After finishing the first stage of twenty-five it was time to see how far down I could make it. With each stage having 10 phases this was going to be quite the task at hand. There were some rewards I wanted so I thought I would give it try anyway.

It became quite clear to me early on that I lacked the right armor and healing device to make it far. I also know from the warning the mission gives that stage 5 and up things get expectantly harder. It was time to dive right into it.

Stage 2

I was not expecting phase two to end up taking a lot of ammo. I did end up using 105 PEDs worth making me wonder about the insane amount the final 25th stage would take.

The next few phases of the stage were quite easy. I had to do a little more healing than I would have liked for healing with level 3 creatures.

Once I had finished him off I just had a couple of spawns left in the phase to clear and I was done. The reward of 4 Mayhem Tokens, 1.2 PED of ammo, and 5 Halloween candy was not that great. It was however at least something.

I also felt after stage 2 with how smoothly it went that getting a few more stages would not be that hard. It regretfully made me a bit overconfident in how far I might get in this event.

One of the more interesting things about this style of survival instances is over the years many cleaver players worked out how to defeat all the stages without much of a struggle. They usually find some kind of loophole.

Each time they do so these events get changed ever so slightly. It used to be back in the day if I’m not mistaken that people would run out the timer and win. Now if you run out of the timer you fail. Granted back then the timer was very long and not like the ones we face today.

Some players would also run around collecting as many creatures as they could. They then would pull out an area of effect weapon and start to chip away at things killing them all down. Nowadays you don’t get the entire spawn if you wait long enough. The phase will wait till enough creatures are killed before spawning more.

I’m sure there have been many other tricks and ways players have gone the distance for an event like this. I would not be that shocked if someone found a way somehow to cheese this event. These however have become quite more interesting.

Getting a buff in this event with you choosing when it takes it. Started to make me wonder how I could leverage it further than I have been for a better chance at success. It is kind of an odd thing to have in these and yet I feel like I’m somewhat missing something about them.

Stage 3

Thankfully a couple of times when I went over to click the Halloween pumpkin for a buff I ended up getting rejuvenation that would heal me for 10% of my total health periodically. This was more than enough to ensure while the buff was up just for a minute I was not going to get killed and could just be focused on doing damage and not having to stop to heal myself.

As you can see in the screenshot above. I was running for my life. At one point I thought I was dead as I was healing for less than the incoming damage. Thankfully I was quick on my feet and made it to the back of the instance.

I managed to quickly kill a zombie dog that was attacking me which removed enough incoming damage along with running around. That I was able to re-stabilize myself. It however became quite clear my gremlin armor and Vivo T20 healing device was coming up short.

While I did manage to pull out a win in the end for 7 Mayhem tokens, 3 Halloween Lockboxes, 1.8 PED of ammo, and some progress towards my Halloween codex. I had enough close calls with death to make me take a bit of a break.

I needed to rethink how I was going to approach stage four and play it a bit safer. Up till now I more than had enough time on the clock once I got over the first three or so phases in each stage. I would need to be using distance more to my advantage.

It’s kind of a shame the Halloween pumpkin is where it is in the instance. It forces you to go in and get a bunch of aggression on creatures if you want that buff bad enough. It’s starting to look a bit more like bait than useful.

After a short break, I decided to restock how much ammo I had on me as well. In stage 3 alone I burned 161 PED worth of ammo. I’m hoping stage 4 is not going to be double that but there is only one way to find out.

At this point as well I’m purely using my ArMatrix LR-35 (L) gun. It’s a shame I’m not one level higher in my damage profession or I could get one size up in the gun. As I want as much damage as I can get at this point.

Stage 4

After some thought and resupplying I came back for stage 4. I would be changing things up a bit. Where I would take more advantage of range and the time remaining on the clock. Hopefully, those changes will make it easier than the last stage.

After that, I would go to the back of the instance and try to keep as long a range as I could between anything spawning. That plan ended up working out great for me.

This also did mean I had to give up getting the buff from the pumpkin that spawns. Since I don’t have ideal armor for this it was just not worth having to get that close to the center of the instance to pick it up. As I would usually get more adds then I was looking to get and risk getting hit by a zombie for a de-buff.

At times I did feel like I could have run over and picked up the buff before finishing off the last zombie dog and getting back to a safer spot. I however was just not going to tempt things. It’s a shame it does not prevent you from getting de-buffs or removing them or something extra making it worth the risk.

This buff seems to be more for those who use short-range weapons. If it was set back a bit further I could see myself wanting to go for it.

One thing I was doing a really good job at was killing the zombies that had a chance of be-buffing me. I think by the time had hit phase 3 I only had it happen once to me if at all.

While I was clearing out the phases fast enough that I could have picked up the capture point later after I had killed everything. I decided since there were not that many creatures spawning at the start of phase 3 to just go for it.

Stage 4 felt a lot easier for some reason than stage 3. I only ever got close to getting killed once and it was 100% me not paying enough attention thankfully things were going decently enough I was quickly able to get back up to full health.

For a short while at phase 10 I managed to pull the boss by itself. At around 60% health remaining on the boss is when I encountered my first add. He did manage to get double de-buffs on me. However in the end I took him and that was that.

My reward for finishing off stage four was 2.3 Ped of ammo, 23 mayhem tokens with an additional 4 tokens. Along with some progress towards the Halloween Creature codex.

One of the reasons I wanted to at least run stage 3 and stage 4 of survival was because they offered codex progress. While I did get a decent chunk of progress I was kind of hoping for a bit more, to be honest.

As far as moving forward. I have been warned that stage 5 is much harder. The rewards for tokens and ammo goes up a few times over as well. The ammo alone is not worth going for since I’m usually down in loot far more than the reward of that.

It is not till stage 7 that I would get some Halloween codex progress again. While I would expect that to be a considerable jump from what I just got. I’m starting to wonder what cost it will have.

While thankfully I did not end up burning double the amount of ammo as stage 3 to run stage 4. It was still around 212 PED and I ended up looting a bit less than that in loot. By now I was hoping to have gotten something decent in terms of loot.

Stage 4 also took me around 40 minutes to finish as well. What I want out of Mayhem survival is not till stage 20 and then it’s only a cosmetic vampire green cloak. There is a blue cloak reward at stage 17 but it does not fit well with my character's overall looks. Not to mention unless I’m missing something big I don’t see myself getting anywhere near stage 17 let alone 20.

Final Thoughts

It was at least a lot of fun. Perhaps in this Mayhem next year, I might be better geared to go much deeper into the stages of the survival event. For now, I’m pleased with my progress this time around.

Other Content

• Entropia Universe | Halloween Mayhem 2022 Survival Instance
• Entropia Universe | Halloween Mayhem 2022 Annihilation
• Entropia Universe | Halloween Mayhem 2022 Event Preparation

Information

Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Entropia Universe.