This achievement is beyond frustrating. The controls for gliding are just not responsive enough. You have to drop to within 10 feet of the orb to scan it which sets you up for millions of fireballs from close range from all the destroyers standing right around the rim. The scanner has a 2 second cooldown and a cast time making it very sluggish and disastrous if you miss. You can’t really dodge the fireballs. You have to randomly change direction to avoid hits. If you try to stop yourself hitting the floor and begin going upward it takes a really long time to actually start moving upward. The ascension is sluggish at first and you get hit very easily waiting for your slow body to move. The best way to avoid getting hit is to stealth glide, but you only get that while moving upwards. To move downwards you have to drop glider which drops stealth. Also you have a revealed debuff when activating the glider, making responsiveness to avoid getting shot VERY sluggish and makes you waste stamina. Why am I being punished with a revealed debuff at all? This is completely unreasonable.
TL;DR – an achievement that requires precision flying without precise controls…
Suggestions:
1. Remove the revealed debuff from gliding.
2. Make the dodge actually give evade frames while gliding.
3. Make the upward ascension less sluggish if possible.
4. Let gliding stealth persist after dropping glider (so i can stay stealthed while falling).
Update:
The easiest way to get this is to cheese it with a friend… I just stood AFK at the top of the chamber and waited while someone else cleared the portals. Then I safely dropped down with zero risk… Achievements like this shouldn’t require cheese like this… sigh.
It’s no more difficult than Flights of Fancy in Hearts and Minds and has the same mechanics working for and against it.
The first thing you have to realise is you can change (and have to) direction on both the Y and Z-axis. The destroyers will aim at your projected flight path so slight variations with left and right or faster/slower as well as up or down work. Ideally combine 2 directions, then after 2-3 seconds change.
As for picking up the orbs, either fly right beneath them and drift up, or try to gather them while falling into them. The updrift is to slow and will expose you to potential hits, hence why you want to keep it as short as possible.
In order to scan the last time you don’t have to drop all the way to ground level, there is leeway. Drop down, open you glider, activate the scan and already while scaning start alternating directions.
It’s no more difficult than Flights of Fancy in Hearts and Minds and has the same mechanics working for and against it.
The first thing you have to realise is you can change (and have to) direction on both the Y and Z-axis. The destroyers will aim at your projected flight path so slight variations with left and right or faster/slower as well as up or down work. Ideally combine 2 directions, then after 2-3 seconds change.
As for picking up the orbs, either fly right beneath them and drift up, or try to gather them while falling into them. The updrift is to slow and will expose you to potential hits, hence why you want to keep it as short as possible.
In order to scan the last time you don’t have to drop all the way to ground level, there is leeway. Drop down, open you glider, activate the scan and already while scaning start alternating directions.
Yeah I get the idea, I just think there are too many control issues getting in the way of a proper challenge. I’m a long time Dark Souls player so I have a keen appreciation for tight responsive controls and dodging. I think my suggestions ought to be considered in the spirit of making gliding more responsive (particularly the removal of revealed).
On a brighter note I got the achievement thanks to some simple cheese… Not my preferred way of getting achievements, but life is too short to waste on clunky controls…
Do the first layer of 3 chains normally, it is easy to do with dynamic gliding. If you want to play it absolutely safe, you can just drop down straight away and clear the mobs one by one and then glide safely to bomb the chains.
Once the hole opened, free fall strafing around and land in the corner of the cave on the floor of the 2nd anomaly and set of chains. Remember you only need to smash the first chain here to trigger Primordus’ roar that despawns all the pesky destroyers.
Now that you’re on the ground, you got to absolutely make sure you NEVER EVER jump or use any skill that make your character leap (daredevil staff5 Vault for example). The split second your character is an micro inch above ground, the destroyers will hurl their green fireballs at you. Normal damage from their lava font or mêlée hits don’t count for discrediting fancy flier achievement.
Keep in mind, you don’t have to face the barrier the entire time you are scanning it. Just long enough to target it in the first place.
My complaint with this achievement is that there isn’t a “leave instance” button until after the final boss, so if you get hit, you have to kill yourself to try again.
Mhm … The first thing I did after the Update was checking the Achievements, so I can do some while playing Story. So I knew about the Fancy Flying thing before even playing 1 minute of the new content. Result: First try = achievement. Call me lucky one, I dont know …
Some advices: Use stealth! Also: The destroyers aim for your current movement. So if you change the trajectory, the attacks will miss. Do it as often as you can. Even a little turn to left or right will make the (just prepared) attacks miss. You also can close your Glider for a sec. The more unpredictable your movement is, so much better.
Keep in mind, you don’t have to face the barrier the entire time you are scanning it. Just long enough to target it in the first place.
My complaint with this achievement is that there isn’t a “leave instance” button until after the final boss, so if you get hit, you have to kill yourself to try again.
What i did was just glide up a bit till i was out of combat and then go to guild hall to escape the instance and then leave guild hall to get back to the map to retry.
Most wanted in game additions: Beastiary, readable books
While yes there were times i was borderline ready to pull that infamous scene from office space, i wouldn’t say the achievement requires any cheesing just some luck and good timing.
I did it solo without cheesing, took maybe 7 tries.
As you’re descending make sure you’re almost centre of the seal, once you’re close pop your glider and bait the fire, when you see them coming drop further to the seal and pop your glider again and stealth as soon as you can to scan the seal. Rince repeat. Second seal as before but leave yourself enough space to bait and drop twice before stealth and do a 180 in flight direction, scan and hit 1 target to freeze and despawn mobs.
Timing is key doing this one. If you try 2-3 times with no success, go do something else then come back to it. Doesn’t really require precision gliding, I’d call it controlled choatic gliding, the mobs will always throw the fireballs at you and nothing else, so you need to be unpredictable in gliding.
It’s fairly easy done solo on a Guardian (preferably an Asura, so you see more of your environment and can evade better).
Guardian, because of the auto-block trait.
Now all you have to do is remain airborne, don’t land! That helps. Descend to the first destroyer level, stay in the air, use the Special Action Key quickly on the device to trigger a charge out of it, catch it, then use the Special Action Key to release one of the locks. Repeat twice. Avoiding the green missiles should be fairly easy on this level.
Now descent to the second (last) destroyer level. Again, avoid landing at all costs. Just be quick. This time, you only need to release one of the locks, then all destroyers will vanish. Release the other two, descent to Balthazar and receive the achievement.
I tried killing the destroyers first. Only to get hit on the ground because I fell a short distance. Eventually, I just gave up on that strategy and did it normally and finished. I did clear the destroyers in one zone so that I’d have a safe place to land.
