Harbor, Little TokyoPrerequisites: Complete “A Hero’s Duty”
Now that you’ve been rudely introduced to Wingers at the end of Act 3, perhaps you’d like to get better acquainted with them. A hearty resident of a little island in the south channel has been getting by in the disaster, but the new Winger presence is wreaking havoc on his boat. Help him clear out the Wingers in the surrounding areas and he’ll reward you handsomely. Well, not really; you’ll get some costume items. But it’ll be fun, and you’ll learn something, and grow.
There are three rooftop areas where Wingers nest near the pirate’s houseboat. You can attempt to clear them out in any order, but the rooftops to the north and to the east are a little bit easier. It’s advisable to travel to those first in order to get a little more comfortable taking on two Wingers at once before proceeding to the rooftops to the west, in Little Tokyo.
Wingers here will issue their usual spouts of grind-ruining flame, and they’ll also cough up Flobbers to chase you down. Flobbers are basically mobile living mines, so pop them before they fly too close. You’ll also have hordes of OD below to deal with or avoid; you can deal with minor groups of OD at this point with Captain Ahab/Taunt Bot and a Pulse Mine or two, a lemming trap that only takes you a second to set up. Captain Ahab is also probably the best weapon to use against the Wingers themselves, unless you have a ProPain Launcher from Chaos Squad.
The rooftops just west over the water into Little Tokyo contain two Wingers, just like the other indicated places, but here there are also two Muggers (and the usual background radiation of dozens of OD below nipping at your bouncing heels). This makes the fight more difficult, but you don’t actually have to kill the Muggers. If you’re adept at avoiding their leaping strikes, you can just avoid them and take out these two Wingers like the others. If you’re not adept at avoiding Mugger attacks, set up multiple Taunt Bots and Turret Copters to give yourself a healthy assist.
With all three rooftop areas cleared of Wingers, the pirate is ready to try his houseboat’s anti-air defenses. He rigged four barrel launchers, each aimed in a different direction. Their operation is like the catapults in “The King’s Feast”—face a direction and press Y to trigger that catapult. If the pirate has the launchers loaded, the large directional reticles will be green. While reloading, which takes about 10 seconds, they’ll be red.
During this defense, the pirate’s houseboat will be bombarded by 15 Wingers! They don’t all show up at once, thankfully. The first eight Wingers will appear in pairs and trios, almost as if they’re testing you. The final seven Wingers will do whatever the Winger equivalent is of a dogpile, though, and show up all together. This gets a little out of hand more or less immediately if you don’t get them under control, but it does have an advantage: if four or five Wingers clump up in the same direction, you can destroy them all at once with a single barrel launch.
Wingers are challenging opponents, but if you make your barrel launches count and use the barrel launchers every time they’re available, you should not have too much trouble clearing this Quest. For the trouble of clearing out over 20 Wingers for this stranger, he’ll give you some of his seaworthy duds.
