So, managed to finish the Overdrive Initiative missions yesterday night. Had a tight 11h after work missions spree that pretty much took care of the entire event, well, that and the couple hours I spent on Sunday night tipping my toe into the Intel missions.
Btw, since 3.23 is still in Wave 3, you'll have enough time to complete the whole thing even if you've not started yet, provided you can grind for around 12 hours in the immediate future. And have some luck finding another player that also knows roughly what they're doing. That's semi-optional tho, just makes things a lot easier. Apart from Intel Raid 5/5, the whole thing is more or less soloable. Well, Intel Raids 3/5 and 4/4 would be a lot easier with at least one more player. Same with... actually, I'll just make this into a table:
The worst timesinks are Intel Raids and Xenothreat Incursion. Which are your first experiences of this mission chain. But don't let that demoralize you, once you get those done the rest of it is a breeze.
Speaking of which, Xenothreat Incursion is literally just completing the same mission 5 times. The exact same. I'd rather CIG didn't introduce such grind. Intel raids you complete the first and third mission twice as well. Could've just been 3 missions. While it's easy to provide players with busywork by just saying "Oh you actually need to do this 5x," that's not very entertaining. And the whole point of games is to entertain. And then if the player happens to like the mission, they should be able to redo it at will. But don't force repetitions as gates to progress in the chain. That's dull.
If you're worried that you can't solo a hammerhead or something, just ask in chat for help. There are still a lot of players doing these missions. And I think you'd be able to find help in TEST discord as well, though to me asking people on the server just seemed like a faster option. Suppose it depends on your luck tho, try both.
I also particularly liked how most of these missions were right at the edge of soloability. There was some real incentive to get a group, which I did but most PUGs are just clusterfu...uun. Cluster of fun. Can't get anything done, waste a lot more time than if you went solo but it's nice to play in groups.
Btw, since 3.23 is still in Wave 3, you'll have enough time to complete the whole thing even if you've not started yet, provided you can grind for around 12 hours in the immediate future. And have some luck finding another player that also knows roughly what they're doing. That's semi-optional tho, just makes things a lot easier. Apart from Intel Raid 5/5, the whole thing is more or less soloable. Well, Intel Raids 3/5 and 4/4 would be a lot easier with at least one more player. Same with... actually, I'll just make this into a table:
| Mission | Soloable? | Time? | Notes |
| INTEL RAID | Yes, apart from perhaps 5/5 | 5 x 40 minutes or so | You don't need missions 1/5, 2/5, 3/5, 4/5 and 5/5. What you need is missions where you transfer 2, 2, 4, 4, and 6. I started in a group that did the "5/5" mission first with 6 transfers. For me this was supposedly 1/5, but my next missions were 2, 2, 4 and 4. Completed just fine. In short, you can do these out of order and whatever the mission supposedly is doesn't matter. A group is great help here, but you can go solo, especially the first ones. |
| PRIORITY TARGETS | Yes, totally. Need to take down a hammerhead tho | 3 x 25 minutes (Most of it travel) | Very easy space combat, though some might find the hammerhead slightly tricky. Think they've made the Xenothreat targets particularly vulnerable though. |
| XENOTHREAT INCURSION | Yes, totally. Need to take down 3 hammerheads tho | 5 x 15-45 minutes | You need to take out 25 ships per mission out of which 3 are hammerheads. This is doable solo, but it's a serverwide mission so if you notice anyone doing these while you're doing, idk, Priority targets or something, just do these. Makes it a lot easier and faster. If you go with a group, absolutely don't waste time grouping or anything. Just get to the mission location and start taking out things. If you're too fast, be polite and wait for the last ones to arrive before finishing. Also understand that these targets like to follow you to the ends of the earth. So if you go recharge your shields, you might be moving 5 targets 40km away from the mission marker. Keep that in mind when you got 5 targets left and can't find them anywhere. We had one mission where we just totally lost last few targets. After we abandoned the mission as we thought it was bugged, these guys showed up at the station we were refueling at. |
| XENOTHREAT SURVEILANCE | Yes, but a second player helps a lot. | 3 x 25 minutes | You need to restore uplink and defend it against Xenothreat hackers (by blowing them up). It's an absolute breeze if you have another player to start the uplink and you'll take care of the vanguards that are hacking the place. Btw if you're alone don't waste time on other ships while the uplink is going. Only the vanguards matter until you've finished the uplink. Then just clean up remaining ships. It's the vanguards that can lead to mission failure if left alone. |
| EMERGENCY AT KAREAH | If you're a total Rambo. | 1 x 35 minutes | I did this with another player. I got downed towards the beginning, my friend just killed everyone and rescued me. My hero. There's A LOT of enemies tho. But honestly the only issue is running out of bullets. So bring a packpack of ammo and you'll be just fine. The servers are so borked anyhow that they mostly just stand still. |
| SUPPLY REQUEST | Yes, totally. | 1 x 45 minutes (traveling) | You literally just need to pick up 3 boxes and carry them to destination. Absolutely no kind of skill or team necessary. Just took me whole lot of time to travel to middle of nowhere and then travel to another middle of nowhere on the other side of nowhere. |
The worst timesinks are Intel Raids and Xenothreat Incursion. Which are your first experiences of this mission chain. But don't let that demoralize you, once you get those done the rest of it is a breeze.
Speaking of which, Xenothreat Incursion is literally just completing the same mission 5 times. The exact same. I'd rather CIG didn't introduce such grind. Intel raids you complete the first and third mission twice as well. Could've just been 3 missions. While it's easy to provide players with busywork by just saying "Oh you actually need to do this 5x," that's not very entertaining. And the whole point of games is to entertain. And then if the player happens to like the mission, they should be able to redo it at will. But don't force repetitions as gates to progress in the chain. That's dull.
If you're worried that you can't solo a hammerhead or something, just ask in chat for help. There are still a lot of players doing these missions. And I think you'd be able to find help in TEST discord as well, though to me asking people on the server just seemed like a faster option. Suppose it depends on your luck tho, try both.
I also particularly liked how most of these missions were right at the edge of soloability. There was some real incentive to get a group, which I did but most PUGs are just clusterfu...uun. Cluster of fun. Can't get anything done, waste a lot more time than if you went solo but it's nice to play in groups.
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