Warhammer 40K: Rogue Trader — How to Beat Space Marine Aurora on Rykad Minoris

One of the biggest combat difficulty spikes in the game is the final Aurora boss fight on Rykad Minoris. That’s right: not the first one but the second one, where you come face-to-face with a Chaos Space Marine. Here’s how to beat Aurora in Warhammer 40K Rogue Trader.

How to Beat Aurora in Warhammer 40,000 Rogue Trader

Taking down Aurora is a manner of trial and error. The hardest aspects of the fight are the Heavy Bolter Burst Fire and the Sniper at the top. Positioning and focus firing to take out key targets are therefore crucial. Also, remember to stock up on grenades on all characters, as they’re essentially free damage that ignores cover throughout this fight. Here are my tips for defeating Aurora with some variations based on your team.

Cover Deployment and Spreading Out Your Team

Make sure to deploy behind half and full cover at the bottom. You don’t want any characters in the open, as the Cultist Sniper can one-shot them. Additionally, make sure to spread your characters out a bit and away from Aurora to minimize his Burst Fire effectiveness as it can decimate your party if they’re grouped together.

Take Out the Sniper

I recommend that killing the Sniper on the top platform past the staircase should be your main priority in round one. If you have a Sniper Operative with something like a Long Las, focus their fire on the Sniper with the extended-range 2AP shot. Cassia’s or another Officer’s Bring it Down! and Take Aim! will help with this greatly.

Play Around Cover

Prioritize cover and ranged attacks early on in the first couple of turns, even on your melee characters — especially if you haven’t taken out the Sniper. I found my melee characters like Abelard and Heinrix dropping fast if I charged Aurora too early. It’s better to play around cover at first using Officer support and Warrior tanking abilities and charging Aurora once the Sniper is dealt with.

How to Deal with Mobs

If you have an Argenta or any Burst Fire build in your party, try to eliminate the smaller mobs that spawn to the right of Aurora as soon as you can so that you can reduce the enemy’s action economy. The more turns you have, the better off you are. You can also ward off their approach with grenades between the two containers on the right.

Tactical Charge

If you have two or three melee-oriented characters like Abelard, Heinrix, and Pasqal, then you can surround Aurora and Taunting Scream him with someone like Abelard. The boss will have to switch to melee attacks and if they move, they’ll receive a few Attacks of Opportunity, which is free damage.

Sworn Enemy and Taunting Scream work wonders here. We can also lock him down as you’ll see right below. Having the Steel of the Forge anti-prone talent on Pasqal is also helpful as he’ll probably be doing the most damage with single melee attacks which will draw Aurora’s attention to him trying to knock him prone.

When Aurora takes a certain amount of heavy damage from a character, he’ll focus his damage on that character. Make sure they can take that damage before Aurora’s turn comes up.

Cassia & Operatives are MVPs

Cassia can carry this fight with various Officer buffs and extra turns. Bring it Down! makes it so that your main damage dealers can take another shot at key targets. Furthermore, her Held in My Gaze, which I highly recommend you learn, will keep Aurora stationary along with Lidless Stare.

You can then surround him with melee attackers and he cannot utilize his Heavy Bolter as effectively. Alternatively, the Zone of Fear on a surrounded Aurora and Attacks of Opportunity can also be devastating. Furthermore, Psyker Operatives like Idira are also crucial with her Sensory Deprivation to blind the boss and reduce his statistics with the Analyse Enemies plus Expose Weakness combo. Other Operatives like Pasqal can also do the latter.

How to Protect the Shuttles and Clean Up

There’s also a side objective for protecting shuttles you’ll use to escape. Losing all three means game over. That’s why this fight should be played aggressively after you take out the Sniper. Surround Aurora and don’t allow him to use his Heavy Bolter.

I’ve not had much luck saving all of them as Aurora usually destroys one or two before I can do much about it. That said, you definitely shouldn’t wait around for this to happen and should capitalize on locking him down with Cassia’s Held In My Gaze and melee characters as we talked about.

Starting off strong is crucial in this fight. Spreading out your characters behind cover at the beginning will minimize your losses from the Burst Fire and the Sniper. Then you can take the Sniper out and focus on the boss with our aforementioned tactics. Once you defeat him, if for some reason you haven’t taken out the Sniper you can climb the stairway while dodging from cover to cover to reach them and end the fight there.

That’s my guide on how to beat Aurora in Warhammer 40K Rogue Trader. From here, I recommend checking out my Rykad Minoris ending choice guide or best advanced archetypes for each class. For more tips and tricks, feel free to browse around our WH40K Rogue Trader guides library.