Alpha 4.10 is finally here, and with it comes Siege of Orison v2. Sure, we had already made two or three attempts in the PTU with the org, but those took place right at the start of the Open For All test and were... terrible!
Now, though, finally on the LIVE servers, we tackled it and made it through!
Unlike before, the whole event is no longer one massive playground where all players crowd together at the same time—which usually just led to gankers taking over after two days and pinning you down in crossfire the moment you arrived at the Solanki platform. Now, it runs on instances for up to four players at a time.
No more chaotic crossfire, and no more constant "Friend or Foe?" running through your mind with every player you spot.
It all started, as it unfortunately so often does, with waiting - for the others. Because despite setting a fixed time, as usual, everyone else still had to get their gear ready first. Guess that will never change 😅.
That gave me plenty of time to mess around in Orison again, and yep... I found a funny lighting bug! Unfortunately, it only looked that way on my screen; everyone else saw me completely normally. Well, if I want a black Geist, maybe I shouldn't be wearing Snow Cameo, right?
Once we all finally grouped up, we took the shuttle to the Arrival Center. Arriving there and sprinting toward the elevators, a Finley plushie sitting on one of the benches caught my eye—and it was wearing headphones!
I mean... wtf? Of all places, right here 🤣. I just had to treat the little guy to a screenshot.
If you've been paying attention so far, you might have noticed: yeah, I'm running light armor. For me, the pros simply outweigh the cons - and every armor type has its trade-offs!
The biggest downside of light armor? If you ever get the bright idea to pull a Leroy Jenkins, it directly backfires on you, especially in Siege of Orison...
Overconfidence got the better of me, especially since an earlier surprise attack using the "straight through the middle" method (climbing over the wall, jumping right into the enemies, and hoping you're faster than them) had actually worked out wonderfully. Just five minutes later, I was taught a quick lesson.
During the flight from Solanki to Hartmoore, a larger dogfight also breaks out in the airspace around you. Especially at night, it's an impressive spectacle. Above all when you land on Hartmoore, Cpt. Reynolds and her squad get ambushed, and (because you didn't know beforehand) you only realize the massive Ironclad is hovering right above you. A sight that I've loved since our very first run and that still leaves me in awe to this day.
Along the way, you also learn quite a bit about Crusader's lore on Hartmoore. Unfortunately, we didn't have time to take a closer look at the info plaques of the various founders and employees - after all, 9Tails were still scattered everywhere.
After deactivating the IFF inverter on both Solanki and Hartmoore, we took a shuttle over to the Barge, which had previously been hijacked by the 9Tails to bypass security during approach.
If you keep your eyes peeled here, you can make your life down among all those containers a lot easier with a P6-LR: you just pick off any enemies crossing your sights from a safe distance.
Once down on the Barge, you face the final challenge before the big boss fight: some genuine CQB right in the middle of all the shipping containers. If you don't stay sharp here, you'll end up face down in the dirt faster than you'd like. But honestly, that can happen even if you are careful, since the enemies sometimes simply hold the upper hand in numbers or positioning.
Once that's cleared, you can finally enter the control room. This is where things get serious: we have to take out Mendo Ren - and of course, he doesn't make it easy!
Equipped with heavy armor, he is well-shielded against bullet hail and incoming fire, and he pins us down with his heavy machine gun. Not to mention the additional 9Tails reinforcements backing him up.
The encounter itself consists of three phases, each triggered by Mendo Ren's temporary "death" (indicated by a mission marker). After that, Mendo Ren retreats and initiates a reactor meltdown: first on one of the three reactors, then two, and finally all three.
If you fail to stabilize them, you either die from radiation or, as we assumed, from the explosion! Whether that's true? No clue, luckily it never came to that.
We were also lucky that it took us about three tries to bring down Mendo Ren. The first time, we just charged in without a plan... pretty dumb move. But hey, you learn from your mistakes. Because of our shared respawn and the fight resetting, Mendo Ren was still moving around, but he completely stopped reacting. That meant our biggest problem - that damn HMG - was gone, and we were finally able to finish him off.
Not the most honorable victory, but hey, it was only our first time. Next time will be cleaner, promise!
After taking him down and grabbing the final keycard to disable the inverter, the mission is complete - and of course, you can loot him! While I don't really need or want one, I now own a set of heavy armor with 9Tails decals!
Oh, by the way: on the shuttle ride back after finishing the mission, you get to see something new:
Space whales! I really hope this won't just happen after completing the mission in the future, but that they'll soon be found "everywhere" around Crusader - maybe even the shuttle routes so you can watch them up close.
All in all, I really like the new version of Siege of Orison and will definitely run it more often. Not just for the loot and the decent payout (roughly 1 million aUEC), but simply because it's a ton of fun.
I'm also excited to see if we'll be getting the Municipal Works missions on Levski (and ArcCorp) soon, since those were featured during the CitizenCon presentation on instancing. One thing is clear so far: it won't arrive with Alpha 4.11, since that's when the Genesis era kicks off with the three planets in Nyx.