The Fight with Rory the Ropalolyst

The other major thing added in the Jovian Concord is the massive fight with the flying Eidolon, the Ropalolyst. It is a gigantic, screeching monster that spends its time hovering around glowing generators that can power a floating city. The Ropalolyst is also an intelligent being who has commanded Alad V to work for him, so when us Tenno come by, Alad V is very happy to have an opportunity to switch loyalties yet again. So we murder the Ropalolyst, a certain someone gets all pissed off, Alad V is happy and we get some minor loot in the form of some very random Amalgram mods and Wisp Warframe blueprints.

I’ll be honest though, I’ve done this fight 22 times (the amount of times required to get all of Wisp’s parts and I still don’t really know how to properly do this fight. I don’t really understand how we kill Rory the Ropalolyst.

The basic principle is somewhat simple. You lure Rory up to three massive generators and get Rory to fire a massive laser at you. You need to dip out of the way of the laser and get Rory to charge up the massive generators. To the point that they look like glowing, exploding lava lamps. While you do this, you need to remove Rory’s sentient shields with your Space Kid, the same way you would with a normal Eidolon.

When Rory’s shields are depleted, you can jump on his back. If the generators are overcharged enough, you can fly Rory into the generators, which will electrocute it, send Rory spiraling back to the central platform and allow you to take out one of his lumpy nodules, again just like a normal Eidolon. Unlike a normal Eidolon though, once you’ve shot off a lump, you need to fire a laser at it, which looks like it really hurts.

You have to do this three times, twice to remove the lumps and one last time to kill it completely. Between each part, you get a brief cutscene of your Warframes looking half heroic, half confused and not sure what’s going on. The last time you shoot Rory with the massive laser, once you’ve taken out all its health, it screams and falls off the platform, collapsing on a generator far below. Extraction can be seen in the distance, on a small platform you have to bullet jump to.

There’s some… caveats though.

Like for example, if you don’t charge the generators before you fly Rory into them, he throws you off and you have to destroy his shields again. And the fact that Rory does a huge amount of damage with lasers that can track you even when you’re invisible and in void mode. Oh, and the fact that Rory can generate a field which disrupts abilities and stops you from switching back to Operator. And the fact that, each time he crashes back into the central platform, he spawns enemies. Enemies that will most likely insta-kill you because you’re locked in a cut scene and can’t do anything to protect yourself.

Yeah, that last thing is bullshit, even more so because if you just happen to be in the wrong place when the cut scene occurs, you also lose all your buffs because the game respawns you as if you fell off a ledge. The way to avoid it reliably is to switch to your Operator before the cut scene. Your Operator will probably get killed but at least you won’t instantly die

There’s also a huge number of bugs. Heavens forbid you have a bad connection because then actually hitting the beast is a pain in the ass, but the bugs that appear are almost completely random. I’ve experienced unwilling Rory not firing his lasers; I’ve seen Rory refuse to target a nearby player and try to kill someone from across the map; I’ve seen people struggling to actually climb on; I’ve seen the Ropalolyst leave the fight completely for a short period of time; sometimes he refuses to stand underneath the laser even when he’s injured. One bug I experienced made me unable to double jump, Void Dash or bullet jump until I killed myself and respawned. The worst bug I saw though was one that rendered Rory and all nearby enemies COMPLETELY INVISIBLE for half the team.

Somehow, despite me being unable to see enemies, we still finished that one and I somehow did the most damage, thanks to the fact that someone waypointed the bastard for us.

All the while you get little snippets from Alad V and Rory’s backer, often out of sync or a few seconds late. And sometimes interrupted by the Lotus telling you to murder the assassination target or that Sentients have adapted to your damage.

The fight against Rory the Ropalolyst is a pretty cool one. But it’s a rough, buggy battle and it’s not always clear whether things are working or not.

There is ONE thing that is clear as day though. Soooomeone is very, very angry at us…