Ranking Escape Hives by Difficulty

Gears 5
#1

I’m interested in finding out which Escape Hives the community deems to be the easiest; and which are the hardest.

I’m not going to be too prescriptive about this. Just say what you want to say, order all of the Hives if you want; or just named a couple of your hardest and/or easiest. Also feel free to add notes to yours as well. I know some people will be assessing Hives as they are presently, or from a particular point in the past (as some Hives have had some changes made to them).

I’ll be using a 5 star rating system (with 5 being the hardest; and 1 star being the easiest); am rating them as they are right now - toward the end of Operation 4; and will be trying to divide them into equally amongst the categories (but this didn’t turn out possible so my list will feature more Hives in the 3 star category).

So there are 31 Hives at present with number 32 out tomorrow, but one is a duplicate (The Hive; and The Hive - Past Hive). And I kinda don’t really want to count Venom Run as it’s basically a bit rubbish and feels to me like it’s reliant on a luck so I’ll be working off 30 Hives (including The Mist, and minus Venom Run and The Hive - Past Hive).

5 Star:

Ice Queen

The Onslaught (I’m discounting the spawn problems in part 2 which allow people to run through it. It’s clearly not intended, so I’m taking this Hive as it was designed).

The Surge

Forever (as with The Onslaught, I’m taking this Hive as if the spawns worked properly. If you get the normal full spawn of enemies, this is very tough).

The Split

4 Star

The Line

Last Stand

The Gauntlet

The Ladyrinth

The End

3 Star

Melee Brawl

The Gatekeepers

The Hunters

The Wanderer

The Warren

The Mines

The Choke

The Barracks

2 Star

The Trap

The Detour

The Ambush

The Malfunction

The Descent

Lethal Engagements

1 Star

The Hive

The Clock

The Corruption

The Blight

The Link

The Mist

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#2

Those picks mostly seem accurate but I don’t rate Blight as a 1 star in terms of difficulty because the way the doors currently work isn’t the intended functionality and it would often be largely down to RNG how difficult or easy the hive can be with the doors that would be open or closed. Aka between ridiculously tough or a total cakewalk.

Labyrinth also just seems like a rather easy hive to beat to me, only the encounter before the ending potentially can cause some issues if you don’t have a lot of time before getting pushed by the venom. Locking away the Wardens shouldn’t be troublesome unless one of your teammates is acting dumb or luring them incorrectly.

The Trap gets a 3 star from me. Mostly because of the Stumps(especially if you happen to get one at the beginning where the different paths link up), the absurd recoil modifier, and the occasional Salvo Scion.

Surge just needs three good players, I did a Master run with someone running a level 13 Clayton once on that hive(proper run, not speeding it).

Not entirely sure how to rate The Warren, Cole makes a joke of it. Only melee characters can handle the Juvies and while I used to do it as Lahni… well, we know she ain’t much good against them at this moment.

#3

I personally think the gatekeepers is a 2 rather than 3. Only challenging part is swarmak fight/enemy onslaught at the end. Other than that the hive is total cake.

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#4

I think 3 is fair for Gatekeepers. See, my rankings are based entirely on playing with randoms since that’s how I’ve done every hive. You’d be surprised the small percentage of random Fahzes capable of killing flyers. When they don’t that fight becomes drawn out and tedious. My rankings are also skewed slightly from personal experience. Most people think the Line is very difficult. I originally would have it as a 4 or 5. After drilling my Fahz on it over and over, I wouldn’t be upset if someone called it a 3. The Malfunction is one people don’t list as a difficult hive either, but for a similar reason as Gatekeepers, I would bump that up to 3. Hives where I was never asked to do heavy lifting because there’s plenty of randoms who know it like the back of their hand and really just need me to play support would also come off as less-difficult to me, e.g. Ice Queen, even though if you threw me in there with two noobs I’d likely fail.

#5

I see what you did there.

Gatekeepers deserves to be higher in my opinion, very easy to fail on this hive. Ironman makes it much less awful because less loading screens, but still.

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#6

Genuine typo! The funny thing is, I looked at that word when I first posted it, and thought “something looks a bit off…” but it didn’t register mentally. :open_mouth:

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#7

Bookmarked! Thanks!

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#8

There’s barely any luck to venom run when you’ve memorized the spawns, I used to do it back to back for people at one point.

#9

The Labyrinth for me is a 2 star map. I solo’d it as level 13 JD. I’d say it’s the same difficulty as the Trap. But it’s just my opinion.

Ice Queen is no longer a 5 star map. With the introduction of Fahz it became so much easier to master the maps.

For me the hardest maps to master ( and by master I mean to kill everything not just run) are The Surge, Forever (when not glitched), The Onslaught and maybe The Split.

#10

The Descent seems more like a 1 star when you have a Paduk with you.
And is Forever still giving tame spawns? Last 5 times I tried it they were all it’s normal hard self.

#11

Still variable. Sometimes you get the full spawn, other times you can get as little as 5-6 enemies, and other times it could be somewhere in between with partial spawns.

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#12

I guess if you keep playing forever you’ll get a lean spawn :laughing:

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#13

Wow The Mist is that easy? Nice change of pace from the brutality of The Split, I suppose.

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#14

Yeah that sums up our most successful strat on Forever: just wait for an easier spawn. Didn’t take forever though. Maybe 3-4 tries to get something simple.

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#15

Whats your strat as fahz dealing with flyers?

#16

Well, I’m not a Fahz main. @Bleeding_Pepper or @AmicableWall421 would probably be able to explain it better. But you want to have your ult ready, of course, get teammates to go ahead and trigger them, if need be, and be shooting through one or more walls, going for “headshots”. You want high level Ambush, Exploit Weakness, Modified Longshot, Critical Parade to keep it going. I like using longshot handling too, to make it feel like an auto-sniper and take out that one extra step, but probably most pro Fahzes don’t.

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#17

It sounds obvious, but aim for the exposed head. If the shield is up, switch to your Boltok and support in taking down the shield and at the same time moving away so you’re safe.

The second bit of advice, is to learn where they are on an Escape hive and to plan your route and usage of your X-Ray ability around that. If you have your X-Ray ready and they’re not aware of your presence and are just floating stationary, then you can pop them in one shot (damage cards pending). Even if they are moving around, if you stay back, mark them, then you can see when they stop which is the sign to hit your X-Ray.

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#18

Where is the choke?

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#19

Oh you’re into that kinda kinky stuff are you?

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#20

3 star I guess.

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