So this could be your first time attempting “Survival”. Or you just want to learn how to survive better. We’re all dead inside anyways. Fret not, this is the perfect guide for you regardless if you’re a new player or a veteran.
So welcome to this Survival guide! You’re on your first step to be experienced in survival missions. They come to this place when they know they are not pure. Tenno use the keys, but they are mere trespassers. Only I, Vor, know the true power of the Void. I was cut in half, destroyed, but through its Janus Key, the Void called to me. It brought me here and here I was reborn. We cannot blame these creatures, they are being led by a false prophet, an impostor who knows not the secrets of the Void. Behold the Tenno, come to scavenge and desecrate this sacred realm. My brothers, did I not tell of this day? Did I not prophesize this moment? Now, I will stop them. Now I am changed, reborn through the energy of the Janus Key. Forever bound to the Void. Let it be known, if the Tenno want true salvation, they will lay down their arms, and wait for the baptism of my Janus key. It is time. I will teach these trespassers the redemptive power of my Janus key. They will learn its simple truth. The Tenno are lost, and they will resist. But I, Vor, will cleanse this place of their impurity. Now let’s get into the basics of Survival.
In survival, the objective is to survive as long as possible. As you can see in the picture below, these are the 2 important things you will need to take note of. The red box shows the percentage of life support remaining and the number of life support capsules available throughout the map. The Green box shows the time you have survived.
In order to not lose you’ll have to survive and not let the life support system percentage reach 0%. Once that happens, no more life support will spawn neither will they drop from enemies. When the life support system reaches 0%, if extraction is not available yet, the mission ends in failure. Extraction will appear after 5minutes. If life support runs out after 5minutes, all squad members’ shields will start draining followed by their health, in a manner similar to a hull breach but at a much faster rate. The health drain will stop at 5 HP for 5 minutes and teammates who are killed can be revived normally. No more life support capsules will be dropped, rewards will no longer be given, enemies will stop dropping the life support modules, and all remaining life support modules on the map will become unusable. After this point the mission can still be completed if at least one player reaches Extraction. However, if all players die, the squad will fail. After 5 minutes, the health drain will continue past 5 HP and will kill everyone. Life Support decreases at 1% every 1.5 seconds. That means 100% is enough for 2 minutes and 30 seconds of Life Support.
So how do you prevent the life support from reaching 0%?
As you can see, the capsule in the picture is called a life support capsule. These capsules will be deployed during a survival mission, scattered across the map. You can activate the capsule by pressing the X button(default). Each life support capsule will give 30% life support. So in order to maximise each life support capsule, ensure that you only activate life support capsules when life support is below 70%.
This is another way to replenish your life support. This will be drop by enemies in survival missions as loot, as such it is not a guaranteed drop from enemies. Which is why in long survival missions, teams will have a Nekros, more on that later. Each of these replenish 4.67% of life support, or roughly 7 seconds worth of life support.
Now that you have understood how life support works, perhaps it is time to enlighten you on how survival reward system works. Survival is considered an endless mission type for the purpose is to test your endurance. Other endless mission types are: Defense and Excavation.
Rewards in survival are given every 5 minutes. The type of rewards given are based on the loot table rotation. There are 3 different loot table rotation. A, B and C. How this works is that the rotation moves like this: A > A > B > C. This means that to get a reward in a B rotation, you’ll have to survive till the 15 minute mark. To get a C rotation you’ll have to survive till the 20 minute mark. After which, the rotation will reset, i.e 25 minutes will give a reward from the A rotation and so will 30 minutes. Basically each rotation is 5 minutes.
Now that you have familiarised yourself with how survival works, or maybe you are experienced in it, but you want to push further, yet you find yourself stuck when you hit the 30 minute mark. Enemies start getting harder, life support capsules don’t spawn as frequently as they do and you’re desperate to push further. You may have seen players advertising “endless” survival in recruiting chat and you’re interested to participate.
In an “endless” survival, you should not be moving around too much. You should be staying in stationary position. preferably you should find a room that has only 1 door. Then you’ll be spending most of your life time in there. From there you just let the enemies come to you and you kill them.
With a good camping place, you’ll never have to activate the life support capsule as there are so many enemies dropping life support modules all over the floor. To find a good place to camp, there should be adjacent rooms with doors that can be opened. The game works such that any place that the door can be opened is a potential spawn point other than the room you’re in. This keeps a good flow of enemies rushing towards you and that is what you want. The more the merrier.
Now that you have the whole solar system coming to kill you, you’ll need a good setup to kill them before they kill you. In a team of 4, you’re going to need Trinity, Nekros, Nova, and someone who can deal a ton of damage. I will refer to the damage as DPS (personally I prefer Octavia).
This is by far the easiest job to do of all. Nekros’s third ability: Desecrate is all that you’ll need. To mod for Desecrate, you’ll need Range mods, Efficiency mods and Despoil.
Nova’s job is to ensure enemies get to the players faster. Her fourth ability Molecular Prime, has the special ability to speed up enemies. By modding for <100% power strength, the percentage slow down for enemies will become negative. As such a negative slow translate to speed up. Allowing for a max of 30% increase in speed this allows enemies to be killed faster and spawn faster.
Trinity has to ensure all parties has sufficient energy especially the DPS. By minimizing duration, Energy Vampire spits out energy very quickly. Also, you’ll want to have range mods to ensure that all parties can get the energy. Power strength will give more energy per pulse. Vampire leech is a nice mod to have as it gives overshields.
IMO, Octavia is the best DPS for long survival runs as her first ability: Mallet scales with enemy damage. What mallet does it attracts enemies to attack it, storing the damage and multiplying it by the damage multiplier(which is affected by your ability strength). Her third ability gives extra armor to allies and allows them to gain buffs by moving along to the beat. Her fourth gives extra damage buff to everyone.
Can you use other frames for DPS? Sure! But personally, I prefer Octavia due to the scaling damage. Also, it will be good to have all parties to have Corrosive Projection equipped to remove armour from engineers since the damage reduction of high-level armored enemies is ridiculous.
Now that I have taught you the basics of survival and also how you can survive for extended periods of time, some of you may ask: What are the benefits of surviving for a long time?
Other than to show off, there’s really no reason to stay for hours in a survival mission. Rewards don’t change if you stay for 2 hours as compared to 20 minutes, the rotation rewards stay the same. The only difference is you get more XP since the enemies are higher level, but you should not be trying to level your weapons in an endless survival in the first place, you should be going into one with max weapons and frames. So if you have any questions, leave it in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer them, if not leave a like and share this guide!
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