[SPOILER WARNING] - You have been forewarned... Hey guys, this is going to be a post dedicated to sharing information about the new raid, "Crota's End", with all of our clan-mates. Feel free to comment and add more information as you find it. Ultimately, we'd like to make this a community of active friends, and one way to do that is to share what we learn so others can learn from our mistakes and our accomplishments. This post and it's comments may have spoilers for those of you who still wish to do it blind. Consider yourself warned. There are several parts to this raid, much like VoG. [The Descent] The first part is the uber dark maze; think of the movie "The Descent". The only difference is y'all will be prepared. You will activate a pillar to produce a mini bridge. You will want to then fall down the holes with a 3-4 person distance between each person. This way, you can see when someone dies and know when to jump and others can warn you to jump at the right time. From here, you will want to designate a staymate and make him leader. Clear out the adds that show up around your base (they can't come into the light) and proceed forward as a team. Notice that every few seconds, you get a debuff called "Weight of Darkness" that goes from 1-10. At 1, you run a little slower, jump a little lower. However, once it reaches 10, you cannot sprint or double jump. Make sure to equip agility based specs and an agility weapon if you have one. It really makes a difference. Stick together so that if you die, someone else can revive you. If you die close enough to the back, someone should hide in a doorway and the staymate can come and rev you. Once rev'd, the staymate should proceed back to his haven. When you first die, it will have a short timer, but as more and more people die, the timer will go on up to the max of 30 seconds. The overall objective is the team should watch each other's backs as you push forward, never stopping for any significant period of time. ***** CHEST ***** Be on the lookout for doors on the left. There is always one with a chest, and the door will have a green vertical line above it indicating it houses your booty. You'll follow the light pillars, hanging around each one for a few seconds to reduce your weight and continue on. Don't hang around too long as they will turn orange and explode taking anything in the vicinity out. You'll notice (more so for the bored person sitting at the safe haven) that you are really just going up in a spiral near the haven towards a blueish hued bridge piece. Once to the top, you will be swarmed by two Ogres, a whole slew of Knights, and more screamers than you have seen so far (grenade friendly and rocket made). You need to be here as a group because the objective is to activate the bridge by standing on the circle (just like the one from the beginning of the raid). Once it is active, my suggestion is to sprint across (even more so if only one is alive) so that you can get your next checkpoint. You hopefully have all earned something nice :) [The Bridge] This next part is really tricky, not so much because of difficulty, but rather because of timing. There are three circles, one in the center (this begins the bridge creation), and one on the left and right. The left and right (in relation to when you first come into the 'room') are your pillars of light. Notice the blue circles in the middle. You need to keep a man on each of the blue circles at all times while someone is working on the bridge. We typically separate out a strong person for center, left and right, with the weaker more squishy characters filling up the space with them. Once you activate them, very quickly, a swordbringer will literally bring you a sword. He'll also bring a quick death if you don't kill him quickly. Make sure that the bridge is fully formed before taking him down. When he drops on a side, send the weakest on that side over. Preferably a titan with bubble and blind or blinding grenades. If none exist, then let it be a blade dancer with invis. He'll grab the sword, haul it across the bridge and attempt to take out the gatekeeper. Make sure you don't die because they will just continue to accumulate (one per swordbringer killed). To kill him, dodge his first blow and [bumper], [bumper], [trigger] (melee, melee, cleave). Rinse and repeat until he dies or you are forced to run away. Now, stay alive and the other side will repeat. For starter side, once the first guy is over, try to tease the swordbringer over to the side with 2 guys, if that doesn't work, then one of the other guys can leave his post to help take him out. Next send over another squishy character. (We send over squishies first because the adds on the end side are fewer at the start). Once he's across, do the same process and send over your third squishy. If a titan with blind got over the first or second time (and you need it), be sure to activate the blind as someone is crossing so that it's easy for him/her to take out the gatekeeper. Now, there are 3 and 3. Everyone should evacuate the circles on starter side AS SOON AS the 3rd guy crosses the bridge. Starter side should go and stay mobile. Once the other side has cleared things out a bit, they should proceed to activate the bridge the same way that you were doing it on starter side. If necessary, titan bubble with blind or go invis in the center so the evil gatekeeper will not steal your soul. Starter side should now focus on killing the swordbringer. Don't worry too much about adds as they will keep reproducing like bunnies on steroids. Once he's dead, if y'all times it right, the bridge will be up and you can send over a stronger guy. Send over the strongest guardian now because the end side will need him/her. Kill the gatekeeper and keep that bridge up. The starter side will want to begin clearing out the adds as they have moved over to the other side and won't respawn on starter side. Once that's done, feel free to kill the 5th sword bringer and come to end side's aide. If you are feeling lucky, try to bring over the 6th guy. If you are not, then evacuate the circles and prepare for battle! About now (give or take a bit) end side will get swamped with 2 yellow ogres and 2 yellow wizards. Kill them all. If the guy on the other side has an icebreaker or sniper, aide in removing the ogre threat. Once the ogres are toast, you should get your next checkpoint and your new gear. If #6 doesn't port over, then build the bridge. [Intermediary] Equip your supers, uber grenades, machine guns, etc as you will be working your way up a tunnel and swarms of screamers will run at you in lines and hordes. Take them out slowly so nobody dies and work your way up the top (ignore this if you are working for the chest and see info below). Once there, there is a hole you will drop down and begin the next stage. ***** CHEST ***** If you haven't gotten the chest in the intermediary tunnel, then like mentioned before, equip your best stuff, but make sure agility is in there. Once those doors open, you will want to all haul it to the end together and kill the two shriekers asap. Do not wait because there is a chest with a timer at the far end. (Jump over the hole in the ground and the door will be there, and the chest will be inside). [Singer] For this part, everyone should be patient. Once the first damage is dealt to an enemy, there will be a 3 minute timer that starts. Once it ends, everyone will die (think of it as an uber slow oracle). Originally, we all thought you had to kill all the adds to get the timer to stop. We have discovered that you can walk out, do no damage to the enemy so that no timer starts, and send your 2 strongest guardians to the left and right top section above where you started. Sprint to the force shield and coax out the wizard on each side, then get to a good hiding spot up-top. When everyone is ready with their heaviest snipers, proceed to take out one wizard at a time. Usually the one on the right side (if you are facing the singer) will be the easiest to kill, so start with her, then work on the other one. Once that is complete, send two people to each side to wipe out the now active Shriekers. Once they are both down, the shields on the left and right will drop and you can proceed to pound the living daylights out of the Singer. Remember you only have 3 minutes to accomplish this, so act swift and act smart. Call out what's going on and stick with at least one other person because the adds can get overwhelming being that they are 32 yellows. After she dies, she can't sing, so you should be in the clear. [To Be Continued...]