From Ratzap:

I was just doing the L4 damsel in distress and noticed I 1 vollied Krull - no reinforcements wave as he didn't get time to shout he was under attack (pity cos I wanted the loot/isk).

I've complete this mission before and after Empyrean patch. Before patch I did accidentally attack of Kruul in first gates. And that caused spawn.
Right after patch I got same mission again. This time I was smarter and didn't attack Kruul. But still they spawned.

If you want to avoid triggering the spawn prematurely then do not use drones at all until you are ready to attack Kruul, which will trigger them. Drones tend to accidently attack him on their own inbetween your target kills.

Drones will not "accidentally" attack if set to passive in your drone settings drop down.

For that matter drones are best set to passive on any mission with triggers since they always seem to attack triggers first.

This mission is the best one IMHO to test your tank. The four spawns alltogether give about 1800/2000 dps all damages (because the assassins at the last spawn). The apocalypse navy issue runs this fury dps with dual officer LAR , 2x officer Kin hardeners , 2x officer Thermic hardener , 1x corpum A eanm. Don't try that if you don't have a perfect tank :)

This mission is perfect for torpedoes imo. Everything spawns within perfect range.
Did it just yesterday thinking, why not try some Siege Launchers on my CNR, since the merc BS always come very close.

Worked like a breeze, probably finished the mission twice as fast.

This is my favorite level 4 mission, if you set drones to passive till ur ready to take out kruul u shouldn't have any problem (after that u can just set them to aggressive again), also very easy to salvage case its all under 20kms.

Tried to pull a nice one. Saved an almost-through-hull pleasure garden for the moment the other pleasure garden spawned it's first wave of ships. Then blew that one up. But sadly they where not affected by it at all. At all.

When i done this i got the second spawn even though i killed the casino so don't count on it not appearing also there is 2 pleasure hubs u must destroy spawns don't appear till u start killing second one the senitals (bs) drop good loot large guns some named zor drops his usuall crap i also tried to use the pleasure gardens explosion to damage npc's but didn't work fun mission

Did this comfortably using only one rep in a standard apoc. 2x kin 1x therm 1x eanm, 2x heatsinks + amarr navy large rep. Megapulses track the <5km orbit BS fine.

Just use the normal warp, cancel warp, warp at distance technique to warp in at desired optimal. Works for me every time.

Completed this mission in a Recharge Myrmidon.

15:35:07 Combat Kruul's Pleasure Gardens hits you, doing 1477.4 damage.

- This was from 30km out, with 2kin/2therm/dc2 armour tank (Apocalypse Navy Issue). I think this explosion hits to 40km out as it always has. When I get real close I get around 2000 damge with the same tank.

This was my 1st level 4 mission and I did not know what was going on! I had not yet discovered this xlent EVE Survival reference. One of my favorites now, it has lots of juicy loot!