Preview: Expeditions - Alcatraz Guide

A really early build of Alcatraz made its way to PTS on Friday, 5th February. To show you what you can expect, we will release a series of articles before Alcatraz will be released on live servers.

Contents

• The First Expedition
• Expeditions
  • How are instances chosen?
  • Structure of Expeditions
  • In between rounds
• Videos

The First Expedition

To get to Alcatraz Island and do your first expedition, you have to do the mission "Season 3: The First Expedition" starting at Coit Tower in San Francisco.

The mission requires you to travel to Fisherman's Wharf. From here, you will travel to Alcatraz.

After you've landed on Alcatraz, you will have to do your first expedition. You have two possibilities to start an Expedition:

• The ship on Alcatraz Island
• Matchmaking menu

Expeditions

Currently, there are three different maps available:

• The War Below
• Stolen Purpose
• Hellbug Hunt

You can choose one of the three instances and matchmaking will find an appropriate instance for you.

How are instances chosen?

Expeditions are based on rounds and tiers. Rounds are individual for each person and the tier of an expedition is based on the ego level of the leader of the group. Tiers increase with rounds and higher tiers mean harder enemies, but also better rewards.

The round and tier is displayed next to your ego level. From what's currently on PTS, at Ego level 5.900, Round 1 will be Tier 23.

Matchmaking will place you into an appropriate instance. This means: You probably will be placed into instances with other people and other people will be placed in your instance.

Note: Rounds of the people in expeditions can differ. A person being in round 1 could be placed into an instance with someone being in round 5, given both would have the same tier.

Structure of Expeditions

Each round of an expedition is divided into three stages. Each stage is getting gradually harder and features mini-bosses that can get quite hard. There are a lot of new enemies with new attacks such as:

• Electrocutioner: A Raider Tanker that sends out a shock wave and also a cluster bomb
• Anarchist: A Rioter that throws small bombs under your feet (like a mine field) and runs away
• A full list can be found in Trion's Expedition Preview

So far, expeditions feature:

• Hellbugs
• Raiders
• Mutants

 Every map can feature every enemy type, enemy types can differ in the maps as well.

The endboss fight is the hardest. There are a lot of new endbosses, such as:

• Jackson 1.0.30: He can shield himself, and has a stomp attack knocking you back
• Dekuso's Spawn: Similar attacks as Dekuso, teleports through the room, laser beam attack

In between rounds

After you defeated the endboss, you automatically get extracted out of the instance after 30 seconds. You now have 30 minutes to start a new round or end the expedition. This timer counts down if you're online or offline.

You have a pop up under your character's name and the time to start the next expedition is displayed on top.

You will always land on Alcatraz when leaving an expedition, can refill your spikes, ammo, grenades, repair your armor plates etc or spend some reputation on the various vendors on the island.

Videos

I recorded an expedition run of me. Each video is one "sub-round", the third video being the endboss.