Need help on beating Airship Battle with the song bird

[moldy]

I am on the boss fight where you have to pilot the ship back to the monument or something, and you have to keep the ship secure from waves of patriots and baddies and you can call in the songbird. I am on hard mode and lowering is not an option. I am stuck and I need advice / tips. I have crows maxed out and devils kiss boosted along with some other things. ANY help is greatly appreciated, thanks.

[Simon Knight]

Save Songbird for the ships. Make sure when the first Zeppelin arives that you have songbird ready to go and take it out right away. Once the Zeps are down, use him whenever he comes up. Stay on the rails. They are your lifeline. You're harder to hit which means you take less damage, and can swing around quickly to let your shield recharge. Drop down to kill guys whenever one is in a position to do so, but then jump right back up onto the rails. When it's just down to the patriots, spam your possesion on one of them, he'll help you take the other one out so it does less damage to the ship. Once the first one is down, keep the seconds attention at all times and just use your standard tactics for dealing with a patriot.

[moldy]

Awesome. Thanks for the reply, Simon. That is going to help big time.

[Simon Knight]

And don't know if you know this or not. But always, use possesion on the armored nade launcher guys. They take alot of punishment, but possesion, wether there are other enemies around or not, makes them kill themselves when it wears off.

[moldy]

Thats really good advice. I do know about possession suicides, but I was saving all my salt for the patriots previously. Really its the launcher vox guys that give me the most trouble. Thats probably what will help the most because they set up on those scaffolds and do a lot of ranged damage.

[RunelordTressa]

What I did was

1. Have songbird kill that first gunship
2. When the other gunships come I just had songbird kill the infantry while I dropped the gunship with the rocket by myself.
Tip: Those rocket launcher guys, dont bother just push them off the ledge with undertow.
3. When The Zeplin comes sic songbird on the first one and kill the patriots yourself (Don't fight the other guys just go for the patriots, using undertow to slow them down after you kill one go for the crank gun so it will be easier to kill the other ones.)
4.2 zeplins will come, kill the one with the rocket and make sure the patriots dont kill the generator type thing
5. Take out that other zeplin and kill the rest of the bad guys.

Don't follow this to the T though, I used songbird a couple times to kill the patriots at the front part of the ship.

Basically just watch out for the patriots and the rpg guys and you will eventually get it.

You wanna hurry and kill the zeplins though as they will keep spawining patriots.

[moldy]

Awesome, thank as well, Shawn. Ill keep it all in mind.

[Icy1007]

"generator type thing" um yeah...It's called the zepplin core.

[EternalCore]

FYI: SPOILERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Oh!Juicy骸骨 \(° 0°;)/]

i had some trouble with it at first too, also on hard mode. both mr. suzuki and mr. knight have good advice, but my solution was quite different...

first, loadout was maxed-out Sniper Rifle and then Shotgun/RPG, maxed-out salts. second, i never used the rails even once, just stayed as far astern as possible behind cover (like a good little sniper x)

1.) the ships themselves are birdfodder, but it was the ground troops that kept giving me issues. so for the first few waves, i crystal trapped the center of the ship, central target area (slowing down approach for ease of targeting), and crow-trapped the target area closest to the genny for stragglers... two seed traps, and then send out a murder on the first wave, and snipe them into more traps (upgraded MoC obviously).

2.) for the first rocketmen, i found that if you pepper them in the head they stop trying to shoot the stationary genny and aim for you instead... and you're a much harder target from that distance with a rocket launcher =)

3.) for the patriot waves, i discovered a neat trick: if you crystalspam the mid-area of the ship (on that center target just after the two boxes), you can slow them down enough so that you can birdcall them to death... repeatedly. the timing is perfect enough to allow you to set 2 or 3 traps, wait for them to get stuck right on that target, and call the bird to kill them while you go around collecting ammo, health, salts, loot corpses, whatever. an added benefit is that they're terribly inaccurate at that distance. barely touch the generator. when you're ready to move on, i stick to the basic possess one, electrocute the other, and RPG his back off.

4.) last wave was tricky, but MoC/sniping took care of the punters, and anyone who got close or was too armored to go down in one shot got Bronco'd into the air and shotgunned off the side of the ship =)

happy endgame to you! :D

[EternalCore]

@OP: Vigor traps are your friend. ;) Just keep planting them around to core during the battle.

[RunelordTressa]

Originally posted by Icy1007:

"generator type thing" um yeah...It's called the zepplin core.

Haha, I could not for the death of me remember that

[snowball]

Also on hard mode, with maxed salts (and maxed devils kiss and shock jockey + storm clothing). If ur salts aint maxed i guess my advice will do no good.
My method was quite simple. First, save songbird for ships only. Ammo may become problem, so focus on killing with vigors when can. First waves of enemies was no problem (shock + kiss kombo). First firemen - killed them using water wave to push them off board. When patriots came it gets little more complicated. I usually got on rails, jumped behind them, used kiss + shock to clear off escort, and killed them from rear, while constantly stunning with shock.

[moldy]

I just wanted to come back here and say thanks to everyone for all your help and advice.

DO NOT READ BELOW IF YOU HAVE NOT FINISHED THE GAME! SPOILERS!

Well, I beat the game. A huge thanks to you guys for not telling me I was about to finish the game as soon as I beat that checkpoint. What a beautiful experience. The end was haunting, surreal, saddening (esepcially if you stay to the very very very end of the credits), and amazing.

Thanks again. and 2K, thanks for the masterpiece. Cant wait to see what you do with the DLC (co-op/MP?)