Event: Operation Hostile Mergers (U25.0.2)

Update 25 brought with it a lot of content, including a new game mode in Disruption. It has been highlighted in a new Operation: Hostile Mergers.

Operation Rewards

The first part of Hostile Mergers is pretty simple, three preset Disruption missions. The first mission requires you to complete one round, the second mission two, and the final mission requires three rounds. The award the Operation Emblem, Sigil and an Aura Forma respectively.

Once the three preset length missions are complete, another special Disruption node is made available. This one is endless, with two goal scores. Spectra Vandal is awarded when you reach 1000 points in a single run, and Glaxion Vandal when you reach 4000 points in a single run. There are also Clan trophies awarded for participation of Clan members in this event, based on the total of all members' best scores.

Disruption Gamemode

In each round of Disruption, four Conduits are spawned. They are colour coded, and require a unique key to be activated.

Amalgam enemies, a new type of Corpus-Sentient hybrid enemy, will drop these keys, as well as the new resource, Hexenon.

The keys are colour coded as well, and will only activate one specific conduit. They need to be picked up and taken to the appropriate Conduit.

Inserting the key will begin Conduit defence, which lasts for 2 minutes normally. The timer is really more of a failsafe than an actual goal time. The Conduit will give some kind of effect, including but not limited to enemy or ally buffs, and environmental effects.

Notably, like Excavation, if you have multiple keys, you can have multiple Conduits active at the same time. In Disruption, if you have all the keys, you can have all four Conduits active.

After some time, for each Conduit active, a "Demolyst" marked enemy is spawned. This enemy charges at their assigned Conduit, and once close enough, detonates themselves to destroy the Conduit after a couple of seconds. Killing the Demolyst before it can destroy the Conduit will complete the Conduit immediately. Demolysts will be specially marked on the map once they are relatively close, and emit a distinctive noise as well. However, they are much, much tougher than usual enemies, have some immunity to damage-over-time statuses (e.g. Toxin and Slash), and can also emit a nullifying pulse. The health bar underneath each Conduit is actually the health of its assigned Demolyst, the Conduit cannot normally be destroyed.

When a Conduit is completed, if its effect is positive for the Tenno, the effect will remain until the end of the round. If the effect is negative and the Conduit is destroyed, the effect will remain.

A round is completed once all four Conduits have been either completed or destroyed. The reward given at the end of the round depends on how many Conduits were completed successfully that round, with more completed giving a higher rotation reward.

On occasion, a Conduit Failsafe will be dropped. I don't personally know what it does, though I've heard that it can be used to neutralise a negative Conduit effect.

Personally, I really enjoy Disruption. It offers a few different playstyles and its difficulty is very much up to the player. If you are more lazy and are content just waiting for the Demolyst to show up, provided you have a good weapon, you can easily just play the waiting game. You can comfortably just do the Conduits one-by-one, killing the Demolyst when it shows up, and casually just move on. If you want to be more active and want faster rounds, you can start up multiple Conduits at once and hunt down the Amalgams and Demolysts. Though more risky, executed well this will drastically reduce round times. Ideally with a full squad, you can have all four Conduits going at once and each player is capable of killing any Demolysts they see, for potentially extremely fast rounds.

I have two main complaints with Disruption. The first is that mission progression relies exclusively on enemy spawns and pathing - if no Amalgams show up, you can't start the Conduits. Similarly, if the Demolysts get stuck, you can't finish a Conduit quickly. This can be largely fixed by improved AI pathing and spawning. The second is that the Demolysts are a little harder to locate than I'd like. The primary method of locating them is to listen for their distinctive beeping, though this coupled with their high speed often takes away valuable time if you're not in the right spot. When close enough, Demolysts are marked with a target marker on the minimap, though again this is only at relatively close range. Ideally, I would like Demolysts to move a little slower, and to be marked on the minimap from further away, if not at all times.

With a 3-player squad relatively new to the gamemode, I was seeing ~3 minute rounds pretty consistently below level ~80, after which the Demolysts start to get pretty tough. With a skilled, experienced and well-geared 4-player squad, I can definitely see them doing potentially 2-minute rounds, provided Amalgam and Demolyst spawns are fast enough.

My Loadout

The loadout I've been using for Disruption isn't anything too special. I've generally found a mix of Frames to be most effective, to be able to kill everything while also staying alive. Most importantly, you need to be able to kill the Demolysts and Amalgams quickly, Amalgams for the keys and Demolysts to protect and complete the Conduits. Keeping in mind that the Demolysts can emit a nullifying pulse, Frames that can survive without their abilities are a good backup option.

My current go-to is a Slowva with Adaptation. Provided Null Stars is kept up, she is extremely difficult to kill, and MPrime makes all enemies much slower and easier to kill - including Demolysts if they don't use their nullifying pulse.

Weapon wise, you just need weapons that deal a lot of damage. You are fighting predominantly unarmoured Corpus type enemies, so Viral and Electric are the most directly effective. Toxin and Gas on a status weapon are also quite effective as well.

I just default to my best weapons of each type, Tiberon Prime built for Viral, Tombfinger Kitgun built for Viral + Radiation.

Glaxion and Spectra Vandal

As of posting, I haven't had the time to do the run(s) necessary to earn these weapons, so the stats alone will have to do for now. I will be doing individual posts for them later on once acquired.

The Glaxion Vandal retains its base model's pure Cold, very high Status Chance and high RoF to be a very capable elemental status beam weapon. It also has increased, though relatively unexceptional Crit Chance, as well as several other minor stat boosts.

Similarly, the Spectra Vandal retains its base model's Slash biased base Damage and high RoF, but has many more notable stat changes, including even higher Status Chance and boosted Crit Chance. As such, it is a powerful hybrid weapon with brutal and consistent Slash proccing capabilities.