RexEviL]

Tamed all legendary in first run, tamed some hero in 2nd run, gisele died early in 3rd run so I just farmed materials.
Sion simply destroys everything in map, Gisele with new set + beast hunter 1 shot all as well. I didn't try cm.

[youl]

It didn't have the same impact as the 50Lv mission.
(At least in C/C.) I thought the quest was just a hassle with the 1s1k condition being destroyed on its own by enemy smoke and explosions.
C/C solo was successful on the first try.

[melkathi]

Started my first run but will continue it later. Bianca is pointing at crabs and they explode, which makes the taming game hard for Giselle. I got the super ice mountain crab though once Bianca died, came back to life, witch possessed the crab and I could run it behind cover for Giselle to tame.

[x_equals_speed]

The die and possess approach to taming sounds excellent :P

[melkathi]

It's how I got Gold Wing :P You have to wait for it break free of the mind control, but you can manage the HP a bit with burn etc then clear the DOTs with Anne when it is near death before it turns on you.

[x_equals_speed]

I see why you'd do that. Gold wing was the worst. Stupid fast glass cannon inclined both to kill Giselle or die if anyone sneezed in its vicinity. I swear half of my enjoying fire Irene is just me trying to feel those efforts were justified!

[Xaxil Nightsun]

Yeah for me my 1st run i tamed the little guys 1st cus i didn't know what the big ones could do but 2nd run i tamed all the legendaries and wipe the map out with bianca and Sion Mages just make short work of anything lol and the extra ability slot allowed me to make my 4 delay maximum Sion even faster, and now bianca is perfect (for me at least)

[melkathi]

Originally posted by x_equals_speed:

I see why you'd do that. Gold wing was the worst. Stupid fast glass cannon inclined both to kill Giselle or die if anyone sneezed in its vicinity. I swear half of my enjoying fire Irene is just me trying to feel those efforts were justified!

Bah, my mistake. Gold Wing died in the run. It was the mutant negoori and grey yasha from that mission I managed to grab. And the big red negoori. Still need to go back for that annoying Dorori :)
I have taken a small break from Troubleshooter while waiting for this update.

[melkathi]

So the majority of crabmits were all nicely lined up in rows in one corner of the island during my run, leaving large parts of the map completely empty. 5 Bosses and 44 enemies, all orderly lined up.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2480263043

Did this also happen to anyone else?

[Trolleur_Durden]

Had an easy start during the first try, and lost Anne by being too careless. Those double-attack crabs are quite the counter to Impulse fields. I retreated after taking out a boss because I like to finish a map without casualties. The second time, I went directly towards the middle of the map, set up a killing zone with melee characters in various debuffing clouds, raking up kills and buffs, and the others on the rocks, on a higher elevation, and draw attention of almost the whole map. Had no issue whatsoever, and found the whole case quite easy compared to the previous one.

[Null Winter]

After this many occasions of committing absolute genocide against creatures simply looking for a home, I'm feeling like our team might be the villains. These crabs weren't even threatening anyone or anything, unlike the Negoori swarm, Tima pack, and Draki nest; they set up on a tiny island with absolutely no human constructions present and seemed content to sit there.

The first run was easy and I'm okay with that; the newest mission doesn't always need to be more brutal than everything that came before it. Taming the legendaries might be difficult only because everything gets nuked by my team.

[Starmachine24]

Originally posted by melkathi:

So the majority of crabmits were all nicely lined up in rows in one corner of the island during my run, leaving large parts of the map completely empty. 5 Bosses and 44 enemies, all orderly lined up.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2480263043

Did this also happen to anyone else?

Oh yes that happened to me as well hahahahaah

[melkathi]

Originally posted by Null Winter:

After this many occasions of committing absolute genocide against creatures simply looking for a home, I'm feeling like our team might be the villains. These crabs weren't even threatening anyone or anything, unlike the Negoori swarm, Tima pack, and Draki nest; they set up on a tiny island with absolutely no human constructions present and seemed content to sit there.

Indeed.
I'll be honest, I don't think I will play this case too often. Now that the only thing in the game to work for is taming beasts, I have lost a lot of interest in playing. It was bad enough fighting those poor negoori, then the abandoned facility where the beasts were just hiding from us. Now we hunt them down on tiny islands.

[Opera]

Sion destroyed everything. Albus got one shot near the end but the rest of the team just strolled around.

I was in cruel / challenge but I have no idea what Burrow is. I saw many masteries related to this in my rewards, and I can read you guys talk about it but the crabs absolutely did not do anything like that. I guess they didn't have the time ? I never try to tame on a 'discover the map' run, I just blasted everything and they basically died and clouded the whole place.

Originally posted by Null Winter:

After this many occasions of committing absolute genocide against creatures simply looking for a home, I'm feeling like our team might be the villains. These crabs weren't even threatening anyone or anything, unlike the Negoori swarm, Tima pack, and Draki nest; they set up on a tiny island with absolutely no human constructions present and seemed content to sit there.

The first run was easy and I'm okay with that; the newest mission doesn't always need to be more brutal than everything that came before it. Taming the legendaries might be difficult only because everything gets nuked by my team.

Also this. Why do they always introduce those beast cases with beasts trying to find a place to settle, or minding their own business ? I mean, it would be nicer to just explain that they are a threat and kill people for fun rather than trying to find their own paradisiac place on a remote island just to be slaughtered :/

[x_equals_speed]

Originally posted by melkathi:

Originally posted by Null Winter:

After this many occasions of committing absolute genocide against creatures simply looking for a home, I'm feeling like our team might be the villains. These crabs weren't even threatening anyone or anything, unlike the Negoori swarm, Tima pack, and Draki nest; they set up on a tiny island with absolutely no human constructions present and seemed content to sit there.

Indeed.
I'll be honest, I don't think I will play this case too often. Now that the only thing in the game to work for is taming beasts, I have lost a lot of interest in playing. It was bad enough fighting those poor negoori, then the abandoned facility where the beasts were just hiding from us. Now we hunt them down on tiny islands.

I think there might be a secret in this level.

When you bring a tamed crab within range of the tree crab it says something like "Flower crab has seen a saviour who could turn the situation around" and tries to move to commune range of your pet. If it manages it you get a message like "Flower crab has inspired pet with its words" and your pet gets some buffs and is taunted by the flower crab.

I've noticed that if I unsummon the pet I get a message marked "commune failed" but I've not yet managed to leave the pet by the crab for enough rounds without it being killed or killing the crab (since it's taunted and auto attacks). I might build a bulky one with crappy attack to try.

I dunno what happens if you manage it. Bit of dialogue? Crabs become friendly and you fight something else? Secret level like with the draki? Nothing at all?

I want to find out. It feels like having your pet understand their plight should do *something*