#21

Is mission time a factor in getting Diamond ranks? My brother and I are thinking about trying to go for all diamond clears duo but we don’t know the parameters which determine your score.

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#22

No. Mission time doesn’t matter. I grinded the swarmers in Algorithm Normal with El Dragon to complete his clothesline lore and pulled a Diamond with well over an hour play time in the mission. Nor do challenges, really, so don’t sweat it if you’re not completing them all. Lives don’t really matter either, at least in Advanced. Extra lives will get you a slightly bigger score, but don’t be worried if you lose a couple here and there. The thing you REALLY want to make sure you do is open every single chest you find and grab the bonus score drops from them and especially from any boss. More kills and buildables and such will also boost your score, but the bonus score drops are your main concern.
And in Defensive maps like Experiment and Sabatuer, the amount of HP remaining on the points you defend doesn’t matter either. They can have 1HP remaining, as long as you complete the mission it won’t hurt your score.

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#23

Technically, more lives means more extra scores (the yellow ones) whenever you defeat a boss or open one of the large six-item chests (and Ops Points chests in Story Ops). Since there’s only a small number of those per mission, and since the increment per extra life are quite small, one or two lost lives don’t matter too much.

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#24

@VaultHunter101
It makes such a small impact though that it’s not noticeable. My group has done multiple normal runs where we take throwaway characters we never play and lose a lot of lives and still pull diamond by a wide margin. We did a run on Heliophage Normal and we lost every single one of our lives and I had to frantically finish off Rendain by myself we and still got diamond. I know lives make a difference in bonus score drops and such, I’m just saying that you can lose over half your lives and still pretty easily get a diamond rank if your overall character scores are decent and you picked up every chest. I guess lives make more of a difference the fewer players you have, but if you’re running a full party you can goof off the whole time and still get diamond by a wide margin. Obviously on Advanced you’ll want to play it a little cooler to make sure you don’t wipe in the last boss fight, but overall it’s not really that hard to get diamonds.

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#25

That’s pretty much it. I play mostly solo PvE. In SOLO, every little score is potentially the difference between diamond and gold. With a 5-player team, you can go full sloppy and still hit diamond with a comfortable margin. Obviously, I’d just as soon spend the extra few minutes (cumulative) in a mission to ensure I’m maxing my score. I’m known to pass up the bonus chests along the way and come back to them after I’ve taken every possible opportunity to find even one more extra life. I avoid using splash damage and AoE attacks against grouped enemies with quick-kill bonuses (Evolved Thrall, Varelsi Scavens, etc), preferring to focus on getting those bonuses. I’d wager that solo is actually harder than COOP, at least for scoring.

You can thank BL2 and STALKER Shadow of Chernobyl, that I’m a little insane about finding every last tiny bit of loot that I can, and re-running missions/quests until I’m satisfied with my result. :wink:

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#26

Okay another question-Is it possible to duo Diamond ranks? I just tried one with a random (Level 5, to be fair) and we got a score of only 55k duo (gold rank). Would I need more people for more spawns, or is the ranking system adjusted per person in the group?

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#27

You can solo every diamond rank. You have to get quick kill bonuses though, which is something random people can screw up for you and tank your score.

Really you don’t even need to get that many quick kill bonuses as long as you’re looting everything and making sure you grab yellow score orbs before they disappear.

Toby and Marquis are best, in my opinion, for getting quick kills. By “quick kills” it really pretty much comes down to “did I one shot them?” as to whether you get base score or some amount of the bonus, as the window of time until the bonus disappears is usually gone by the time you can get another shot off. Basically, you gotta get good at headshotting consistently, and bring attack damage or critical hit damage gear to make sure your headshots are one-shotting the enemy.

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#28

The score margin doesn’t seem to be adjusted based on amount of players. In fact, from what I could tell it’s around the same threshold even across difficulty levels. But it’s still possible to get Diamon in a Duo. You can get it solo too. But the less players you have to more difficult it will be. It’s ideal to have a full party, because then it becomes a cakewalk. But a full party PUG is more likely to have one or two new players who isn’t performing well enough to pull the big scores and that can hurt you. Normally carrying new players isn’t bad. In fact it can be fun to roll in with a 5 spot PUG and just crush :wink: but if you’re shooting for diamond I’d say get at least a 3 man going and run it private. But the more the merrier.

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#29

Thanks for the tips! Really appreciate it!

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#30

@Beatrix
No worries! =]
I’m glad I could help!
It’s a shame we don’t play on the same console, or I’d help you get your Diamonds.
But I’m sure if you made a post asking PS4 players for some help that they’d be more than happy to help. The community here is pretty amazing.

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#31

Mr. mattgoodman and I are very much in sync on this. Quick Kill bonuses are GREAT! (Yes, click that.) And the advice for Toby or Marquis is also great, as they’re pretty much the one-shot wizards of this game. With recoil reduction gear, I find that Whiskey Foxtrot can manage a lot of those against Varelsi and Thralls. Up-close, he doesn’t even need the recoil reduction.

Also important, again as already noted above, is knowing how to get those yellow bonus scores to drop. Some bosses, if you do it right, can be farmed for those. The Varelsi Conservator at the end of The Void’s Edge comes to mind as perhaps the most easily score-farmable boss in the game. The guardians in The Sentinel, as well as the Old Sentinel itself, CAN be made to drops bonus scores during the fights, but there’s a trick to it. Geoff/Arachnis drops them every time he goes into his invincible shield before retreating for firmware updates, as well as once he’s killed. The Galactic Emperor is similar to the guardians, in that you CAN get him to poop out a bunch of bonus scores. And so on.

Someone should write a score-max guide. Mattgoodman, you up for some research? :smiley:

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#32

You can break Henchmen’s shields over and over again without actually causing damage to them, which makes them drop bonus score as well.

The guardian bosses drop score from breaking the glowing spots on their joints.

Jailer Hylis can be farmed by shooting his homing missiles which he shoots every 10 or so seconds, which turn into 3-4 yellow score.

I could write a guide… there are lots already written though. Probably. There’s not much to write really. Just the yellow score farming tips we’ve already mentioned + make sure to loot everything + quick kills are vital.

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#33

Is it better to take down anchors and summoners as fast as possible, or let them bring in all the adds they can and kill those first? Anchors seem to bring in 2-3 waves if you let them before they go pfft. Not sure about the summoners.

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#34

@VaultHunter101 It’s always best to just let the enemies spawn and rack up the kills for the extra scores. I’m pretty sure summoners will spawn thralls endlessly if you don’t kill them. One of my favorite things to do in Demon Bear is farm summoned thralls right after you open the door and see the Demon Bear for the first time. You can easily hit like level 7-8 in a pretty short time to get the massive advantage of having the level boost during the mission, and easily hit level 10 by the time you get to the boss.
I’m also pretty sure that at least certain anchors will spawn infinitely. In Renegade before activating the defense position** I farmed one anchor for my knife kills with Whiskey and I easily got 40-60 kills off of one spike. I’m not sure if they all spawn infinitely or not. Whether or not you’re actively defending a point might play a role in that.

[Edit] I said before activating the boss in Renegade, but I meant before activation the defense point.

#35

To be honest, I never even knew that quick kill bonuses were a thing. Maybe that’s why it was so easy for us to get Diamond while running with my group. We all play pretty aggressively and we’re usually wiping out the enemies pretty quickly. I mainly use a high accuracy Montana with a Symbiotic Gauntlet and some attack speed increase, so I usually take the big enemies out quickly, and we have a guy who usually runs a Marquis and another who usually runs high attack and crit damage Oscar.

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#36

There’s a couple on the left side of the final building as you approach over the bridge that have a limited number of spawns then disappear permanently. The ones on the roof by the windows regenerate each wave if you take them down, and those seem to be unlimited.

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#37

Leave the anchors and beastmasters alive and they’ll keep spawning enemies, but not infinitely. Beastmasters will eventually stop summoning thralls and just throw javelins at you, and anchors eventually self-destruct when they run out of spawns. I’m nearly certain there are no infinite beastmaster spawns or anchor spawns. They’ll behave the way I just described, except for the beastmasters that “shield” Jailer Hylis–they’ll spawn thrall infinitely, as far as I’m aware. The only other infinite spawns in the game are varelsi or swarmers.

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#38

That’s been my experience, too. In SOME cases, the anchors run out pretty quickly. In others, they last a while. But any anchor I’ve tried to let run, it eventually runs out of spawns and self-destructs just like you said. And my experience with the beastmasters is also just what you’ve said; sooner or later, they just stop summoning any more adds.

I’m wondering, and maybe you know: Are the shield-Thrall-things protecting that one beastmaster in the Oscar Mike op the SAME as Hylis’s shield-bearers?

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#39

Yes. You could farm that for score, or the Henchmen’s shields if you get them instead, or Arachnis’s 3rd phase, where he spawns enemies endlessly. I forgot about that last one.

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#40

Yeah, I only get those shield thralls when I have the side objective to kill the guy inside the shield. Farming Henchman is SO much more rewarding. And popping the defiler’s head poops out a crap-ton of bonus scores. You can also farm the foreman/supervisor (forgot which it is) if you get him. The drones he throws out, each drop two bonus scores when killed.

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