Crystalline Craters

**Crystalline Craters** is a final section of Chapter 2. It takes place on a high cliffside where Narelle's crashed spacecraft is located.

## Walkthrough

The Crystalline Craters are situated at the top of a massive cliff. When you arrive, follow Utgy and the other Varkem Soldiers to the base of the cliff. Utgy will lead you up the cliff-face, the other soldiers staying behind to keep watch before later following you up. You have to follow Utgy, using your rocket boots to keep pace with him, though like back at the training building he will stop and wait for you to catch up at certain checkpoints.

You soon enter some caves encrusted with crystals, which leads to a massive cave with large crystals inside that you have to walk on and jump between. Continue following Utgy until you reach the top, where a cutscene will show that Narelle’s ship landed upside-down some distance ahead. Head over there, making sure to top up your oxygen levels at one of the oxygen vents.

Enter Narelle’s ship by pressing the button on the airlock, then rocket-jump inside. Once inside you will find Narelle, who is dressed in Metal Armor and an Oxygen Mask similar to what you and Lucas had before Chapter 2. Utgy gives you some materials to craft her a spacesuit and leaves to keep watch. The materials he gives you don’t stack with anything else in your inventory. They also can’t be used in any other recipes, and similarly only they can be used in crafting Narelle’s space suit.

Once you craft her the full suit, she begins putting it on, but Utgy calls you on your comm and says there is incoming. Head outside with Narelle, and head back over to where you came out from. Drones are beginning to spawn, dropping from the sky, but at the same time some gray and cyan concrete pylons are generating out of thin air, being beamed down by the Celestial, though it doesn’t seem like they do anything.

You have to fight off a few waves of drones. The main thing to note is that Utgy and the Varkem Soldiers fight of their own accord (unlike Lucas and now Narelle, who attack whatever you attack). They will use a ranged weapon if no drones are near them, and a melee weapon if there are. One of the other Varkem Soldiers, Corporal Hydroix, also sets up a Force Field and points out that they damage Aerial Drones that try to swoop at them, essentially deflecting them.

After some time you will be put in a cutscene to begin escaping by jumping off the cliff. However, the pylons then unveil their purpose - they generate an enormous, impassable energy barrier between them, trapping you, Utgy, Narelle and the rest of the soldiers inside an octagon-shaped area.

Utgy and the rest of the soldiers will begin turning their weapons on one of the pylons to try to destroy it, and he orders you and Narelle to shoot at the Aerial Drones. A Heavy Aerial Drone will spawn, which you have to defeat. Once you do, one of the Varkem Soldiers (who got knocked off the cliff at the very beginning) calls Utgy and says that he has set up a Link Teleporter, and that if you create a Link Teleporter yourself and link it to his, you can escape. Utgy puts you in charge of this endeavour, however one of the items it requires you don’t have yet.

At this moment a boss drone appears.

### Boss Fight - Aerial Assault Drone

The Aerial Assault Drone has AI similar to a ghast, however its form is very different, and it has numerous abilities that set it very far apart.

It has the following attacks:

* Its vanilla fireball attack. The fireballs have increased explosion power so they’re more damaging.

* Every ten seconds it will unleash a barrage of three homing missiles that first fly upwards into the sky for a bit before each picking a random target (which can include you, Narelle, Utgy, or one of the other Varkem soldiers), then homing on them and exploding upon hitting their target or the ground. The homing missiles can be destroyed by shooting them.

The rest of its abilities it will randomly choose from once every 10 seconds (5 seconds after each missile attack).

* It can spawn a large group of Aerial Drones or a group of Phaser Turrets. Utgy and the other Varkem soldiers will focus on these.
* When you knock it down to 80% health it will gain the ability to teleport, disappearing for a moment and then reappearing in a random spot.
* When you knock it down to 60% health it gains an ‘artillery’ ability where it will sometimes drop a line of warning indicators along the ground in front of it that then detonate in rapid succession. These always aim for the player.
* When you knock it down to 50% health it gains an ability where it will slam the ground and unleash an antigravity surge which will give levitation to all players, allies and ground drones for a few seconds.

It has a lot of health, but once you bring it down it will drop a special item named the Interspatial Core, which is required to craft the Link Teleporter. If you don’t have enough of the other materials to craft it yet you can farm them from drones, as waves of them will continue spawning in a manner similar to at the Crashed Ship, with a mini-boss spawning at the end of each wave and the next wave only spawning once the mini-boss and enough drones from the wave have been defeated.

Once you have crafted the Link Teleporter, place it on the highlighted spot near the Matter Manipulator, and a cutscene will show all of you escaping. Once you’re down at the hrover, rocket-jump into it, and you will all make a clean getaway.

## Equipment

The Aerial Assault Drone drops one of the following four weapons upon its defeat. In multiplayer it has a 50% chance of dropping an additional weapon for each player:

Aerial Missile Launcher - Shoots homing missiles that explodes and can deal up to 20 damage. It has a fire rate of 1.5 seconds.

Artillery Cannon - A powerful weapon that shoots a slow-moving red particle that unleashes a chain of explosions as it moves forward, each dealing up to 25 damage. Can be used once every 10 seconds.

Antigravity Surger - Deals 8-12 damage and inflicts levitation for 5 seconds to all nearby mobs within 8 blocks. Can be used once every 15 seconds.

Broken Cannon - 48 Attack Damage, 0.25 Attack Speed, Knockback II. A broken Aerial Assault Drone cannon that, while unusable for shooting, is repurposed as a powerful melee weapon.

## Recommendations

As explained back in Training Time’s recommendations, crafting a Plasma Rapid Blaster is vital, especially when going up against the Aerial Assault Drone.

When fighting it, the Rapid Blaster’s quick fire rate will likely destroy most of the homing missiles that the boss shoots if they come towards you (the rest you can just let explode - your allies can’t die). It will also be useful against the insane amount of Aerial Drones that spawn throughout this section, especially against the Heavy Aerial Drone. In general it is a bit easier to deal with Aerial Drones as of now though, due to having access to better weapons, there being more allies to help you, and the fact that Aerial Drones can now spawn in their larger variants, which while they have more health, they are easier to hit.

Back to the Aerial Assault Drone, Narelle, Utgy and the rest of the Varkem Soldiers won’t directly target the boss itself (though it can still take damage if a stray shot hits it), meaning you will have to deal most of the damage yourself. They will, however, attack Aerial Drones and Phaser Turrets should the boss spawn them, meaning you probably don’t need to worry about them too much. Just keep moving around the arena to avoid the many ranged attacks being thrown your way, or you can also try hunkering down in a force field.

Most other weapons from Chapter 1 won’t be too useful here, including the Assembler Drone’s weapons. The Electric Drone Staff can deal a little bit of background damage, but it won’t make too big of a difference. You could try to get it to latch on to the Aerial Assault Drone, however it may get distracted if it spawns some Aerial Drones or Phaser Turrets, and once it begins teleporting it will basically become useless.

In order to craft the Link Teleportal, you need the following materials:

- 1 Interspatial Core (which drops from the Aerial Assault Drone upon its defeat)

- 32 Electric Cells

- 16 Laser Cells

- 128 Combat Drone Parts (32 Varkem Metal)

You should have enough Electric Cells by this point if you saved them, but if not, mobs that spawn after the Aerial Assault Drone’s defeat have a unique property where they all have a 50% chance of dropping 1 Electric Cell, and defeating a mini-boss guarantees it to drop 1 Teleportal Cell.

If you wish, you can continue farming the mobs even after getting enough materials if you wish to craft more Varkem Energy Cores, since more weapons that require them become available at the start of Chapter 3 right after this section. However, there are a lot of mobs at the beginning of Chapter 3, so you probably don’t need to spend too much time on this.