Bosses
A boss is a capital ship that cannot be killed by shooting its hull. It has to be taken apart: first the machinery that keeps its armor up, then the bulkheads that hold it together. There are three boss hulls, met in six places.
| Boss | What it is | Where | Tier |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spear of Amnion | Region boss, no faction | Amnion's Refuge, Exile's Hideout | Stratum 4 |
| Uber Spear of Amnion | The same ship, much tougher | Amnion's Refuge, Warren Tombs | Abyssal |
| Shield of Amnion | Region boss, no faction | Shield's Orbit, Kassik's Drift | Deep Strata |
| The Brood Queen | Region boss, queen of the Thermavores | Queen's Layer, Nest Sanctum | The Nest |
| Bastion Ship of Ganden | Faction stronghold, on the Spear hull | Ganden Cathedral Arcs, Cloud Wake | Stratum 1 |
| Bastion Ship of TZHAL | Faction stronghold, on the Shield hull | TZHAL Cathedral Arcs, The Gallows | Stratum 1 |
Below the bosses are seven named champions and the ordinary elites: see Elites and champions.
The hull cannot be shot
A boss hull takes no direct damage. All damage goes through mounts attached to it, which you target one at a time.
| Mount | Health | What destroying it does |
|---|---|---|
| Armor Repairer | The boss's armor, shared equally between its repairers | Lowers the boss's armor for good. When the last one dies, the hull is exposed. |
| Hull Bulkhead | The boss's hull, shared equally between its bulkheads | Deals that much hull damage. The last one kills the boss. Bulkheads are hidden and cannot be targeted until every repairer is dead. |
| A gun, under its own name | A pool shared between the gun mounts | Removes that gun. Optional: guns are not part of the kill. |
- The boss's armor is the health of its living repairers added together.
- A repairer heals itself, but only after 3 seconds without taking damage. Keep hitting the one you are working on.
- Repairers take damage through the boss's armor resistances and bulkheads through its hull resistances. Gun mounts take damage in full.
- Tab cycles through the mounts you can see. A mount on the far side of the hull is hidden behind it and cannot be targeted from where you are.
The fight
- Break the repairers. Bulkheads stay closed while any repairer lives.
- The opener. When the last repairer dies, the hull is exposed and the boss answers once. The Spear and the Shield channel an EMP nova. The Brood Queen channels a brood surge. A fresh wave of escorts arrives at the same moment. The bulkheads can be shot while this runs.
- The repairers come back. When the opener ends, half of the repairers return at full health, between one and four of them, and the bulkheads close again.
- Break them again, then the bulkheads. The opener does not repeat.
The EMP nova
The Spear and the Shield stop and channel for 10 seconds. A sphere then spreads from that point to a radius of 5,000 over 30 seconds. Every pilot it reaches is SCRAMed once: three control rods burned, heat set to zero, modules switched off and a 3 second shutdown. A pilot who is already shut down is skipped. Distance is all that matters. See SCRAM.
After the opener, another nova starts every time the boss's hull and armor together fall by a fifth of their maximum.
Aggro and reset
- A boss with no faction is provoked only by damage from a pilot. Its own escorts cannot set it off.
- Once provoked it targets the nearest pilot at any range. Line of sight and cloaks do not hide you.
- It calms down 60 seconds after the last damage it took.
- It flies a fixed route at about half its top speed. It never chases and never leaves the route, and nothing can push it.
- A boss left alone for 300 seconds regenerates fully. Destroyed mounts and guns return, the hull refills and the fight starts over.
- With no pilot near its route, a boss that is not in a fight goes dormant and wakes when one returns.
Escorts
While provoked, the Spear and the Shield launch a wave of escorts at once and another every 60 seconds, up to a limit. Escorts orbit the boss, attack pilots who come close and return to orbit when you pull them too far. If the boss dies, the surviving escorts stay and fight on. The Brood Queen has no waves. Her escorts hatch from eggs.
Death and loot
- A dead boss leaves a wreck with one salvage socket for each hull bulkhead it had: eight for the Spear and the Shield, one for the Brood Queen. The loot is split between the sockets, and each has to be cracked with the harpoon.
- Kill credit follows damage to the mounts. Whoever breaks the last bulkhead is the killer.
- The Spear, the Shield and the Bastion Ships roll loot with the best odds in the game of Regalia and Artifact modules. The Uber Spear and the Brood Queen roll as champions, one step below. Nothing is guaranteed.
- Boss wrecks can drop hull blueprints: Achamoth, Augr, Beltane, Condor, Enforcer, Jackal, Legion, Mammon, Orstrog, Rune, Scarab, Seraph and Vektr.
- Only the Bastion Ships pay Merits.
Coming back
A boss that has been killed returns after 30 minutes, the length of a tide. See tides.
The tutorial boss
The Desecrator is the last enemy of the tutorial: "Destroy the Desecrator". It is not a boss of this kind. It has no mounts and no phases, and you shoot the hull. It raises a 1,000 HP barrier when its armor breaks.