Undine Assault Advanced Walkthrough
Undine Assault Advanced (UAA) gives out a ridiculous umber of marks - around 230 fleet or Undine marks, plus the 55 daily bonus for Undine marks. That's quite a few fleet marks and, if you don't need Undine marks, quite a bit of dilithium. And you get 50% more during a marks weekend.
So I put together a quick walkthrough to make fleet runs easier this weekend.
The mission is best completed in 3 phases: 1) Close Undine Rifts, 2) Close Errant Rifts, and 3) Kill the Planet Killer. Closing errant rifts is an optional, but that optional is worth around 100 marks during normal times and more during a marks weekend, and it takes almost no effort to accomplish. Closing the Undine rifts first maximizes marks because you get bonuses for speed in that phase.
Phase 1: Close Undine Rifts
There are 3 lanes and 2 Undine rifts in each. You will start at the left at a random lane. When you can move, go to your assigned lane (if your team assigned lanes) and get to the first rift quickly. Your job is to kill the ships while the NPC ally scans the rift. Then you can shoot the rift. And then you can move on to the next rift in the lane. Once both rifts in your lane are closed, go help people in another lane.
The NPC allies move from left to right, and you're supposed to be helping them get across the map. If they're stuck fighting Undine at the left while you're at the right clearing a rift, you're not helping them. You have to go back and kill the Undine so they can move to the right.
There are 4 ways to divide these lanes between players:
Phase 2: Close errant rifts
Now is the optimal time to close those rifts that Tuvok was telling you were opening between lanes. Don't go on to the Planet Killer before these rifts are closed - you get over 100 marks for this optional and you will annoy your teammates if you're working on Phase 3 before Phase 2 is over.
Errant rifts come in 3 colors - red, yellow, and blue. If a captain of the same career as the rift (tactical with red, engineering with yellow, science with blue) closes it, then it takes a couple seconds and it closes. If a captain of a different career tries to close it, 3 Undine ships will spawn and you'll have to kill them first before closing the rift.
You can check your teammate's careers in the upper-left of your screen and call out the career of the errant rift so that someone of the correct career can close it. Or you can just open it and attack; these ships don't take long to kill.
There are 6 rifts and the objective will turn green when finished.
Phase 3: Kill the Planet Killer
All the way at the right, pew pew! You've seen these in Viscous Cycle and the Undine Battlezone, so there's nothing really new here.
It's over!
So I put together a quick walkthrough to make fleet runs easier this weekend.
The mission is best completed in 3 phases: 1) Close Undine Rifts, 2) Close Errant Rifts, and 3) Kill the Planet Killer. Closing errant rifts is an optional, but that optional is worth around 100 marks during normal times and more during a marks weekend, and it takes almost no effort to accomplish. Closing the Undine rifts first maximizes marks because you get bonuses for speed in that phase.
Phase 1: Close Undine Rifts
There are 3 lanes and 2 Undine rifts in each. You will start at the left at a random lane. When you can move, go to your assigned lane (if your team assigned lanes) and get to the first rift quickly. Your job is to kill the ships while the NPC ally scans the rift. Then you can shoot the rift. And then you can move on to the next rift in the lane. Once both rifts in your lane are closed, go help people in another lane.
The NPC allies move from left to right, and you're supposed to be helping them get across the map. If they're stuck fighting Undine at the left while you're at the right clearing a rift, you're not helping them. You have to go back and kill the Undine so they can move to the right.
There are 4 ways to divide these lanes between players:
- Everyone warps in and does the lane they get randomly assigned. If no one is assigned to a lane, someone volunteers to do it. This strategy works if everyone can do high DPS (over 30k).
- Lanes get assigned before the round, with 2 pairs and one solo. When people can move, they go to their lane. This works for mixed strength teams.
- Lanes get assigned before the round, with 2 stronger players assigned to one lane and the other 3 to another, and then they go to the third lane when they're finished. This works in fleet runs if no player thinks they're strong enough to solo.
- Everyone does every lane together, starting at the top. This was the old strategy when the mission was released in 2014 but power creep has made it obsolete. Sometimes you'll see PUG players suggesting this.
Phase 2: Close errant rifts
Now is the optimal time to close those rifts that Tuvok was telling you were opening between lanes. Don't go on to the Planet Killer before these rifts are closed - you get over 100 marks for this optional and you will annoy your teammates if you're working on Phase 3 before Phase 2 is over.
Errant rifts come in 3 colors - red, yellow, and blue. If a captain of the same career as the rift (tactical with red, engineering with yellow, science with blue) closes it, then it takes a couple seconds and it closes. If a captain of a different career tries to close it, 3 Undine ships will spawn and you'll have to kill them first before closing the rift.
You can check your teammate's careers in the upper-left of your screen and call out the career of the errant rift so that someone of the correct career can close it. Or you can just open it and attack; these ships don't take long to kill.
There are 6 rifts and the objective will turn green when finished.
Phase 3: Kill the Planet Killer
All the way at the right, pew pew! You've seen these in Viscous Cycle and the Undine Battlezone, so there's nothing really new here.
It's over!