Breaking Down the 113

You CAN Do It

By: George Argyropoulos

a/k/a Dragon_Bane  

A Quick Note : 

A new era of the Forsaken Missions is now rolling out upon us, though, many players feel as though it is rolling over them instead. I hope to change that feeling. I can understand the frustration players feel when something familiar is changing, however, credit has to be given to Kixeye, this roll out was pretty well thought out and executed. Let me explain this first before we get into the 113...

While the 'best' tools are used, mostly, for the builds I will show, many can be had either through the FM or the TLC. The Zelos is in Prize Pool 2 of the FM. As much as I hate to say this, the Zelos is the premier CM Tank in the game at the moment. The builds also can be cobbled together once you see what is used below and understand the thought process behind them and build to your tech depth.

Add to this, the Monoliths can be had in the current TLC using Punisher Tanks and Citadels. It might not be 'easy' but it is doable. And Kixeye gave us two weeks in which to do that particular TLC. Truly, it is a good roll out with regard to tech availability concurrent with the FM transition.

The 113 :

The target itself is a mix of interesting game aspects and there are a few tricks that can be used in order to mitigate a LOT of damage.

Angle of attack is important. If your angle is off approaching the turret clusters you could get too close to the clodsnaps. That will ruin your day. Come in as close to the wall as you can when engaging the turret clusters.

Another trick to help you target and stop is by targeting the turret you want to destroy and then click on the spot on engagement of the spotter ship. This will allow you to be ready to hit the down button to stop the fleet as soon as you are in range so that you don't over run your target. This is one such sequence:

One of the hardest parts of this target, in my opinion, is the patience you need to engage the first turret cluster at the 'gate'. This is one where you have to have the right angle again but because of the isometric conversion used in the game, the margin for error is less than the other clusters and you have to VERY carefully creep into range so as to not activate the coldsnap.

One of the things I had to address in the Zelos build was the speed so that you could have a safe option if you wanted to run the channel. Stacking well before engaging the channel is important and will take some practice. There ARE other options than this, but I wanted to cover this one as it seems the 'trickiest' and one of the more frustrating aspects to players.

Drive past the turrets far enough so they don't catch you, then turn and kill them. Mop up the Citadels that are likely left and you're done.

You may note that I make no mention of the fleets. If you watch the videos you'll note that the only ones you really must engage are the first Citadels and the last Citadels. The rest are ancillary if you want. I tend to avoid engaging them as that just gives the RNG a chance to ruin your day a little more.

A side note since people seem to want to complain about this not being clear. Just inside the entrance, you can hug the left wall and reach the building controlling the shroud so you do not have to run the channel. I ran the channel to make the point that it is not a difficult task when you understand it.

The Builds :

There are a myriad of options available to you for the 113. Some are better than others and those with the best toys will likely have the best time of it. That said, I want to put to rest the idea that these targets can not be done 'cheaply' without charged armor. This is the best run I've done to date of any of the builds. This build was more commonly at 10-12-ish min of damage if I had to gauge an average. Not a single ship in this video has a single plate of charged armor. The damage of this run is 1 minute 13 seconds of damage.

The build for this fleet can be found here. The key to the build is the Zelos Tank.

Despite all the cries otherwise, there still is room for creative builds, just not as it used to be. This saddens me as well, but you have to play the cards you're dealt. This particular build has been designed to run with the Monoliths and not lead too far ahead of them, hence the Speed System 4 instead of the traditional Speed System 5 or Hydraulic Resistors.

The other aspect of this build is that it is designed around a couple specific mechanics of the Zelos and the build maximizes these aspects which is one reason why it performs so much better than the Gridiron as a tank. The selection of everything from the Phalanx 3 to the Counter Measure System 3 is all geared to squeeze every advantage out of the hull and it's special abilities.[1] After having tuned this for the non-charged armor build, I learned  a few things that made this a better all-around build than I had before. It will likely perform even better when I switch back to some charged armors.

The Gridiron is next and that fleet build, without charged armors, can be found here.

The Gridiron build is similar in thought, but since it has some shortcomings as compared to the Zelos it can not perform as well as a tank. The big benefit of the Gridiron is the Tactical Field that gives all the nice bonuses to the Monoliths. If this is something you forego (like me because I'm lazy and like to stack) then the Zelos is likely a better choice for you for a tank. That said, even without the charged armor the Gridiron still performs well in the 113. Do note that this run did not use a Sea Serpent crew and likely took some extra damage because of it.

This all came about of course from one of the original runs that were dome with the fleets using charged armor. That video is below and the original Grid/Mono build is from this article. The build can be found here.

The final Zelos build, I believe, will end up looking like this:

Original charged Grid/Mono Fleet run:

[1] I am rather hesitant to explain this fully since, more and more, players seem to be wanting just the builds and not wanting to learn. Add to this some countering of previous builds and there are times I am leery of fully explaining. I will say this, that sentence covers most all of the magic of this build. There are specific reasons for the selection of the Phal3 and CM3. I did mention it on a TFC show, and I hope that this mention allows for you to puzzle it out as I believe that will help you far more than me just spitting out the answer... for now.


Ok... today we are mid-raid of the last raid, so... The reason the Phalanx 3 works so well with the Zelos is that the shorter range of the Phalanx 3 allows the Duality CM to fire first. This is significant because the Duality CM can fire at the same missile multiple times until it is dead. Doing this allows a larger percentage of projectiles to be killed before the Phalanx 3 has to engage and be limited to one shot per incoming missile. The use of CM3 adds accuracy back to the Phalanx 3 to make up for the loss of going from Phalanx 4 to Phalanx 3. Additionally, because the Arc missile in these targets can not be shot down by the Duality CM this allows your hull to 'multi-task' hitting the missiles and the Arc simultaneously allowing you to more effectively use your finite salvos per engagement. In essence, we are manipulating the order of operations a little so we can take as much advantage of the Duality's nature as possible.