You’ve been tearing up the jungle of Monster Island, crushing
the evil plans of Dr. Moreau and other nefarious groups.
You’ve smashed your super-powered fist through the jaws of
countless genetic experiments, be they manimals or dinosaurs. Lately,
you’ve been hearing talk of Lemuria, the fabled undersea
civilization that ruled the earth eons before mankind learned to walk
upright. You’ve even conversed with a Lemurian refugee on the
docks of the Bureau 17 base. Well, gather your courage, heroes!
You’ll be able to access this zone once you hit level 31.
When you hit this magic level, travel back to Millennium City and there
you’ll find a Primus operative next to the jet. Talk to him
and he’ll tell you of the emergency currently going on in
Lemuria, the Lemuria Crisis! To begin your journey, travel back to
Monster Island and go to the sub anchored at the dock. When you click
on the Lemuria Crisis button, it’ll bring up the instance
queue menu. All you have to do is ‘join queue’ and
wait a few minutes. One word of warning: this crisis is level 34 in
difficulty, but you can attempt it at 31. It’s best if you
bring friends with you.

When the crisis starts, you’ll be treated to a cut scene
showing the sub, Aegir, being damaged and in the grasp of some weird,
pink energy cloud. You’ll learn, via the cut scene, that
there is a civil war raging in Lemuria. A section of Lemurian society
worships the Bleak Ones, ancient gods who are cruel and reward a
lifetime of devotion with the blessing of no afterlife after death,
only the cessation of pain. Nice, eh? These Lemurians are easily
distinguished from their brethren by the fact that they have de-evolved
to an earlier lizard-like state. After the cut scene, you’ll
find yourself on the Nautilus, a submarine. You’ll begin your
mission chain by talking to the captain and then heading to the next
compartment of the sub where you enter the chilly depths of the ocean.



Right away, you’ll notice that all the action takes place
deep underwater. Your travel powers do work here, but there might be
some tweaks to them. My power of flight made me swim faster through the
water, so that travel power came in handy. Always remember to look up
and down for danger as that your enemies can come at you from any
direction. You are truly in a 360 degree environment here. Overall,
this zone is a nice departure from the previous zones.



To gain access to Lemuria, you’ll first have to complete the
Lemuria Crisis. This crisis consists of a series of individual missions
which you’ll have to complete. The easiest way to get through
the missions is to travel with other heroes. The crisis can
be soloed, but it becomes a lot harder if you choose to go this route.
The missions for Lemuria Crisis are:

• Feeding Frenzy
• Lemurian Blockade
• Aegir Repair
• Enter the Aegir
• Qliphothic Dimentia

Feeding Frenzy is pretty straightforward. Basically, the sheer amount
of sea life is playing havoc with the Nautilus’ sensors. This
sea life is not your typical, passive sea creatures, but vicious beasts
that are in league with the evil Lemurians. You need to thin their
numbers and make members of PETA cry tears of rage. You have to kill 30
Fleshrippers (swarms of piranha-like fish) and 3 Radioactive Great
Whites. The trick here is to engage the evil fish at the furthest
possible range. You should be able to knock them out one by one in this
manner. If you get close and multiple Fleshrippers set upon you, then
you’ll be sliced and diced faster than you can blink.



After you kill all the little fish, then you have to break the Lemurian
blockade. To do so, you’ll need to defeat 30 Lemurians,
deactivate 5 mines, and board 2 of their subs and overload their
engines. First, we’ll deal with the mines. To deactivate a
mine, you have to swim right up to it. However, each mine usually has 3
Lemurians guarding it. Be very careful when you’re fighting
them. If you do area damage, you can damage the mine, causing it to
explode. Doing so inflicts a lot of damage to the Lemurians next to it
and to you! I learned that the hard way when I first used my gatling
gun to mow down some fish-men. I was feeling smug killing all three of
them when BOOM!!!! Next up are the 2 subs that you have to board. You
have a few subs to choose from. To board a sub, swim up to the glowing
ring at the end of the sub and you’ll have the option of
boarding the sub. Just be careful as that there are Lemurian guards
alongside the subs as well. When you board the sub, you’ll
find yourself in a room with 2 guards at the exit, and past them is a
console with another Lemurian, a villain. Kill the 2 guards as quick as
you can (they spawn quickly!), then kill the villain at the console. Go
up to the console and you’ll be able to overload the engines,
and then you need to get out quickly! Once outside, the sub will
explode, but you’ll take no damage. By just doing the subs
and mines, you should hit your quota of 30 Lemurians. If not, swim
around and kill some more until you complete the mission.

The next mission, Aegir Repair, is extremely irritating. In this
mission, you have to swim down to the stricken Aegir and oversee the
repair of 3 damaged areas of the sub. There are automatic welder robots
to do the job, but you have to help them get supplies and protect them
from attack. The first part of the mission is that you find the box at
the bow of the sub containing flares. Once you have the flares,
you’ll swim around in an area looking for a target to light
up on the sea bed. This is the Nautilus shining down a drop area, but
they need you to confirm that it is safe to drop supplies. To do so,
you have to swim to the target and then use the flare. Three boxes will
drop containing supplies. Immediately, 3 Lemurians will appear and
attack the supply crates. You have to kill them as fast as possible to
prevent them from destroying the crates and the welders. When
you’ve killed the Lemurians, the robotic welders will supply
themselves from the crates and head towards the Aegir. The robots will
take a course designed to go through the most mob traffic possible to
one of the repair sites. You’ll have to defeat any Lemurians
that are attempting to destroy the welders. Don’t worry if
any welders are destroyed as that more will spawn. You’ll
have to go back and forth from using the flare, defending the crates,
and then defending the welders as they attempt to fix the Aegir over
and
over again. If you’re soloing this mission chain, be
prepared to spend a lot of time here. The Lemurians around the Aegir
spawn at an almost instantaneous rate.



When the sub is repaired, you enter the sub and talk to the captain.
After talking to him, you’ll proceed to the final mission in
Lemuria Crisis. In this final stage, you enter the part of the sub
closest to the rift to battle Aphatha, a powerful servant of the Bleak
Ones. This can be an extremely frustrating fight. The first rooms
contain henchmen, but they spawn an infinite number. The best thing to
do is to run through the henchmen to get to Aphatha. The problem with
Aphatha is that he hits for tons of damage, plus you take damage every
half-second that you’re in the room based on how much energy
you currently have. If you have a full bar of energy, you’ll
take more damage than if you had less. In addition, you gain energy
just from the atmosphere of the room. The easiest way to do this fight
is to have a group that contains a healer. With constant full energy, a
healer can spam away to his heart’s content! If you find that
you cannot defeat him, you cannot leave the submarine. To exit out of
Lemuria Crisis, you’ll have to log off from the character for
30 minutes. When you re-log in, your superhero will be back on Monster
Island.



Please
note! I stated that at the
beginning of this article that you have to complete the Lemuria Crisis
to get to Lemuria itself. This is not true. I was able to access
Lemuria after doing the first two missions and spending about an hour
and a half on the third (Aegir Repair). The third part took me forever
as I tried to solo the mission at level 31. Later on, I went back to
finish it at a higher level. Apparently, there has been a great deal of
griping on the official forums over this mission chain.



Lemuria Crisis, despite its irritating tendencies in a few parts,
serves as a nice introduction to Lemuria. The underwater setting makes
for a refreshing change of pace, and the new zone is fascinating to
look at. The Lemurians look really cool, especially close-up, and the
whole lost civilization vibe is darn cool, in my opinion. Plus, you get
to slaughter more fish than an entire Alaskan fishing fleet, so
what’s not to love?