This instance has a Left 4 Dead feel to it, as do the mobs.

There are Bloated mobs that explode when dropped to around 10% HP. You can leave them to explode by themselves or have the tank eat the damage. It is avoidable. (L4D Boomer)

Mercenary Mobs grapple group members and continue to CC the member until his channel is interrupted. (L4D Smoker)

Screamers will do a targeted knockback similar to Force Push. (L4D Witch?)

Hunters have a force leap and will switch aggro randomly, using a bleed attack on the new target (L4D Hunter).

Other mobs are basically Tank and spank. Boss fights are pretty intuitive. First fight is a fight off the horde, wave after wave, fight. I suggest having a melee DPS man the vehicle-gun over ranged as Bloated mobs will spawn throughout. Basically the gunner mows down the non-elites while the tank and other DPS kill the Strong mobs.

The next boss was a very large, red Rhakghoul (L4D Tank) that is basically untankable. He will knockback and stun quite frequently. We basically kited him around a large courtyard area that has 4 very obvious barrels in each corner. When he was in range, we exploded the barrels that applied some burst damage to him and what appeared to be a powerful DoT effect. He will occasionally enrage and you will be prompted to run away from the boss in a Raid Warning format. We simply kited him to the next barrel while DPS'ing and mobile healing. Pretty simple.

The only boss that was particularly challenging was KR-82 Expulsor. He is an optional boss droid.

He has a few abilities that are of note. He will occasionally target a random member and shoot a missile at him, doing around 4-5k damage. He will also AoE Grapple everyone in the group to melee range and begin casting an AoE damage pulse. You are snared when he does this so you must begin running out immediately.

Around every 45-60 seconds he will drop 3 droids that shield him and they begin aggroing based on heals or damage. This was the portion we missed for a bit. You must CC as many of the droids as you can and kill them single target. While shielded the boss will continue barraging random players quite frequently. The healing is sustainable so long as all ranged are spread out and 2 of the 3 spawned droids are CC'ed - this barrage appears to have splash damage, hence you should spread out. This is a timer ability and is not keyed to his health, so max DPS is a must. He drops the shield after the last droid is killed. The fight then reverts to the previously mentioned mechanics.

This optional boss drops, from what we saw, the Columi Headpiece Token, some random schematics, and the Tirsa Elite mount that Soa drops.

Last boss is a trio of of mobs. The center mob is commanding the other two to attack a random member of the party. The large (right) mob will pin whomever he is attacking to the ground in a channeled cast (L4D Charger) that may not be interrupted. We killed the center boss first, then the smaller left mob (L4D Jockey?). After we killed 2 of the 3, the large boss on the right enraged somewhat, but the damage was very healable.

Overall, I really liked the creepy feel of the instance and the nifty headlamps similar to L4D's Flashlights. Looking forward to Part II.

Thanks for the writeup!

Will be nice to have a place for 4 man groups to go for the headpice.

This optional boss drops, from what we saw, the Columi Headpiece Token, some random schematics, and the Tirsa Elite mount that Soa drops.

 

Are you saying this dungeon drops two columi head pieces? I did not down the bonus boss today, he was simply too hard for my group, but of course the final boss was pretty easy and dropped the t2 head token.

We just beat the Bonus boss. We had to two heal it.

Vanguard Tank

Jedi Sentinel DPS

Scoundrel DPS (healed most of the fight)

Commando Healer

We used CC's for the adds, killed the first three, then CC'd and burnt the boss during the last set of adds.

Dropped T2 helm token for Consulor SMH and a Purple Armortech recipe.

PITA fight, vent almost died with our celebration!

Picaro of Deadly Virtues

Finished it half an hour ago with the following group:

Assassin tank (me)

Merc healer

Marauder and sniper dps

The first boss (not really a boss, the explosives event) was the biggest problem for us, the turret which was supposed to help despawned after the first wipe before we even figured out what was going on, though after a few wipes and an order to only aoe after the silver mobs are down we actually mananged to finish it successfully.

Both "real" (non-bonus) bosses were very easy, the last one we killed in the order of big guy > small guy > commander guy, I was interrupting Full Auto of the commander and that was that really, didn't notice any form of enrage. They also dropped the Tirsa hovercar for our marauder.

The robot guy is very tough, we somehow managed the first pack of adds with no cc and using all the tanking and healing cds at our disposal, then went on to cc the second pack making it much easier. The boss was at ~30% after the second add phase and went down shortly after so we were unable to find out if it's only 2 packs/fight or he spawns more in a timely manner.

A very interesting and well designed flashpoint, and we didn't encounter any bugs except for the turret despawning. GJ Bioware, waiting for the second part now.

Mercenary Mobs grapple group members and continue to CC the member until his channel is interrupted. (L4D Smoker)

It seemed to me that as the healer, they LOVED to grapple me.

We did this on normal and HM back to back. Both were faceroll easy except for the bonus boss.

We were a melee group, and point blank this boss is a melee **** block. With the splash dmg that is done we could not kill the add's fast enough and asborb all the dmg even with cc'ing and chain stunning the mobs.

This fight is so blatantly anti melee fight, just like the majority of end game pve content in this game....*** bw cant you guys actually design fights that dont have certain group makeup hard blocks.

We did this on normal and HM back to back. Both were faceroll easy except for the bonus boss.

 

 

We were a melee group, and point blank this boss is a melee **** block. With the splash dmg that is done we could not kill the add's fast enough and asborb all the dmg even with cc'ing and chain stunning the mobs.

 

 

This fight is so blatantly anti melee fight, just like the majority of end game pve content in this game....*** bw cant you guys actually design fights that dont have certain group makeup hard blocks.

It's encouraging balanced groups. We nearly did this with 2 sage a shadow and guardian. 2 melee 2 ranged. The important thing is the splash damage good cc and heals. But if you go heavy in melee or even heavy in ranged squishy you will suffer for it.

It's a fantastic flashpoint never laughed so much. Best moment when the boomer (yes I only use L4D terms) was about to blow up next to me on the turret and I knew I was going down absolutely hilarious

Did this flash point in HM without doing the normal version.

Best flash point ever, great fun. And we did not encounter any bug.

Great job Bioware:cool:

Not a single cc needed during the whole hard mode instance, easiest instance in the game since black talon (mostly due the fact that this instance didn't actually have bug infested bosses). 2x Columi head gears, 56lvl color crystal and 2x alloys make it also the best lootfest out of current 4man instances.

Instance had really good feel on it, gotta give it that.

This instance is SO awesome. It really exceeded my expectations. Story was great, dialogue options were fun. Atmosphere and immersion were outstanding and we were able to complete both the regular then the hard mode in about an hour each. I think the bonus boss could use a bit of tweaking, as it's next to impossible without 2-healing the fight and is way, way too difficult for your average pug.

Otherwise, great work BW. Keep them coming like this and I'll be in heaven.

I agree. This instance was an absolute blast to run. Did not encounter any bugs at all, the tone and atmosphere were absolutely perfect, and the shout-outs to other games of the same genre of the flashpoint were tastefully done.

If this is the sort of quality I can expect from Bioware, expect me to be here for a very, very long time.

Did this yesterday without knowing anything about it, jumped right into hard mode.

Really enjoyable. Best moment was the first "boomer": Loads of Zombies call for AOE right ?

Total chaos, couldn't see a thing, so many explosions ! After it was over i realize my tank is the only one still standing ... really a "holy ****!" moment

Bonus Boss is a bit hard, but thats oki its a Bonus after all. The other mechanics were easy to figure out, took us around one and a half hour for the first run.

TIP: Have a geared Healer and Tank and aoe your way to victory

Definitely my favorite flashpoint. It's creepy at the same time that it's exciting. It has its challenging moments as well

Only issue my own group had with it was a single bug.

One in which if you kill a mercenary while it's constricting someone without doing any interrupt, that person is stuck constricted until they use tenacity or any other equivalent.

Agree this is my favorite flashpoint.

1st boss (the wave thing) was a joke. None of us ever got below 80% health (yes this was on hardmode). And we did it the way we shouldnt' have done it too (I as a marauder killed mobs while our aoe sorc used the gun ... because the bastard hopped on it first grrr!)

2nd boss was spank and tank. You HAVE to use the canisters that blow up on the side. The dot they give him is insignificant; they ALSO blow off his reduced damage buff (until you do this he takes ridiculously reduced damage)

3rd boss (bonus boss) was easy if you do it right. Just LOS him to get him to move away from the spot he spawns in. His adds he calls in always spawn in that spot still. Makes it 100x easier to see them for immediate CC/pwnage as if you don't move them the damn things spawn right on top of the boss and are hard as hell to target.

Final boss ... also easy as hell. We killed the Commander then the big *** guy who holds you on the ground then the last guy.

Only whipe we had was on the bonus boss until we decided to LOS him to move him.

This instance is SO awesome. It really exceeded my expectations. Story was great, dialogue options were fun. Atmosphere and immersion were outstanding and we were able to complete both the regular then the hard mode in about an hour each. I think the bonus boss could use a bit of tweaking, as it's next to impossible without 2-healing the fight and is way, way too difficult for your average pug.

 

Otherwise, great work BW. Keep them coming like this and I'll be in heaven.

WE only had one healer and had no problem whatsoever. Make sure you are CC'ing the adds and killing them 1 at a time.

My group didn't manage the bonus boss (it was getting late and we decided to try and finish the dungeon instead,) but we finished the whole thing. The turret wave thing was quite tough, took a good number of attempts before we managed it.

It was a LOT of fun. Loved the Dead Space feel to it and the bosses felt balanced and not over tunned at all. If all the other dungeons were this polished then this game would be heaven.

Did this last night as well, Vanguard tank, Sage healer and Commando/Scoundrel dps.

Wiped a few times at the turret encounter as our tank seemed a bit unsure of himself and kept running around like he was afraid of taking dmg.

Other bosses were pretty much cake, except for the bonus who we had to leave, we tried cc'ing 2 of the adds killing the third and burning the boss but just could not provide sufficient dps to kill him before he brought down the next wave of 4 or killed the tank ( i suspect the Tank was a little spotty regarding dmg reduction cd's as I had to explain the concept to him a few times)

Other than this the instance was a blast, very atmospheric and the toch droids were a nice touch and I managed to pick up a Assault cannon with some really good mods/crystal

Did this with Guardian tank, Guardian tank doing dps, sage healer (myself) and a trooper dps (forget what ac he is). Went straight for hardmode not knowing a thing about the place.

Bonus boss was fun to learn, took a few goes to work out a strat for it. First wave of adds we cc'ed 2, then killed them one by one, second wave we cc'ed 2, killed the 3rd then nuked the boss.

did this with:

jugg tank - me

merc dps

merc healer

sorc dps

did it on hm and was pretty easy with the exception of the bonus boss but imo right now its worth it because of the t2 head peice that comes with it.

overall it was really fun that first "boss" with the constant waves of infected was alot of fun. the last boss was pretty easy especially after having downed the bonus.

did it with tank+heal + 2 npcs in hard mode..

PITA but managed it.. but fun instance..

Anybody got any tips for a heavy melee group?

Our group was:

Vanguard tank

Scoundrel healer

Shadow dps

Guardian dps (me)

We pretty much breezed through the non-bonus bosses (hardmode), but we couldn't even get past the first add phase of the bonus boss. Are you supposed to be able to burst down the 3 droids before he is done with his shield? We usually got 1 down with 1 cc'd and a third one with about 20% hp left, but the boss got back before we could kill all 3. 1 of them alive, plus the boss is just too much of a strain for our healer.