Grace

Blaugust 2015, Day 20

Hello and welcome again to another episode of Shiphand Buddy! Today’s edition is supersized, I hope you’re ready!

What: Escape your captors and fix your ship when your exploration mission gets hijacked by aliens!

When: Available at level 32

Where: Wilderrun

Gold Timers: Normal: None   ; Vet: 50:00

Gracie’s Run Time: Normal: 18:24    ; Vet: 21:39

Shiphand Buddy Says:

Bear with me friends, this one’s a doozy! You start in the “prologue” section on your exploration vessel. Simply talk to each of the highlighted crew and head to the bridge to progress. Once you speak to the captain, ikthians appear and abduct you and the crew, beginning the “main” section of the mission.

You awaken inside a containment field. Use your modified action bar to taunt your captor until you annoy it enough to open your cage. Once you’re free, deal with this guy and then turn to help your fellow captives. Each of the 4 containers has a different access code, and entering too many wrong codes will zap and destroy anything still inside. You can still get a gold medal if everyone gets zapped, but can you live with yourself? There is a lore object just outside of this room that contains the codes, which are:

Protostar: 3596

Cubig/misc: 879

Rowsdower: 441

Humanoid: 975

After they’ve been dealt with one way or the other you can use a console to open the next area. I tend to clear everything out of the middle because we’ll be coming back here several times before we’re done. Occasionally you will notice ikthian weapons on the ground, pick them up and use them with CTRL+F1 to advance your objective. You can only carry one weapon at a time so be sure to use them as you find them. The weapon has a random chance of either applying a very strong bleed, a weakness, or backfiring and causing an enrage. Use against strong enemies at your own risk.

From the central chamber, I begin with the west path. Along this corridor, keep an eye out for freebot parts. When you reach the room at the end you’ll need to take out two large enemies and a miniboss. Each can be pulled separately and dragged back to the entrance to the room for safety. The miniboss does occasionally patrol around, so be careful. Once the room is clear you can make a quick trip around the perimeter, jamming scrap metal into the engines and collecting freebot parts. There is a table near the entrance where you can assemble the parts back into Clamp, then make your way to the central chamber again.

Next we’re heading down the northern hallway. Don’t forget to pick up and use the ikthian weapons along the way. This path opens up into a much larger room where you will need to free crew members from ikthian experiments, mostly by tapping “F” a lot. Note that there are two large enemies that patrol around, make some space to safely take them out. At the back of the chamber is another boss with large telegraphs and a tether attack. Kill him, finish rescuing your friends, and then return again to the central chamber.

Phew, that was a workout, good thing there’s only one path left now! The door to the east will open, and you can follow this route to the captain’s chamber. I usually clear out the spikehordes on one side to give myself some extra room before engaging him. The ikthian weapons will work on him, so you can always try that to help take him down faster, although you do run the risk of it enraging him instead. Once he’s finished you just have one more mob to kill and a game of simon to destroy the ship and activate the escape pods. Hooray! That wasn’t so bad was it?

Wait, what? This mission is still going? Yep, it is time for the “epilogue”. When the screen clears, you’ll be standing in front of a control panel. Use it, and you’ll take control of a maintenance drone inside the damaged ship. Navigation here is tricky since you are floating in zero gravity. Do your best to avoid the drifting debris, and head out of the room and down the hallway. There are 6 life support panels to activate in the large room, and two more in the smaller room on the lower right hand side. You must be close to the panel, target it, then press “1” to activate it. If you take heavy damage you can move to a charging station and use your “2” ability to repair. Losing all your health will transfer you back to your body, and you’ll have to interact with the panel again to take control of another drone.

Ok life support’s back up, time to open the hatch and get out of here. Seriously? There’s still more to do? Fine, I guess we can go and fix the gravity. Make your way across the room, and target the hookfoots (hookfeet?) and use your “T” ability on them to freeze them. Avoid the vents along the walls which occasionally send out a freezing blast. Keep following the path until you reach the laser grid. The beams probably won’t do enough damage to kill you, but they will bounce you around and annoy you. I usually turn my camera so I have a top-down view here, which makes it easier to see the gaps. Double jump is your friend, as is the pile of junk on the left side which you can use to bypass some of the beams. Reaching the end of the hallway will deactivate the lasers. Then you can jump up the junk pile again and into the next room.

Here we’ll meet the last enemy of the mission. He has the same large telegraph moves as the rest of the big ikthians we’ve already dealt with. Fun fact: if you happen to save an ikthian weapon, you can use it against this guy too! Once he’s down you just need to make your way around the room to seal off the 5 valves along the walls, then hit the switch on the floor to fix the gravity. Finally! All done!

Wait. OH *BLEEP* NO. There’s more? Leave the engine room and head down the hallway to the main chamber. Oh. Hey. They threw us a party! Congratulations, we’re finally finished!

Differences between normal and vet: There’s very few differences here. On normal you don’t have any ikthian weapons, which could be a blessing or a curse depending on your luck. There are also no lasers to jump through in the final section on normal mode.

Other Thoughts: This is the longest of the shiphands. I was honestly surprised that the run time on this one is only a couple minutes longer than Fragment Zero, because it feels significantly longer. I am constantly wishing it either had one less wing on the ikthian ship or that it would just end when you reach the escape pods, since that feels like a natural place to stop. Also of special note, the section where you pilot the repair drone can be particularly awful if you are prone to vertigo or nausea. Fun times!

Even after all those complaints, this one still manages not to be my least favorite. That title goes to our next shiphand mission. Tune in again to see me complain about our 7th and final (for now!) Shiphand Buddy mission: The Gauntlet!

Blaugust 2015, Day 18

Welcome back for another episode of Shiphand Buddy! Today’s mission is a cautionary tale about breathing dangerous chemicals.

What: Stave off Space Madness and cleanse the ship!

When: Available at level 30

Where: Farside

Gold Timers: Normal: None   ; Vet: 35:00

Gracie’s Run Time: Normal: 7:25   ; Vet: 8:22

Shiphand Buddy Says:

Space Madness is broken up into a few sections. First up you will have to progress through the ship, collecting datapads and rescuing survivors. The mechanic here is that you have a sanity meter to keep track of. It starts at 100 and ticks down as you spend more time in the contaminated air. You can use the air canisters scattered around to counteract this effect but there’s a catch: the three creatures you need to find for your gold medal objectives can only be found at different stages of “madness.” From 80-60 (“You don’t feel quite like yourself”) you’ll be able to find the slank, 60-30 (“You feel quite delusional”) the rockmite, and below 30 (“You have gone quite mad. Ooooh, rainbows!”) the dawngrazer. Each transition brings about changes to the environment, and different enemies will appear. I tend to use the air canisters once or twice at the beginning to avoid fighting through excess monsters during the phase transitions. Be careful not to use the canisters too much, however, or you’ll be sitting around wasting time waiting for the critters to appear before you can move on to the next area.

There’s one more datapad to find in this room, and then you can access the spacesuits. If you are feeling adventurous, you can also buy some lemonade from a friendly spider (along the wall on the left as you enter). Once you hit the access panel you’ll be knocked out for a few seconds. When you return you’ll face 3 waves of adds followed by the vending machine mini-boss. Keep an eye out for his “Self Service” ability and interrupt it if you can. It is a substantial self-heal that will make the fight drag on if allowed to succeed. Once you finally defeat him you can grab a spacesuit and move along.

The next area is often the part that ruins a gold run for folks. In this section you have to contend with hallucinating crew and livestock, all while avoiding exploding rowsdowers. It pays to be patient, there are some safe spots that the rowsdowers avoid if you watch them long enough to see their patterns. Pull enemies back to safe areas so you don’t have to worry about fighting and dodging explosions at the same time. Be aware that sometimes the crew members you try to help will turn hostile too, so clear some space before you talk to them. Finally, if you do trigger an explosion dodge out of it if you can. You absolutely can still get a gold medal if a rowsdower explodes as long as you do not get caught in the explosion. You just have to react quickly.

Once you make it to the final room you can turn on the air scrubbers and begin the last event. Waves of enemies will spawn and must be defeated until you are left with the final boss of the mission. The last boss is random, you can tell which one you are getting by the color of the distortion in the room as you are fighting the earlier waves. Electricity means you’ll be fighting the construct boss “Thunder Surger”, fire means you’ll get “Inferno Intensity”, and darkness leads to “Decrepit Atrocity”. They each have one annoying cc-type attack, either knockdown, blind, or disarm, respectively. Otherwise it doesn’t matter much which one you get. Kill it, activate the console at the back of the room, and pat yourself on the back for a job well done!

Differences between normal and vet: The huge difference between the normal and veteran versions is that on normal you don’t have to collect the 3 critters. This means you don’t have to descend completely into madness in the first section and can progress much faster. The other major difference is that there are no exploding rowsdowers to dodge, which makes that section very easy compared to vet.

Other Thoughts: I think the “madness” mechanic is interesting and spices up an otherwise pretty standard instance. I like the art style and the strange things that appear for you to fight. I do recognize that this mechanic can be problematic or unsettling for some folks. The good news is that if you don’t enjoy it there’s not a lot of reason to run this one unless it is the daily.

That’s all for today. Come back next time for Shiphand Buddy’s longest mission: Deep Space Exploration!