The second zone following the Illuminati starting area of Kingsmouth is The Savage Coast. Nestled in the once bucolic New England countryside youll find the Overlook Hotel. But this isnt the sort of hotel where youd like to spend your honeymoon; this hotel contains a portal to Hell. (And no, thats not just a metaphor for marriage.)
Just inside the zone-in from Kingsmouth youll come across the Overlook. Step up to the front desk and pick up your mission. (The purple colored quests are always for dungeons.) Youll be directed to room #13. (Its the one with the strange orange glow emanating from the slats between the boarded up windows.) Make sure youre running with a full group in at least quality level 5 (QL5) gear--Hell will hurt even more than usual if youre not thus prepared.
Entering Hell
As you enter Hell, youll encounter some of the few trash mobs found in The Secret Worlds dungeons, the Rakshasha Cur. Theyll be fairly easy to dispatch. Dungeons in TSW are less about slogging your way through weaker mobs to get to the good stuff and more about, well...the good stuff: complex boss fights with challenging mechanics.
Moving on, youll encounter some rocky spires. (And, of course, everythings glowing like a burning ember. This is Hell, after all.) The spires present a challenge for the unaware--they glow purple at the base and send out a wicked AoE that you and your party are going to want to do your best to avoid. The trick is to run through quickly. Youll take damage and anger some mobs along the way, but dont stop to fight them within the spires--pull them through and fight the mini boss and his friends out of the reach of the spires damage area. (In case you hadnt already guessed, that purple glow on the ground and the electricity filling the air are both bad things.)
Antimony Ministrix
After clearing the mini boss and his friends youll encounter the Antimony Ministrix. As you size up the fight from a distance, youll notice that there are more spires, with more AoE effects. This means that youre not only going to have to fight a rather challenging boss, but youre also going to have to remain alert so that you can pull her around and move out of the damage area of the spires as they go off.
As with most boss fights, unless you have a tank build youll want to stay behind the big baddie to avoid her ire. Check out our narrated video footage for more on boss fight mechanics.
[video]http://video.tentonhammer.com/secretworld/TSW_HellRisingDungeonRun.flv[/video]
The Corroder
The Corroder is big and nasty. He also has the unfair advantage of living in a room full of randomly burning platforms. As youre fighting him, youll need to jump from platform to platform as they flare up (theres an effect before each flare up that gives you a visual cue that its time to move), pulling the Corroder with you.
To add to the fun, theres also lava on the floor. Yep, you heard me--the floor is lava! Its like your childhood games suddenly made reality. It should go without saying that youll want to do your best to avoid that lava, just as you did the pretend lava of your youth.
The key to winning many boss fights in The Secret World, as our team discovered, is damage, damage, and more damage. The faster you can DPS, the better off youll be. If you fight the Corroder too long, youll begin to run out of safe places to battle him as more and more of the platforms progressively flare up. Killing him as quickly as possible is the key.
Hardwired Fleshtank
Our next boss encounter (after defeating another mini boss and his friends) is the Hardwired Fleshtank. Once again, youll need to watch out for the turrets and their affects. The hallway in which you fight this boss will randomly pop effects, and its your job to watch for them and get out of their way, all while DPSing the boss.
Again, speed is of the essence. Should you glance over your shoulder, youll notice that there are flames quickly approaching from behind. Your job is to take out the Fleshtank before youre completely enveloped.
Recursia - Many-in-One
This succubus is a real bitch. (Nope, thats not a marriage metaphor, either.) Again, speed is crucial, because Recursia will summon minions to really mess up your day, and shell summon them faster and faster if you dont take her down.
There are two major elements to this fight. First, youll need to stay close to Recursia, within the yellow circle youll see on the floor, lest you take damage. And while youre fighting, DPS the hell out of her. (See what I did there?)
The second element is the adds Recursia summons. Shell stop and call to her minions, and youll see them spawn around the perimeters of the room. During that time, you cant damage her, so thats your cue to rush the minions and take them down quickly. Our group moved around the room taking them out one at a time during our first encounter, but we quickly figured out that we needed to split up to work both sides of the room and clear them faster. When the summoned minions get to the center of the room theyll lay a hurting on your group, and you may just want to avoid that.
Machine Tyrant
The final boss is vicious, and the mechanics are tricky. Hell shield himself, and youll need to pull him into a ground effect area to remove the shield. Hell also start calling down effects and youll be bombarded by flaming meteors. As with other fights in the Hell Rising dungeon, the damaging effects will escalate is the fight goes longer. So yep, you guessed it, the group that can DPS the fastest stands the greatest chance of success.
This is a fairly straightforward race to DPS the boss down before your situation gets more tricky than your group can manage. And theres a lot of moving around with this fight, so ranged abilities are incredibly useful, too.
Parting Thoughts
Once again, The Secret World proved to us that dungeons can be deadly. Fortunately, if you pay attention and observe the mechanics of some of the trash mob fights, youll learn how to handle the larger, longer fights. Funcom has done a decent job of making sure that savvy groups learn the potential for the mechanics of various fights before they encounter them head on.
With QL5 gear, and the number of AP and SP that comes with having reached this point in the game, this dungeon is going to be quite a challenge. Expect to die in TSW dungeons. And probably often. But with our pointers youll be better prepared and ready to face the dangers that wait in Hell.
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