It’s not a secret that the newest Incursion Dragon’s Nest as part of The Division’s Season Pass is actively farmed by lots of players these days. You can expect dozens of guaranteed loot drops like High-End weapons, mods and Gear Set items when you are exploring this particular parking lot located at one of Manhattan’s numerous rooftops.
But it’s not the final boss/main objective that grants sheer endless amount of loot and attracts players – no, the Four Horsemen, 4 heavily armored Named Elite Cleaners (from left to right: War, Pestilence, Death and Famine) are the primary reason for players to go there at the moment.
Update: The Division’s Update 1.4 has changed the Dragon’s Nest Incursion so that this guide is not working out anymore. However there are now plenty of other ways to get new loot!
Intro
Contents
Before we dive into the details of this guide, we would like to make sure and clarify that farming these 4 bosses (which feels like killing multiple Bullet Kings or a Loot Cave) is neither an exploit, nor glitch, or anything like that.
It was officially considered to be legitimate by the developers during their weekly State of the Game stream from July 21st (26:50), with the statement that “you won’t get any sets there … (low chance) … and you will miss out the mission reward”.
However, we have experienced the complete opposite of what was said during the stream in just around half an hour… Now, is this good or bad? Don’t get us wrong, being overwhelmed with tons of loot is great and yes, it is a loot-driven game, but even in terms of loot drops the game has to maintain at least some kind of balancing, otherwise you will soon find yourself asking what’s left to do.
Getting more loot this way than actually completing the Incursion itself feels not right and should be addressed at some point.
For now it’s fine, so let’s look at how you can get the best loot in the game, with currently one of the fastest as well as easiest methods to gear up, even on Heroic difficulty! We’ll see how long this experience lasts and if the devs will revise their statement in case they are looking at this (which is honestly one of the purposes of this article).
Guide
Although the Underground has been recently buffed regarding loot and its drop chances, farming the Four Horsemen seems to be still the more/most efficient way to obtain new items, because every Gear Set (1.1 -1.3) can drop, up to 4 times per run if you are really lucky!
Completing such a run is very easy, almost doesn’t require any skill and effectively takes around 6+/- minutes if you follow the one and only rule – don’t leave your Nest. We’ll explain later why or you can skip the text and continue with watching a complete run in form of a video.
Skill Sets
As for every content that currently exists in the game, you will most likely only survive this when you or one of your teammates is able to put down a high Electronics/Skill Power Smart Cover that buffs your whole team with a high percentage of Damage Resistance, and additionally grants a huge DPS boost. Furthermore, the same guy should run Pulse as a second skill to buff your damage numbers in terms of Critical Hit Chance and Crit. Damage even more.
Because those Cleaners aren’t stupid, they will try to get you out of the cover by throwing gas grenades and sending small rc-cars with explosives towards you. While you can ignore the latter threat as long as you stay in cover and don’t leave your Nest, your team should definitely think about using one Support Station with the Immunizer mod equipped, which you can either place right next to you on one these boxes, or throw them to the parked cars on your right to avoid triggering annoying game bugs. This will not only protect you from the gas, but also from the flamethrowers the Cleaners are using. There is no real need for Exotic Damage Resilience or Final Measure.
After this has been clarified, the other 3 guys should equip the First-Aid Skill with Booster Shot. It temporarily increases the damage for the affected targets in addition to the normal healing effect. No need for Overdose.
In this encounter you want to use the Tactical Link Signature Skill for bursting down the 4 Horsemen Elites in a few seconds. If you are confident enough, you can even run with 4 of them! The rest of the skills can be a mixed selection based on the Gear Sets and stats you and the other members in your group are running.
We decided to use a Seeker Mine with the Gas Charge mod to get enemy Engineers out of their cover as they are constantly building those rc-cars. Alternatively you can throw grenades at them to achieve the same. Furthermore a second Support Station with the Ammo Cache modification helps to reduce your cooldowns and allows you to regain ammo on reload.
Talents
There is not much to say when talking about Talents in this run, but don’t forget about Triage, which is probably one of the best and most valuable Talents available, in PvE and PvP encounters. When healing an ally with a skill, it reduces your skill cooldowns by 15%. This way and with some coordination, you can significantly reduce your cooldowns without having to stack Skill Haste or Electronics, perfect for this scenario when standing next to each other!
Gear Sets
2 or 3 players can be damage dealers by running classic Sentry Glas Cannon builds (Sentry’s Call; 150-200k Toughness! is totally enough), while at least one should go for an Electronics/Support oriented build, either with Tactician’s Authority, or more preferably – the new Reclaimer Gear Set, for an additional Elite Damage Bonus of +20% when using the Water consumable. Feel free to try out other things if you currently don’t have any of these sets.
Entering the Dragon’s Nest
The first part where you have to place the explosives is very self-explanatory. Kill the Cleaners that are running into your direction and use Smart Cover to buff the truck, or put down a Mobile Cover in front of the door and enhance this with Smart Cover (which might be the faster way).
Walk or run up the stairs (you could use a Survivor Link here if you really want to save some time) and reach this Nest we were talking before. You can find it at the other end (left side) of the parking lot. Jump down the ledge right in front of the stairs you can see in the screenshot above where the Snipers will spawn and you will come across some stacked crates. Let the cheese begin!
Back to Hell
Once you and your teammates are ready and in position behind that cover, you can start with securing the parking lot. The only type of NPC that could get you into trouble is the Rusher with his axe. Make sure that he goes down before he manages to climb up the box as he could push you out of cover or worse – down to the ground where those little rc-cars are waiting for you.
Is the area secured, you have to eliminate the Collective (Four Horsemen). You should focus your fire at this point and concentrate on the first Cleaner Elite (Famine) that comes out the door right behind you – it’s time to activate the first Tactical Link.
The boss might not be even able to pull the trigger of his flamethrower. You then continue with killing the other 3 bosses called Death, Pestilence and War – in clockwise order (recommended). Use one Tactical Link after the other one for optimal damage output.
Tip: If you cannot handle the amount of additional NPCs that will spawn after each boss kill, try to lower the health of all four bosses together and kill them at the same time.
In case your connection to the The Division servers is working fine, you can immediately restart the Incursion as soon as the last Cleaner Elite drops the loot. This way, you can save another 1 or 2 minutes. The loot will stay on the ground and you can pick it up later altogether. We wouldn’t recommend this restart though if you are experiencing problems with the connection as you could lose all that hard earned loot – so just pick it up when you are done and then restart it.
That’s it and all you need to know! Sounds easy? It really is!
Video
We have also created a short video of a full run (06:26 minutes) to see how this all works in action. It’s by far not perfect, but basically shows where you need to go and what to do. Here’s another video of a well-coordinated team that just needed around 5 minutes to complete it, so there is plenty of space for improvements in terms of coordination, the usage of skills and of course the gear you are using.
Full Run Anybody?
Farming the 4 Horsemen all day long won’t give you that many Phoenix Credits, nor the Weekly Mission Reward. However it’s a good preparation for what’s coming when you want to continue and actually want to complete this Incursion. The approach of defeating the final boss – the Fire Engine – is pretty much the same.
You are sitting behind the first cover you’ll see when jumping down from the control room. Enhance this with Smart Cover, use the Immunizer for reducing the incoming fire damage/removing the Status Effect and make sure to activate the controls simultaneously. You might want to replace your Tactical Links with Survivor Links as well as get more Toughness and maybe even some Exotic Damage Resilience down there, but there is nothing else you have to worry about. Good luck and happy farming!
We hope that this guide helps you a bit in setting up a proper strategy to complete it. Let us know in the comments below if you have any questions or suggestions.
