Testing Station 152

The electromagnetic reading of the Coriolis storm is exceptionally high in this location.

Testing Station 152 is an Overland Dungeon, featuring a unique boss fight, and can be completed solo or in a party. Overall difficulty is also scalable, allowing for increased challenge and rewards granted upon completion.

Details

This testing station is located on the North of the worldmap, between Hagga Basin and Arrakeen.

As a former Imperial Testing Lab, the scientists in the area experimented with harnessing the power of the Coriolis Storm, which massively backfired, frying anyone inside alive when the tests were effective

Now merely a husk of what it was, it's controlled by Deserters and it's secrets guarded by the Planetologist Takulki, eager to defeat any intruder meddling with the important data gathered by the successful, yet failed, experiment.

The station has mostly energy environmental damage in the form of electrical rays, puzzles and electrified floors - Taking damage from any electrical surface will nearly deplete the power pack reserves and cause an incredible amount of damage on your healthbar, scaling down with armor and mitigations.

Layout

The station follows a linear layout, with 2 mob-wave rooms and a Boss room.

Puzzles / Hidden Rooms

Unlike other testing stations, this station has 3 main puzzles the player has to solve.

• The First puzzle consists on pressing a "red" console button in the room adjacent to the starting area, which will remove the electrified floor leading to a corridor for the next puzzle. The button is in a wall with red light and is clearly distinguishable.
• The Second puzzle consists in activating 2 console buttons to unlock a door, while a spinning wall of lighting is rotation, on a the circular room. The strategy for this room is to go left when the wall of electricity passes, press the button, continue with it, press the second button, and then open the door.
• The Third puzzle consists in 4 electrical doors gating a big mid-section of a room that leads to the exit room, covered in electrified floor.
  • The left electrical door will deactivate during 5 seconds which will allow you to enter the mid-section of the room, activate a red console button opening another of the doors, and then passing to the half of the room that leads to the exit.
  • After that, go to the left area of the room and you will see some stairs that lead to a control room with another console button, this will deactivate the electrified "top" part of the mid-section.
  • Undo your steps and then you will find one of the doors will also deactivate during 5 seconds, go with it, take the White ID-Band and press another button to open the remaining door.
  • Then you can jump on top of the mid-section top part and search a console button that will deactivate the electrified floor of the exit door.
  • What remains is following the previous steps, and looting the White-Door chests if you want, as it's now unlocked by the band.
• The 2 combat rooms spawn waves of adds consisting:
  • Assault-Rifle Ranged npcs
  • Sword Rushers
  • Machine-Gun Heavies.
• After the second mob-spawn room, there is a hidden area accessible through a small puzzle.
  • There is a room with two spinning electrical walls and an electrified door, leading to a room with two buttons and some loot/mission objectives.
  • You need to activate the two console buttons on this area and run towards the previously electrified room, then you will find, in one of the sides, a locked metal door you can take out with your cutteray.
  • Following it there are some vents and an electrified floor you can easily cross, which leads to another metal door and a big loot room.

Recorded Dialogue

Solido Projection

SOLIDO PROJECTION: Greetings authorized visitor. If you have reached this point, it means you have passed our checkpoints and satisfied all security protocols. I am therefore authorized to tell you this is Imperial Testing Station No. 152. A station dedicated to researching new, hyper-efficient forms of power generation and storage. I am excited to tell you we here at TS 152 are on the verge of an exciting breakthrough that will have profound repercussions for all humankind. For our goal is nothing less than harnessing the awe-inspiring power of Arrakis' mighty Coriolis storms!

Shigawire Recorders

ANCIENT SCIENTIST: Well... the storm has passed at last! And it certainly seems as if we achieved effective power generation, but the question of just how effective remains. We'll have our answer as soon as we check the core output. Ahh, here we are, the moment of truth. READY EVERYONE!? Let's see... Yes... YES! HA! All batteries charged to full capacity! Retention at 100%! HA! We've DONE it! We've really done it! We've harnessed the storm! Haha! Congratulations everyone! We have our proof of concept! Next step: an exponential increase in the core's size and capacity!

ANCIENT SCIENTIST: Our new Mark 8 core is ready to come online with the next Coriolis storm. I'm fully confident we will succeed in achieving full capture and retention of the storm's power. At this rate we will soon be able to build a core capable of capturing enough energy to power a low-population world, like Arrakis, for a century or more by tapping the energy of a single storm! Ha! Lo! We are like the weather gods of ancient myth. The power of the storm is ours to command! Hahaha!

SKEPTICAL SCIENTIST: I'm afraid I've become unpopular around here. Everyone else is positively giddy with our success so far, and I seem to be the only voice urging caution. They've taken to calling me Doctor Downer. I just keep hearing the words of my first-year planetology instructor: "The freaks of cyclonic storms are the rules of cyclonic storms." There are just too many variables in a Coriolis storm — especially with the furious strength of those on Arrakis. With winds reaching up to 700 kilometers an hour its... Well, this is just not the place to try to catch lightning in a bottle.

OLEG TAKULKI: Our investigation of Testing Station 152 has proven spectacularly fruitful. What was achieved here is extraordinary. Nearly limitless power generation! Yet, the ancient researches may have taken their experiments too far. It seems they inadvertently flooded the entire facility with thousands of watts of electricity. The entire team perished in an instant, and the project never restarted. I'm certain we can duplicate this technology. This may be just the advantage we need to facilitate a meteoric rise in the fortunes of House— Wait—what's that? Damn! Someone else found their way into the lab. We can't afford interference! I'll have to eliminate them.

Boss Fight

PLANETOLOGIST TAKULKI

Being one of the easiest bosses to deal with, but requiring at the same time most "precise" knowledge of the electricity patterns, this planetologist of unknown allegiance fights with a disruptor pistol and several unique abilities, paired with a terrifying electrical dance of lighting currents and walls that follow a specific rythm and pattern.

This boss has no add spawns, which makes him really easy to deal with when the room patterns are memorized.

Boss Abilities/Damage tools

• Disruptor pistol (3 charged shots)
• Suspensor Blast
• Stunner
• Quick Melee

Room patterns

• Phase 1
  • When the boss is damaged, some "static" electrical walls will appear and bolt across the room, clockwise.
  • After a certain amount of time, the walls will shift to an horizontal pattern, triggering 3 times.
  • The walls can be easily dodged with position or with suspensors when horizontal.
  • The patterns is: 6 vertical bolts, 3 horizontal descending top-to-floor bolts.
• Phase 2
  • The electrical walls will now move clockwise while they appear and bolt, damaging you during and after the animation - be aware!
  • Follows the same pattern as on phase 1, but now the walls will continue moving after they appear.
  • The patterns is: 3 rotating vertical bolts, 3 rotating horizontal descending top-to-floor bolts.
• Phase 3
  • A series of balls will start descending from the center of the room.
  • Instead of walls, now approximately 1/3th of the circular room will be flooded with lighting, in two mirroring 1/6ths, without any movement (static lighting)
  • The pattern moves clockwise and starts on the entrance room sixth.
  • The patterns is: 3 rotating vertical procs, 3 horizontal descending top-to-floor bolts.
• Phase 4
  • Now the balls on the center will rotate and flood 2/3rds of the room.
  • The ball has a circle carved on it, that side will never be flooded with electricity.
  • The patterns is: 3 rotating vertical procs, 4 horizontal descending top-to-floor bolts - the last horizontal (ground) electrification triggers twice!

Strategies

• Movement
  • Phase 1 and 2
    • Fight at the edge of the room, taking an eye to the "Devices" on the wall which triggers the electrical wall bolts.
  • Phase 3
    • Stay close to the center of the room, move to the previously "bolted" areas as the pattern never repeats the previous 2 electrified areas.
  • Phase 4
    • HUG the ball circle'd area and move with it, stay with suspensors active during the vertical 2 last bolts as they repeat, electrifying the floor
• Boss
  • The boss disruptor pistol damage is low but can be lethal without shields, he shots 3 times then reloads - use that time for gunning him down.
  • If you use mostly melee, the boss can be easily staggered but will trigger Suspensor blast, which can be lethal with a moving pattern.
  • If you are too far away or suspended, the boss will try to use a stunner on you - be aware.
  • The best phase for higher damage output is when the horizontal patterns descend.
  • The best moment for healing up is when the boss is reloading.
• Recommended skills
  • Compel - Will save you countless times if you make a mistake, as gives you time to heal up.
  • Ignore - Same as compel. but with higher cast time/cd.
  • Attractor Field - Will increase your ranged damage on the boss by a high amount.
  • Deflection - A very unused skill that may be your saviour on this boss, using it while being on low health or with your shields broken can just give you the time you need for healing up in an interphase.
• Tips
  • Even if you are ranged, try to play "close" to the boss, but not at melee ranged - This will cause the boss to trigger his suspensor blast, which can allow for an extra 6-8 seconds long damage phase when chained with the boss reloading.
  • Do not panic, prioritize the pattern as its what is gonna get you killed - the boss gun tickles the shields on difficulties lower than 15, but does massive damage on low-armored targets.
  • Stay close to the round part of the ball construction during the last phase.
  • Prioritize surviving during the vertical lighting bolt phases, Prioritize damage during the horizontal lighting bolt phases (before the ground pattern happens)
  • DO NOT PANIC - Try to memorize the "dance" of patterns and the boss will be super simple - advised to practice on level 1.

Rewards

This lab has mostly technical armor and ranged weapon rewards, amongst the loot pool some of the highlights are:

• Experimental Lightning Gun
  • A powerful energy-based energy rifle that melts shields and has a rapid burst mode
• The Forge Set
  • Incredibly useful light-armor set providing elemental resistances, optimal for early (1-15) levels of the Electrical, Poison and Fire Labs.
• Power Harness
  • Heavy armor with extra passive energy reserves, for better powerpack duration
• Circuit Gauntlets
  • Heavy hands with 10% reduction on power use from all sources, included shields.
• Regis Tripleshot Repeating Rifle
  • A very coveted high damage rifle.
• Energy Resistant Weave + Energy Dispersing Padding
  • Garment augments for energy protection, higher drop chance on this lab.
• Rafiq Snubnose Disruptive Coating
  • Unique augment of this Lab, for increasing Snubnose disruptor damage.