The Battle for Echo Base (Imperial) 1.1

[Q'in]

The Battle of Echo Base Guide
Compiled with info from the SoE boards. Main post



Phase 1: Protect the AT ATs

The objective is to reach the Hoth base without losing 3 of your AT ATs.

As you load into the zone, you will be greeted by a selection of AT STs. These can carry 2 people. If you go in on your own, you can drive and shoot the lasers. If you get a passenger, they can operate the Concussion missiles as well. The passenger will get a toolbar with an option to use the Concussion missiles as their primary weapon. The missiles do appear to pack more of a punch, but are slow to re-fire.

You will quickly see the battle commence - you will encounter Rebel NPCs, Turrets, anti-vehicle mines and Snow Speeders.

The Anti-vehicle mines are hidden, and will only show up on your Radar when you come close in proximity to them. If they detonate, they can do about 150k damage which is almost enough to destroy your AT ST. It is worth having some of your team on mine clearing duty. Use your radar to spot them appearing.

As for the Snow Speeders, they will fly faster than your AT ST can move - there are several flight paths, and as they make their first pass on the AT ATs, they fly towards the beginning of the instance and come back for a second attempt, giving you two opportunities to destroy them.

Use your radar to spot them coming.

If you don't lose your AT ATs, well done. If you do, carry on regardless - eventually the army will reach Hoth Base, the NPCs automatically take out the Shield Generator - you'll hear a voice message of this, and get a waypoint for the entrance to the base.

Reward : 3 tokens if your AT ATs don't die!


Phase 2: Command Centre

Hoth Map

This section is great for Imperial Spies - FINALLY a group role!

Guide for Spies : There are 4 groups of objects you must kill, marked in your journal as objectives. They can all be found at locations marked on the map:

• Grotto (Food Crates)
  
• Equipment Room (Equipment Crates)
  
• Medical Centre (Medical Crates)
  
• Command Centre (Bombs)

You can run beyond all of the NPCs to these locations, and gradually take out the various Crates. You must be careful though, if the NPCs aggro they do hit hard.

I will update the guide as I do this a few more times with a suggested order. Thus far, I've gone to the Grotto first, then to the Equipment Room and then back towards the Medical Centre, at which point I rendevouz with the main group. I have seen a suggestion that the Spy does the Command Centre first and then the reverse order to this - there seems to be plenty of time either way.

Guide for Group : There is a timer to complete the objectives, however, this does not mean that you should rush through. Staying alive and killing things slowly but surely is much preferable to rushing through and dying. Grab aggro gradually, retreat if needs be, let NPCs help you etc. But if you die you clone at the base entrance and it can be a long way to run back, depending how far through you get.

That being said, this is simple, if you've a Spy to do their bit. Simply work your way through and after you go down the first lift, you will eventually come to a room where there are two routes to take. Go up the step to the right, towards the Medical Center. It doesn't take long to get there, and once you've taken control of it, you can clone there should you need to.

In the Medical center is a lift up to the Commando Center (lift is marked "Command" in English, not Aurabesh!). Head up there and once you've taken the room, you're set for a flawless victory on this phase.

Head back down and work your way towards the Hangar. There is a lift marked "Evac" in the Main Hangar... when you've cleared the area, the option to go "UP" will be unlocked, and you will have access to Phase 3.

Reward : You can pick up 1 token for completing a single objective, but you must complete all the objectives to get further tokens, a flawless gets you 3 tokens.

The new Rifles drop in the Command Centre, there's a named NPC in there.

Phase 3: Destroy Transport Ships

You have to fight your way towards the transport ships and destroy them.

You'll encounter a number of NPCs on the way, and there is a constant spawn of Rebel "Evacuation Pilots" from 2 areas of the map (Left and Right as you face the bunker exit, will check if it's West/East or whatever).

You can largely ignore the Evac Pilots as the Imperial NPCs will deal with them... pick some up as you run past but don't spend too much time on them as they respawn indefinitely.

When you get towards the ships, you'll see each one guarded by a 3x Gold Chevron Commandos. You must kill these Commandos for the ships to become attackable.

Best practice really is to stay together and take out each ship as a unit, not getting split up. Careful on the AOE as some clusters of guards are close to each other and you can be in trouble if you aggro 6x Gold Commandos at once.

Reward : If you destroy 3 Ships, you get 1 Token. If you get all 5, you get 3 tokens for the phase.

Wampa Valley

A side quest of sorts is Wampa Valley. In a side room in Echo Base you will find an elite Wampa (cl95 boss). Take him down, and when he is dead, move out into the valley which you get to by exiting the room where you found the wampa through a dark hallway. Once outside you will see rampid wampas, along with some taun tauns running around. These drop junk loot such as human skulls and taun taun bones and skeletons. Kill everything possible in the area. After killing all the wampas in the valley there will be an elite Wampa called Unkajo (a wampa skullcrusher). NOTE: Before anyone attacks him, make sure all your group is together up in the area by the wampa, which is also by a deserted structure and get up by the Wampa's food bowl. As soon as someone attacks him a barrier comes up, trapping you in with the wampa, and keeping anyone from getting in, so it is important to keep your group together so no one gets locked out. The elite wampa isn't terribly hard, until a few smaller elite wampa's come running to aid him.

Level 95 (or 96?) Gold Elite with ~850k health.

He has two debuff attacks that are preceded by a yellow text system message:

[Wampa scoops up ice and flings at (groupmember)] . This is nasty. It imprisons group members in a block of ice, like the crystals in Axkva Min. Unlike the AM crystals, you cannot execute ANY heals or combat actions while imprisoned. You can use stims while imprisoned. You cannot be freed from the ice prison, you simply have to wait out the debuff.

[Wampa picks up a rotting taun taun corpse and flings at (groupmember)]. This debuff takes all core stats to -200 for the duration of the buff. It's 40 or 45 seconds long. This debuff is 40 or 45 seconds long as well and will also hit any groupmembers within a 5 meter range.

Ok easy tip, Ukajo will gather up ice and throw it at a person named in a Yellow system message, after that he will pick a Taunton up and hurl that at somebody else also named in a system message (similar to phase 1 ISD ), you have about 10 seconds to move the toon getting the Taunton thrown at them near to the Toon encased in Ice, the warmth of the Taunton will Melt the ice and break the trap...!!

This is the deal breaker, you'll have to make sure people are aware of the coming ice debuff and have them run 10 meters away from the rest of the group.

The good news is both debuffs appear to work as a random aggro table, so if each player uses a Com NPC, pet, or combat droid, the wampa can debuff them instead of the players. All 8 players should have a 'pet' to help soak up these nasty debuffs. Buy a droideka if you don't have BM or a factional comlink.

In addition to the debuffs and punishing blows, he will sometimes call for 3 smaller gold elite wampas with less health, ~300k health. They will aggro members encased in ice, so make sure you pull aggro from your helpless groupmates.

You can exit and reenter the instance without fail (unlike other heroics), so our group finished the 3 objectives of the primary instance, exited to rebuff, and came back in fresh with a full kinetic buff. You'll need it.

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Version history:
1.0 - Initial release
1.1 - Debuff info for Wampa Boss added