Mission 09: Thermal Energy Deposit

Move forward here and hope that one of the two soldiers you initially encounter drops an energy gun. There are plenty more soldiers in your path here, so it'll be helpful to have a fire and forget weapon as you move forward and kill the rest of them off. If one of them drops a plasma gun, then it'll go along well with your energy gun.

You can fight your way up to the top of the rocket turrets and use them to finish off most of the soldiers here.

Your path is denoted by the data post here as leading you to the north, but there are plenty of enemies below you. Before you drop down, use the energy gun to knock out some of the rocket turrets on the eastern wall, as well as the VS enemies atop the wooden structures below you. The best place for dropping down is back where you entered the level, at the eastern edge of the road there; you'll avoid the bulk of the soldiers below you and will be right near three large fuel containers, which will let you load up on T-Eng. From there, you can fight your way through the soldiers below you to one of the VS suits you knocked out (or to the one in the hangar bay) and use it to cross the valley and jump over the lava river.

After moving into the structure atop the bridge, avoid the explosive Akrid, then find the room with a few soldiers on foot and drop down to the groove in the middle of the floor. There's a small tunnel there that's only passable on foot.

The Tunnels

Drop down to the bottom of the chasm that you come to and find the driller VS there. The path that you have to take is periodically blocked by rocks, but if you attack them with the drill on the VS (right analog stick while in treaded movement mode), you can bust through them. There are a couple of different paths through the tunnels, but both will lead you to the same industrial-looking interior after a bit of exploration. A large dongo will bust out of a containment shed here, but there's another driller VS next to it that will suit you well. Be sure to hit the Data Post nearby before heading through the Akrid-infested tunnel, as the boss fight is right around the corner.

Boss Fight: Spider Akrid

It's curious how your teammates express so much shock about how this Akrid could be the source of the heat signatures you've been reading. Isn't that what's been happening all game long? They detect a heat signature, you explore, and it turns out to be an Akrid?

Anyway, the Spider here is large and intimidating, but follows a fairly simple pattern. His attacks can be mighty annoying, though, especially when you're on foot, so try to stay in a VS as often as you can. Note that using a driller VS here is perfectly possible, but if you continually hold down the fire button on your vulcan cannon, you'll probably burn through a good three or four thousand T-Eng just from firing it alone, not counting damage or normal rundown. Be sure to have yourself topped off before coming in, then, or switch to another VS when you have the opportunity to do so.

Another drawback to using the driller VS is that it's difficult to see what the heck you're aiming at.

The Spider has weak spots on each of its legs, with another one on top of its body. As you'll probably deduce from simple trial and error, destroying a weak spot on one of its legs will cause the leg to fall off, not unlike the large Chryatis boss from Mission 05. Although there are four legs on the Spider, you only need to shoot two of them. Shooting any two legs will cause the body of the Spider to collapse to the floor, slightly revealing the weak spot on top of it, which you should fire away at. It can be tough to get an angle on the weak spot, but if you happen to be in a VS capable of jumping and hovering, you can do so to let yourself fire downwards onto the weak spot.

If you're in the driller VS, then your cannon will be capable of destroying the leg weakspots in one or two hits, with the main weak spot requiring a bit more work. If you hop to another VS, use a gatling gun to destroy the leg joints and save your rocket or grenade launcher (if there happens to be one) for the main weak spot. Although the Spider will summon in numerous smaller Akrid to the fight, they can be dispatched relatively easily with your gatling gun, and may actually add to your T-Eng total.