Thoughts on the 5-man runs

[ajackson]

I've now done 3 of the 5-man missions (two of which I did twice in part or full). General thoughts:

 

Destroyer's Lab: Overall, I think the best of the bunch. It has a good mix of battles that aren't all the same, as well as a couple of tricky non-battle parts (the parts magnet in the robot factory is a bear to control). The fact that there's only one respawn point, at the start of the scenario, significantly encourages you to be cautious about getting yourself defeated. One puzzle/bug, though: in the final room, when you first arrive, you have a 5 minute countdown to disable 5 assembly systems. I took out 4 of them in the 5 minutes, at which point the countdown froze at 0 seconds, until I killed the last of them. I have no idea what, if anything, I accomplished by doing that. It's possible that the super-destroyer didn't have all of its weapon systems. I think it would be better if that countdown were more meaningful.

 

Teleios' Tower: Unlike Destroyer's Lab, there's respawn points at every level. There are probably tricks to doing the tower, but I never saw them. I did get defeated quite a lot, but it seemed to be mostly a case of one fight after another.

 

Burial Caves: the worst of the lot. There's only one trick, which is obvious, and all the fights are pretty much the same. Necrull himself is quite unscary.