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Lech Kril assassination as a solo experience


Ornothopter
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This has been a while coming, but I figure enough time has passed that I'd be able to say what I've got to say without just pouring out salt. Back when I started this game carried with me the mentality gotten from moba games - stay out of public games until you've gotten good enough to carry your own weight. This, and wanting to explore at my own pace, resulted in me going trough the early parts of the game almost completely solo. While I enjoyed my time fighting trough the early planets, getting trough Lt. Kril was a major progression stopper I called a friend to help me out with.

The thing is, if you're playing solo Kril will constantly be facing you, and that juicy orange glow of *shoot here* doesn't show up on your screen. As I've learned later, a very effective way of combating that is to juke around in melee range and get some shots on the backpack when he swings, but when I was new this thought didn't even cross my mind. Come on, when you're making your way to the arena, the boss and Lotus both make sure you know he's got a huge hammer and isn't afraid to use it. The intro cinematic even showcases this! And when you stay back (because a new and careful player likely doesn't like the idea of hugging someone with a huge hammer) he whips out a machine gun. Since machine guns are usually inaccurate and powerful, what's the natural reaction? Keeping your distance, taking cover and using your more accurate armaments to your advantage.

After a quick search I gathered that I'd need to break the tubes connecting to the backpack. This resulted in me trying to shoot the tubes until running out of ammo on the MK1-Braton. Since I didn't have faith in being able to handle the boss with just a Lato and melee I aborted the mission and tried again with a Boltor and ran out of ammo again. As each of these had taken quite some time - I was carefully shooting at the cables from behind cover, and wasn't really aware of how the invulnerability actually worked - I just threw in the tower and asked a friend to carry me trough the mission.

While Kril seems like an acceptable boss fight for where he's encountered for a group of players as none of this would be an issue as you could just take potshots at his back when he's aggroing someone else, I can't say I agree with the game giving you a clear message of "stay back, he's got a huge hammer" when you're never as safe against Kril as you are when hugging him tightly. His weakspot not showing up unless you do doesn't really help either.

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I gotta admit this fight isn't as intuitive as it should (even if the backpack glows) I constantly get in squads that don't let him freeze after breaking the tubes. This has been overlooked possibly because at this point most squads simply overpower him

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3 hours ago, _Ruby_Rose_ said:

You haven't met Lephantis yet

 

Currently at 3 or 4 digit amount of hours to the game. This was several months ago, I just took a while to get over the salt this made me feel and didn't want to just rant about it. While Lephy can be a pain, he doesn't share the main issue (telegraphed weakspots never showing up to solo players unless they already know what they're doing) and appears much later than Kril, unless the player knows to go out of their way to look for him.

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While leph can be annoying, hiding and throwing toxin, he has clear pink glowing weakspots in the best zelda fashion. So even if he's stomping you, you have an idea of what you should be doing. Same with the jugg, his belly is basically a big HIT HERE target, as it happens with Ruk. I'd say Hek's first form can be confusing, but at least you can clearly see the dmg numbers when he opens his face.

Lech kril in particular is not as easily noticeable, specially given the myriad of visual fx (specially if you land a couple procs on him) but again, since most people overcome him with raw power (pretty sure many a tenno kill him without knowing how they did) it seems unlikely they will tweak anything.  

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On ‎4‎/‎14‎/‎2018 at 9:08 AM, Kainosh said:

You can kill Krill's "backpack" with AOE procs.   

Electricity and Gas procs, as well as some other explosive weapons all can damage his back no matter where you are. 

 

 

How dare you explode Krill's Snack Pack

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Yeah, I remember being quite confused about what to do when I was fighting Kril for the first time(how many years ago now lol?). He was perma-invulnerable with no visible openings or weak spots and no vulnerability periods in his attack patterns. Yeah, after a couple of attempts I got the idea of what to do but it feels like a bad game design to be honest. I think a simple hint from Lotus, something like "Beware, Kril is protected by his hardened shield generator he wears on his back" would go a long way to help new players avoid unnecessary frustration. Let's face it, lack of in-game information will simply mean a trip to a wiki/forum/reddit anyway, so it's not like discovering this weak spot on your own is particularly significant.

 

Edit: to clarify, I don't think the fight itself is hard solo(that's the only way I play so I know what I'm talking about) when you know what to do, even for a low-MR player. It's just until you figure out what to do the fight is extremely frustrating. And it is really not that obvious with Kril always facing you when you are the only tenno around.

Edited by Siilk
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I had to look it up online to see what to do; even then there was basically no in-game feedback that anything you did was actually helpful; I just had to trust that the wiki was giving it to me straight and that a) I was aiming at the right part, and b) if I managed to pop the hoses, then something good would happen.

Edited by Ham_Grenabe
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In the OP you say that with some experience, you figured out what to do.  So what's the problem?  Bring a stronger gun, and use the wiki.  At least some wiki reading is required for this game, like it or not.  

Be glad that the bosses are still challenging, since that's not gonna last long after you get core mods.  

Edited by RealPandemonium
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On 4/18/2018 at 4:48 AM, RealPandemonium said:

In the OP you say that with some experience, you figured out what to do.  So what's the problem?  Bring a stronger gun, and use the wiki.  At least some wiki reading is required for this game, like it or not.  

Be glad that the bosses are still challenging, since that's not gonna last long after you get core mods.  

The problem is that the visual cues for figuring out how do deal with Kril never show up when playing on solo unless you already know what you're doing and the information the game gives you implicates that staying far away from him is the best course of action - which only works out in a party. While MK1 and Boltor might not be too good, they got me to Europa well enough, so don't think they were the problem on Mars. As said earlier, he's a fine fight for a party, but for a solo player he's got one glaring flaw - almost mandatory wiki prowling to not bang your head against a wall.

Compare this to the Jackal - you can simply hover over him and see which parts have yellow health bars. Compare this to the Raptor - you've got waypoints showing at least what you should be interacting with. Compare this even to the forementioned Lephantis, who only shows up way later, who parades their blatantly obvious weakspots every couple seconds. Even Vay Kek has the courtesy to display Glowing Eyes of Doom, while Kril just stands there pinning you down with a machine gun unless you have the idea of dancing around his navel. (Or have someone else take the aggro so the orange glow gives the whole deal away, but who's gonna show up to a public game just expecting others to do the mission for them when they're stuck?)

Don't get me wrong, I started the game by prowling starter guides, weapon reviews and modding builds before even loading the client, but only because that's how I am. Whether or not wiki browsing is required has no bearing on whether or not it should be required. 

Edit: grammar

Edited by Ornothopter
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On 4/18/2018 at 11:48 AM, RealPandemonium said:

At least some wiki reading is required for this game, like it or not

Yes it is required. And while it may be acceptable for detailed stats or obscure gameplay info(full damage calculation formulas for instance), despite being a de-facto standard practice for warframe it is not ok to have to resort to reading wiki page to understand how a boss fight is supposed to be conducted. Not how to get better at the fight, not how to minmax the fight, now how to cheese the boss. Just to understand what game is expecting player to do to progress in a situation which is clearly not intended as a complex puzzle.

Location of the boss' weak point and which player actions will trigger it must be deducible from the context of the fight itself, otherwise it is bad game design, period. Aforementioned Vay Hek, Lephantis & Jackal are good enough examples of fights which are designed better. It is clear enough that the boss has either timed phases of vulnerability(Hek & Leph) or a way for a player to open him up to damage(Jack). Note how nothing is verbally explained to player but rather conveyed by the game mechanics and visuals during the fight. Visibly distinctive body parts and switching of health bar state from invulnerable to damageable quite clearly conveys when and where player has to attack those bosses.

The Kril fight is supposed to be like that as well. And it kinda is, when done in a group. But visual clues are completely invisible to a solo player. Player can of course, look up the fight walkthrough in the wiki but this is where the problem lies. Instead of fixing a design problem and improving the feedback so that players will be able to identify the required attack pattern, DE relies on players obtaining the information form a source not only outside of the fight but entirely outside of the game. This is a blatant unwillingness to address the issue on DE's part and we should not defend this case of bad design which is still not addressed so many years into the game life cycle.

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36 minutes ago, RealPandemonium said:

Can someone elaborate what they mean by "the cues are invisible to solo players?"

Unless a player already knows to get close to Kril (which the game doesn't really make look like a good idea based on the information it gives) he'll just pelt them with bullets and cast an occasional ice spell, never really showing his back.

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11 minutes ago, Ornothopter said:

Unless a player already knows to get close to Kril (which the game doesn't really make look like a good idea based on the information it gives) he'll just pelt them with bullets and cast an occasional ice spell, never really showing his back.

Oh.  My first instinct was to roll past him to bait his melee swing over and over.

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