o7 Commanders!
Many of you have probably heard about the Orthus variant of Thargoid that's roaming around, and some of you may wonder how to find it for yourself. Here's how to outfit for, and eventually find and eliminate the Orthus.
Build – The Orthus is quite slow, but having a ship capable of outrunning the other bugs is nice. Speed over 500 m/s is my goal. You will want some armor as well. I'm using a shieldless Phantom that has around 2,800 armor with 5% caustic resistance because why not have it? (I doubt you need the resistance though). You will also need a and if you aren't aware, you need to hold the button down, not just press it.
The main part of the build is either the Modified Plasma or Modified Shard Cannons from Azimuth. These are nasty! If you have them already, great. If not, I recommend the because they're easy to use. You can unlock those in the , which you probably have a permit for from previous CGs, but if not you can get that from Azimuth by getting Allied with them. I found the easiest way to get Allied was trading Tritium and doing cash donation missions. Do these activities at the Glorious Prospect megaship in LHS 1163. You need to buy 4 of them, that's the max you can equip at once. So don't get just enough materials for 1 cannon, you need to get materials for 4! What a treat!
Now that you have your ship and guns, I recommend . This makes it very unfair for the bug. (it might be necessary, I've needed it so far)
The 3 L's of Real Estate – The best place to find your prey is in Thargoid Alert systems near the Maelstroms. Once in system, you will be looking for Non Human Signal Sources with a Threat Level of 4 that have Salvage as a viable activity. Some places you can scan the Nav Beacon, some you need to FSS down the NHSS Threat 4. The correct NHSS are not super common, you may only find a few per hour. Once you drop in on the right NHSS, there should be a Thargoid Probe. Now, you wait to spring the trap!
The Big Event – You will want to have the Shutdown Neutralizer either on the same fire group or on a hotkey (new feature) because immediately once you start firing it will activate the shutdown field. If this hits you and you haven't used the Neutralizer properly, you're out of luck. Gotta hold it down the whole time until after the field passes over your ship. Test it out before hand if you're new to the module!
Once the Orthus appears, especially if you're using Shard Cannons, get in range. You need to apply max damage ASAP. It will try to shut you down, but you've countered that, so keep firing with full pips in WEP. You want to be within the 1.5km falloff start of the shards and land every shot. It will call in other Interceptors, but they take a few seconds to show up and it should explode before it activates its other trick.
After a short period of time from being attacked, the Orthus will deactivate all Guardian tech around it. This is why max DPS is key. It does not have stages or hearts like other Thargoids, so you just go for the kill right away. The payoff? 50M credits and a big contribution to the war effort!
If you need to see it done before hand to get a better idea, there are videos on Youtube of folks pulling it off.
Happy Hunting!
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/zdbdgy/orthus_ganking_guide/
