What starts out as a fairly innocuous research mission on Eos eventually becomes your first encounter with the toughest remnant bot there is. You’ll pick up this mission from Hainly Abrams in Podromos.
- Place the first seismic hammer. Follow your map marker to the first location to the southwest of Podromos. Once again, you’ll know you’re in the right place when the shooting starts. Clear out the kett, then place the seismic hammer.
- And then clear out the remnant bots that appear.
- Place the second seismic hammer. The next location is further to the southwest. You won’t get to place the hammer right away, though.
- Investigate the strangers at the site. The scout you meet at the second location is from a nearby independent nation called Advent. During your conversation, he’ll offer you a deal — you can drill for the water for Podromos or you can drill for gas for Advent (which they will then trade to Podromos for water). The choice is completely up to you — it doesn’t effect what happens next in this mission or in the larger narrative at all.
- Place the second hammer to drill for water or place the second hammer to drill for natural gas. Check your map to see which is which, then go place the hammer. And then shoot the remnant that attack you.
- Place the third seismic hammer. Head to the third location (which is not too far away), and place the hammer. Now things get interesting.
- Defeat the remnant Architect. This is a big fight (just like every fight with an Architect), so we’re going to repeat our advice about remnant fights here.
General advice
- No fight against an Architect is easy, but there are some things you can do to help you survive.
- Keep moving. An Architect’s weapons are deadly, but the attacks are both telegraphed and avoidable. Just keep moving and you’ll be okay. This is the most important part of a fight against an Architect — especially at lower levels.
- Avoid using biotics. They’re just not generally useful against constructs and they’re not going to be great here.
- Use your special ammo. Just keep activating incendiary or disruptor ammo during the fight — you want that extra damage active throughout.
- Stay near cover. The Architects have some devastating weapons that you’re going to spend a lot of time dodging. You’re going to want as much cover as you can get.
- Don’t attack from beneath. The Architects generate a field under their legs that hurts a lot. Just stay out from underneath — which is easy because you’ll want to be back behind cover anyway.
- Keep moving. This was our first piece of advice, and it’s important enough to repeat here. You won’t survive many direct hits from an Architect no matter what level you are, but you can avoid almost every attack just by strafing (with the ocassional dodge thrown in).
- Don’t be a hero. Yes, like we said, you can avoid a lot of damage just by strafing, but don’t be foolish. It’s a giant robot with lots of lasers — you’re never going to survive a frontal assault. Shoot around cover, strafe, dodge and hide. Be smart.
- Be patient. You’re going to fire off an outrageous number of bullets during one of these fights. The Architects will absorb a huge amount of damage and these fights take a lot of time. Don’t rush it.
The phases of a fight
- Every Architect encounter follows the same formula — shoot the legs, shoot the head, destroy the remnant, shoot some more. That’s pretty much it, really.
- The reality is a lot more intense. The Architects are well armed and take a whole lot of bullets to knock down. But the structured and predictable phases to the fights make it entirely doable.
- Shoot the legs. The first phase is to shoot the glowing, pink conduits in the legs. (This phase is easy to identify because someone in your squad will likely be shouting at you about shooting the legs.) Just unload into the glowing pink targets. This part is timed — you have about 30 seconds to deal enough damage to a leg to get the head exposed before the Architect spawns some other remnant bots to make your life difficult.
- Clear out the remnant. If and when the Architect spawns remnant bots, turn your attention to them. Stay out of the Architect’s line of fire and destroy the bots. Use your squad to help you by directing them to attack with the d-pad.
- Go back to the legs. If you haven’t gotten the head open yet, after you clear the remnant bots, you have to go back to shooting the leg conduits. You’re on the clock again, so just keep shooting.
- Shoot the head. After you’ve dealt enough damage to the Architect’s legs, its head will open, revealing a new, spherical power conduit inside. Once again, your job is to shoot the glowing, pink bit.
- Watch for ammo crates. These fights either take place near a forward station or someplace where there are ammo crates around. It’ll be too frenetic to hit them during the firefight, but there are a few breaks in the action — like when the weaker remnant bots are spawned or when the Architect is moving to a new location. Use these breaks to resupply and heal up.
- Reposition. When you destroy one of the legs, the Architect will move. It won’t go far, but you’ll have to find new cover and ammo crates. Take a break, recover as much as you can, reload, hit an ammo crate to resupply and then watch for where the Architect lands. When it does, find yourself a new hiding place and resume your attack.
- Interface. When the fight is over and the Architect collapses, run around to the head to interface with it. This sends it into orbit where … it just kind of hangs out. You’ll see it the next time you’re in orbit around the planet. It leaves behind a nice crate of goodies, though.
- After your fight with the Architect is done, you’ll talk to Hainly over the radio.