EVE Epic Mission Arc Guide – Part 10

Hey There.
Thanks so much for the guide.
After 12 attemps attrying to kill Kirstan (and several ships) I finally called in some help and toyed with her for a while prior to my Corp CEO blowing the ship to pieces, (Cheers Will !). I was however, determined to Beat Dagan myself and after a few different fits and 6 attemps finally found the right mix: My Caldari Comrmorant fitted with 6 small Ion Blasters and a missile launcher with Faction Foxfires.
Apart from the shielding and capacator fits that are now fairly standard for me, I also equiped a Tech 2 NOS to counteract my rapidly draining cap. I hammered him at just over 1 click with Anti matter and then swapped out to plutonium (at 1.4 clicks orbit) after his shield was gone. Once I was into his armour his structure was quick to go…..
Couldn’t have done it with out your help, and alll those who posted here as well. Thanks to you all

I just soloed it – using a loaded Vexor with 3 Light Ion blasters. Gallente apparently don't care too much about shields so I was armor tanking with Damage Control on and a Medium Armor Repair module. Had a Nosferatu running all the time but also need a Capacitor booster. Oh, yes, 3 Hammerheads (1 got killed by one of the adds before the Dagan fight started properly)

The real challenge is to get and stay close. His targeting is lousy below 1000m and that is where you want to be. This means, come in fast and straight, orbit at 500m and I used a Stasis Webifier to keep him in place. Use an afterburner at least in your approach – you need to cover the distance quickly where he can target and shoot you. If you come in too slow, he will eat through your shield and armor. It took a long time and a lot of ammo – I used antimatter which isn't smart – it uses too much capacitor – but in the end it worked reasonably well.

I soloed it successfully first time with a low skill Caldari Cormorant. I destroyed the frigates, warped out and back in again and Parthus didn't agro me until after a few seconds when I was orbiting him at 1200m. The blasters did most of the work and destroyed him within minutes. The sensor booster negates Parthus's target disruption and improves dps.

The cormorant setup:

5 x Light Ion Blasters I with Antimatter
1 x Small Nos I
1 x Rocket Launcher with Navy Gremlins (though normal Gremlins would do)
1 x Afterburner
1 x Sensor Booster I
1 x Power Diagnostic System I

Thanks for the mission guides.

FIrst off, thanks for this excellent site.

With respect to 47 Chasing Shadows: I tried three time with a sniper Catalyst (railguns at 23km), and my tank was just eaten up like nothing – it wasn't going to happen. So I went back and fit an Atron with blasters (only 2 high slots on the Atron) & antimatter and went straight in with afterburners and orbited at 500 meters. Unbelievably, I took zero damage (!) – at 500 meters he can't touch you!. The problem is, the 2 blaster slots available to the Atron simply can't deliver enough damage to overcome his armor repper + the cap drainer. But what I realized was this: up close, all I needed was a little more firepower and I would prevail easily. Based on this new knowledge, I went back and fitted a Tristan with 2 blasters & 2 missile launchers. Again, I ABed in (taking zero damage ), meanwhile, I was able to slowly but steadily eat into his shield, armor and hull until he popped.

So, the bottom line is, this should be an easy kill if you fit a frigate with at least high slots like a Tristan, Rifter, or Incursus, and fight up close at 500 meters. BTW, it is very scary -at 500 meters his lasers make a huge noise even when they miss 100% of the time, combined with your Drone's autocannon, it sounds like a total battlefield.

Awesome guide, thank you very much for providing it and thanks to everyone who commented here – it helped a LOT in the last two big combat missions (47/49).

As for me, I did both 47 and 49 solo in my rifter. I have a good number of skills, though, so I'm sure that made a difference.

In both encoutners I stayed VERY close and blasted away. Both were tough but eventually I got them down.

Mission: 47: Against Kritsan I kept getting drained and had to use my shields a LOT but my launchers and turrets did fine over the long term against her – it got a lot easier when I got close.

Learning from that, and from advice of the posts above, I adjusted my tactics for Dugan.

Mission: 49: I experimented with amo types and found Explosive and Kinetic to be the best – particularly Explosive. The other key was fitting a Nosferatu. That kept my cap up and (hopefully) slowed him from recharging his shields. Outfitted with Fussion and Pirranah and orbiting just below 1000m did the trick. I missed a lot but he missed more. Once I was in orbit I worked hard pulsing my shields until I had his escorts done then it was just he and I. A stalemate at first but eventually once I got my modules in a good rhythm and with the right amo it was just a matter of time and he was done. In the end the battle took about 20 minutes. =D

Again, thanks for all the advice here!

– Cadence

I have to admit I just did the arc in an almost max-skilled Worm (yeah, that's cheating in a huge way). Not bad, but the ending does indeed need something climactic.

Well, to be fair, I did it in an Assault frigate. So I cheated as well

Mission 47: Earlier in the day, I first tried taking on the BC using my Catalyst, normal load of Rail guns: 2x150mm, 2x125mm, and 3x75mm, with a Small Cap Booster, an Overdrive, and Tracking aid for the Rail guns.

I'd already looked at your guide, so I knew I had to get in close.

I failed, of course. So, I took out the 150s and tried the lasers you mentioned. I made SOME leeway, but kept failing in the end. I was getting in close to 5000m, but obviously, that wasn't doing it.

After finally becoming toast, I went away for a few hours in disgust.

Which was, in fact, a good thing.

The final result: Catalyst. New load: Autocannons. 2x200mm, 3x150mm, 3x125mm. Small Cap Booser II, 1mm Afterburner, Overdrive, Gauss Field Balancer I. Ammo: EMP for the 200mm, Phased Plasma for the 150mm, and Fusion for the 125mm.

Depending on where you come out of warp, you may or may not take damage before you get in close.
Set Orbit at 1000m. Hit Afterburn and watch your distance. When you hit about 4000m, disengage Afterburner. Momentum will carry you closer. Set all guns to firing. Then, watch your distance and micromanage your Afterburner. Optimal is 2500m. Watch your distance. As it starts to rise, be ready. When it hits 3000m, hit the Afterburner. Watch for distance start to close in. Disengage Afterburner around 2700m. Momentum is still your friend. You'll get a feel for this. Keep watching distance and micromanage your Afterburner use. Doing this just right, the BC barely nicked my shields.

Mission completed. Garbage for salvage. And missed the Bonus time.
But it was DONE.

Sounds like I MIGHT be able to do the same with Dagan. Going to try.

Thats some awesome advice, thanks for commenting.

I would say though that you might have been better off had you not mixed your guns. If you'd fitted your ship with guns which were all the same (exactly, same type and module name) you probably wouldn't have had to manage your range quite as agressively. Personally I would have gone for blasters and not rails, filled them with AM ammo and orbited at around 1000m. That is of course if I was restricted to a destroyer. I cheated slightly and did the arc in an assault ship (tech 2 damage frigate with tech 2 guns).

With Dagan, I'm running into the same problem others have had with his shields. I can sit a long time between 7500m and 10 km and lob AntiMatter at him with my normal load, but his shields stay strong. Closing in with the load I used on the BS wasn't much better and I actually took more hits, even under 1000m. I tried varying ammo, but it didn't make much difference.

I may try the suggestions others have made, but my financial situation is very tight right now. And I'm trying to build back up to about 5mil ISK to buy the Eidetic Memory skillbook. So Dagan may just have to wait awhile.

Yaaaahoooo!

Yup, 6x Ion blasters with AntiMatter charges s, 1 Nosforatu (I salvaged it earlier in the day, I figured “What the heck, try it), a Small shield booster and small cap booster, and Overdrive.

Fly in under 1000m, and just sit, fire away, watching my shields, boosting them a wee tad every so often.

Took awhile, yup. But, came out uninjured this time.

Thanks for the suggestions.

Now, lett the gutting of the wrecks begin. My favorite part.

Thrasher ftw. 7x 150mm Gallium guns, OE-5200 Rocket launcher, V-M15 invul field, medium FS-9 regolith extender, cold-gas arcjets. damagecontrol and powerdiag in the lows. I was able to solo all missions in it. Mission 47 made me warp out a few times, tho.

Thanks for the guide! Good recon is invaluable!

Dagan – In a Coercer armed with seven Dual Afocal Pulse Maser I, a Nosferatu, an Afterburner, a Small Armor Repairer, a Capacitor Power Relay II, and some armor plating, I set orbit at 500m and constantly fired away. I had a friend orbiting at 10K with a Thrasher firing Titanium Sabot rounds at him. Occasionally I had to drop to 4 guns firing instead of 7, just to have the energy to repair my armor. Eventually we got him down. Took about 5-8 minutes. I'd been fitting and refitting my Coercer for almost two weeks off and on trying to complete this mission solo with the skills I have. I think the point of this mission is to teach people that they don't always have to solo it.

The guide is great, only wish I would have found it sooner. After loosing four Catalyst's during Burning Down The Hive I realized it was time to seek advice and your guides saw me through to the finish, which I completed yesterday.

I started the epic right out of university with around 300k SP in my newly awarded Catalyst (which I later learned was not needed at all until the final battle).

Following suggestions in EVElopedia the skills focus was on learning. Clearly not good advice for trying to make it through this arc. After getting all those ships flamed I quit for four days and switched training skills from learning to more relevant skills. Finding EVEMon was a great help for designing a SP path focused on ship management; little things like core, weapons, tanking.

After acquiring around 575k SP I was able to burn down the hive, but this time in a Tristan.

Mission 47 was a tough nut for the Fat Boy (I'm now around 650k SP) Tristan but I made it through with the following:

2x Light Ion Blaster I with antimatter s
1x Standard Missile Launcher with Sabertooth (couldn't fit 2x and keep stable cap)
2x Cap Recharger I
1x 1MN AB 1
1x Damage Control I
1x Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane I
1x 100mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I

This setup maxed my CPU and Powergrid at Stable Cap. I was in tight at 687m from target taking a lot of damage but eventually took the BC down.

Mission 49 is a different story all together. The fat boy was unable to deliver enough damage despite my efforts. Every conceivable weapon/fighting distance combination was attempted but I could never get his shield damage above 50%. Once a weapon needed reloading his shield would regenerate. The whole time I'm barely getting scratched but after thousands of rounds and hundreds of missiles I gave up on Tristan.

Out comes the Catalyst again. At this point I began too believe it was going to be days, or weeks, spent building SP before Dagan would go down. He was cutting my shield in three hits and tearing away at armor before I hit 75% through his shield and fractional armor damage. Time to re-think this one with my last ditch setup:

8x Light Ion Blaster I with antimatter
1x Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane I
1x 200mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I
1x Damage Control I
1x Hobgoblin Drone I

There was no way of keeping core stable using any mid slots (AB or Shield Booster) so I went without. For those that don't know the Catalyst is not very swift. Trying to outmaneuver Dagan with a slug ship was out of the realm of possibility. I made a direct flight into him and set orbit at 500k. By the time I was orbiting my shield was already half gone but I hung in there.

I finally penetrated his shield and ate away at armor too about 35% before warping out with 85% of my own armor eaten. After repairs straight back in with the same tactic. This time he only damaged a small amount of armor while I was building on the previous encounter. Once getting trough the shield and most of his armor I could tell it was over for him. I was at 50% armor damage and starting in on the hull, which went quickly. When Dagan exploded I had no shield and 25% armor remaining, SP at sub 800k

Anyone with proper skills and training in a well fitted ship would be bored with this arc. For a greenhorn like me it was very difficult. However the lessons learned were worth the 4 million ISK I lost in ships/modules, well maybe not but you get the idea.

But not for finding this guide I'm not sure I would have made it. Thanks for taking the time to put it together.

I am left with a lost feeling though. Don't know where to go or what to do next. No clue where to find the next agent, nothing. Just sitting here acquiring SP.

It happens to us all, that lost feeling, even me from time to time.

The thing to do is figure out what you want to do now in general terms: Do you want to PvP? Are you of an industrial bent? Do you want to mine? Another thing you could think about is signing up with EVE University (http://eve-ivy.com) a well known and respected player run corporation which specialises in running classes for new players as well as graduate classes for okd hand like me who want to try something new. They'll give you a well rounded look at all the opportunities available in EVE and you can make an informed choice.

As to finding the next agent. pick an NPC corporation (any will do but for combat missions, my speciality, one of the faction navies is probably where you want to be) These are Federation Nay (Gallente), Caldari Navy (obvious), Imperial Navy (Amarr), and Republic Fleet (Minmatar). If you search for any of these under corporations in your People and Places window and click the littl info icon in the dialogue which appears. you'll get info about that navy. There will be a tab in that window labelled 'Agents'. Under that tab will be listed all of that corporation/navy's agents under their different divisions and marked as to whether you can use them or not. Pick one, right-click and set destination, that'll give you an idea of how far you have to travel to go talk to them and start getting agents from them.

You can find more information about agents and divisions here: http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Agents

hope this helps, feel free to send Rokkit Kween a mail in game.

Thanks Mandrill, those are both great suggestions for finding what to do next. I appreciate it.

Just finished Mission 47. Took quite a few tries and I barely manage to get the bonus.

Unlike most others here I soloed the Battlecruiser at >30km the whole time–purely due to personality. I don't imply it is superior tactic. My Throax is armed with
2x 250mm railgun
1x heavy medium laser
1x 720mm artillery cannon
1x cap recharger
1x 10mn afterburner
1x 400mm armor

Kritsan's weapons are quite inaccurate beyond 30km so I simply outlasted him. My armor was down to 50% when he blown.

Took down Dagan today with the same fitting. Dagan's weapons were ineffective even at 15km so I was able to tackle him with three drones plus the most damaging ammo I have–antimatter, gamma and fusion respectively–without taking much damage myself. As this guide suggests, Dagan have very strong EM and THERM resistances, and as such fusion ammo seems to work better than EMP.

NOOB Player, been playing game for maybe 1 1/2 weeks <500k skill points just did this whole story line with a Catalyst. Dagan is VERY tough and took about 4 hours till I got the loadout right then another 25 mins of flying around him at >1000m fireing everything i got into him till he popped.

Battle with Dagen:

Catalyst:
High:
4x Light Neutron Blaster I – Antimatter Charge
2x Light Electron Blaster I – Antimatter Charge
1x Small Nosferatu I
1x Salvager I

Medium:
Small Capacitor Booster I – Brought 11x 200 Boosters used 8
Small Sheild Booster II

Low:
Cap Power Relay I
Small Armor Repair II
Damage Control I

Tactics: Take out all the Escorts first. Then get in as close as you can to Dagen set orbit 500m you'll end up around 800-900m away, then just let loose with all the Blasters, Sheild Booster was running almost constantly as was Nosferatu, when Capacitor went below 40% or so I used a 200 Boost, if Sheilds hit full (or almost) I turned off Sheild Boost and let the Capacitor build back up a little, when guns started to get low on ammo I'd stop one and reload then start it again before stopping and reloading the next so only 1 gun down at a time. Took about 20-25 mins to kill him as he keeps shield boosting, but his shots miss probably 50-60% of the time cause you are so close and you will hit almost every time.

In case this helps some1: I used a caldari Cormorant (destroyer) to take out Dagan in mission 49.
My choice for mission 48 was Gallente, they gave out the biggest bonus.
Big thanks to all who posted their experience with this dude, helped me a lot to get the right outfit.
Im on a 14 day trial having around 3 days left. The outfit is all T1 and the total cost without the ship would be around 1.5M.

Ship outfit:
TE-2100 missile launcher with bloodclayw missiles (doing some 20 dmg per hit)
5 x limited light ion blasters with AM s rounds
E5 prototype Energy Vampire (nos)
Heat dissipitation amplifier (anti thermal resistance to shield)
Cold-Gas 1 Arc Jet Thrusters (afterburner)
Alumel wired 1 sensor (sensor boost)
Small clarity ward booster 1 (shield booster)
Mark 1 generator refitting : diagnostic system (helps to recharge shield&cap faster)

Overall misisons 47-49 were quite easy with this outfit, in 47 i had to repair the ship 2 times at the station but in 49 i had 0 problems after wasting the escort (warped out twice after takin out a couple of escorts each time, didn have to but just to be safe). Dogan himself was quite easy, took maybe 10min to cut through him. AB and sensor booster can be on all the time and shield booster when shields drop to about 1/4 of total. had to reload all guns + missili launcher 2 times, so dont forget the ammo. I used orbit at 1000m which resulted in the actual orbit of 1600m for me, guns did quite bad damage.

In addition i had 1 “salvage 1″ module in Offline mode, to check the wrecks after im done, I had around 560k SP at the time, having quite a lot of skills on level 3 (mostly the basic ones) Basic certificates in Core, defence, electronic warfare, gunnery, missiles and navigation.
Hope some1 finds this info useful thanks again!

Mission 49
Target: Dagan
Commander choice: Minmatar

Character: Gallente / 4 days old / 370k SP (270k in learning)

Ship: Catalyst

[Low:]
Damage Control I
Capacitor Power Relay I
Small Armor Repairer I

[Medium:]
Small Capacitor Booster I (Fetch a few Cap Boosters 200, I had to use only 1 )
Stasis Webifier I

[High:]
7x 200MM Autocannon I
1x Small Nosferatu I

Ammo: Fusion S (2 rounds should cut it (i.e. 7×240 units), I made it trough with 1 )
Drones: 1x Warrior I

Tatics:
Take out the escorts, warp out if you need.
Warp back in, approach Dagan, set orbit to 500m.
Use Armor Repairer / Cap Booster when needed.

Estimated loadout costs: Not much
Estimated combat time: 10-15min (After you’re done with escorts)