Jump to content

 

The Spectre Challenge


Bahroo3
 Share

Recommended Posts

  • Replies 63
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

  • 2 weeks later...

Well you have me...

 

Edit- what about no grabs? And if a team member dies more than three times you must restart (Or is that overkill?)

That would suck if at the last 2 seconds of the extraction somebody goes down and you have to restart the whole thing.

Edited by I3east Lig3r
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well you have me...

 

Edit- what about no grabs? And if a team member dies more than three times you must restart (Or is that overkill?)

That would suck if at the last 2 seconds of the extraction somebody goes down and you have to restart the whole thing.

 

Take a look at the "harder" version.

 

I'm so down to try the MP one, even if it does look batshit crazy. Versus reapers of course.

 

Now I just need to find one more. :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

All I have to say is let's do it. For a worse one have to solo, no using medigel

 

I tried that once because I was bored, tried it with the Batarian Sentinel using only the harpoon sniper. It was on bronze, admittedly, but I reached wave 10 before getting impaled by a Phantom doing the 4 hack objective. ¬_¬

 

Didn't use any equipment either. As at the time I was out of cobra's, and was just basically trying to hoard them.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Now why would you ever want to bother with something so frustrating? It's not like it's an actual mode, like Hardcore mode from Dead Space or something the devs actually made up. You just tried to think of the most impossible shit you could and posted it here.

And if you do somehow beat it, you're rewarded with a big pile of absolutely nothing... besides maybe a tinge of loneliness or a loss of self-worth.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Now why would you ever want to bother with something so frustrating? It's not like it's an actual mode, like Hardcore mode from Dead Space or something the devs actually made up. You just tried to think of the most impossible shit you could and posted it here.

And if you do somehow beat it, you're rewarded with a big pile of absolutely nothing... besides maybe a tinge of loneliness or a loss of self-worth.

 

I like a challenge and I love the ME series but Insanity is a complete joke so I made a up a new one. Also, why the hell do you care how I play the game? Do you need some little achievement attached to your profile in order to have fun?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I like a challenge and I love the ME series but Insanity is a complete joke so I made a up a new one. Also, why the hell do you care how I play the game? Do you need some little achievement attached to your profile in order to have fun?

 

It also makes the game last longer.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Now why would you ever want to bother with something so frustrating? It's not like it's an actual mode, like Hardcore mode from Dead Space or something the devs actually made up. You just tried to think of the most impossible shit you could and posted it here.

And if you do somehow beat it, you're rewarded with a big pile of absolutely nothing... besides maybe a tinge of loneliness or a loss of self-worth.

 

You mean like we did before games had achievements and rewards?

 

Man, god forbid we try and have fun in a game.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, Bahroo didn't specify, so I'm assuming you could use either.

 

As for when, I'm good to go tonight. I'm available pretty much any night, so it really is a matter of when you guys can get on at the same time. ;)

 

We'll probably do it during the weekend, I'm too busy with school.

 

If it involves Drell i'll have to pass unless I can whore out some credits and get lucky with the premium/spectre packs. :p

 

Drell Adept is an uncommon so buy Veteran Packs to get him, Drell Vanguard is a rare

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...
**UNENDING NIGHTMARE**

 

This mode is the hardest setting you will never find for ME3 and will take a lot of skill and dedication to beat.

 

-Cannot upgrade Fitness.

-Cannot use Jamess squad health increase evolution

-Default (Katana, Mantis, Predator, Shuriken, and Avenger) weapons only

-Cannot upgrade weapons or modify default armor beyond appearance

-No Attachments

-Cannot use Soldier Class

-Cannot use Tactical Cloak

-Cannot use any bonus powers

-Cannot use ammo powers

-Cannot use grenades

-Cannot use Medi-Gel

-Cannot pick up Medi-Gel

-Must carry all 5 weapons at all times

-Cannot use Cobra Launcher Firestorm, Spitfire, or Reaper Blackstar

-Squadmates powers must be set to "Off"

-Cannot order squadmates to attack a specific target.

-Cannot Revive fallen Squadmates

-Must be on Insanity the entire game

-Must do all combat side missions

-Must do each mission in it's entirety without dying. If you die mission must be restarted.

 

Mission accomplished. Bahroo3 and I made it through.

 

So, some things of note. First and foremost this was a bitch. This is not Insanity, this is a damn NIGHTMARE! Bahroo has lots of Insanity experience, even doing the Spectre Challenge in the opening post, but this was still a significant challenge for him. I hadn't actually done Insanity before, just earned my achievement from it actually! Would have got Unwavering too if I didn't knock it out in multiplayer.

 

Before we start, I found a few holes in the challenge that mildly upset Bahroo3, but he ultimately allowed them because they weren't there when we started:

 

  • Intel. The conditions didn't forbid upgrades from intel, so I took every advantage I could grab. Most notable were cooldown bonuses.
  • Ordering squadmates where to go. While we can't tell them to use powers, we could tell them where to position. This helped quite a bit early on, though it caused issues later in the game.
  • M-920 Cain. There are two Cains during Priority: Earth, so the second Cain helped with taking out the Banshee right away.

Another exploit, though not necessarily a loophole, was weapon pickups. When we picked up a weapon and chose to go to workbench, it refilled all of our ammo and gave us one bar of health back. This was helpful because where we knew weapons were coming up, we could be reckless with ammo. And last thing to mention is Kinect; this helped me get through Marauder Shields since I didn't know what to expect against him and there have been forum topics about him causing difficulty.

 

The setup:

 

The challenge didn't forbid imports (Bahroo3 stated the new game requirement was removed because of how awful the story is without imports), so we both imported Level 30s from ME2. We both ended up changing their class though, to...

 

Class: Engineer. We went with Engineer solely for the Combat Drone and Sentry Turret. Because cooldowns were going to be ridiculously high, we needed powers worth the cost. The Drone and Turret were great candidates because not only did they do damage, but they distracted the enemy. Further into the game Overload became quite useful as well, while Sabotage and Incinerate had some niche uses as well.

 

To give you an idea of how terrible the cooldowns were, this is what they were at the end of the game (read: we had several intel upgrades that helped this, as well as several perks, so it was a lot worse earlier in the game).

 

Incinerate: 20.40 sec

Overload: 18.40 sec

Cryo Blast: N/A

Combat Drone: 12.75 sec

Sabotage: 20.40 sec

Sentry Turret: 12.75 sec

 

Specs: As mentioned above the Drone and Sentry were the centerpiece of our class choice, so we maxed them out immediately.

  • Combat Drone: Shields & Damage/Shields & Damage/Rockets.
    • We wanted max shields to give it the greatest longevity, since cooldowns meant we couldn't replace it often. To me, Rockets had more appeal than Chain Lightning for the stagger and extra damage, as the Drone's Lightning isn't very good to begin with. Bahroo initially did go with Chain Lightning, but he wasn't getting a lot of mileage out of it and switched to Rockets for the stagger potential.

    [*]Sentry Turret: Shock/Armor-Piercing Ammo/Flamethrower

    • While the Drone was built to be a more long term harasser, the Sentry was the real damage dealer. Shock gave it utility when we threw it in the middle of enemies, AP Ammo proved to be infinitely better than Cryo ammo (which we tried with negligible effects), and Flamethrower was the meat of the damage, not to mention the Drone already had Rockets covered. We initially went with Cryo because it looked good on paper, but after only seeing a noticeable effect on Husks, we respec'ed to AP Ammo.

After that Tech Mastery was our next priority, since other powers didn't have utility quite yet.

  • Tech Mastery: Power Damage/Damage & Capacity/Drone Mastery
    • At the beginning we could only get it to level 3 or 4 I believe. Power Damage was the better option because our Drones didn't have duration and duration had little impact on the other powers. Because we couldn't tell our squadmates when to use powers, the Squad Bonus was useless so we went with Damage/Capacity (though Capacity didn't help a damn thing). Lastly the Drone Mastery gave our Drones a ton of extra kick and longevity, they really started to shine after we unlocked it.

After that, our power priorities were Overload>Sabotage>Incinerate.

  • Overload: Damage/Recharge Speed/Shield Damage
    • Damage was key here, because Overload was our way of handling Phantoms. Recharge Speed didn't help a significant amount, but Neural Shock was even less appealing because it wasn't worth the cooldown to use it conventionally against "weaker organic enemies."

    [*]Sabotage: Duration/Explosive Hack/Berserk

    • Duration was better because we would only be using this on synthetics, meaning no Backfire to speak of. While the Recharge Speed was a good candidate, Explosive Hack was chosen because it would help in a few key instances like hacking Geth Primes (which would also hack their combat drones, which would then explode when they were destroyed). Berserk was a much better option because we didn't have the cooldown to abuse Tech Vulnerability.

    [*]Incinerate: Radius/Burning Damage/Armor Damage

    • The reason for this build wasn't primarily for damage, but rather to keep shields from regenerating on larger enemies. In some situations it's just too heated to keep up damage, so Incinerate was my way of keeping shields at bay while giving myself time to think. Bahroo went with Damage over Radius, though the effects aren't drastically different.

As I mentioned above, Overload's real quality was taking down a Phantom's barriers so we could snipe them (or in my case, just do damage :p). It had some niche uses like taking down troublesome Marauders/Centurions and dealing good damage to Kai Leng. Sabotage was fantastic against the Geth, and later on against Engineer Turrets which ripped everything to shreds. Incinerate was for keeping shields down and sometimes for straight damage (like against single Brutes). I put points in Cryo Blast but never even used it so I won't go into detail; Bahroo tried to use it twice I think, but his targets ended up rolling away.

 

Squadmates: Because we couldn't use squadmate powers, weapons had to be the focus; James and Garrus were our primary squadmates not only had good weapon proficiencies, but they also had ammo powers to boost their effectiveness tremendously. James was the go-to member for every mission because of Incendiary Ammo, which panicked enemies and kept their shields down. Garrus was second choice because of Armor-Piercing Ammo, as well as his access to better weapons. I had Ashley on my playthrough so she was a good choice for a mission because of her weapon options and Disruptor Ammo.

 

I will edit in my detailed descriptions of each mission later, Bahroo will post his own experiences.

Edited by Veedrock
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share


×
  • Create New...