F@$& CoH Underground Trial

F@$& CoH Underground Trial

The 4^th incarnate trial released for City of Heroes was the Underground Trial or UGT.  It’s considerably longer than BAFs or Lambdas, and a lot more fun than Keyes.

There are a lot of phases in this trial, keep up.  Through all phases the team has to lead an NPC, Desdamona and keep her alive.  Not a trivial task, since like all NPC pets she is howling stupid. 

 

Phase 1:  Clear IDF.  Defeat enough IDF mobs and you unlock the next phase.

Phase 2:  Clear more IDF, this time in ambush form.  This unlocks phase 3.

Phase 3:  Clear some more IDF to unlock phase 4, this also unlocks a teleporter, if you die and go to the hospital you get ported back to the main group.

Phase 4:  Extinction War Walker AV.   Nasty AV with a bunch of AoE powers.  A warning will pop up for these attacks, and it’s wise for the player to move away when that warning appears, otherwise that AoE attack splatters on everyone.  Uncoordinated teams can fail here by not defeating this AV within a time limit.

Phase 5:  It’s a trap!  Des is immobilized and won’t be freed until the room is defeated.  

Phase 6:  Self Repairing and Lichen Infused War Walker AV.  A tougher version of the previous AV is the Self Repairing War Walker.  Tactic manuals say get him to a wall away from 3 heal points, and use temp powers acquired in the run up to him, they debuff him.  After Self Repairing is defeated it immediately re-spawns as Lichen Infused War Walker, rinse and repeat.

Phase 7:  Spores and Bombs.  Spores are a constant damage over time status while the team is in these halls, NABD but don’t AFK there.  Bombs are either trivial or hard.  There is a badge for destroying every bomb before it explodes, and that is hard.  Especially the last room.  8 bombs are really close together in the final hallway, and it either takes luck or exceptional coordination to get them all.  If no one needs the bomb badge, screw it.  Send a super-speedy scout to blow them all up and get away before the damage strikes.

Phase 8: Avatar of Hamidon AV.  This AV isn’t all that hard to kill, but there are a lot of confusion status effects that happen.  Confusion makes you damage your friends and not the mobs.  There’s a lot of ways in game to counter status effects, avail yourself of those.  Also stay close to Des; she gives buffs for this fight.

So ends the trial, but not until another lengthy cut scene displays.  Hamidon is coming to eat us.

Review:  This trial doesn’t have anything really innovative in it, but it’s reasonably challenging and enjoyable.  Most failures occur at phase 6, because if teammates start dying in job lots, the AV heal will run out the clock.  It is possible to fail on the Avatar fight, but it’s a lot less likely.  With bombs this trial takes about 90 minutes and bypassing them cuts the length down to around 60 minutes.  With the bonus Empyrean merit, this trial is in circulation fairly often.