Co-op Raid

Co-op Raid is a guild event, and it’s the first mode that asks you to lend your roster rather than just field it. It runs seven days, from 26 September at 04:00 UTC to 3 October at 03:59 UTC, with three bosses that unlock on days 1, 3 and 5. Here’s what it actually asks of you, and what a guild should sort out before day one.

You set up ten characters, not five

The entry requirement is unusual: everyone has to configure ten co-op characters before taking part. Those ten are what your guildmates borrow, and what you borrow from them. Deploying a borrowed character grants it a damage bonus, so a team built partly out of other people’s units hits harder than the same team built entirely out of your own.

That flips the usual advice. The five you’ve invested in still matter, but so do the next five, because that’s what the rest of your guild will be fighting with. A guild where everyone posts the same three meta units gives its members nothing worth borrowing.

Each boss is two fights sharing one clock

A boss isn’t one encounter. You get two separate battles, up to five characters each, with a maximum of three co-op characters per battle. The two fights share a single combat duration: whatever time is left over from the first one carries into the second.

The second fight is the one that counts, and its boss can’t be killed. Every point of damage you deal in it gets recorded, and that number is your ranking score. So the first battle is really a time-management problem: clear it fast enough to leave a long window for the second, because every second you save there turns into recorded damage.

How the leaderboard is built

Each of the three bosses has its own ranking. Your position on each converts into points, and the three point totals add up into a single overall leaderboard. Placing well on one boss and poorly on the other two loses to placing decently on all three.

What it pays

Three reward tracks run at once.

Individual rewards unlock by hitting speed and damage targets on each boss, on your own.

Guild rewards unlock when the damage every member deals to the bosses adds up to a shared target. These are cumulative, so members who can’t clear high difficulty still move the guild bar just by showing up.

Ranking rewards go out by final overall position, and the top three take an exclusive champion, runner-up and third-place title, plus Astrogems and spirit shards.

My take: a participation event dressed as a damage race

Two things decide how a guild does here, and neither one is your best character.

The first is turnout. The guild track is cumulative damage, so ten members clearing a modest run beat three members clearing a great one. If you run a guild, chase attendance before you chase damage.

The second is what people leave in their co-op slots. Borrowed characters carry a damage bonus, so a guild that coordinates its ten slots (covering the roles nobody has invested in, rather than everyone posting the same DPS) hands every member a better team than they actually own. That coordination is worth more than any individual’s roster.

Set your ten before day one. There’s nothing to gain by waiting, and a slot left empty is a teammate who can’t borrow from you.

Related

• Guild Boss: the other guild-wide damage race, and how its scoring works.
• Team Builder: work out your ten, and see what each pairing actually does.
• Tier List: who’s worth investing in beyond your first five.