Hoi Chummers!

Welcome to the Red Challenge guide.

The Red Challenge is easier than the Blue Challenge. You should have at least one weapon skill tree maxed. You can do it after having finished the whole story mode.

Like in the Blue Challenge, a victory will give you 5 karma point, and the more round you complete, the greater will be your chance to drop nice loot.

This challenge is more friendly toward rigger/decker than the blue one, since there will be tons of drones in round one and all the ennemies will be vulnerable to tech damage.
Magic users are still useful, but mass armor spell don't seem to be necessary.

You start the challenge with 5 Assault Drones in front of you.


The Assault Drones are magic and stun immune. They have 100 physical armor and 50 HP. They attack either with a machine gun or with a low accuracy AOE rocket. Machinegun do 10 physical damage.


Just take cover, don't stay too close to each other and focus your fire on the same target. Decking is naturally very efficient against them.

after 2 turns, wave 2 will spawn, there will be:

• 1 Neonet Commander
  
• 2 Neonet Engineers
  
• 2 Neonet Infiltrators V2

The Neonet Commander can spawn a roto drone to fight you, but if you kill the commander, the drone will die too. they all can be stunned. naturally, the drones will be immune to magic. Neonet Engineers and Neonet Commander can rigg into drones, giving them an extra attack and improving their aim. Yes, they can rigg into the Assault Drones. Neonet infiltrators attack with a 10 physical damages laser.

after 2 more turns, wave 3 will spawn with:

• 2 Sun Priests
  
• 2 Neonet Engineers
  
• 1 Neonet Infiltrator V2

Sun Priests can cast fireballs, so another reason why you should spread out. I have never seen them cast sacrifice.

after 2 more turns, the last wave will spawn:

• 2 Assault Drones
  
• 1 Sun Priest
  
• 1 Neonet Commander
  
• 1 Neonet Infiltrator V2

each wave will spawn on a random wall, like this:


Strategy:

This round is a decker paradise, so if you're in a full decker team, this one is a no brainer. Otherwise, it will be best to take cover and spread out at a long distance, this way the Assault Drones will only be able to shoot you with their very low accuracy rockets. The other waves will spawn quick, but they aren't hard to kill. If you have deckers and non deckers in your team, play smart: let the deckers focus the same target, while the non deckers focus another target. It's not efficient to shred the 100 armor of an Assault Drone with physical attack if the drone is then destroyed with tech damage.

In this round you will face 3 waves of Infected Bombers. Each wave will spawn 8 of them, all around the room. Be careful, sometime they'll be hidden behind pillars.

Those drekheads have permanent haste, so they'll be able to move and detonate the same turn. Their blast radius is the same as in story mode, but they will do 25 physical damage around them.

Hopefully, they are vulnerable to all kind of damage, and can be stunned.













Strategy:

Starting point:

• Middle of the room: be sure to really be packed close to each other and clean one side of the room to create an emergency exit path.
  
  • Pros: easy chain reaction explotions, fast room wiping
    
  • Cons: easily trapped if you don't have enough movement range
  
  
• One side of the room: you'll have to be careful with bombers hidden on the other side of pillars, and don't blow the ones that spawn too close to you.
  
  • Pros: safer for slow runners,
    
  • Cons: take more time to kill them all, you'll end up trapped if you really lack firepower

Any way, be careful not to blow your teammates, and communicate a lot with them to decide wich one to target and wich one to stun. Roto drones are very useful here, as meatshield but mostly as serial stunner, remember that they have a stun combo with marked target. you can also try to gather the Bombers to make a serial detonation. Try to focus the closer bomber and remember that the blast will do 25 damage, it's serious damage but not enough to kill another undamaged bomber. And it's always better to run than to bet on a hazardous kill on a too close bomber.

A lot of shotgunner love to headcrack them, resulting in disasters. Headcrack can crit, oneshoting the bombers, and it will crit VERY often. Don't blow yourself this way please.

Remember Takshak from the story? The dude dealing with Luna who go Naruto style and spawn illusion clones of himself? Well, seems he got real clones, because you will face now 4 real Takshak in this last round. There will be only one wave, no reinforcement to wait.
The 4 Takshak will spawn at random position. If you are lucky, they will sometime spawn close to each other, ready to be hosed down.


Takshak have 115 HP, and 24 physical/magic/tech armor. He is stun immune but can be damaged by any kind of damage.


His clones are much more weaker. But these illusions are all tech immune.

Strategy:

Like in the story, if you kill a real Takshak, all his clones will vanish. Take cover to reduce his aim and you should be mostly safe. Takshak and his clones have all the same attack, a manaball dealing between 6-8 magic damage. Takshak will sometime summon more clones, especially if you killed his clones, so focus your fire on one real Takshak at a time in order to dispose of him quickly and not get swarmed by too much clones.

Congratulation, you now completed the Red Challenge, entertained millions of Boston survivors, and maybe won some epic loot. Hope this guide was useful.

Thanks to all the runners who teamed up with me.