Test Discussion Episode 35: Scarlet Speedster Solo

For the banners. there was an earlier clue about it. Paraphrasing, not letting fire be touched by either sound or ice. It's a matter of checking to see whether having ice or the sound banner be next to the fire or not. The orbs at the last boss, if you get close to them an interaction cog does not appear, but if i just get close I can hold circle and close it.

I queued for the Event version and was finally able to finish and do the Open World an Talk to Nightwing.

I had the same with the additional wave appearing after the fight

Yes, I could do that as well, but Calculator still gave the dialogue as I still needed to do it.

Well it took my 4 times to finally finish it, but I know it's still not working for others.

Please add a skip console for the Cutscene in the Flash Museum. Also make it so, that it takes 1second to activate and not 3, since its unneccesary Long in other instances.

After the Cutscene we are supposed to go to the letter on the Floor - just to be send back, where we came from to activate a crate to again - go back to the letter area… this is very annoying and unneccesary. However you're able to activate the crate Right away (even tho theres no Mission marker) and then you can save a lot of time. So why not either put the Letter Closer to the Crate, or ignoring the Letter for the Mission Progress?

Confirmed. I STILL cannot get past the solo at this point.

Also to note, the reward boxes have Manipulator Gear boxes in them (CR 229 max).

1-Player section in the Rewards. it says CR253-285. Its suppose to be 264-296.

You can disarm the orbs if you use the Pied Piper tech. If you don't, I used the timer icon on the orbs so you could see the countdown before they blew up. I can remove the countdown timer when you do not have the Pied Piper tech if everyone thinks that would be more helpful.

This is intended. I was going for a little twist on the normal quest motions. Halfway through you are interrupted by people getting "metalized." At that point the metalization takes priority.
If it helps, I could remove the number counts and have the right hand side objectives direct you to just helping or harming people.

Can we bypass having to do the solo in order to pick up daily and weekly missions?

The Orbs you describe in Mirror Masters fight are called "Speed Force Distortions" in the combat log. Red Death's interference with the Speed Force is causing all kinds of havoc, much like the red sky and Speed Force tears in the sky.

There is a note on the ground near the locked door (behind the portraits) that has a hint. This part is a puzzle and there is a method to it. I can try rewording the note if that helps?

The orbs in the Red Death boss fight are bombs. Did they not hurt you, or knock you down? I have the icon on them so you can see when they'll detonate. I could remove that icon if it's less confusing. But you'll have no way of knowing when they'll blow up.

Thanks, I'll look into this!

I don't think it's necessary to change anything as it goes away and doesn't seem to affect anything. There's no need to add to your plate as it is.

Ahh I see; thank you for explaining that. What I do for a workaround is to leave the dead drops alone until I am finished with the other objectives; starting the dead drop mission seems to trigger the "metal" conversions.

I haven't tried the event version of the solo yet but the regular version seems to be fine damage wise in both fights, the thing that was taking more health out of me was the constant lunges and interrupts they were getting in, the easiest run i had was when i used munitons and that was because i had rocket jump on my loadout and was constantly jumping away from them more easier.

I didn't see the note before tbh but after reading it, the order i had from before does make sense, when i tried to make it without the note i was using the posters on the other walls as a reference.

And in the last fight the orbs did do damage and sometimes would knock me down if i was close to them, but if i stayed away from them it was barely noticeable.

Feedback - Regular Version (Not event)

I've run this solo probably about 10 times to check the experience and whether or not there were bugs - My character was CR270 so sits where it would on day 1 of this DLC, power was Earth. - Artifacts were 200 solar amplifier, grimorium and EoG. The stats of my character were similar to that of my live character which is CR273.

First Area

I found this monotonous after the first few runs, in fact the spawn points for the objectives in this area aren't even random they're set and are the same every time you enter the instance, you can basically follow a path that will complete this area that is identical every single time. - solution: is it possible to make a number of spawn points that are randomly spread out in random spots for the objectives that randomize every time the instance loads, it'll just make it feel a little bit different every time you run the instance, otherwise it's just going to get repetitive very quickly.

Also the number of objectives you need to complete is pointless because it isn't required that you actually do it, it just eventually activates the metal and then tells you to continue to help people but the objective count disappears and doesn't really feel like it serves in real purpose. I think we should either have to complete the number or just have it absolutely random up to perhaps a maximum until it asks us to confront Mirror Master.

Mirror Master Boss

This boss poses absolutely no threat at all in and of itself, there is the orange AOE field that does a lot of damage if you stand in it... but since it's static you just roll straight out of it and it's never really a threat. The boss himself really poses no threat whatsoever and melts in little time. The fight was rather trivial - solution: is it possible to make the orange AOE field spawn more rapidly, Mirror Master is either dead before one even spawns if you pop a super charge or at most two spawn. If they were to spawn faster players would have to move around more frequently, I think the boss could also do with a slightly higher health pool and possibly also hit harder to make this fight less trivial. It's a solo so it should be 'easy' but at the same time I think this is just too easy.

Second Area

This area was fine, however is it possible to put a "skip cutscene interface" in the first room next to the cutscene before you interact with flash and initiate the cutscene, the cutscene is fine the first time but after you've run this 10-20 times it's going to just become tedious.

Most adds in this area can be skipped except for the adds directly in the path of your quest. It's nice to see a puzzle in the solo, and it is fun to solve. I enjoyed this part.

The rogue tech that you collect doesn't seem to serve any real purpose and just seems lost on the player in terms of serving any real purpose that adds to the experience, you can just pick whatever one you want and run off ignoring any impact it might have on the instance moving forward, apart from pipers tech allowing you to deactive the bombs on the final boss.

Final Boss

This boss also posed absolutely no threat at all, even the bombs going off were confusing, there were no messages on the screen really indicating anything was going on, when you couldn't deactive them you just sat there and waited for them to blow up so the boss would come back and you continue to fight him. The bombs didn't even pose a threat you'd just stand there un-threatened by them exploding. The boss himself also did no meaningful damage. solution: could we have this fight changed so that there is some sort of meaningful impact for choosing a rogue tech because at the moment they mean nothing. The boss and bombs also need to be buffed as they pose absolutely no threat at all whatsoever, this solo simply isn't a challenge in its current state and you'd think it would be at CR270, which is what most people will go in as, by the time they finish JLD.

Feats

I noticed there were no feats in this solo, I don't know whether they just still need to be activated or what but I think there should be and I think there's decent opportunity to do so, perhaps you've got plans already but if you haven't and you're looking to add some, I had a few ideas.

• Kill at least if not more than 500 metal enemies in the solo
• Defeat Mirror Master while not getting hit by the orange AOE
• Complete the poster puzzle in no more than 2 moves
• Defeat the final boss while using all four different rogue tech's
• Defeat the final boss while disarming at least 3 bombs each time they spawn
• Speed feat

Conclusion

I can't say I saw any bugs that lead me to believe the instance was broken although I did experience the odd time where Mirror Masters mirrors would spawn after he was already knocked out.

In general I liked the solo, but after having run it a few times it'll become repetitive, I think the gloss will wear off it quickly so having some decent feats in there will motivate players to keep running it, it's only 1 mark so this will be one of the first things to drop off people's daily runs simply because the reward isn't there, although it does have two loot drops which will probably help motivate people to run it, but generally duos do too and they also drop off content being run more quickly than other stuff.

I think it needs to be buffed a bit to make it more challenging and to help retain the players desire to keep playing it for that challenge rather than it just becoming a "daily task" too quickly. If more engagement could be put on the rogue tech and the bomb mechanics at the end so they serve a real purpose I think we'd have a pretty decent solo on our hands that's then engaging but also a good bit of fun for most people choosing to play it.

I'm going to have a go at the event version and get back to you on that as well, if there's anything you'd like me to look at specifically or if you even want me to drop my CR or even increase my CR to change my experience, happy to do so, just let me know.

Thanks.

Feedback:

Open World (Central City)
This area is too large for the requirements of the objectives. We have the entire central city as an asset but only need a small tiny area to complete the objectives as when you get 3/8 2/4 2/4 on the open world objectives the mission auto completes and then you are just killing a few Metal transformations. Each time I ran the solo I never needed anywhere close to 8/8 4/4 4/4 so I am not sure the point of having them listed like that.

Could the central city be scaled way back to where you can't go behind the museum? It would save asset allocation and allow you to possible change some of the central city landscape because besides just the sky its just a copy and paste of an environment we have seen a lot in dcuo.

First Boss
Mirror Master only took 26 seconds and this was as Atomic using a aoe rotation and in CR270 which is just the "recommended" CR for the solo instance so I feel like going it which such low cr by comparison the difficulty should be higher.

Flash Museum
This part offered nothing new and unique was just either killing or skipping re-skinned npc's, I chose to kill everything and still ended up with just over a 10min completion time. Then you have to run back and forth to get the spare parts.

For the puzzle it wasn't readily apparent that it's a puzzle as the prompt (unless it was a voice prompt but I had subtitles on) it just says fix broken panels and its not easily understood that the order is right to left on how they are arranged on the walls. The poster that is outside the entrance is always different as well. I could see some complaining they aren't sure what to do. Just suggest adding text that says "Determine proper order for the broken panels" etc

For the Schematics I really didn't see the purpose behind having this, the npc's after you pick your schematic are the exact same as before so if you didn't have trouble killing them in the hallways you certainly wouldn't have trouble killing them after you have the powerful schematics chosen. It should have to mean something like the npc's can only be killed when you have a proper schematic like when you had to pick a shield on strikers island solo. Or have the npc's afterwards alot stronger to account for the added schematic effects.

Final Boss
The bombs seemed to serve no purpose. I tried to defuse them all the first time I ran it and some exploded some didn't and I killed Red Death and the next time I didn't defuse a single bomb the next run and still completed it just as easily? The bombs seemed to hit for me 17k but red death doesn't do much damage at all so even if I stood on a bomb purposefully I wouldn't come close to dying.

Bug Report
Interacting with the "No Cutscene" terminal at the start of the Flash Museum actually triggers the cutscene once you finish turning the cog.