Mercenary Kings – Speedrunning the Most Difficult Bosses

How to kill the most difficult bosses for fun or farming purposes.

General Info

Note: Credit goes to TRON

I always had the “Weightlifting” proficiency activated while completing the below missions. This proficiency isn’t needed to complete the missions but it negates 3kg of equipment weight that imporoves run speed to achieve a little bit better completion times.

Dr. Neil (Final Boss – Live and Let Die Mission)

Method #1

Equpiment: 2 grenadier mods, 2 grenades, 2 shock bombs.

The two grenadier mods triple your grenade damage (that is 15000 for me as a 5 star general) and using them on a shock-bombed enemy will double it (6-fold grenade damage). This means 90000 damage per grenade for me while Dr. Neil and his transformed self have only 68000hp. Two instant kills with two shock+grenade combos. To improve your completion time run between from beginning of the level to the boss by holstering your weapon and using dodge/roll whenever possible. My best completion time is 0:41 and my average is only a few seconds more.

Method #2

Equipment: 2 shock bombs, Flamethrower with its basic/default configuration (with Flamethrower barrel and Incendiary ammunition).

You don’t need mods but you can try using 2 Sprinter+ mods – it might be faster to run to the boss with that than using dodge/roll actions.

Holster your weapon and go to the boss. Immediately throw a shock bomb on it and fire all of your 100 bullets on it. The sock bomb effect takes 5 seconds, exactly the same emount of time as firing all 100 bullets from the flamethrower with its 20RPS speed. After this the boss immediately starts transforming into its second form. Meanwhile you have to reload and holster your weapon. Follow the transformed boss by always being behind its legs this way you don’t need a Dodger+ mod to be able to dodge through the boss without taking damage. As soon as it exposes its weak spot (usually at the middle of the screen) you have to jump and throw a shock grenade on it, quickly run under the weak spot, switch to flamethrower and release all of your bullets into the weak spot of the boss by shooting upwards. The boss dies from about half of your ammunition. Completing the mission this way takes forty-something seconds.

Metal Woof

Method #1

Equipment: 2 grenadier mods, 2 grenades, 1 shock bomb.

My 15000 base grenade damage is tripled by the 2 grenadier mods and then doubled by the shock bomb to 90000. Metal Woof has 120000 HP and has 30% resistance to grenade damage. This means my grenades deal 63000 damage on him instead of 90000 (assuming that Metal Woof is shock-bombed) so 2 grenades will kill Metal Woof. If you are lower rank and your base grenade damage is less than 15000 then you might need 3 grenades. I recommend carrying a Destructor 9 weapon that deals mostly electric damage that is insanely effective against machines including Metal Woof and also the others you encounter while you are running on the map towards Metal Woof. I usually replace the magazine of the Destructor 9 to Shadow to have 44 bullets instead of 24 in exchange for a tiny bit slower reload and less raw damage (this weapon is about electric damage anyway, not raw).

On the “Dog Pack” mission you can kill Metal Woof this way while you can simply use the Destructor 9 to kill the two other dogs that are much easier to kill and the Destructor 9 is very effective against them.

Method #2

Equipment: 3 shock bombs, Destructor 9, perhaps some grenades.

Simple story: shock the dog several times and damage it with whatever you can: throw all of your grenades onto it (but they will not kill the dog without grenadier mods) and shoot it like crazy with the Destructor 9. You have to have a basic understanding of the choreography of the fight to be able to survive unless you can kill it quickly. When Metal Woof fires a lot of projectiles either crouch and deflect the bottom row of the bullets with your knife or use a riot shield to deflect both bottom rows. If you are playing it in coop then your team mate can constantly fire Metal Woof from behind you while you are deflecting its bullets either with a knife or a riot shield.

The 3 Prime Soldiers (Battle For The Ark Mission)

Equipment: 1 grenadier mod, 3 grenades, 3 shock bombs.

My 15000 base grenade damage is doubled by the grenadier mod and then doubled again by the shock bomb to 60000 while 1 prime soldier has 48000 HP. This means that a shock bomb + grenade combo insta-kills a prime soldier. If you are lower rank and have a much lower base grenade damage then you might need 2 grenadier mods to have 6-fold grenade damage with the shock bomb. The shock bombs have to be timed very carefully: the prime soldiers might jump/dodge it or the shock bomb might be deflected if you throw them when the soldiers are in an invulnerable state.

The first prime soldier spawns into the room and climbs up to the right side of the ceiling. Then the second soldier spawns in and climbs to the left side of the ceiling. Then the third one teleports in and the fight begins.

The first two soldiers can be killed with 2 shock bombs and 2 grenades before they climb to the ceiling. The timing has to be very accurate. Switch to the shock bomb and jump into the room (you stand on the right side of the box that has the “n tech” logo on it with a bit of gap/space between that and you). Without moving from that position throw the shock bomb exactly when the first soldier starts spawining in with its cool “scanline/teleport” animation. This shock bomb will catch it and throw a grenade on it. Consider this soldier dead but for some reason (bug?) it’ll still climb to the right side of the ceiling and will die only later when it tries to climb down. The likelyhood of a bug is indicated by the fact that when the grenade kills the soldier it immediately continues it’s choreography of climbing to the ceiling instead of being shocked for 5 seconds. However this soldier no longer deals damage to you, consider it dead.

After throwing the grenade on the first soldier immediately run to the right side of the room. You don’t have to run too far to the right, just make sure that you are standing on the right side next to the second soldier who spawns in the middle of the room. When the second soldier spawns in it starts shooting to the left side. Throw a shock bomb on it and a grenade to make the kill. Wait a bit with the shock bomb until the soldier starts shooting, if you throw it too quickly then you’ll miss. Similarly to the first soldier when you land the grenade the soldier immediately dies and comes out of the effect of the shock bomb and climbs to the left side of the ceiling but you can consider it dead.

When the third soldier spawns in it immediately goes into an invulnerable state (so you shouldn’t try to shock bomb it immediately because it’ll be deflected) and fires two poison projectiles. You should catch the soldier with the shock bomb when it does something that makes it unlikely to go into an invulnerable state in the next few fractions of a second. One suitable situation is when he is walking towards the middle of the room. Another situation is when it jumps from one side of the room to the other side – in this case you should throw the shock bomb so that it lands on the soldier exactly when his jump is finished.

This is the most difficult boss in my opinion because of having 3 actors with complex choreography during which the actor who is on the floor often goes into an invulnerable state.

You can speed up completion time by speedrunning from the beginning of the level to the prime soldiers:

• There are multiple routes towards the boss. When I spawn into the level I immediately holster my weapon, enter the door that is on my right side and then I run to the right side of the level towards the boss.
• Use a Sprinter+ mod.
• Holster your weapon for faster run speed and use dodge/roll when possible.
• Simply run away with holstered weapon from those enemies when you can. For example I don’t kill the spider robots (jump over them) and I don’t kill the first “helicopter robot” because I can run away from it with 2 well-timed large jumps.
• On your way you’ll run find a room with crushing machine that can move both horizontally and vertically. Exploit the fact that after entering the room you are invulnerable for a short period and simply jump throw the crushing machine to the right side of the room without trying to cross the crushing machine in a smart way. 

My best completion time is 1:14 and I usually complete it in less than 1:30.

Killing this boss is the best way to farm imperial alloy that has one of the lowest drop rates. There is a chance (but no guarantee) that the prime soldiers drop imperial alloy when they die and the mission completion rewards might also give imperial alloy (but no guarantee). When you don’t get it as a reward you can still buy 1 from Golden Gate in the camp using her buy/material menu. However, you can buy an imperial alloy from this menu only if you haven’t got it as a mission reward and only if you skip the mission that the game starts automatically after completing the prime soldier mission. That automatically started mission is about cleaning the camp but you have to call bobby through the transceiver to cancel it. Failing to do so will mean that the camp cleaning mission will be the last successfully completed mission so the buy/material menus of Golden Gate will sell things from the reward list of that mission (because that’s the last successfully completed mission) with no imperial alloy.

Kings of Violence Mission

Method #1

Equipment: 2 grenadier mods, 2 grenades.

My 15000 base grenade damage is tripled to 45000 by the 2 grenadier mods while the violence kings have 42000 HP. This means instakill with 1 grenade. Run into the middle of the room and when the violence kings drop to the room on your left side immediately throw a grenade on them. They immediately jump on top of their “vehicle”. Run to the left side. After they fly up to the air and the invulnerability disappears from them jump and throw the second grenade on them. Done.

To speedrun the map to reach the boss you can pack shock bombs and/or an additional grenade if it doesn’t change your run speed (you can check your run-speed by bringing up the sub-menu with the back/select button and choosing the “status” menu item). Shock bombs can help speedrunning because you can run through a shocked enemy without taking damage. As a weapon I recommend the Flamethrower but replace its stock barrel to Dread to increase its range to Medium. It is a lightweight weapon with a large magazine and a brutal 20 RPS not to mention that it’s very effective against most enemies on this map including the violence kings (their weakness is fire) if something goes wrong with the grenades.

Method #2

You could use the methods I applied to the previous bosses: shock bombs and grenades either with two grenadier mods or a Sprinter+ and a grenadier mod. This way you might be able to speed up the part where you are running to the boss and this way it is possible to complete the mission with lower base grenade damage (lower rank players). There is however one problem with this method: if you shock-bomb the violence kings and throw a grenade on them then usually only one of them gets shocked, they get separated and when they jump on top of their “vehicle” they might stop responding or doing anything due to a bug and you might not be able to complete the mission.

My average completion time is below 1:30.