The Vault: Ensnared - web completion points

codewarrior316

I've found The Vault: Ensnared to be quite efficient at grinding Nukara marks, however am having a bit of trouble consistently completing it perfectly for the max 58 marks during the event. Let's be honest the grind sux, and efficiency makes it suck a little less.

The part I don't understand is when the web completion kicks in. The mission text and graphics make it look like only the Vault Weavers do this, but I am starting to suspect all ships work towards that completion. Despite best efforts to communicate strategy to the team: 2 top, 1 mid, 2 bottom - kill only vault weavers - work counter clockwise - use battle cloak, evasive, duet burn, ep2e - still the vault can get to 20% or even 40%. Obviously I can't see the entire battlefield, but near to me they are dying as quickly as they warp in...

Does anyone have evidence that supports killing only the Vault weavers quickly is better than destroying all ships to keep 0% completion or any better strategies to maximize mark returns? What exactly triggers the completion points?

ceekayzero

My fleet adheres to a "vault weaver only" strategy, and we were able to hit the max last night.

It might merely be your tactics - we put one person up top, one person at the bottom, one in the middle, and two in middle/top and middle/bottom. Put the latter two on the other side of the Vault. This ensures no gaps for a vault weaver to spin without dying.

voporak

My friends and I just did it casually with speed buffs outside of evasive and it stayed at 0%.

Oh, and it can't get to 100% as we found out. They'll still celebrate even if you just sit there the whole time.

nicha0

A team of 5 competent people is hard to find.

All people going counter clockwise.
2 on the bottom, 2 on the top, the 1 strongest in the middle. The top and bottoms can clear their area then dive/climb to assist the middle.

The tholians are 0 threat to your ship, weapon and engine power is what you want. Evasive manuevers/deuterium burn to hit the next weaver, kill and onto the next.

I've hit 0 a few times, but most times you have one person occupied 100% of the time struggling to take out a single fighter group, or lost in the nebula or 3 people afk.

gfreeman98

I got really lucky and got good PUGs yesterday; both my main and an alt completed this with perfect scores: 10/10 Saved, 0% Web allowed, boss killed. (First time it's ever happened, and the fact we got it even with my slow Sci cruiser was surprising.) And the icing on the cake was this also completed the Tholian Malfeasance accolade on both chars.

I can't speak for what my random teammates were doing, but they must have done it right. All I know is I do what you have above: focus on the vault weavers and go counter-clockwise. In fact when the other pests try to engage, I just ignore them and EM/Eng Batt on to my next target at best speed.

P.S. My main is Tac and took the middle, since he's the fastest. My alt is Sci so he took bottom which has a smaller perimeter. I don't know if it was necessary or if it helped but I did bark out orders to that effect for the rest of the team: Go counter-clockwise, slower ships take the smaller perimeters.

codewarrior316

That's basically the instructions I gave, although I have no real way to know how well or if they were executed properly. I didn't think of the engine batts, might be a good supplement if duet burns aren't handy and probably a temp weapons+engine heavy power ratio if needed.

The frustrating part is there is no indication of progress. Save the ships? OK. Destroy the transformer before the nanite spheres get to it? Got it. Don't let probes go through the time portal? No problem. Plenty of other examples, at least you know where you are and its clear what to do. This just seems almost random with no feedback.

I've gotten 0% many times before with the same strat it just didn't work here. Most times I will focus on the vault weavers of course but when none are around will burn the other ships just to clear them out and didn't know if that was helping or not...

gfreeman98

codewarrior316 wrote: »

The frustrating part is there is no indication of progress... This just seems almost random with no feedback.

Well aside from the voice announcement ("The Tholian Vault Web is at 20%!"*) you can just check visually that none of the sections have been webbed.

So as long as you don't see or hear anything, it's going well.

* I like how the voice actor puts an extra sense of doom when he announces it's at 80%.

codewarrior316

gfreeman98 wrote: »

Well aside from the voice announcement ("The Tholian Vault Web is at 20%!"*) you can just check visually that none of the sections have been webbed.

So as long as you don't see or hear anything, it's going well.

* I like how the voice actor puts an extra sense of doom when he announces it's at 80%.

I think you misunderstood. I want to know before it gets to 20% since there is no way to destroy the webbing and reclaim the lost marks! After, yes its kind of obvious and incredibly frustrating because of the loss, I have to do more to make up for it. Just trying to make it suck 20% less!

Oh yea, and timers to start other times... who thought that was a good idea?

gfreeman98

codewarrior316 wrote: »

I think you misunderstood. I want to know before it gets to 20%...

Ah, I gotcha. Yeah a progress bar or something would be nice. But really, what could you do about it? If the rest of your team is getting bogged down or otherwise failing to keep their section clear, you're just not going to get a perfect score. The joy of PUGs.

newagewarrior

Hi,

I understand what the OP means. In the one moment there is nothing and you can't really see some Vault Weavers and *peng* there is the 20% complete message out of nowhere. A statusbar or something just to see how far the tholians are with there work really could improve the STF.

NewAgeWarrior

vasco56

Same problem here.

I wish they'd put it up on the wiki page on how that section of Vault Ensnared progresses. I take a line and head around the circuit anticlockwise in my Recluse and elite mesh weavers and take out everything in minutes, but still the web progresses to 20%, then 40%, etc.

It just makes you wonder what the other guys on the other circuits are doing. If only we knew how it worked we could adopt a formulaic approach; the same as any elite STF.

I'm in the fortunate (or unfortunate) position of having two Tholian ships on my main character I want to equip with the full Nukara rep Mk XII set, and grinding these missions net far less marks than any other reputation type. I need to have 3,500 NMs banked by the time I hit T5 and earning penny packets in the available missions is making this highly improbable.

Shame we can't raise spiders for 400NMs a pop, eh?

arbrielfamily

Yes or raise something like epohh's that can net in 400 Nukara Marks each!

I too frequently play in Ensnared and yet still experience the same issue as the above poster.

It does seem that the whole Nukara Reputation system is incomplete and yet not a word from Cryptic about it in this thread.

Come on Cryptic, what's going on?