Megafauna Hunting Guide

[Leanfrog]

I've been thinking about my strategies for hunting the various megafauna on Lavaland and that got me thinking, I realized there was no real strategy for dealing with the megafauna, I'll be doing that here and now.

Ash Drake                                                       

Suggested Equipment:Fully upgraded explorer suit (or the champion's hardsuit/inquisitor's hardsuit), an upgraded KA (my preference personally is 2 cooldown 1 range), a fire extinguisher, a large empty area clear of hostile fauna, burn meds (brute meds aren't included as getting hit directly by the drake is usually the end of the fight)

Optional:stabilized legion souls (if you think you won't be able to avoid getting hit directly), fireproofing potions.

In many a miner's opinion this is the easiest of the megafauna to take down and also their first, this is for a very good reason, butchering the body grants access to an armor that rivals the feared blood red hardsuit.

To start off, always stand at a diagonal, the drake can only use its fire breath in the four cardinal directions, use this to your advantage to pelt it with your KA outside of it's range, this next part is absolutely vital, never stop moving, the drake will constantly be moving towards you, you do not want to be in melee range ever, after the drake has taken enough damage it will start using it's swoop attack far more often, this is a potentially devastating attack that most likely will end up with your death if you fail to avoid it, the drake will stun you, break a bone, then proceed to maul you to death and eat your body gibbing you and healing it.

This next tip holds true for all megafauna, having a group makes fighting megafauna significantly easier as the megafauna will only target one person at a time allowing for the others to rain hell on it in relative safety, but of course, with more people means dividing the loot between you, in a group of 3 everyone gets 1 piece of loot, armor, or the chest the drake drops (I personally always go for the armor as it makes all of the future fights far easier.

Ahh the loot from this guy is arguably the best from all the megafauna, of course there's the most vital piece of equipment for all of this, the armor, now this armor isn't quite a drop, rather, you need to butcher the body and craft the armor from its remains, there will be enough material for 2 suits, the armor as stated previously rivals the syndicate hardsuit, being beat out by it only in bullet biohazard, and bomb resistance, the drake armor does beat it out in the energy department however making this set something to be feared, its other features are being completely immune to ash storms and fire proof (this suit is not pressure resistant, do not try to EVA or fight a plasma fire with it), next is the chest, this one's a bit of a dozy, the chest can contain various things, ranging from a potion with various effects, to a spell book and a fireball wand, to a less exciting staff that can create lava and turn it to basalt (very useful for cults as this allows you to cut off access to lavaland entirely). The potion can do many things, ranging from simply making you immune to lava to being able to transform into a lesser ash drake at will. And the very last drop is the spectral blade, this weapon allows you to call ghosts to you and they become visible, for each ghost orbiting you dealing greate damage as well as reducing the damage of incoming attacks,

Blood Drunk Miner

Suggested Equipment:Drake armor/Fully upgraded explorer suit, fully upgraded KA, brute meds, legion soul

Optional:A partner to help tank

This guy might catch you a little off guard at first as he does look just like an ordinary miner, though for any slightly experienced eye it's rather obvious of his presence, he will be standing in the middle of a small area with necropolis tiled floors and will visibly be wielding a Cleaving saw, while his attacks may not hit the hardest out of all the megafauna he hits fast, very fast, he'll be able to rack up quite the amount of damage as well as blood loss if you aren't careful, overall this is one of the easier guys but the weapon he drops can be very, very powerful in the right hands.

The loot, now this guy doesn't actually drop all that much, his main piece of loot, as mentioned earlier, the Cleaving saw, it has two modes, the first causes a bloodloss buildup in fauna that can deal devastating damage, the second will strike in a wider area than the first, rapidly switching between the two modes effectively resets the attack cooldown and allows for rapid attacks that can rack up damage quickly, he also drops a KA but if you're already hunting megafauna it's almost certain you've got one by now.

Heirophant

Suggested Equipment: Ash drake armor, upgraded KA, several burn patches

Optional: Legion souls, splints, Cleaving Saw

This one has significantly less setup than the previous, part of that is because the Heirophant lacks any attack that can ignite you and comes with a pre-built arena, in this fight moving is even more important, standing around will result in you rapidly building up burn damage which will slow you down, this is why you carry those burn patches, some of the attacks can be really hard to avoid and your only option is just to tank it if you can't quite dodge it, the patches will save you from the damage you've built up and allow you to keep going, most of his early attacks are fairly easy to avoid, it's when he gets low on health that the more fearsome attacks come out, you should try and save your burn patches for this phase of the fight, you'll need them, he also has a rather potent melee attack that can and will break bones.

The Heirophant drops something vital to beating the next one on this list, his staff is a ranged weapon that allows you to teleport to a set rune after a short channel and damage enemies without gaining their attention, it also functions as a reasonably good mining tool

Colossus

Suggested Equipment: Heirophant Staff, Drake Armor

Optional: Several monkeys strapped to chairs

This guy is arguably the hardest boss right now simply due to how fast and hard hitting his attacks can be, this is why most players tend to try and "cheese" him, as stated in the Heirophant section the staff you get from it can allow you to kill the Colossus without even gaining its attention, this is the safest and easiest way to take it out, however, this strategy takes quite a while 5 ish minutes of whittling away at its health while just barely keeping its feet on screen, the other option is more dangerous but much faster, you're going to take several monkeys and buckle them to rolling chairs, you'll then set these monkeys around the area where you will be fighting the Colossus, the monkeys are there to be a distraction for it, while it's busy ruining the monkey you get in and blast it with your KA, you'll need several monkeys as it's very unlikely you'll deal enough damage to take it out in one go, for both of these strategies the drake armor is pretty vital as it is storm proof allowing you to keep up the fight regardless of if there's a storm or not.

The loot sadly is a little underwhelming, though the voice of god you get is a fairly fun ability to mess around with, the crystal however tends to be mostly useless as it requires a very specific activation source and a good effect to even be worthwhile.

Swarmers

Suggested Equipment: Upgraded KA, Drake Armor, at least one other miner, burn meds

Optional:EMPs, an exo of any variety

Yeah, these little buggers are considered a megafauna, that's for a damn good reason though, these little pests aren't the same as the ones you see on station, for one, they're AI controlled, this basically means perfect aim and relentlessly chasing you, they also have two other varieties now, a laser and baton variation, both are capable of killing, the baton swarmers are colored yellow while the laser swarmers are red, and oddly enough, the blues are entirely passive, the baton swarmers are considered the worst as the make a b line straight at you at full speed and will stunlock you to death, the laser swarmers are just as hellish, they fire lasers with roughly the same damage as a laser rifle from security, one hit will slow you down if you aren't wearing armor with decent burn resist, the goal with these swarmers though, isn't to kill them all, it's to kill enough so you can go kill the beacon that is spawning more, do note that any attack on the beacon will alert most nearby swarmers to your presence, the beacon itself is surprisingly beefy and will almost certainly spawn a few before you destroy it.

Worst part about these buggers, they don't drop anything special.

Legion

Suggested Equipment:Drake Armor, Legion Cores, Multiple Miners, brute meds, a cloner pre-scan.

The big, the bad, the one and only Legion, this guy's a pain in the ass, he always spawns at the north most part of the map, this means one hell of a trip to get to him, this fight will go on for quite a while hence the need for the drake armor, getting hit will almost certainly break a bone and require the use of a legion soul lest you die and get turned into a legion, now on to the fight itself, Legion actually doesn't have many attacks, it's essentially just a large version of the typical legion skulls you see, he also has a charge, and spawns said legion skulls constantly, the skulls aren't too much of a threat but will block your shots and can break bones if you let them hit you, once you deal enough damage to Legion it will split into two Legions, each skull will do this roughly 3 times totaling up to about 7 splits, (don't quote me on that one).

The worst part about this guy, all he drops is a shitty staff that makes an ash storm, the only use one would ever really have for this is to hijack the shuttle by making it unlivable or deny access to a certain areas while you're doing some nefarious deed.

Bubblegum

Sadly I haven't encountered this guy yet as he's quite the rare spawn on lavaland so I can't really offer any advice, but I can tell you about the loot he gives, the only drop he has is a blood contract, this item sadly doesn't have much use outside of hijack or ahelping it first as it allows the user to select a target then it gives them a chainsaw, pumps them full of potent chems while also making everyone appear as a slaughter demon the victim is then marked for death by the station and can kill as many people as they have to.

Edited July 6, 2019 by Leanfrog
Moved the spectral blade to the proper location under the Ash Drake section

[Coul]

Blood drunk should be taken down first as the saw makes hierophant easy if you use augs or cores