The Definitive Thread on the Crystalline Entity

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The following is a full proof strat for dealing with the crystalline entity. it will work every time regardless of numbers. I hope you're all paying attension, it's very complex.

Get to 9km.
Fire all weapons.
Put all power to engines.
Fly in circles.

I'm dead serious this boss does not need a nerfing at all. This boss is pathetically easy, you just have to look at it from a raid boss standpoint. From one who played WoW this thing is pathetic and the fact that people are QQing makes me sad because Cryptic is going to think STO players wont be able to handle real raids later on and will hit the whole game with a nerf bat again.

Here's a detailed explanation of what this boss does:
Phase 1 (60-100%) boss will shoot lasers that an escort probably can't take. Best to duck in and out of 10k with your finger on the jam sensors button if you have aggo. a good cruiser should be able to eat that laser all day. Also shards will come out, see above strat. If a shard hits any ship they will take 5-7k hull damage and heal the entity for a negligable amount.

Phase 2 (60-30%) more shards, no lasers, see above strat.

Phase 3 (0-30%) Large shards spawn. If a large shard hits a ship or a mine it turns into three small shards which will return to the boss and heal it for about 1.5% health per shard. Recommended countermeasure... see above strat.

This thing is a push over, a peice of cake, anyone can solo it if the game would let you. Orbit at 9km and it literally can't touch you provided you can eat the lasers. Please stop complaining about it being too hard or needing a nerfing, it's fine.

Orbit at 9km and pew pew. If you cannot or choose not to perform these functions, please inform your flight attendant and you will be reseated.

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The Crystalline entity is not a hard mission, unless you get a bunch of knuckleheads who don't read the ops and keep shooting the shards, then you can never get anywhere unless you have more admirals than LT CMD...

Please read this post and act accordingly.

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Well said OP. It makes me sad seeing the people that just sit in one place or fly really close to it. They get hit by the large shards every time and just end up healing the entity. I was in one instance where we would get it down to 30%, it would kill the people not moving and heal back up to 60% for two hours. And like clockwork the people that where just sitting still would go right back to the place they died and sit there again. I'm really not sure if they just didn't care or if they where trying to grief the people that where trying to kill it. If people would take the time to learn the mission it would be so much easier.

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Just want to comment that you can shoot the shards if you want, but splitting DPS away from the Crystalline Entity should only be done if a shard is coming too close to hitting someone.

Furthermore, if a shard -does- hit someone, all DPS needs to be focused on the Small Fragments. These are the things that will fly back to the Entity to heal it.


There are only two things that need to be changed in this encounter:

1) Prevent shards from detonating (into Small Fragments) upon hitting mines.
2) Increase the DPS and EHP (health) of the Crystalline Entity.

A third change I would advocate is to Ramming Speed and not specific to this encounter. I would prefer if Ramming Speed had some pre-requisite constraint (e.g., player must be <25% hull, as Suricata suggests), and it should not count toward DPS scoring.

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I don't see the point in the mines stopping to split things into small shards. Solution is just to NOT use Mines!
Just as in WoW you don't use fire based damge on fire immune creatures ;)

STO is to easy as it is, please let there be some thinking involved in at least ONE encounter at lower level.

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That was the worst designed boss of any game i have ever played in about 2 decades.

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hmm, mines are causing the large fragments to split into the smaller ones. The normal fragments are killed normally. So if you have to urge, to use mines, use them in the beginning and let them pop before the entity reaches 33% hull.

Science ships with PSW can use it immediately after being hit by a large fragment, since it kills the smaller ones in an instant.

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CONFIRMED:

Scramble sensors on the CE will stop all shards > 3km from the CE from moving or crashing in to anything.

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nice ...will test it next time :D

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The following is a full proof strat for dealing with the crystalline entity. it will work every time regardless of numbers. I hope you're all paying attension, it's very complex.

Get to 9km.
Fire all weapons.
Put all power to engines.
Fly in circles.

I'm dead serious this boss does not need a nerfing at all. This boss is pathetically easy, you just have to look at it from a raid boss standpoint. From one who played WoW this thing is pathetic and the fact that people are QQing makes me sad because Cryptic is going to think STO players wont be able to handle real raids later on and will hit the whole game with a nerf bat again.

Here's a detailed explanation of what this boss does:
Phase 1 (60-100%) boss will shoot lasers that an escort probably can't take. Best to duck in and out of 10k with your finger on the jam sensors button if you have aggo. a good cruiser should be able to eat that laser all day. Also shards will come out, see above strat. If a shard hits any ship they will take 5-7k hull damage and heal the entity for a negligable amount.

Phase 2 (60-30%) more shards, no lasers, see above strat.

Phase 3 (0-30%) Large shards spawn. If a large shard hits a ship or a mine it turns into three small shards which will return to the boss and heal it for about 1.5% health per shard. Recommended countermeasure... see above strat.

This thing is a push over, a peice of cake, anyone can solo it if the game would let you. Orbit at 9km and it literally can't touch you provided you can eat the lasers. Please stop complaining about it being too hard or needing a nerfing, it's fine.

Orbit at 9km and pew pew. If you cannot or choose not to perform these functions, please inform your flight attendant and you will be reseated.

Just read complaints carefully, what's the problem with it. It's not the mission itself, which is dead easy, it's people, noobs, destroying all your efforts, because: 1 - they want to get max dps, so they use escorts and sit there, doing nothing but taking shards. 2 - they take mission text too seriously, and since there's nothing about Large shards turning into small (healing) ones, they don't care. 3 - they don't read chat, nor think, so it turns out into whole day 100%->30%->100%->30%->...

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Bumping cause people need to read this

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Please refer to noobs and uninformed players that way you get more points on the insult!

Currently i'd say this fleet action is unplayable via pug and trust me i now i just spent two hours of my life or 1 and a half levels wasting my time. It was still fun ofcourse.

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omg! i can' get past this mission, everytime i seem to be in a game with a bunch of idiots! lol anyone no of a way i can kick people out of the mission or do it on my own!? lol

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I like this encounter very much.

If you look at WoW, and you try to get into a any raid with a PUG, they act the same way. This is an open encounter like wtf was his name in Hellfire, and Doomwalker imo.

Can't wait to find a good Fleet and try this out!
Tho, are all fleet members able to join in the same instance? Even if you select your own instance?

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Well, my problem with doing the Entity (this was like... on the 2nd of February probably, can't remember really) was that the mission text didn't really offer an explanation on how to defeat it as far as I can remember. In zone chat, either people didn't know how it works - like me - or there were people giving contradictory orders on what to do: "Shoot the fragments!" "No don't shoot them!" "No you must!" ad nauseum. I only ended up killing the bugger twice, neither attempt took all that long thankfully. But frankly in both cases I couldn't figure what ended up killing it, as one moment it was at 60-100% HP, and a few seconds later it went boom.

Now if it really is just about kiting the shards and DPSing the Entity itself, then indeed, it's very easy, but what won't be very easy is getting other people to do the same damn thing. But then again I don't really see the point in grinding the bugger either, especially at higher levels. Even at the appropriate level for the Entity, the leveling content is very easy, so what you equip doesn't matter much. And at later levels you already get better stuff as mission rewards and normal drops, and it's not like you need Energy credits for much of anything.

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Bottom line escorts ruin this fight because we have to sit still to keep the thing in our targets. Sure if people kiting the shards didn't drag them into sitting escorts that would be cool but frankly they are doing their job we escort pilots are not....

Last night I spent 2 hours fighting the C Entity as a normal escort with Cannons sitting stationary and ruining everything for my group as I died to shard after shard until I finally wised up, went to the exchange, and bought some cheap phasers and outfitted my ship to broadside like a cruiser. Guess what...I died only twice but we still couldn't bring the thing down because for every escort pilot such as myself willing to spend the time and money to do my job correctly there are 2x as many that are ignorant and stubborn.

ATTENTION ESCORTS:
IF YOU WANT TO WIN DON'T SIT STILL, DON'T SHOOT SHARDS, BROADSIDE LIKE A CRUISER



P.S. And FFS Fly clockwise not counter clockwise

Respectfully,
-Vox

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Well, my problem with doing the Entity (this was like... on the 2nd of February probably, can't remember really) was that the mission text didn't really offer an explanation on how to defeat it as far as I can remember. In zone chat, either people didn't know how it works - like me - or there were people giving contradictory orders on what to do: "Shoot the fragments!" "No don't shoot them!" "No you must!" ad nauseum. I only ended up killing the bugger twice, neither attempt took all that long thankfully. But frankly in both cases I couldn't figure what ended up killing it, as one moment it was at 60-100% HP, and a few seconds later it went boom.

Now if it really is just about kiting the shards and DPSing the Entity itself, then indeed, it's very easy, but what won't be very easy is getting other people to do the same damn thing. But then again I don't really see the point in grinding the bugger either, especially at higher levels. Even at the appropriate level for the Entity, the leveling content is very easy, so what you equip doesn't matter much. And at later levels you already get better stuff as mission rewards and normal drops, and it's not like you need Energy credits for much of anything.

What killed it then was ramming speed which is now nerfed. And before letting the shards hit mines did not heal the entity or spawn small fragments...now they do.

You should kill large and small frags but in doing so it takes dps off the boss. It is easier to kite and avoid them but there are too many nub escort pilots ruining the match.

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This post should be a sticky.

Had a good small group of people doing this strategy. We got the entity down to 30% then I noticed a bunch of new people warping in only to spawn mine after mine and tons of boarding parties. Others rammed the shards. One guy started going counter clockwise when we were all going clockwise, and a small group huddled behind an asteroid at full stop pooping more mines, watching the shards come right at them, and doing nothing.

Needless to say the entity got back up to 100% in a matter of seconds... almost two hours later and after having jumped into at least a dozen different instances to find a group at least trying to work together I gave up. Everybody tries to do their own thing, they pay no attention to people trying help out in chat, and do not care if there is a strategy. Maybe this needs to become a private group only instance.

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i think one of the problems that really needs to be looked at is the griefing with mines :mad:

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I tried to do this earlier today before I had to go to work. I didn't know the strat, but I read the chat and got it figured out. I'm looking forward to trying again when I get home. I like this mission. Most of the game hasn't been terribly challenging (or maybe it is the lack of death penalty that makes it feel that way), and this has been kind of fun, even with everyone not doing what they're supposed to.

The escorts thing is the major problem I see with this. Every escort I saw when I was doing this mission was just sitting still, getting smacked around by the fragments.

I have a feeling that after a few days or so, people will have it figured out, and it won't be something to worry much about.

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The Crystalline entity is not a hard mission, unless you get a bunch of knuckleheads who don't read the ops and keep shooting the shards, then you can never get anywhere unless you have more admirals than LT CMD...

Please read this post and act accordingly.
Shooting the shards seems to be largely harmless, aside from the loss of DPS on the main entity. Getting HIT by the shards is far worse.

The problem is, very quickly you're dragging an entire cluster of instant death behind you, and anyone orbitting behind you in in serious danger of getting your crystal hemorrhoids in the face. All it takes is one one to die, and that entire cluster of death descends on the person behind... and then the crystals they were dragging... and so on.

The stategy espoused here DOES work, but it is massively fault-intolerant. One **** up (by a random who hasn't read this thread, or has Zone chat off) and it's right back to the start.

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Shooting the shards seems to be largely harmless, aside from the loss of DPS on the main entity. Getting HIT by the shards is far worse.

I've done some instance-hopping yesterday and saw a few (well, actually two) different strategies - including one where players shot the shards (even the large fragments that split into smaller ones and fly back to the CE). Funny thing is: Whenever the large shards where shot, they DID split up but the small shards immediately disappeared. As far as I could tell, this did NOT heal the CE.


The problem is, very quickly you're dragging an entire cluster of instant death behind you. and anyone orbitting behind you in in serious danger of getting your crystal hemorrhoids in the face.
Agreed. I've seen several instances where you couldn't even target the CE because everything was full of shards. One mistake and you're back to 100% health on the CE very quickly.

While I do agree that kiting is ONE strategy that can work, I don't think it is the BEST because it's rather risky. I've seen one instance where there where almost no shards around, and the entity was still down to 30% and less. Should probably have stopped hoping at this point - BTW, how do you see your current instance #?? Wasn't there supposed to be a popup if you hover over the title above minimap?

Anyway, to overcome the problem of coordinating that many (20) people without adequate grouping / chat options, I'd very much like to try a different strategy: Form 4 teams where 1 member targets the CE from about 9km away and everyone else in that team is following him but only shooting shards. Would be interesting to see if this is enough DPS to bring down the CE and get rid of all the shards. If not, try 2 on CE and 3 shooting shards.

Also I did notice that at least in *some* instances there where strong (about +20 from my point if view, which is Lt.C. 5 or 6, not sure where I stopped yesterday *g*) NPC-ships around. From the one time where I entered an empty instance where ONLY the NPC-ships where around (in Front of the Planet) and the CE was behind the planet I'd guess that in those instances where no NPC ships where involved the fighting just took place in a different area and it might be wise to find the NPC ships and lure the CE there. So maybe there is another strategy: lure the CE to the NPCs, let them shoot the CE and ONLY take care of the shards so that the NPC-Ships are not hit.

Regards,
Rainer

P.S.: I don't say that I KNOW anything about all of this, this is just what I've observed (or think that I have observed) so before you flame away you might just go out and check this out for yourself. Instance-hoping can be interesting, you know :)

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In my experience, you're right. Shooting the crystal shards doesn't seem to produce Small shards that last for any length of time. (That said, I think I was beyond 10km from the entity when I destroyed the Large Fragment - that could have been a factor, and it might well spawn Small Fragments if destroyed closer to the entity)

The only definate time I've seen the small shards spawn is when a large shard collides with a ship. So shooting shards doesn't "hurt", aside from taking damage away from the entity and it apparently has a high natural regeneraion rate as it is. This is why the current general strategy espouses focussing all fire on the entity.

Like you, all I have to go on are personal observations. I do wonder - and this is one possible interpretation of the Ops text - is whether the Fragments possibly contribute to the entitys health regen while they're alive. The more Fragments, the more regen? This would explain why the entity's health goes down early in the fight while there are few fragments, and why it starts to increase at 30% when it starts shooting out more Fragments?

It seems like there might be a balance between focussing your fire on the entity and taking out occasional fragments that would serve to reduce the risks of navigating the entity and reduce it's overall regeneration rate that would compensate for the loss of overall DPS, but the maths is beyond me.

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I have to admit I didnt read the OPS. So i spent about 5 minutes shooting shards and blowing up. Fortunatley I do look at the chat window when its not overflowing with gold spammers. Spent about an hour in that map trying to kill that damm thing but unliike myself about 5 people would not read the ops or listen to any chattters. Have yet to beat that stupid thing.

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One of the problems that I have with this fight is that you need to either re-equip your ship or just not use all your weapons. I totally understand the problem with escorts and this fight. I have a level 11 tactical officer and I would not be very effective without my cannons. But, my main is a science ship that drops mines... except on this fight they heal the entity. I'm sorry but I'm not about to go "buy a cheap phaser array" to fight one boss while leveling.

I say skip this and come back later. Hopefully Cryptic has a way to track how many times each fleet action is defeated and will realize that this one currently cannot be. And if you beat it while ramming speed worked, you don't count.

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I found a nice mini-strategy in my Cruiser last night while trying this guy. While orbiting, I'd have my auto-fire arrays pounding away on the CE, but between cooldowns on those, I'd just toss a rear-facing Photon Torpedo into the shards I was kiting. It really helped keep their numbers down, as ~2 torpedoes take out one of them, and the torpedoes tend to splash into a few of them. This would probably work for SVs as well.

Aside from that, the only nerf I'd argue for is perhaps that Large Shards only spawn the first time the CE hits 30%. That way, even moderately organized groups can beat it, it would just take a lot longer.

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agreed ...........

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Escorts can make runins and runouts on the CE. The simple solution is to attack at an angle where none are orbiting with shards following, to never get closer than 5 kliks of the CE and to always exit on the side they came in, eg attacking from top getting out from top.
The only drawback is that if you pickup a few shards you need to kill em off before you make your next run.

It worked fine with me and only failed when people would orbit at any hight or anti-clock wise.
The standing still tactic also works but the escort needs to always look at the distance with the CE and keep it at max of 9 kliks, to always lookout for orbiters and shards incoming. This means that an escort will need to relocate frequently.

About large shards. They do brake into smaller shards when crashing into ships or even when being blown up by weapons. The only difference is that when they are blown up they spawn small shards that immediatelly disapear, but I will note that some times when the large shard is blown up these small shards do not disapear and head towards the CE. This could be due to distance as another poster mentioned.

Time for a question. Some people have typed in the ingame chat that using large torps is wrong. Anyone care to explain why, cuz I don't get it.

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i second all motions that speak to the players being the problem with this encounter, not the encounter itself. I had my FIRST try at CE yesterday...and man was it FUN!

it was frustrating because people refused to group, but then also refused to follow directions. In approx 5 mins and NEVER seeing this encouter before, I was able to pick up on the basics of the fight...having it down to 28% after 30 mins of pounding and watching it shoot back to 100% within a minute is disheartening to say the least

people just need to follow direction better...but that could also speak to the need for better raid tools built into the current interface

for fleet action auto grouping...the highest rank player should default to the raid leader, and should be able to have at least 39 other ships auto grouped to his, so that way we can get the same message out to all groups/singles at the same time...not that it will fix the people who just flat out dont like to listen, or those who are purposely griefing the encounter by assisting the CE in healing, but it's a start

DONT NERF THIS FIGHT!! /signed :D

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I think I narrowed it down to an individual priority system to succeed at this encounter:

1. Stay away from Fragments. Nothing good happens from letting them come in contact with your hull. This is especially important in the final phase, because Large Fragments hitting people is what essentially makes this unbeatable. How do you keep this from happening?
a. Everyone rotate around the CE in the same direction.
b. Set your engine power to at least 80.
c. Pay attention. Fragments occasionally will change targets. Be aware.

2. DPS the CE. In my Cruiser, I want to spend as much time broad-siding the CE as I can. Should translate well to a SV, but not sure about Escorts (never played one aside from occasional Klingon PvP fun).

3. This one is well below Priorities 1 & 2, and it is kill fragments. Personally, I did this by simply tossing the occasional rear torpedo, while my arrays were mid-cycle, into the fragments I was kiting. Damaging the shards with non-targetable weapons does nothing bad from what I can tell. Again, not sure how well this will work in an Escort, but I see it being easy in a Cruiser or SV.

How's that look?

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I've posted my own testings and findings in to this thread:

http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=119521

Please review and comment. I will repost in to this thread if needed and request a deletion of my original thread.

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A couple things I noted from my adventures with this, there is no raid interface. You can team up but that is limited to the few who fit in a team. Not a big deal, yes BUT don't forget how many people simply ignore zone chatter. Between the spammers and their gold, the constant chatter about the spammers and their gold and then those who want to chatter away about what their pet fake gold fish girlfriend is doing has gotten many to ignore zone chatter.

Screaming in Zone to not shoot the fragments or to circle at 9k, etc, does little to nothing. With no raid chat, it's like talking to a brick wall that is actively ignoring you. Add to that, few even use the forums and there are no sites with all the tricks - it will be a while for many to realize how to do this mission. I tried last night and gave up after the seven time to 28% only to watch it shoot back to 80% in seconds.

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This entity should be so easy to destroy it should be a single player mission. The Ent-D as yu all know used a harmonic frequency with that woman who was carzed with revenge for her son that she started a harmonic transmission that set the crystalline structure into a resonance and the entity fragmented. The mission should be you having to activate harmonic generators while trying to survive an attack by the being.

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Sometimes I click too fast and miss the message so I simply use J and read the things I miss. However, there is NO INFO that I could find about the CE Miision upon entering it. I had to come here to learn about it which is a bit distressing for some - since they want to play - not read posts all day long. I can't tell you how many hours I've spent trying to learn about training bridge officers (why are the square horizontal and ground then space, and when you click on assigned players its verticle and space then ground? very inconsistant, and assigned away teams have their skills in reverse rank order geez!) and what the heck is the Fleet bank (which I still can't discover with the whimpy search engine on here).

Despite all that, I was yelled at asking why I was deploying mines the first time I went into fight. I was like ahh they fire automatically? then I'm told they heal the CE. So I spend everything I have to get all phasers on my ship and head back but no one was doing the CE anymore.

After reading this I find even more rules / strategy about how to fight the CE.

It would be nice if your science officer spoke up and said > our mines seem to be regenerating the CE!!! but is that asking too much? or Large shards have stolen your hull armor and are feeding the CE!! Something! but no... my BO's are staring at the screen saysing.... WOW... we're going to die.

But I agree with others here, with my experience from other online games - I think being able to form a fleet before hand and jumping into a private instance would be a really great feature.

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i've tried this 4 times and have given up someone always messes up you say don't use mines they say the forums say you can you tell em bout this thread they won't read it. it's terrible i just gave up on it

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Yeah, after trying this a few times, I'm giving up. All it takes is just a moron warping in and shooting at the fragments :-( sigh ....

IMO this should be changed to a private instance of some sorts...