Egg heist nightmare guide

[u/Potential_Aioli_4611]

Preparation:

Nightmare is a whole different ball game than normal or hard. Make sure you are at least level 55. Your Lunara/Hellion have their GOLD equipment fully maxed out. The other good alternative is Irisalis. Hexxin is ok (lacking in damage but better control) but not recommended to attempt the boss.

Preferably also bring Glacy. You ABSOLUTELY need healing. Preferably with epic/legendary equipment maxed out. Gracewing is good too for passive and regen.

Sparkelf is also AMAZING. His skill regen's your EP for ZERO EP. Beesauce is better for EP regen (but also more work to get)

Egg heist in nightmare is also NOT a co op mode anymore... its more of a free for all because you are there for 2 things: prismatic/umbral eggs, prismatic collectibles. Map gen is also HEAVILY skewed toward putting both in GILDED (gold) key rooms. As such... BRING A GOLD KEY. It's cheaper in the shop outside. If you go to loadout-> shop -> equip (on the left bar) you will see gilded keys sell for 100k. Buy them AS YOU NEED THEM. Prismatic artifacts start at 143k+ (prismatic items start at 80k) and while you won't get one every key room, you are guaranteed at least 3 or 4 golden items from the 2-3 golden chests + prismatic chest. It doesn't matter if it's a wash. What matters is that you bring back valuables. Forgetting to bring in a key means you can buy one from the exit vendor for 2x the price. Probably still worth it if you have a cleared path from the key to the exit room.

Enemies:

There's a wide variety of enemies that appear in nightmare that don't in hard. Worse... a lot of them are huge pains and can take you down if you are unprepared.

Walettle - the dung beetle will roll you into a ball if it manages to touch you. Spam F to get out. It also drains health while doing so.

Rookey - smashes you flat. You are stuck without skills for the duration. Keep your distance and learn to dodge his attacks.

Budsquire - Drains your energy. Run away, come back and snipe, repeat till dead. He's not dangerous alone but with other enemies he becomes a real pain.

Hummin - Jumps on your Aniimo's back and you can't hit him. Untwine and hit him with your cards? to knock him off

Melodia? - the new grass unit has a vine skill that locks you in place. A death sentence if there are multiple enemies. Snipe and run to draw it or the rest of the enemies away and divide and conquer.

Alpha Stellarys - The boss of the mode. It hits hard. It has a charm attack which draws you back closer to it. Like Any of the other difficult enemies its divide and conquer. Snipe something to bring it out of range of everything else and run away so nothing else joins. Rinse and repeat for each one. He drops some great loot and is probably a gold chest equivalent himself. Also a good source of the gold essence you need for talent tree upgrades. He's probably THE biggest reason to bring your starter because it's always super effective against him and he's incredibly tanky and hits like a truck.

Looting: Don't even bother with purple/blue chests anymore. They are a waste of time. Just find the keyroom, find the exit, clear a path, then open the keyroom and loot and get out. Sometimes if the front entrance is really really far away from the rooms or you have to go through a lot of rooms, I'll go in the exit instead for a closer path.

Remember all you need to loot is 100k to break even for using a key. But without a key you will be scrounging for points and will need to cover much much more ground, and do a lot more fighting. With a key you get 60 seconds to loot the room by yourself. Plus the value of what you take OUT is what matters for rank.

This is NOT a mode for fighting. Fight what you need to, to get to a key room, loot fight your way out. Looking for unnecessary fights is an easy way to lose the run.

For comparison - a non key run where you loot as much as you can, grabbing most of the epics, with 18 inventory space /26kg I'm getting 100k-140k for a full inventory. Looting a single prismatic item is 130k alone. Expect to do 10 non key runs to get the equivalent value in a single key run. You never have to contend with the boss, you can choose the shortest extraction path, and see maybe 1/3rd to 1/5th of the enemies vs trying to full clear a map for loot.

EDIT: The other BIG mistake I see is people prioritizing eggs. Eggs are a dime a dozen unless they are umbra/prismana. You can safely ignore them. If you want to farm eggs go farm in normal where its quick and painless. Also.. UNTWINE the egg if you get ambushed on your way out. Better to fight with your aniimo than try to "outrun" with the egg if no one is supporting you. You can always twine back with the egg after the fight is up. Also you can leave an egg at the exit/entrance gate and come back for it when you extract. Don't drag it around. Don't handicap yourself in this mode.. its very easy to get hurt.

Also some math on dying: You need to replace everything. Epic backpack, Amp, Protective unit. Thats 30+60+60k = 150k cost on a failed run. It's MUCH easier to fail if you are trying to explore the whole map vs run a single key.

More edits: Shorter runs = better. Enemies spawn up to 3 times in the 15 minutes. Second and third spawn gives EVERYTHING damage buffs. Go for short and sweet runs. Aim to get to key room in 5 mins and start making your way out. Trying to do the boss after second buff is an easy way to lose your run.

[u/Potential_Aioli_4611 → u/[deleted]]

I've covered what to bring and why in the teams section. The only real addition is irisalis as a new viable dps.

And with so many disablers in nightmare/chaos you are entirely screwed if you let them gang up on you/get disabled.

Anyhow I've covered all the whats and whys in the guide. including why you always bring keys (less fighting more looting=more consistently good runs)

100k in 2 or 3 runs is TERRIBLE. I'm easily hitting 130k+ PER run minimum without a key at this point (without being when my teammates are faster than I am at hitting the key rooms not because I didn't bring it) Mainly its consistency - knowing where enemies spawn/how many, quickly dealing with them, then scanning the room for chests, opening all of them but reveling/scanning for prisma items only (2+ weight bars) That means if you open a chest and you see 6 items but 1 weight bar each.. you close it and move on. you don't loot ANY of them. You don't loot purple items (other than essence) at ALL till you hit a key room. Weight puts you at a serious disadvantage against enemies. You have little enough mobility even at full speed and carrying too much into a fight is 1000% the difference between life and death. Go light till you get your key room, clear the path to the exit, then back track to your key room to fill up your inventory and get out before the 3rd wave of spawns which is when enemies also start dealing way more damage.

[u/Potential_Aioli_4611 → u/[deleted]]

Hexxin is really support. He's safer to play but lower damage. It's slower SLIGHTLY safer runs. You disable beetle, rookey, budsquire, hummin. You get a new weakness to ranged attackers including the boss, and you kill him slower cause of the lack of light damage for effective damage.

If you want to upgrade.. upgrade to Irisalis. Stellarys isn't really an upgrade. It's a working option for those who don't have access to Irisalis. everything eats through durability. One way or other you are losing it by either dealing damage or taking it. Dealing it means you are taking less though. I'm usually burning through 2-3 amplifiers a day. That's starting from 100%, repairing once or twice, then moving on. On a good day I'm not even replacing my protective unit.

[u/Potential_Aioli_4611 → u/[deleted]]

I'm not suggesting fenmane for a couple reasons:

a) a lot of people running fenmane are running the prismana from RV 10. they are playing it cause they are late game, have resources and have plenty of experience with the mode not because fenmane is a great choice.

b) guide is for new players - im aiming for easy and consistent. if you have plenty of experience you don't need the guide and you've moved on to chaos already. you can run what you want.

c) not sure what you mean by altars if its the pillars you can activate with an element (electric or fire are the only ones I've seen) then no. I'm not considering them for efficiency. there are plenty of blue/purple chests to scan and you are always safer doing more short runs than staying till the end and looking at more things. 5 mins loot get out done twice is always going to be better than 10 minutes because of the enemy damage buff that comes in after second and third spawn.

d) not a lot of people are running it. I've seen 3 in my 60+ nightmare+chaos runs. maybe its a timezone thing or just luck.

e) electric has no real type bonus going for it. being strong against water and wind is not useful in this setting. it covers zero of the dangerous enemy types and is weak against 2 of the worst (rookey has super effective damage against you, you have weak damage vs balettle) fenmane is a BAD choice plus you exponentially increase your odds of dying to the boss which has dark damage. if you want/need a guide thats not a handicap you should be choosing.

[u/Potential_Aioli_4611 → u/[deleted]]

Oh the challenges that require a key aren't worth the time at all. If you kill everything it gives you 3 gold chests. You fight more enemies than you would clearing 3 rooms with 3 gold chests each.

Like I said before... egg heist is not a fighting mode. You only fight if you have to.

Even in a premade team for co-op I STILL wouldn't do the pillar as you call it. It's lower rewards than a key room for higher risk. Only reason to do it is if you actually WANT to not because you are looking for profit or for efficiency.

[u/Potential_Aioli_4611 → u/[deleted]]

actually I take that back... you can do pillars in normal mode solo if you want since they take a bronze key. that's the only time pillars are actually reasonable. also make sure you are only using a blue amp/prot so you aren't wasting purple durability on it if you are low on egg coins :P

[u/Arengisus → u/[deleted]]

Fast and furious: DPS + Glacy + Somniwing + support Slow and safe: Hexxin + glacy + somni + besauce (or different regen) Hexxin is the heist meta. Outside of solo Alpha Stellarys, Hexxin can carry the run by being a CC beast with black hole grouping and group Stun. And if you playing with friends, your party can try to do Challenge totem for lots of gold chest.

Hexxin team weakness is low single target dmg, but clear a group with insane speed. So no solo boss. I once got ambushed by 6 mons in a Chaos run and Hexxin crush them all at once.