How can I effectively hunt eidolons?

Question

Eidolon hunting has become more important now that arcanes drop from successful runs, and it is also a good way of farming focus and sentient cores for quill standing. However, Eidolons can be hard to kill or capture, so how can I be most effective when hunting them?

Answer 1

Warning: Spoilers ahead. Read at your own risk if you have not completed The War Within quest.

First off, a little info on Eidolons. There are 3 large Eidolons in total (Teralyst, Gantulyst, Hydrolyst) which you can fight. They only appear on the Plains of Eidolon on Earth during the night phase of the day/night cycle (150 minutes of day and 50 minutes of night), and once dawn arrives any Eidolon currently on the Plains will immediately repath towards the water and once it reaches the water it will become immune to damage and despawn. The Teralyst will immediately spawn upon loading into the Plains (look for a blue pillar of light) and the Gantulyst and Hydralyst must be summoned by depositing Eidolon shards into the Shrine of Eidolon located in the center of the Gara Toht Lake. When you first start hunting Eidolons you will probably only finish 1-2 Teralyst runs per night cycle, however a properly geared and well coordinated group can run 3-4 tricaps in one night. The more of these things you have the faster you will be able to hunt, and the more you will be able to hunt in a single night, but you can still participate even if you don't have all of the boxes ticked.

Weapons to use; most weapons do not deal much damage to the Eidolon, so having the correct weapon will significantly decrease the time it takes to kill an Eidolon. Sniper rifles are the preferred weapon for hunts, and the best 4 are

1. Lanka
2. Vectis Prime
3. Rubico
4. Vectis

with the order changing somewhat depending on if you have a good riven for one of the snipers. Alternative weapons to use are the Opticor or Euphona Prime. For builds, you want multishot, damage, crit damage, crit chance, and radiation damage.

Amps to use: when you first start you will probably only have the mote amp. This is fine for now, but to be useful in taking down the shields, you will want to get a 1/1/1 amp from the Quills as soon as possible (amps require 3 pieces to build and have 3 tiers. The form is prism/scaffold/brace) as it is a huge upgrade over the mote amp. For max build on an amp you will want an x/2/3 amp with a 3/2/3 amp being regarded as the best (some people prefer to run a 3/3/3 amp on the DPS and Healer roles as the 3rd tier scaffold has a longer range).

Focus trees to use: Depending on which role you are playing as, the focus tree that is best changes. I will classify the 4 roles as DPS, Shield Killer, Healer, and Status Protector. For the Shield Killer and Status Protector roles, you will want to use the Madurai with the Void Strike node maxed. The DPS will want to use Unairu (Unairu Wisp maxed) or Zenurik (Energy Dash maxed), and the Healer will want to use Madurai (Void Strike maxed) or Zenurik (Energy Dash maxed). Any way bound nodes you can unlock will help significantly as well.

Frames to use: certain frames do much better and your team composition will affect how fast you are able to hunt eidolons. The most commonly used (meta) picks for each of the roles mentioned earlier are as follows;

• DPS
  1. Chroma
  2. Rhino (Prime)
• Healer
  1. Trinity (Prime)
  2. Oberon (Prime)
• Shield Killer
  1. Volt
• Status Protector
  1. Harrow
  2. Oberon (Prime)
  3. Limbo

For maximum efficiency you will want one frame from each category with the best results using the highest tier from the list. Chroma should be built with max duration and 299% strength for optimal damage output, and should have a good sniper rifle with a secondary or melee that he can damage himself with. Rhino should also have a good sniper rifle and build for strength to maximize his damage buff with roar. Trinity should build for 150% strength and max efficiency with as much duration as possible. Oberon should build for range, duration, and efficiency. Volt should build for max duration. Harrow should build for 95-100% duration and max efficiency with natural talent.

Gear to have: Archwing launchers are not required for single caps, but are highly recommended. They are however required for multicaps so that you can move around fast enough to complete it in time. The Itzal is the most helpful to have, but any archwing is better than no archwing. Also good to bring along are energy restores as you will use a lot of energy during the fight and you also have a chance to get magnetic proc'ed if you aren't careful which can completely drain your energy.

Single Captures: single captures are by far the easiest, so it is not necessary to have all the aforementioned best equipment, though the more of it you have, the faster it will go. Your first step is to locate where the Teralyst spawned and mark it with a waypoint so everyone know where to go to kill it. Secondly you want to find 2 Eidolon lures (they spawn in or near Grineer camps. Shoot them to knock them down, and then hack them to capture them. They will follow whoever captured them unless told to hold position and another person tells them to follow) and fill them by shooting Vombalysts and taking the charges to the lures. If you shoot at a Vombalyst and put it into its wisp form near a lure, the lure will automatically collect a charge from it. Each lure requires 3 charges to turn on, and you will need one fully charged before breaking the first Synovia (weak spot at the joint of Eidolons), the second needs to be fully charged before killing it.
After charging at least one lure, you should deplete the Eidolon's shield by using your operators amp to damage it (the shield is immune to all damage except void damage) and then shoot one of the Synovias to break it and repeat the process when the shields come back up. The DPS's main job here is to kill the first shield and to damage the Synovias. If Chroma's Vex Armor isn't fully charged, he can use his self damaging weapon to charge it himself. The Healer's main job is to have all the lures follow them while healing the lures and fellow tenno to prevent any of them from dying. The Healer can also assist in shooting the shields to take them down faster. The Volt should drop a shield or two close to the Eidolon and use the shield to buff operator amp damage to shields. If running void strike, charge it whenever possible, and if possible charge it through at least the first shield phase if your team can take it down relatively quickly without your help. The Status Protector's job is to use their ability that makes them and nearby frames invulnerable to status effects to avoid getting hit by the magnetic procs from the energy spikes an Eidolon sends off after one of their Synovias is broken. Harrow can also use his crit chance booster to help the DPS kill the Synovias faster, and the same goes for Oberon using Smite Infusion and Volt using shields to boost the DPS's damage output.

Multi Captures: multi captures are significantly harder and require more coordination. The healer gains an additional responsibility of collecting more lures (4 for double cap and 6 for a tricap. the other lure is grabbed immediately by the DPS and taken to the Eidolon immediately), and you do the first Eidolon with just the DPS, Volt, and Status Protector, though the Trinity should come once the required amount of lures are captured, or the rest of the team is about to kill the Teralyst as they will need one more lure for a capture. You will then summon the Gantulyst which requires 3 lures for a capture, and repeat the process of dropping its shield and destroying the Synovias, though it has 6 Synovias instead of 4. After capturing the Gantulyst you can then summon the Hydrolyst which requires the same resources to capture as a Gantulyst, but has a different set of abilities to cope with. For multiple runs of captures, you simply need your group to be strong enough and coordinated enough to finish the capture to have enough time to do more captures before dawn.

Notes:

• Read up on the 3 Eidolons' attacks so you know what to expect. (Tara, Gant, Hydro)
• Alternate which Void Strike user is shooting shields so one can always be charging theirs for the next shield or eidolon.
• If you are using Zenurik, occasionally drop an energy dash on your fellow Tenno's warframes so they can regenerate energy.
• Keep the lures a little ways away from the Eidolon so they don't block shots from your fellow Tenno.
• Keep lures out of the sky lasers the Gantulyst uses as they will die quite quickly in them.
• For an extremely detailed guide on tricaps, read here.
• Captures have a higher chance to drop rare loot than kills.
• You need one lures per 2 Synovia.
• If you don't have a charged lure when destroying a Synovia, or the lures are too far away, the Eidolon will teleport away.
• If you find yourself unable to use any abilities, try jumping into water to reset you frame. If this doesn't work, you will have to let yourself fully die before reviving yourself to reset your frame.