Finish the game to unlock the Lunacy rifts challenges. There are already walk-through guides on this so I won't be redundant here.

Find all the mainframe components. Once again, this has been covered elsewhere ad nauseam.

Crank the difficulty down and use whatever tier IV ship you have to farm level 3 incursions for gear. Keep in mind though, if you play at nightmare difficulty the game will occasionally drop legendary items.

Let's face it, not all bombers are created equal. The right combination of passives can make or break a build. So let the waiting begin. Head over to Kato's Palace and find a bomber. Set a timer for 10 minutes and re-roll the passives until you get the right ones. I fired up Netflix and watched a documentary while doing this. 50 minutes later this is what I picked.

ARC-9000 damage increases by 2% for every second after being fired.

Target lock is maintained off screen.

20% reduced energy consumption for all secondary weapons.

When ARC-9000 is detonated manually, gain 40% increased ARC-9000 shockwave damage.


Why these passives? I found the ARC-9000 to be pretty wimpy without 2 of them. With these, now you can do more damage to your enemies than yourself. Also, you can really feel the difference 20% reduced energy makes. The "Target Lock" passive is kinda meh. The only things that benefit from it are 2 devices sort of. Nothing else on this build needs a target lock, making a round with the "enemies can not be locked" modifier a piece of cake.

Come up with a cheesy name for your ship. I went with a spider theme because it webs everything and named it "Charlotte's Revenge." I hated the book when I was a kid. Eat the pig, use the spider to create superhero's I say.

Let's be honest "Close Call" is nothing more than a cheat code that made it into the game. After over 1300 rifts without it, I never needed it.

Defensive Massacre is the way to go once you ween yourself off of close call. There is more of a sense of accomplishment knowing you crushed a Lunacy 2000 rift without dying than having some fairy god developer wave their magic mouse and resurrect you.

Play it Safe feels like a cheat code too. In fact there are a couple of ships you can make nearly invincible using it with the right passives and devices.

Downtime Warrior is my perk of choice, but if you keep dying and need Play it Safe I'll forgive you.

Crit Happens, because I like big booms and I cannot lie.

Critical Faculty, because if you are going to pick passives that turn the ARC-9000 into a W.O.M.D. you might as well make it more available, but if you find yourself still having trouble staying alive get that armor back with Unyielding Assault.

Exploitation, trust me, almost everything will have its motion impeded with this build and Preparation takes too long to stack and resets when you need it most.

Finally, Symphony of Destruction, It's just there working for you all the time unlike the other 2 in this group. Ride the Lightning takes too long to ramp up and disappears when you need it most and Overkill only works for 15 s if you're lucky.

It's impossible for someone to build a Bomber with the exact same numbers I have but here is how you should prioritize your attributes.

Firepower

Precision

Expertise

Utility

Structure and Resistance are pretty much useless especially when the Bombers Expertise is Hull repair/hull damage dealt.

The goal here is to have each of these as close to 3500 as possible. Although, I tend to be more successful when maxing out Firepower.

My philosophy behind devices is not so much what they do, but more of how do I use them to maximize the affects of the perks, mainly, Play it Safe or Downtime Warrior.

For example, at first I would recommend Play it Safe to help keep most ships alive and the follow devices setup works great for that.

EMP: Hard Reset

Corrosion Injector: Mercy Kill

Annihilator Virus: R-naught

Missile Defense System: Sustenance


The first 3 work in conjunction with each other to constantly keep the first 2 resetting which spams Reactive Armor. Yes, I know you can use another warfare device to spam even more reactive armor but I have a tendency to ignore missiles and there is another very important reason to use MDS this way that I will explain later.

If your're feeling cocky and want to use Downtime Warrior to keep your guns a blazing switch EMP to Short Circuity and Corrosion Injector to Caustic Trauma. That way the warfare devices are on cool down way longer feeding energy to your primary weapons. It's not necessary but it helps a little.

Notice how I don't use Teleport, Energized Boost, or any other support device. Frankly, you don't need them. Only cowards run. My style of game play is in their face, kill them before they kill me, as fast as I can so there is less of a chance of being hit by a sniper I can't find quick enough.

The idea here is to make the bombers secondary weapons do as much damage as quickly as possible while staying alive. I had to go with a radiant..

Final Reckoning (Blightmonger)

With the potential of getting 600% increased damage out of your secondary weapon,(mine has 599%) and a fire rate of 20.0/s that keeps the crits a coming, what's not to love? And its DPS, range and consumption are pretty OK too.

Birds Nest (Blightmonger)

Can we all just agree that this should of been called: The Spider's Web ? I know with its fire rate you're not going to do any speed runs with this but by slowing things down it activates the Exploitation perk, makes everything easier to shoot, and make it harder for them to hit you. Win Win Win

Ragnarok (Peripheral)

Let's be honest, the randomness of this game sucks!! In all the 600 or so rifts that I've done since Incursions came out, I have still never received the unicorn piece, a Ragnarok with Firepower, Precision, Utility and Expertise. The ones with both Structure and Resistance I just delete. But the fact that you can just nick any enemy and automatically get 39% destabilization for 4.9 s made me break up with the Omni Magnus on 3 of my ships.

Terminal Velocity (Blightmonger)

This one takes practice. If I had a quarter for every time I killed myself with it I could spend an hour at an 80's arcade. Once you get the hang of it though, it will definitely help keep you alive. Just pump it to keep it close to Latent Boost so it is there when you need it.

Did you notice that we are packing on the Blightmonger catalyst to get to 4 pieces? Chuck on another 50% to your secondary weapons!!!

By now you have probably figured out which secondary weapon we will be using. Ding ding ding. You guessed it

Powerful Corrosion Mines (2 banks of them)

10% chance to regenerate 20% of the Hull hitpoints with each kill

Mines are magnetic and will fly towards enemies in a 500 meter radius

Deals 20% bonus damage to Ancients and Ancient-controlled units

These babies back a wallop, they cannot be intercepted, and with the 4 piece Blightmonger bonus, Final Reckoning bonus, Exploitation Bonus, etc they melt everything. But wait. There's more. We are not done pumping these things up.

The first attribute is somewhat of a throw away but what you really want is the last 2. Everything in Lunacy rifts are Ancient-controlled so everything gets 20% extra damage. Oh, I almost forgot. If you start with a "Powerful" version of the mine you can add the catalyst for 30% extra damage. KABOOMY!!!

As far as the primary weapons go... Dealers Choice

Rapid Redemption Eradicator or Soul Seeker

Deals 20% bonus damage to Ancients...

Non crit hits have a chance to increase crit hit chance by 2%...

If you opt for the Soul Seeker you'll want to pray for "Shots have a chance to do area damage.." or "20% chance to reflect shots" or re-roll re-roll re-roll to try to get them. Prioritize Deals 20 % bonus.. and just go with whatever other 2 you get. Before Incursions I had several guns with both, Deals 20% and Non crit hits, but after dozens of re-rolls I've never seen another one. And I've never seen all Deals% 20, Non crit hits and area damage or reflective damage on the same gun so don't waist your resources re-rolling.

*Trick* Try to get several version of the same gun. Save your game. Re-roll a couple dozen times. If you don't get what you want reload your save game and try a different gun. I once re-rolled a missile over 50 times and didn't get the combination I wanted, reloaded a save game and tried a different missile and got exactly what I wanted in 3 rolls. Your mileage may very. Just don't try re-rolling the same piece of equipment. You'll get the same thing. The ES2 Fandom site gives a breakdown of weapons' and modules' attributes. It is impossible to get some attributes on some gear so it is a good idea to check it out before you waste time and resources.

Now let's pump those mines up even more and give this bomber some more super powers.

Optimized Redemption Zealous Core

527 Firepower
4% extra secondary weapons damage
6% increased kinetic damage.

OK, what you really want is 10% increased destabilized damage, but I got sick of re-rolling. Ya can't win them all.

Blightmonger Overcharged Hazard Shield

428 Precision
10% Destabilized damage
4% extra secondary weapons damage

I cannibalized my Vanguard for this. What I should do is swap it out for an Optimized version with Firepower, 10% Destabilized, and 10% Ult damage or some other damage adder. It's like a project car, never finished. And the Blightmonger shield turns the Corrosion Field modifier round into a free-be.

Redemption Optimized Dogmatic Scanner
527 Firepower
527 Precision
Mine Launchers deal 20% increased damage.

I re-rolled multiple of these hundreds of times, no exaggeration, and never got one with Firepower, Mine Launcher deal 20%, and another power adder. It would be nice to get one with Autocannons do 20% increased damage too but I gave up.
Autonomous Optimized Repair Bay
527 Firepower
Missile Defense System increases the damage of your secondary weapons by 25% while active
5% increased hull repair

Remember way back when I said you needed MDS on sustenance? This is why. Boss ship goes bye bye. And if by chance you experience the rare case of equipment getting damaged, this fixes it.

As for the consumables, use Damage Booster and energy injector especially if you opt for the Soul Seeker.


The Redemption set use to be arguably the most powerful set in the game until the Dogmatic scanner got nerfed by %90!!! Now it only webs on 10% of the critical hits. Still, it can make for some hilarious rounds. If you find your self near a bunch of crystal asteroids, just launch your ARC into the middle of them. I had over 50 turrets pop out all at once and vaporize everything. All I had to do is fly around the edges picking them off. It's like getting a free round.

Start by boosting to one side or the other, not down the middle. When close enough, fire off your devices and unleash as many mines as possible. Launch a mine and immediately switch to the next. You can fire way more mines by switching because you don't have to wait for the cool down period for the next bank to launch. At the same time use the Final Reckoning to soft them up and work up to that 599% bonus damage. Don't just lay on the gun. Make your shots count. I usually leave the aim assist on default but I did finish the entire game with it off on nightmare. Pump Terminal Velocity to try to keep it close to 90% Latent Boost so it is ready if you need to dodge the Okkar Prime Orbs. If you do it fast enough then you'll have to boost to the next group. Drop mines along the way. You'll be surprised by how much collateral damage you can get this way. If you see the snipers' red beams, break off, boost into range and take care of it with your guns. The goal is to get a line of about 3 Bird Nests with enemies trapped inside. Fire your ARC-9000 down the middle, kick back and watch the chaos you've created. If you spot a group of crystal asteroids, fire the ARC in the middle. It's possible to have over 50 crystal turrets working for you at one time. The modifiers don't real do much. I still don't do the area damage one that much. High risk no reward. Corrosion fields don't hurt you and only 2 devices use lock on if you opt for the Eradicator. For the end boss, go in guns blazing. Remember to use a damage booster and your MSD to power up your mines. Rotate your sliding in a circle. The AI can't seem to zero in on you very well when you do this. Use the Latent boost to dodge or get away if you need to and fire off your ARC or chase down the teleporting one. The only boss I have a problem with is the one where you have to fly inside it's shield, but it's doable.

Well, I hope most of this make sense to most people. And by no way am I saying this is the best build, but I have had a lot of success with it and rarely die. My intent was to help people out and give a little bit better explanation on why some things work better together than others. If you found this inspiring, comment. I have 8 other ship build that all crush Lunacy 2000 too.... Well maybe not the Scout. I've beaten it with the Scout but I stink at it.

Now, what are you waiting for? Go forth and embrace the lunacy.