Down To The Surface

Whether you choose to pass through the Ithorian or Czerka branch of the Telos quests, you’ll eventually be allowed to shuttle down to the surface of Telos, so hop aboard your shuttle and get going! Of course, nothing is quite as simple as that, so you’ll find yourself taking fire and getting shot down before you can reach the surface. Luckily for you, though, Bao-Dur is waiting to pull you from the wreckage.

These concentrations of mines usually hide caches of goods.

After equipping Bao-Dur (you can probably let him whack away with his bare hands, thanks to his Unarmed Specialist training), gear up and start exploring the planet. Your first stop will actually be just to the southwest of your crashed shuttle; if you track down the set of mines and clear them (Bao-Dur should have no problems with this), you can find a hidden mercenary cache which seems to usually contain a decent Jedi Robe for you to wear. Further south, you’ll come across some actual mercenaries, but you should be able to close to combat range before they spot you, allowing you to chuck in a frag grenade or two (assuming you have any) to weaken them up before heading in and slaughtering the lot.

Make your way down the path until you reach the beach, where you’ll come to the main group of mercenaries. (There’s also a bag on the far western end of the sand that you can search through, although it probably won’t contain much.)You can attempt to skirt around them, if you wish, but they really aren’t that difficult to kill; just use any Force Power buffs you have, activate energy shields for everyone, then charge in and lay waste. After they’re dead, you’ll be able to more safely explore the area. If you check the area to the southwest of their position, you can find their second cache; there are other miscellaneous bags on the map, as well, so scout around a bit before moving on to the next zone.

Before you can proceed to the Czerka Excavation Site, though, you’ll have to bypass a mine field that’s watched over by a pair of heavy turrets. There won’t be much you can do here to prevent your teammates from running pell mell through the mines to get to the turrets when they open fire, so you might want to either send in Bao-Dur in solo mode to try and clear a path, or just use energy shields on everyone (to protect them from the turret fire) and running through the mines, then healing immediately afterwards while taking down the turrets.

Czerka Excavation Site

It’ll be difficult to deal with these goons without running through the mines between you and they.

Another similar trap will await you at the Excavation Site, where a Mercenary Droidmaster will sic her battle droids on you while hiding behind some frag mines. Your best bet here is to just run through the mines and take whatever damage comes your way before cutting all of your foes down; they guard the path to the excavation site itself.

The initial battle with the Mercenary Leader is going to be quite tough, and unfortunately you can’t buff yourself and charge right in, as there’s a bit of a conversation ahead of it that will drain the time from your short-term buffs (although you’ll probably want to activate your energy shields ahead of time, since they last for a couple of minutes). Both the Leader and the Veteran will use melee shields, but you should be able to easily deal with them by using Bao-Dur’s Shield Breaker ability (he’ll need to be weaponless to use it), which can drop them instantly, assuming it hits.

If you’re having trouble with the soldiers here, try luring them back to your party with Solo Mode.

The main problem here is the way that another mercenary waits near the main group; after you kill the initial four enemies, your teammates will probably run over to him and start wailing on him as well, then chain from that guy to yet another large group of foes. All of this is not really survivable, so you’re going to have to either extract them from battle (which is nearly impossible), or ensure that they don’t get within view of the last group of enemies. This can be done by giving both of your teammates ranged weapons, and manually controlling the main character so that he or she doesn’t charge in (or by using a ranged weapon on your main character, as well). This will hopefully let you avoid alerting the second group of enemies, and give you some time to rest up before heading back that way and taking them on. If you’re careful, you should be able to kill all of them without drawing the ire of the turrets or soldiers on the landing platform, but save your game after the first group of foes nonetheless.

Your ultimate goal here is to fight your way onto the landing platform, where Bao-Dur will be able to examine a console and determine that the Ebon Hawk is most likely to be found at Telos’s polar icecap. In order to get there, though, you’ll need to get into the underground military base and find a shuttle, so find the exit near the platform and move on.