Secret Spore-Tending Unit Dantooine Biomes Achievements

The Spore-Tending Units in the Dantooine Biomes are dangerous floating droids that give off a toxic debuff that will quickly kill your character if you don’t take the right precautions. While you are mostly supposed to avoid them as a hazard in the area, there are two special secret hidden achievements called Spore Thing and Violent Tendencies you can get by gathering a group up and killing the strange Spore-Tending Units flaoting around in the Wreckage on Dantooine area.

Dantooine Biomes

If you are not familiar with the Dantooine Biomes, they are a level 80 area introduced in Update 7.8 You can learn how to start on the Dantooine Biomes guide.

SWTOR Dantooine Biome Dynamic Encounters Guide

Map

The Spore-Tending Units Map shows potential locations the Spore-Tending Units might be – the Green one is always there, and there will be a single Spore-Tending Unit in one of the other locations, so you need to go around and find it, and it despawns changes locations approximately every ten minutes after it spawns randomly in one of the locations.

If someone has killed the attackable Spore-Tending Unit recently, you’ll need to wait for the ten minute timer to run out, though you may not know when they killed it. The yellow spore-tending unit will automatically despawn upon completion of the Transition Event going from Phase 2 to 3, regardless of how much time is left on the counter. It will NOT despawn during the transition from Core Unavailable to Core Aligned).

During Phases 1 and 2, a yellow spore-tending unit will spawn in one of several areas of Sporefall. During the entirety of Phase 3 (Core Unavailable and Core Aligned), a red spore-tending until with spawn. Again, did not discern a pattern. These also operate on a TEN minute timer.

For both the yellow and red spore-tending units the units will despawn after the timer expires regardless of whether they are in combat or not. If the invisible ten-minute timer runs out while you are fighting the droid, it will also disappear and despawn, and reappear somewhere else.

Tip: If you are farming this for the achievement, I would strongly recommend you find the first one and wait out the timer, then start a ten minute timer on your computer or phone and find where it’s respawned to next. Also, don’t engage them in areas where there’s a high likelihood of a lot of adds spawning. – Rogue

Spore-Tending Units

The Spore-Tending Units are the “scary” droids that when you approach them, if you don’t get away quickly, will kill you in a few seconds due to their stacking spore debuff. They will may have a green-yellow, or red nameplate, but all version of them are dangerous.

The debuff they give you is bright-pink.

Immunity

You can protect yourself from these Spore-Tending Units! There are  glowing blue workshop tables around the area called Hazard Mitigation Modules. 

Once you reach the Hero rank with the Galactic Sustainability Institute reputation faction, you can spend 100,000 Credits to purchase the Mycelial Immunity buff from the terminal which will protect you from all forms of Sporefall in the Sporefall area, including the deadly pink Heavy Sporefall. The buffs that are available from the earlier ranks will protect you from spores but will not protect you from the special deadly spores from the Spore-Tending Units.

Fighting Spore-Tending Units

Once you have immunity, it’s time to take on a Spore-Tending droid, either a yellow-named or red-named one. They start off with about 5 million health for one player, and for every player or companion that attacks them, will go up by 3 million health (so 8 million for you and your companion if playing solo).

It is important to interrupt Energy Surge whenever possible, as it really hurts, taking about 10% of your health with every cast.

Fight Tips

They are a nasty fight solo, and I did not have much luck alone myself, but I have seen other players taking them on!

Tip: As far as the fight itself, this enemy can be solo’d with the standard caveats–you know your class, you are comfortable with your rotation, and know how to manage your DCDs.

You should also have a ranged companion in healer spec equipped. When you engage the unit, jump in unmounted and from a distance–this way your companion will most likely remain outside the range of the unit’s AOE attack. Once engaged, the unit will spam an energy surge AOE attack. You can absorb quite a bit of this, but should cycle your DCDs appropriately.

When I farmed this achievement, I did so as a Guardian. Guardians have a shorter interrupt (12s cooldown) and a DCD (45s cooldown) that reduced all AOE damage by 60% for 15 seconds. So I could time it to use the DCD, minimize the damage for 15 seconds, interrupt three times while healing thru the intervals, and repeat. Assuming you’re not getting random players hitting the boss and not contributing at all, I’m able to find and kill the unit in about six minutes.

I would strongly recommend you have Advanced Research: Sporefall unlocked and that you maintain the “Spore-Spangled” buff you get from the Spore-Coated Mass. I did have a few pulls where it fell off and I didn’t realize it, and during the fight I noticed the difference. – Rogue

 With the Research Notes purchased from the Reputation vendor at Friend rank or higher, you can look for the glowing blue brain-shaped spore-coated masses and right-click them to get the Spore-Spangled buff, which you can use around the area or even bring into the core.

 Spore-Spangled from Research: Gotten from the clickable brain-shaped spore-coated masses obtainable with the Sporefall Research Notes at Friend rank or higher. The spores have burrowed in. Periodically gaining a heal over time effect and movespeed boost. Rarely, protects you from all damage for 5 seconds while at low health. If you are under 15%, it will protect you for 5 seconds for 100% of the damage you would have taken, but not more than once every 15 minutes though. Also has a 40% chance of healing you, for 1*BonusHeal + 3% of your health separately from the protection.

Spore Specifications

When you manage to defeat a Spore-Tending Unit of any kind, a few random members of your group will get Spore Specifications, a binds-on-pickup item that will allow you to build a Spore Purifier. In our group of 8 people, roughly 2 to 3 people would get an item.

Construct Spore Purifier

If you have a Spore Specifications item, there are a few specific areas around the map where a blue hologram and temporary ability called Construct Spore Purifier will show up.

If you click the temporary ability, you will lose your item, and build part of the Purifier.

Once done, you or another player can use up another item to Construct Spore Purifier. Make sure not to have multiple players build at the same time, or you might wind up with issues where items are deleted but don’t count towards the build.

Once the purifier is mostly built, a third player can use a third item to Construct Spore Purifier. I think it took us 3 or 4 constructions before we completed it.

The Purifier should last until the entire area resets after the Core Unlocked phase,

While standing near the Purifier, you will get the Purified debuff which gives you immunity to Sporefall and to Heavy Sporefall from the Spore-Tending Droids.

Why you would want to build this, when you probably need the immunity to fight the droid in the first place, I’m not sure.

Achievements

•  Spore Thing: Attack and defeat a non-hostle Spore-Tending Unit (Hidden Achievement, refers to the non-hostile Yellow units)
•  Violent Tendencies: Defeat 25 Spore-Tending Units

Thank you so much to player Rogue / RogueTwo / obiwanomalley for compiling a lot of information about how, where and when the droids spawn to share with everyone!