Boss: Ropalolyst

The Ropalolyst is a new boss, introduced in the Jovian Concord Update (U25). It has a pre-requisite of completing the Chimera Prologue first, and contains a number of story spoilers.

Node

The Ropalolyst is found on Jupiter, past the new Ganymede node. You must have completed the Chimera Prologue to access it.

Getting to Ropalolyst

You are dropped in a fair distance from the Ropalolyst, and must traverse quite a few rooms, including a number of the newly added tilesets. Nothing particularly special happens here, except occasionally encountering the Ropalolyst who is not targetable and flies off after a short time anyway.

Eventually, you will reach this room, with an elevator button that transports you to the boss fight area.

Boss Fight

When you're on the centre platform, the Ropalolyst will emit two red lasers, periodically firing shots that deal massive damage. The tracing lasers can be evaded, thus so can the shots. However, the Ropalolyst is currently invulnerable.

To make the Ropalolyst vulnerable, you need to electrocute it with one of the three massive pylons away from the centre platform. They however need to be charged up first. The pylons are attached by a number of dashwires. Jumping onto a dashwire will cause the Ropalolyst to immediately teleport to the appropriate pylon, and use a different set of attacks which again are avoidable.

Once you reach the pylon, the Ropalolyst will attack with a big red laser beam, which doesn't deal major damage but does push you back. Notably however, if it strikes the pylon, the pylon will be charged up. To do this, simply stand behind the pylon and let the Ropalolyst fire.

Once the pylon is charged up, switch to Operator mode and take down the Ropalolyst's shields with your Amp.

Once its shields are down, you can jump up to the Ropalolyst and grab it.

Grabbing the Ropalolyst gives you temporary control of it, during which you must ram it into the charged up pylon.

This electrocutes the Ropalolyst, throwing it to the centre platform and destroying the pylon. You will be teleported to the centre platform as well, and some enemies will spawn.

With the Ropalolyst grounded, its Synovias are now vulnerable. Destroy one of the Synovias to stun the Ropalolyst. Though grounded, it can still attack and move around, notably using an extremely annoying and long grab attack that leaves you helpless.

With the Ropalolyst stunned, go to this console in the centre platform and activate it. This fires a big laser down onto the platform that heavily damages the Ropalolyst. You will need to be fast, as if you take too long, it will recover and you'll need to shoot it down again. After being hit by the giant laser, the Ropalolyst will take to the air again, and regenerate its shields. Repeat the whole process with the pylons twice more to eventually kill it.

Each time the Ropalolyst is grounded to the central platform, the enemies that are spawned become tougher. Once its two synovias have been destroyed, after you've electrocuted it with the third pylon, the Ropalolyst itself will be vulnerable, though you still have to finish it with the big laser.


Personally, I kind of like the Ropalolyst boss fight. There are many aspects of it that are fun, and don't depend too heavily on bringing a specific type of Warframe or weapon. So long as you are decent with parkour, it's not difficult to avoid the majority of the Ropalolyst's attacks, and much of the fight progression is more about mobility than it is damage dealing. Both its shield and actual vulnerable spots are pretty weak health-wise, and can be easily taken down with a decent Amp or weapon respectively. Furthermore, this fight has more directions given to players via transmissions, though it is still fairly lacking.

There are several aspects that I dislike however. The Ropalolyst frequently emits nullifying pulses, which not only cancel any active abilities, but also disables abilities for a short time. This includes Operator abilities, leaving you without the ability to Void Dash for several seconds. Combined with the many sources of high damage during the fight, squisher Frames that rely on abilities to survive do not fare particularly well. Its grab attack is incredibly annoying, with no counter-play except stay away from it, and no way to break out of it on your own. When the Ropalolyst is grounded, the enemies are spawned before the cutscene is finished, resulting in the enemies piling on damage to your Warframe even before you regain control over it. This has resulted in a number of unavoidable deaths, and is also quite annoying.

Overall, there are definite improvements with the Ropalolyst over other boss fights in Warframe, as well as several areas of potential improvement. Thankfully, with some experience, the fight becomes fairly quick, and with many of the bugs fixed, there aren't too many things that screw over the player unfairly. In my later rounds, assuming no weird interactions, I can comfortably clear the mission within about 6 minutes.

Rewards

Upon defeat, the Ropalolyst awards one of five Amalgam mods, and one of the four Wisp Blueprints. The main Wisp Blueprint is slightly rarer than the other blueprints, while the Amalgam mods all have the same drop chance. Notably, the Amalgam mods all give two bonus stats, but are locked to a single weapon.

Amalgam Argonak Metal Auger gives the Argonak very high Punch Through, while also revealing enemies through walls. Additionally, it gives all Daggers (except Zaws, which is presumably a bug) a Shattering Impact effect, stripping base Armour of enemies hit.

Personally, I don't consider this to be an especially good mod. It offers a lot of Punch Through, which is good, however its additional effects are not as useful. Daggers already have access to Covert Lethality which just instantly kills enemies with finishers, so have no need for armour stripping. Additionally, I have read some reports that the dagger may require Impact damage for it to work properly (ie exactly as Shattering Impact). Revealing enemies through walls is neat, though having some kind of Enemy Radar provides a similar function without requiring an otherwise mediocre weapon mod.

Amalgam Daikyu Target Acquired greatly increases headshot damage, gives a chance to recover used ammo, and gives Nikanas (except Zaws) a small amount of Life Steal.

If you are reasonably good at landing headshots with the Daikyu, this mod seems absurdly strong. It increases the headshot multiplier from 2x to 3.5x, or on a crit, 4x to a whopping 7x. After the staple mods, this absolutely seems to be by far the best extra mod to slap on, again only if you land headshots well. 3% Life Steal doesn't seem like much, but when you look at how much damage we do compared to how much health typical Warframes have, it can very easily heal up most Frames in just a few hits. The chance to recover used arrows is just another bonus, enabling you to not have to run Ammo Case/Mutation/etc.

Amalgam Furax Body Count greatly increases Combo Duration, as well as increasing the blast radius of all primary Launcher weapons, and causing melee kills to knockdown nearby enemies.

If nothing else, this mod seems like a very fun one to play around with. Increasing Combo Duration is very good for Melee, with their Combo Counter and interactions with various mods being one of their biggest strengths. Increased blast radius on Launchers, though very dangerous with self-damage, also allows you to hit many more enemies with a single blast. Knockdown on melee kills could be useful for setting up high damage Finishers, as well as giving you a short reprieve from being attacked.

Amalgam Javlok Magazine Warp increases Mag Capacity, while also giving Parrying with a Sword and Shield weapon massive damage reflection. Additionally, it greatly increases the efficiency of Channeling.

This mod is all about Parrying, which is something I basically never do, and still am not particularly familiar with. It is also not well worded in its requirements - Shield refers to Sword and Shield weapons, not Warframe Shields. Parrying occurs when you Melee Channel (spend energy to improve Melee abilities) and Block, which is very weird in the current state of Melee, and is something I never do. Thanks to the 6000% multiplier, it can actually deal significant reflected damage. If you enjoy Sword and Shield weapons, and really want to Block and still kill enemies, this is the perfect mod for you - the only problem being that the only Primary you can use is the Javlok.

Amalgam Ripkas True Steel adds a reasonable amount of Crit Chance, a small amount of Reload Speed on primary Shotguns, and guarantees breaking apart bodies into multiple pieces.

This mod isn't anything too special, +Crit Chance is good on Ripkas, but doesn't remotely compare to Blood Rush. +20% Reload Speed for Shotguns is nice on some weapons, but not a huge boost. Notably, this mod guarantees direct kills from the Ripkas to break apart bodies, which is primarily useful for Nekros' Desecrate. Since Desecrate works on each individual corpse piece, this mod overall increases the amount of loot gained. This effect also occurs naturally with any majority-Slash weapon, being more likely the more heavily Slash-biased the weapon is. Overall, I wouldn't bother with this mod. It's not particularly powerful and its special stat can be mostly emulated by using any high Slash weapon like the Galatine and Gram families.

My Loadout

With relatively low health (by recent boss standards at least), the Ropalolyst does not require a damage buff frame to be completed efficiently. However, its high damage output (from both itself and random enemies) as well as many nullification effects mean that you are best served by a Frame who is tough without abilities. The ones that come to mind best suited for this are Hildryn, Inaros and Nidus. I've had very good success with Hildryn and Adaptation, pretty much never dropping my shields in the runs I did.

Alternatively, Frames that offer quick travel between the pylons and the centre platform can also be helpful. Nova and Zephyr are the two that come to mind for this, though both can have issues surviving given their survivability is purely ability based.

Weapon wise, you just want decent weapons built for Radiation. I run Tiberon Prime and a Tombfinger Kitgun, and can deal enough damage to progress each stage within a couple of seconds.

Operator-wise, I recommend an Amp effective at long range, such as the Cetus Tier 1 Prism (Raplak) or Scaffold (Pencha). At times, the Ropalolyst may back off when you're at the shield-stripping stage, which seems to happen more often once its Synovias have been destroyed. Any decent Amp should do more than enough damage to quickly strip its shields.