PRE-BATTLE PHASE:

So after nothing's happened or one side has won you have approximately 11 minutes to dick about, call friends, go do something else, etc.

There's not a lot of opportunities here unless things haven't been pruned properly.

-Optimal parties include warlocks and sins/KFMs, plus flavor. You want maximum DPS - there's almost no opportunities to perform CC. A summoner is a good addition to keep people healthy, and a force master that's got quick frost sheath fingers will probably save lives. During the main phases (2 and 3) you should be popping buffs as soon as they come up.

-About 2 to 5 minutes before the start of the battle both sides will spawn a miniboss and 4 elite warriors at the central extraction area. This is a good time to start on your "regional warfare" quest.

-If you see any humans named 'Miner" going to your meteorite impact spot, note them. If you protect them from the assassins that spawn they each produce a soulstone patch that can be mined over 10 seconds for 5 prestige. This event happens at multiple points throughout the battle.

-The weapon crates in the meteor impact zones have ice bombs (useless), machine guns (hilariously aoe), and grenade launchers (one shot everyone). They are only useful for pvp, they do greatly reduced damage against NPCs.

-The meteor impact spot also contains METEORS in the center. Take one back to your faction commander (the one who gives you quests) for 5 free soulstones. Note that it does a lot of damage while you carry it. If you come close to dying, drop it for a moment, drink a healing tonic, and resume.

OPENING BATTLE PHASE 1 (CAPTURING):

-This phase starts with the usual shittalking. Approximately a minute later, both sides forces will arrive on the field. The normal warriors are invulnerable and will fight each other endlessly - The named NPCs on both sides are you target.

-This phase shouldn't take you very long at all. If your group is unable to complete it, you need more people. This phase is ridiculously easy compared to the later phases so again - Just stop trying if you can't do it.

-As above, the miners can spawn during this phase as can meteors.

-Kill the weak human adds first, then the robot, then focus Konta (or whoever the crimson's boss is). Note that if you have a LOT of dps/manpower you can simply skip the robot, as it will despawn when Konta is killed.

-Konta's loot requires only a normal key to open, but has a good chance of giving a soulstones plains key (needed for all other boss boxes).

-If neither faction's objectives are completed in this phase, the entire battle resets to pre-battle phase. You then have 11 minutes to prepare for another try.

OPENING BATTLE PHASE 2 (MINING):

-I'm going to assume you won the last phase. If you didn't, your objective is the named NPCs next to the north and south mining towers. You're likely to face an overwhelming amount of enemy players, so you're probably better off waiting for a time your faction can dominate. If you want to troll around, or just PVP, then get a gun from the weapon crates (grenade launcher preferred) and fire into the largest crowds you can see. Best done right after a boss kill or halfway through the phase for maximum trolling.

-If you won the last phase, congratulations - here's where the real money is. You're going to face 3 announced waves (roughly every 10 minutes) in total, each comprising 6 mini-waves. The mini-waves arrive approximately 1.5min after each other, at alternating towers (S>N>S>N>S>N). The last of each mini-wave arrives at approximately the same time.

-The first wave arrives at the south tower, so EVERYONE should start there, regardless of their eventual position. You'll know it's coming when you see 4 Hoglins running in from the enemy base, followed by a larger Pig commander that carries 225 prestige (I average around 8-10 prestige per kill of these guys). Your focus should be on the commander exclusively - Killing the Hoglins grants you nothing but standard, shitty, drops and takes time away from dpsing the commander. They are also not a large enough threat to hurt your faction commanders.

-You need to make a decision ahead of time for which strategy you want to employ.

-The "DEATHBALL" involves bursting down wave commanders as they arrive and immediately rotating everyone to the alternate tower in time to catch the next wave. It's very effective even with low population, but misses a lot of extra money from alternate spawns.

-A "SPLIT" involves dividing your total manpower in two and defending each tower separately. It requires a much larger force than the deathball, but it also allows you to grab all the alternate spawns and provides for a fairer distribution of rewards.

-No matter which composition you choose, if one tower is being outspawned and the bosses are stacking up, you need to immediately switch all players to the stronger tower OR YOU WILL LOSE BOTH.

-First two mini-waves are easy Pig commanders, just iframe their telegraphed attacks and do as much damage as possible.

-Third mini-wave is the strike force commanders (mini-terrors). Thankfully, they only have a bit more HP (~5m to ~3m) so they die pretty quickly. However their aoe attacks are very dangerous. If you get badly hurt and don't have any more healing skills or tonics out of cooldown, you need to pull off and dumpling. It's better to lose 5 prestige not doing DPS than to lose 50 prestige because you got greedy.

-The boxes from these bosses have a chance to drop soulstone plains keys, thus returning your key investment. The chance seems low, from anecdotal evidence.

-During the mini-waves, alternate spawns will occur at the tower not under enemy attack. These drop varied rewards and seem to provide most/all of the benefit TO THE FIRST PERSON TO TAG THEM, REGARDLESS OF THE FACT THEIR NAME REMAINS SOLID RED. You can safely ignore these spawns without losing the phase, but being able to grab them is a great boon. Notably, there's a rat spawn (money pouch of up to 5000 gold, usually tons less) and a golden pig (waddles from Mushin's tower, drops boxes with soulstone plains keys).

-Other alternate spawns include a Giant Augerite (unknown benefit besides prestige), local wildlife grasssquatch/giant bulbari/etc (flower petals and prestige only).

-After all announced waves, the giant pigs will spawn at each tower at the same time. Their boxes can be opened with normal keys, and have good rewards. A deathball will easily crush both pigs for double per-player rewards. Getting one or both of these also completes one of your dailies.

-During this phase, the drilling robots at each tower will generate approximately 1 soulstone patch per mini-wave, at the tower currently facing the alternate spawn. This patch takes 10 seconds (for the player) to mine and grants 10 prestige. The robots will not create the patch if they are under attack, and if they are under attack too long they may "miss" a spot entirely. Listen to their dialogue cues to know when a patch is coming up.

-Again, the human miners and meteorites are available for some easy farming. I would only recommend going for meteorites in between announced waves, but I'm sure people will selfishly do it at other times.

-In between announced waves (after killing the strike force terrors) you can quickly return to base to exchange prestige. If you've completely finished the phase, you are HIGHLY recommended to spend all your prestige. The third phase is very likely to get you killed at least once.

-If you want to spend your prestige on charms or soulstone bundles, there is a merchant next to each tower (assuming you are defending). If you are about to die or can't risk running back to base, you can buy the 50-prestige charms which can be traded on the marketplace and are thus a safe investment.

BATTLE PHASE 3 (FINAL BATTLE):

-This phase should occur regardless of who won the last phase.

-Both factions spawn a large number of mini-terrors at the central drilling area. The adds have ~1.2m HP and should be killed first. It is absolutely vital that after all adds are killed players should group around the enemy's standards/flags. The boss' aoe attack knocks you back a large distance and it is very easy to pull him across the halfway point, which will instantly reset him.

-Your target has ~35m HP and is capable of killing a character with pre-patch BiS equipment in two combos (one for ranged attack). It is absolutely vital you keep your major iframe and escape skills up while you are anywhere close to the target. He has a standard array of swipes and punches, and three major special attacks.

-His little aoe does approximately 20k damage and has a radius of ~5m. Melees get fucked here, sorry.

-His major aoe does approximately 35k damage has a radius of ~13m.

-His ranged attack does approximately 60k damage and consists of 3 projectiles in approximately 2 seconds. It will knock you down after the first hits, therefore you must use your iframe/escape skill at that point to dodge the second and/or third hits.

-As a terror copy, he will also instantly pull a character from up to ~25m, even if you do not hold aggro and perform several crushes before throwing you to the ground. If you're FM, immediately ice shield (tab). All you need to do is survive a few seconds before he changes aggro.

-As such, if your iframe/escape skills/healing tonics are on cooldown and you are not full health, you must retreat to out-of-combat distance (~30m) and restore your health to full before re-engaging. Make sure you don't have aggro and accidentally pull him out of the combat area.

-There are very small (~1s) opportunities for joint attacks, but there is no bar indicator. Only the skill icon pops up on your screen. As a FM, I am incapable of reacting quickly enough - My last skill is still going through the global cooldown before I can hit my 3 button for a double stun.

-People are going to die, and not everybody will be able to be ressed before the boss dies (thus earning no prestige). It sucks, yeah.

-Successfully killing the objective yields another daily quest completed, and half of a badge fragment. The half you get depends on whether you won or lost the last phase. You can choose to receive the other half as your daily reward to combine the two into a chest that requires 4 soulstone plains keys to open.

-Neither meteors nor miners were seen during this phase. It is possible they spawn and we were simply too focused on the difficult boss to care.

POST-BATTLE PHASE/STUFF THAT DOESN'T FIT ELSEWHERE:

-It is highly recommended you spend at least 25 prestige on getting the "crimson orders" from one of your faction merchants. This grants a daily quest to collect 4 herbs in the areas around the battlefield, and gives a moderate reward for an easy fetch quest. It also grants a full 200 faction contribution points, more than the prestige is worth turned in.

-Every boss has a chance to drop a quest to infiltrate the enemy base and acquire their battleplans. I recommend bringing one or more FMs/assassins and entering by walking up the towers on the far sides of the enemy base. Wait for the guards patrolling the courtyard to move away from the main tent, then rush in. Have your FM cast frost sheath, or your other classes (sins) use stealth. The two bosses will likely instantly kill one or more of your players. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO FIGHT THE BOSSES, MERELY DISTRACT THEM AND GRAB THE PLANS. As long as one player survives and picks up the orders, the quest will be completed for all party members in the immediate area. You may then all die/respawn/escape back to your base without consequence.

-You may randomly get a notification to rescue wounded warriors near the enemy base. You will notice them by the large pillar of faction-coded color rising from the ground under them. It's unknown what triggers this, but it seems to involve losing (not drawing) one or more phases. On the Dochun server the Crimson legion won 5 straight battles and was never able to perform this task. As such, I'm not sure what the rewards are.

-For players looking for extended grinding, if you hold more than 50/100/200 prestige you can activate the drums in your base for buffs against the evolved monsters. It disables one of their skills (used against you), increases your defense against them, and increases your damage versus them respectively. If you're planning on carrying a large amount of prestige against more than one boss (especially against phase 3 boss), you are highly recommended to activate the drums when you get a chance. The buffs will disappear if you go below the required amount of prestige (either by dying or spending it).

-In order to carry more than 25 prestige, you need to attain the rank of "Warrior" to carry 50 (unknown ceru equivalent). The "Ascendant" rank can carry 100 naturally, and higher ranks can carry even more. The tradeable charm costing 2g/50 prestige allows you to carry 4x your normal load, so you can get the largest soulstone bundles.

-If desired, you should be able to farm the defense captain's badge (part of combining to victory rewards box) by killing the large ~30M HP monster that guards the enemy base's gates. Not recommended, nor attempted before. For obvious reasons.

-Landing the last blow on a boss gives you two loot boxes. Yeah, it's bullshit.

Originally taken from: https://www.reddit.com/r/bladeandsoul/comments/4c00af/soulstone_plains_farming_tips/