Weekly Nightfall Strike Completed! One of the first teams!

[Dumien]

WE DID IT!!!!! It took around an hour and a half to an hour (start to finish on one run), but we totes did it!

I'll provide details later, but I acted as the team medic/last resort (Titan) while my Hunter bros Raider and Croft took point. We ended up being one of the first recorded in the world for this feat. I don't usually go braggin' but this felt really special. All the minions (even shanks) had armor and overshields and their shields could only be damaged by a specific element. Everything kills you in 1-2 shots (usually 1).

Here are the proofs and some pics of rewards!


Last 5 minutes and proof


Celebratory Posing

We get double XP till the reset.

[wittyscorpion]

Congrats!

However, to fully appreciate your "special" achievement , I'll need a bit more info on how the Nightfall Strike works. What exactly is Nightfall Strike and how does it work?

[Pegasus Actual]

'Celebratory posing'? I hope you got stuffed into lockers a lot during high school.

[Dumien]

Sept 14, 2014 1:32:50 GMT -5 wittyscorpion said:

Congrats!

However, to fully appreciate your "special" achievement , I'll need a bit more info on how the Nightfall Strike works. What exactly is Nightfall Strike and how does it work?

Sure thing, boss.

Weekly Heroic strike and daily heroic story are modified versions of missions already present in the game. Normally you get a medicore prize for completing them (strange coins for weekly are good tho). What makes these missions special though is they have the heroic modifier WITH a special modifier. Like... "lightswitch: enemies of the darkness do much higher melee damage" to make the mission harder. In addition, and most importantly, there is no waiting to respawn after a certain amount of time. When you are in the darkness a teammate MUST revive you. Your life matters.

Weekly Nightfall Strike is a bit different. For starters, the mission enemies are at level 28. To start the mission you must be at least level 26. To be level 26 you are almost required to have exotic/legendary armor which disallows most players from even starting the mission. More importantly the game forces you to contend with 5 modifiers at once...

Here are the modifiers for the mission we had to deal with (moon strike w/ septimus prime and the spider boss).

Arc Burn: Arc damage from any source is greatly increased. (most of the enemies here except the final boss use arc damage)
Nightfall: You will face a relentless army that has never known defeat. If all players die, you will be returned to orbit.
Heroic: Enemies appear in greater numbers and are more aggressive.
Mythic: Heavily shielded and highly aggressive enemies appear in great numbers.
Angry: Minions of the Darkness won’t flinch, even after massive damage.

So, handcannon flinching strategies wont work. Lots of stuff wont work. The main problem is NOT the bosses. It is the upgraded minions. The single most difficult portion is the beginning area where we had to face 3 waves of minions. These little minions had lots of armor and shields that could only be damaged by a specific element. Lots of callouts and tactics were used. Also AI is significantly improved. Sometimes we would spend over a minute trying to lure one enemy out. I was in charge of wrecking the Captains' arc shields since I rock an arc launcher. The hunters were in charge of the fire barriers because of their super and grenades.

The only upside was we were able ot use Arc Burn against the enemies...note it says "all sources." My launcher was able to do 3500 damage per hit.

Also we brought LOTS of spare ammo. Before I started I bought 15K glimmer worth of ammo packs...luckily we made it through on our second try and i didnt use any ammo on the first try.

The point? Each enemy becomes a miniboss. Even the shanks (with their fireshields) and the dregs (with their aimbot one hit kill grenades) are nightmares. Also the threat of the "Nightfall" modifier is heartpounding.... my last hour and a half of work could be ruined!!!!

All in all, patience was the key. If you see the last 5 minutes we are being super careful. That was the whole game. My bros were protecting me since my bubble revive could potentially revive both of them at once. I got fringe enemies with my launcher and saved my super for panic moments. I was able to get us out of a panic situation twice!

[wittyscorpion]

Sounds great. The inspiration of the modifiers came from the "skulls" in Halo, and it is nice to see that they have built an infrastructure to crank modified versions of story and strike missions at will.

What do you get as rewards, besides double XP you already mentioned? Better loot drops?

[Dumien]

The rewards are supposedly usually straight up exotic gear. Croft and I got legendary weapons. Raider got an exotic Rocket Launcher.

Other rewards from people who have already completed it include 12 ascendent shards (arguably the best reward possible since it is necessary for level 27-30) and 12 strange coins (for the weekend vendor.

In addition to the 20% (apparently not double) increase in all exp/reputation we get shiny blue flames coming out of our heads that make people incessantly message us.

[wings]

Exotic gear? So basically pearlescent weapons from Borderlands. Are they any good though? Ny best bet so far is getting Strange Couns and hope to see that weekend merchant.

Edit: Looks like I will be trying the Weekly Heroic Strike tomorrow (bit tired today) set in Old Russia to get 3 Vanguard Marks and 3 Strange Coins.

[tooros]

Congrats! I'm still fighting to get up to level for the raid.
22 and counting.

[hazard]

Congrats to you all! Glad I can share a clan tag with all of you! Good luck with your future endeavors!

[hebbnh]

Congrats Dumien, very cool! Hopefully I'll be able to give some of the tougher challenges a shot in the next week or two. Almost to 21, still working on finishing out the story (just got to Mars).

[Dumien]

Thanks for the support guys. You da best. If anyone needs tips on specific strategies for nightfall areas...let me know.

[wings]

lol only just unlocked this at level 24.

well, I can see it being visible but it is still unlocked.

[wings]

Is there always the cosmetic effect on your character upon completing the Weekly Nightfall? If so I might be inviting messages asking for help with it. . I did this week's one with all three characters. I guess this lets me know that extra XP is on and the cosmetic bragging rights you get in shooters generally.

[Dumien]

yes

[tooros]

I mega cheesed last week's one for the first time. (Hid under the platform and shot his legs with the icebreaker.)

Blue flaming head for 1 day only.

[daftpunk]

Oct 13, 2014 8:30:03 GMT -5 tooros said:

I mega cheesed last week's one for the first time. (Hid under the platform and shot his legs with the icebreaker.)

Blue flaming head for 1 day only.

Ha , i did the same , went in solo as a level 27 Titan , it was tricky even getting to the boss , getting oneshotted by they gosh darn golly gee whiz hobgoblins and getting kicked back to orbit was infuriating , but i got a few goodies and im up to lvl 28 now . All praise to the mighty Icebreaker though..

[wings]

Be careful if you are a Hunter trying to jump up that rock to go underneath the platform because the Blade Dancer's jump motion can be tricky to get up and in. There were a good few lines of sight where those hobgoblins would stare at me and not shoot me, like the first road block in Ash Cave (I think) as you can jump up the hill to your left for a good vantage point.