Emissary Derelict Assassinate – The New Zealot Boss Fight

Nightwave’s the Emissary has had its story come to an end, with Arlo basically being dead and a new infested cult joining the fray. Arlo was nothing more than a trick to get more people infected and infested and it worked brilliantly. Not only do we now have more Infested running around but now we have new bosses that we need to deal with, spreading their disease in Emissary Derelicts. Because we totally needed more mutagenic hive mind infestations running around.

The conclusion to the Emissary was to be expected, but right now I’m pissed off with the new boss fight that has popped up. It’s fucking awful.

The Zealot Prelate is the name of this new boss, found on Emissary Derelicts and requiring one Emissary Derelict Zealot Code to access, which requires doing three Invasion missions.

The mission is pretty simple. You enter the Derelict, you find the Zealot Prelate, fight him for a bit and then he runs off, making Infested nearby him invulnerable. You have to chase after him into a larger, two-tiered room (specifically the Derelict room that Simaris sells as a Captura scene) but you can’t damage him. Not yet. You have to go and kill a nearby Zealot Bastion (generally about 50-100m away in another room) then pick up Arlo’s Flame, the item the Bastion drops, which is admittedly a pretty cool-looking lantern. This makes all nearby enemies vulnerable again, and you have to take it back to the Zealot Prelate so you can damage it.

You have to be fast though, as the area that Arlo’s Flame effects constantly shrinks and will quickly disappear. The Prelate WILL teleport around, at least one per vulnerable stage, making you waste more time running around. Once it disappears (or you do enough damage), the Zealot Prelate will turn invulnerable and try to heal by sucking the life out of nearby Infested, which you have to kill before he’s finished draining them.

To finish the fight, you have to do this at least five times. That’s five Zealot Bastions you have to kill. Oh and the Zealot Prelate has high damage resistance, so you’ll want big, strong weapons. Or you can just Maiming Strike everything to death with a whip.

“Oh but you can kill enemies to recharge Arlo’s Flames so you can do more damage to the Prelate!” Oh fuck off. Almost all the enemies around the boss are invulnerable most of the time, and you still can’t keep the flame up forever because the Zealot Prelate WILL make it explode and disappear after taking a certain amount of health. No matter WHAT you do, you are running back and forth fetching lights at least five times, more if your team lets Arlo’s flame die.

It’s a simple fight but it’s boring because you can’t really speed the fight up with smart play or specific builds. You HAVE to repeat yourself and run around getting more flames. And that makes the fight not fun at all.

I suppose, on the plus side, the new health bar added to this fight will soon be on all boss fights, a change that is solely needed. And there’s only one thing to farm off this new boss: its stupid glaive weapon, which requires a blueprint, two blades and a knobbly bit to attach the blades to. EXCEPT THE GAME KEEPS ON GIVING ME MORE FUCKING BLUEPRINTS.

Ugh. This is Hydroid and Mesa farming all over again. A tedious fight that drops three things but does so in a random order making you farm more and more.