Battleborn Taken King Guide

Oryx Hard Mode (Challenge)

This is it! The ultimate ultimate ultimate challenge! Your skills, weapons, and patience are about to be tested. Especially your patience. And sanity. And probably your relationships, but screw it, they never understood you anyway.

The challenge seems easy, detonate 16 blights at once to kill Oryx. How hard could that be? After all, by now you're killing knights like a....um.....knight killer. Anyway, surely it isn't such a big deal to just wait to detonate them all...

Why it's a big deal

So in the past, you've detonated blights every round, so where the Ogres ended up wasn't an issue. Sure you might have to time your run differently for a distant orb, but for the most part the blights were in the general corner area and you could run back and forth easily.

Now imagine an Ogre gets running

...and that blight will now stay in the middle of the map every round for you to dodge

...and now you need one more person to detonate that blight

...so no one can die or you won't have enough people

...and if you have another blight in the center of the map so your runner needs to detonate one

...so they aren't hitting Oryx in the chest keeping it open

...and you realize that the Ogre doesn't have to go too far for the blights to not overlap and you can run out of people to detonate real fast

...and did I leave the oven on?

So yeah. It's a big deal. And we haven't even gotten to where you're going to die yet.

Getting through the Ogres

You really want 2 Titans killing Ogres now. One with a Weapons bubble, and one with a Blessings bubble. You can get by with just a Blessing, but it's going to be harder. The goal is the Ogres die without moving. You want to quickly stagger the Ogres where they spawn, and don't let them take a step. If you do it right, all 4 blights will be stacked up nicely for a detonation cycle. The Ogre taking a step or two usually keeps them in the overlap range, but it adds more risk that the Guardian doesn't step in the right area to detonate both sets.

Don't kid yourself anymore. Touch of Malice is the way to go for the Ogre Killers. If you haven't infused any larger weapons into it, now is a good time. People on platforms, don't conserve ammo, take out your best Sniper/Machine Gun and wail on your Ogre after throwing your Grenade.

Repeat after me. The Ogres Do Not Move.

Everything else works the same, killing your knights, killing the Vessel, and hitting Oryx in the tummy. But then...is where you're going to die.

The Shade

The shade you've killed 100s of times will suddenly be incredibly stressful, and difficult, and people will die, and you'll cry tears of frustration. And the reason comes from one teeny, tiny, little detail. There are more adds.

That's pretty much it, in normal hard mode, the explosion clears them out, and so when the shade bubble forms, you just need to take out 2 measly knights, then run to right to kill adds, then left twice, repeat repeat repeat. But now, you had no explosions, and they just keep spawning, and that will slow you down real bad in the shade bubble.

Communication is the key. Assign one person to each knight, one person to hit adds coming from the back, and everyone else clear the adds in front before they back into the bubble. Which they will do, really quickly, because they're dicks. As soon as Oryx regains the favor of darkness, everyone sprint to take care of their baddies.

For some reason, a lot of people don't seem to understand this, and this makes the shade bubble painful. The 3 of you who are clearing the adds in the front are the most important part of the raid. So take this opportunity to shine!

But what if adds get in? Especially in the beginning? Don't panic. First person in, kill adds, forget about the shade for a second. Clear the field so when the 2nd person gets in, they have a clear area. The rest of the team should catch up and you can do shade like normal. If your Titans decided to go with blessing only, putting one in the center of the shade bubble isn't a bad idea AS LONG AS YOU WARN PEOPLE. Hunters, tether the shade (not while it charges) and you'll get right on pace in taking it down on time.

Shade Tip #1: When the shade charges, have your Warlock run right at him to "bait" him into swinging early so you don't get someone hit when they warp in. If you run right at the shade and jump in the air over it's head, it will hit the ground and you might escape without taking any damage. You can do it as a Hunter as well....but you'll probably need practice.

If you cause the shade to miss you completely, it's perfectly acceptable to mock it.

Q: I'm a warlock, when I bait the shade, should I be a Stormcaller? Or Void Walker?

A: I....I....wow. Um. Ok, let me answer it this way. Which one of those classes has self-res, so if you screw up you don't ruin the run for your team?

Shade Tip #2: Guardians warp into the center, so if the shade charges the Guardians can move to the edges to keep the shade from slicing the poor sod who gets warped in.

Shade Tip #3: While shooting the adds and waiting for Oryx to regain the favor of darkness, drop a tether down and generate orbs so your Titans can feel free to drop a Blessing bubble inside the shade bubble.

Shade Tip #4: After staggering Oryx, kill the Centurions and Acolytes (i.e. the adds that shoot at you), then stop shooting. Let the Thralls come into the shield with you and slap you around. There are only so many Thralls Oryx allows to come out at once (probably because they're so annoying). So when Oryx regains the favor, drop a tether at your feet, then blast them. No more Thralls. However this strategy is really annoying in noise and controller shaking.

Take a breath. Repeat. Swearing helps...somewhat.

The main thing to remember is to communicate and stick to the team's plan. If you just can't do your part of the plan, then work something out (i.e. if you just can't do platform #3, switch with someone else). Don't quietly fail and spend 3 hours on something you're just not great at doing. That doesn't mean give up and not try, but be honest with yourself (especially if you're in a later time zone and are getting tired!). When a run doesn't work, talk through what happened. Do not assign blame, work out what needs to be done, and do practice movements before triggering Oryx.

Remember, this is supposed to be fun! I helps if you repeat that....out loud.....multiple times....with alcohol.

Seriously, this one is going to take multiple multiple tries until you get the hang of it. So keep your spirits up! After all, you read this guide, so you're pretty much an expert!

What? You're still here? You want some final bits of wisdom? Fine, here are my final thoughts.