So, for those of you trying to make sense of the Discovery Arc 2 Flash Events events that debuted today, let me explain.
No, there is no time. Let me sum up.
Here’s the quick version.
There are two events. Both involve destroying hostiles in the new systems. One’s an alliance event. One’s a solo event. Winning medals in those events can get you rewards in a milestone and a leaderboard event.
Now, here’s the specifics.
Vulcan Hello
So this is a solo leaderboard event, named for the Discovery episode of the same name. They’ll occur twenty times a day, and you’ll get a five-minute warning before they occur. You’ll get points based on your finish. Basically, you’ll get a Gold Medal for finishing in the top 15. A Silver Medal for coming in 16th to 40th, and a Bronze Medal for finishing 41st to 400th. (These are a little different for players level 39+)
Basically, you can get a Bronze Medal for damaging one Klingon invader, total.
You’ll get 10 points for each unit of damage you do to Klingon invaders at your assigned levels. You’ll get an additional 10 points per unit of damage you do in critical systems for the event. And you’ll get an additional 10 points of damage for using one of the “critical captains” on your ship. Players from level 21-29 will get bonus points for using your Discovery. Players leveled 39+ will get extra points for using G4 ships on level 40 bosses.
This is important – the critical captains and critical systems will change with each flash event.
Again, if you’ve unlocked the Summoning feature of your Discovery, this event becomes much, much easier, as you can jump your hostile-killing warship to the scene as fast as possible.
On a strategy note, you may be better off avoiding the critical systems, as they will tend to crowd up very quickly, and hostiles there (in my experience thus far) may be hard to come by.
Battle of the Binary Stars
This is the alliance leaderboard event, again, named for an episode of Discovery. It’ll happen four times a day. You’ll get points by destroying anomaly hostiles, Klingon invader hostiles, or by defeating Klingon invader armadas (you wondered what they were for, didn’t you?)
The top five alliances will get a Gold medal. Those finishing 6-15 will get a silver, and those finishing in the 16th to 75th will get a Bronze.
You must score at least one point for your alliance in the event in order to receive points.
Bleak Times
The Medals you earn in either Vulcan Hello or Battle of the Binary Stars events will get you points for Bleak Times. These are the same rewards you got last month, but instead of needing 15 points to complete the daily event to get your Discovery refinery tokens, now you only need six.
So you could feasibly get these tokens by destroying just six hostiles in a day.
Distinguished Service Leaderboard
So here’s where the big rewards are. While you only need to get six points to complete the Bleak Times events, players who want to keep going can go for more rewards. And they’re pretty good (I’ll show the rewards at level 38.)
Essentially, you’re playing for avatars, Latinum, and crystal. Not bad if you can manage to win the event. And not just a little bit of Latinum, but a lot of Latinum, and at my level (and maybe at yours), there are still thousands in Latinum for the top 50 players.
But the nice thing about this event, as opposed to most previous events like this, is that there are rewards for the top 250 players in the event. If you’re the 250th player in the event, you’re still going to get some Latinum, and the common avatar.
Discovery Arc 2 Flash Events Analysis
I’ve seen some grumbling about this event. And there is something to grumble about. At least one player says, “Blah.”
I think there should be more critical systems. What you get are clumps of ships around the nodes. This really isn’t fun.
But there’s nothing at all that says you have to go to those systems. I’ve managed to get into the top 15 fairly easily each of the last four events by going avoiding the crowds altogether.
I do like the lit up bonus hostiles during the event. I think that’s a nice touch.
All in all, I like the rewards, and as I said before, once you unlock summoning, this event becomes a lot more fun.