Had enough of bouncing the Wraith off your Banshee? Here's another plan!

(4:33) Level 5 ('Assault on the Control Room') on Legendary. In my fourth and probably final movie on getting a live Wraith to the bottom of the cavern, I show how you can get it down using surface friction instead. It's not as much fun as cushioning the Wraith with your Banshee, but it's still interesting to see.

Released March 6th 2018, gameplay recorded March 1st-3rd 2018.

00:02 This opening clip gives the basic idea. Shunt the Wraith off so it ends up sliding down a pipe. Those pipes seem to be rather grippy!

00:41 Ideally you want the Wraith to meet the pipe only very gently, so it settles into prolonged contact rather than bouncing away. Not easy to get though; may take you a good few tries before success.

01:03 Based on my experience, the angling of the Wraith affects how much it's slowed (as well as the issue of whether it settles into prolonged contact in the first place). Sometimes I saw prolonged contact which wasn't providing enough slowing, because the pilot eventually died.

01:26 Here I'm using a different save and a different pipe, and the Wraith settles into a nice stable rear grip. At the end I hear the pilot groan, which makes me rotate to look. I thought he'd died, but in fact he made it. And now my Banshee is a nice stationary target. Ouch!

01:50 This is just a brief clip to highlight the fact that you better not dawdle long when lining yourself up to shunt the Wraith off. Not on Legendary anyway. It opens fire pretty fast!

01:58 Here's an example where the Wraith contacts the pipe very late, and the pilot almost dies. You can hear him groan at around the time of contact.

02:25 For fun you can barrage the Wraith on the way down. I settle into a good long barrage here, carefully keeping my speed in sync. Eventually I hit it with a fuel rod shot, which blasts it away from the pipe and ends the slowing, but the pilot still makes it down ok. I soon finish off the Wraith though.

02:58 Another descent barrage. It was harder to stay on target here, but I do a pretty good job. There's a mishap later though. Just after the Wraith is destroyed by plasma fire, my fuel rod shot arrives and detonates the pilot's dropped plasmas, destroying my Banshee. Oops!

03:33 In this example the Wraith hits the pipe too hard and bounces away, but it it settles into contact with the wall, which gets the pilot down ok. The wall doesn't seem as useful as pipes though. Maybe the friction is weaker, or maybe it's just the way the Wraith tends to be in contact with it, bearing in mind the different surface geometry. I never got a descent by wall friction alone.

03:59 One last example to finish - with a quick Wraith destruction at the bottom.

Closing remarks I didn't bother to show any descent failures here - I thought I'd keep the movie relatively short - but there were lots. Obtaining a friction descent certainly takes me more tries on average than doing cushioning via Banshee, and it's less fun too, but it's still interesting.

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