Speed/Solo Cavern of Transcendence Trial

[KaizenSoze]

Thank you for the feedback. I have included your suggestions.

 

If you want to solo or speed run the Cavern of Transcendence Trial

 

Level min: 12

Level cap: 15

Merits: 8

 

Updates due to Issue 27, page 3 changes. It now can take much longer.

 

First you will have to unlock the task force via completing the The Heart of the Hollows (12-14) arc. This can be done via Oroboros. The arc should take about 30-45 due to the number of glowies, kill alls, and finding Atta in a very large map. It's actually quicker with a small team due to Troll bosses being nasty at level 14.

 

What I think is required to solo this task force quickly:

Stealth - super speed is probably enough, but keep reading. SG bases can have an Empowerment Station where you can craft an timed invisibility buff.

Personal Mission Transport or Team Mission Transport - can be purchased from the P2W vendor

Full load of inspirations. The kinds depend on you build, blues if you have end issues, etc...

 

Optional, but very useful

Flight - get it from the P2W vendor

 

One you have started the task force, use the personal or team transporter. This will take you right the mission door, skipping the whole tunnel maze.

Travel to each obelisks and click it. The paragon wiki is out of date. Homecoming allows to click the obelisks one at a time.

Fly is very useful here as there is lava everywhere and if you touch it stealth drops.

Sometimes there are mobs near the obelisks. Just position yourself carefully behind the obelisk and it's safe to click.

 

Once all the obelisks are clicked the north door can be opened.

 

Due to Issue 27, Page 3. There have been noticeable changes. Make the TF harder.

Bad news 1: Team size settings have no effect on the number of mobs spawns. This was always the case but do to bad code logic a few spawns would be heavy with bosses which caused the overall number of spawns to be fewer.

 

Bad news 2: The ambush mechanic which apparently always existed has been "improved" the more obelisks you click, the more chance of an existing spawn turning into an ambush and heading for you. Ambushes will come after you when you fight Koago unless you fight him in the middle of the map. There is some tricky distance calculation involved with if a spawns turn ambush.

 

Good news: The map works now

 

You now must defeat Koago, but you do not have to clear the whole boss spawn. To rescue Wincott, just kill his guards.

 

Koago the final monster:

• Not a giant monster. It's regeneration rate is not very high.
• Weak to knockdown or knock back

 

The fight can take several minutes because you're only level 15 and have limited powers. So, manage your inspirations carefully.

Ranged attacks work well because you can stick to the ceiling in the outer chamber.

 

It took me 13 mins to complete with my ice/ninja stalker. 

 

 

 

 

Edited June 14, 2022 by KaizenSoze
feedback

[Ulysses Dare]

With good stealth you can slip past Koago's mob and just fight the two Ignius holding Sam hostage.

[KaizenSoze]

I was wondering about that. I had not had time to try it.

[Ukase]

Um...here's what I did. I finished in 4:04. 

Yes, use team teleport to skip the cave/tunnels. 
Use your sg buff station to invis you - even if you do have a celerity in super speed like I did. This way, when you click, you will still have 25 feet stealth radius. 
You should also set your diff to 0/1 so you're not wasting time killing more than you need to. 
There are a number of obelisks to click, each down a path with some mobs you can ignore. You might need to kill some, depending on your defense stats. If they're low, take a luck before you click. Usually, they miss, even if they do see you. But with the sg invis buff, it's not an issue unless you straight out attack them and lose stealth. 
When you've clicked all the obelisks, you can hop over the mobs guarding the npc and just kill the two minions guarding him, ignoring the rest. 

I did that little trial 35 times for that partner badge, never once had to engage in a fight with anything other than two minions guarding the npc, except once, when my sg buff expired after an hour. 

[Ulysses Dare]

That suggestion about the SG buff station is a good one, I always forget that thing is there.

[Ironblade]

On 1/16/2020 at 7:39 PM, KaizenSoze said:

Travel to each obelisks and click it. The paragon wiki is wrong, you do not have to click the obelisks at the same time.

It would be more accurate to say that Paragonwiki is not up to date.  This is how it worked when the game was live.  After the game shut down, most or all of the simultaneous click requirements were removed due to the much lower population on the 'secret server'.

[KaizenSoze]

I included everyone's great feedback in the guide.

[Hogunn]

On 1/16/2020 at 7:39 PM, KaizenSoze said:

Thank you for the feedback. I have included your suggestions.

 

If you want to solo or speed run the Cavern of Transcendence Trial

 

First you will have to unlock the task force via completing the The Heart of the Hollows (12-14) arc. This can be done via Oroboros. The arc should take about 30-45 due to the number of glowies, kill alls, and finding Atta in a very large map.

 

Task force level: 15

Reward merits: 2

 

What I think is required to solo this task force quickly:

Stealth - super speed is probably enough, but keep reading. SG bases can have an invisible power station which provides very good stealth.

Personal Mission Transport or Team Mission Transport - can be purchased from the P2W vendor

Full load of inspirations. The kinds depend on you build, blues if you have end issues, etc...

 

 Optional, but very useful

Flight - get it from the P2W vendor

 

 

One you have started the task force, use the personal or team transporter. This will take you right the mission door, skipping the whole tunnel maze.

Travel to each obelisks and click it. The paragon wiki is out of date. Homecoming allows to click the obelisks one at a time.

Fly is very useful here as there is lava everywhere and if you touch it stealth drops.

Sometimes there are mobs near the obelisks. Just position yourself carefully behind the obelisk and it's safe to click.

 

Once all the obelisks are clicked the north door can be opened.

I would clear the group in front of the door, the end monster, Koago will often run around. The last thing you need is to fight two groups at once.

 

Koago the final monster:

• Not a giant monster. It's regeneration rate is not very high.
• Weak to knockdown or knock back

 

The fight can take several minutes because you're only level 15 and have limited powers. So, manage your inspirations carefully.

Ranged attacks work well because you can stick to the ceiling in the outer chamber.

 

If you are a stalker, illusion controller, or have very high levels of stealth. You slip by Koago and kill the two monsters holding Sam Wincott. This will complete the TF.

 

Normal way, defeat Koago, rescue Wincott and you're done. It took me 13 mins to complete with my ice/ninja stalker. 

Stealth everything and ignore Koago. That only took 4:33 with my ice/ninja stalker.

 

 

 

I tried this one this morning. The mission map did not work. Is that how it is intended?

[KaizenSoze]

1 minute ago, Hogunn said:

I tried this one this morning. The mission map did not work. Is that how it is intended?

The mission map will not work inside the cave. Paragon wiki does have a map.

 

If prefer to go counter-clockwise.

[LQT]

As others have mentioned the only things needing taken out are the 2 minions guarding Sam at the end. At 0/1, or even -1/0, both these mobs can be one shot depending on the AT and powersets you use for the trial.

 

My main being a fire/dev/flame blaster means I have more than enough stealth with Field Operative + Super Speed, and for any Obelisk with guards I just Smoke Grenade them and click the Obelisk without needing to hide as the -perception from Smoke Grenade plus the stealth from Field Operative and SS means I can literally have mobs collide into me while I'm clicking a glowie.

 

When I get to the 2 minions I pop AIM [+Guassian proc] then Blaze to one shot the first minion then swap to the next and use Taser. Alpha strike + AIM + Guassian means Blaze will easily take out an even con minion and with AIM+Guass still running the followup attack will also have Defiance empowering it.

 

If I'm really paying attention I can get the whole thing done from start to rescue in under 3 minutes: Mission TP from contact, SS+CJ the 8 obelisks in clockwise direction, run past everything and only take out the 2 minions at Sam. Otherwise it's in the 3-3.5 minute range. Without mission TP it's an extra 30 seconds on top of that so even when farming this as Ukase did for the repeat WST badge I could get a run done every 5 minutes easily, returning to the contact by solo queuing for the trial through LFG.

 

Have done the same thing with a Kin/EA stalker I have with SJ for easy movement and again it takes about 3 minutes from start to finish with Mission TP.

[Ironblade]

3 hours ago, Hogunn said:

I tried this one this morning. The mission map did not work. Is that how it is intended?

Yes.  You don't get a map in Trials (Cavern of Transcendence, Eden, Sewer, etc).

[Ironblade]

On a side note, I just soloed Talshak's arc to unlock Karsis on another character.
Talshak's arc rewards THIRTY merits.  I just soloed it on an invuln tank and it was a breeze.  Unfortunately, I didn't think to take note of the time required.

[KaizenSoze]

Good to know Ironblade.

[Mister Mass]

On 1/23/2020 at 1:21 PM, Ironblade said:

Yes.  You don't get a map in Trials (Cavern of Transcendence, Eden, Sewer, etc).

Right.  This has always been true.  But WHY???? 🤨

[Ura Hero]

Trials have never had maps.  They were intended to be difficult.  If you can't see where you are going or where you have been then it's difficult, right?

 

It's kinda dumb when you looked back at it, but at the time this was developed, EverQuest was the dominator in the field of MMORPG's.  There wasn't a lot to draw from for good game design.  Some things just haven't been revisited.

[Rooster Gold]

Base buffs Grant Invisibilty and stealth IO FTW

[FrauleinMental]

Has anyone else noticed an unusually long click range for the obelisks in Cavern of Transcendence?  In my most recent run, five of the obelisks had guards, but I was able to click the obelisk from outside of the guards' aggro range each time (maybe 75 ft in total), sometimes from the bend in the tunnel.

[Mr. Vee]

You should be able to click it so long as you can see it on that trial.

[Ukase]

I just learned about this during the latest week during which CoT was the weekly. It saved a fair amount of time. All you have to do is be able to see the obelisk and you can click it. It never occurred to me to try before, and someone told me about it. It's likely a glitch, but I'm okay with it. 

[DarkWings]

Ok for some reason can't use super speed in this trial, the icon is greyed out yet the images above definitely have people using super speed. Is this a bug?

[ScrewlooseCohh]

At what level did you take the power?  You will be exemplared down (to level 15?) and limited to power that you took 5 levels above that.

[Ukase]

I did this yesterday with Super Speed. But I take SS at level 4 on every character. My guess is that you took it too late to be able to use it at the level of the CoT. 

[DarkWings]

Ah, I see I definitely didn't get the power at level 4, I was well past 15 by the time I got it. I learn something new everyday, I always thought as long as the exemplared level is higher (15 in this case) than the minimum level of a power (in this case SS is level 4), you could use it.

[momentarygrace]

Thank you for this guide, it was very cool to solo this. 

[Hedgefund]

A few random thoughts on finer points...

 

The Igneous have a damage aura, each and every one of them (see https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Minions_of_Igneous).  Even if you're fully invis and a damage tick hits you, then you've been seen.  Make sure to jump over or fly over any Igneous spawns.

 

Each obelisk will drop a Take a Breather (Medium blue insp) upon clicking.  I convert to a purple (medium defense, a Good Luck) as soon as I get 3 blues.  The medium purple (25% def to all) seems to last just long enough to collect another 3 medium blues, to then convert to another purple.  This is just a means of mitigating risk of getting hit by a damage aura.

 

I have Demonic on all my characters.  Once I've clicked all 8 obelisks I activate Demonic before going up the ramp to the final room.  That path is tight and if you happen to get damage ticked on your way to the door and you open the door, then you're surrounded.  

 

Super fine point here - be mindful of your cones, especially if you've got +range.  I accidentally hit Koago with a cone once this week.  Maybe position yourself such that your cone won't face him or his spawn.

 

If things go south, keep an eye on the minion guarding Sam that you're NOT targeting.  They're quick to start running and a worst case scenario is Koago and co getting engaged and the other minion guard running away.  Just be aware of where it is and you can still end the mission quickly by taking it out after you've finished the first minion.