Everything costs shields.

Aegis Gale's alt-fire is the nuke, and it scales on Range for radius and Strength for damage; Arcane Expertise converts Strength into extra shield capacity, which feeds back into Aegis Gale damage.

Pillage is the engine: it returns shields from stripped enemies, so casting it in a crowd both strips armor and refuels you.

Notably you do not always want a one-cast full strip, because a fully stripped enemy returns no shields on the next Pillage.

1.

Enter Aegis Gale and spam alt-fire across the room.

2.

Spam Pillage whenever enemies are near to refill shields, cleanse status and strip armor.

Two modes.

For base Steel Path, casual tanking on the huge shield pool plus Adaptation (over 50,000 effective shield HP) is enough, and armor mods do nothing for shields so none are used.

For endurance, lean on Hildryn's passive: 3s of i-frames on a shield break, a 1s recharge delay, and about 300 shield/s regen, meaning you can recast Pillage by the third second and reset the gate.

Rolling Guard near the end of the i-frame window extends it, and Vazarin Protective Sling stacks a further 5s on demand with no cooldown.

Duration scales Pillage's spread to roughly 60m effective.

Efficiency should be neutral to positive because Aegis Storm drains hard; Seismic Bond and Mystic Bond on a companion give free Efficiency and free Pillage casts.

Range scales Balefire radius, Pillage cast radius, Haven, and Aegis Storm's crowd control; 145% to 280% to taste.

Strength drives Balefire damage, Pillage strip amount, and Haven's damage and shield bonus, with the caveat about not over-stripping.

Transient Fortitude, Umbral Intensify are the Strength core.

Primed Continuity holds Duration against Transient Fortitude.

Overextended, Stretch set the wide Range.

Primed Redirection deepens the shield pool, which is both survival and Aegis Gale damage through Arcane Expertise.

Augur Reach is more Range and a shield-gate contribution.

Aegis Gale is the damage.

Blazing Pillage for enemies with no armor or shields.

Streamline for Efficiency.

Adaptation for passive casual-SP tankiness.

Rolling Guard for extra i-frames.

The exilus is fully open.

Corrosive Projection to strip in two Pillage casts at 183% Strength, which also preserves the shield return from a partial strip.

Enemy Radar for tracking.

Growing Power for Strength.

Pick one.

Subsume over 3.

- Xata's Whisper for overguard damage and a headshot multiplier on Balefire.

- Roar for straight Balefire damage.

- Elemental Ward (electric) for more shield capacity plus damage redirection.

- Molt to move faster inside Aegis Gale.

Arcane Velocity for Balefire fire rate, Arcane Expertise for the Strength-to-shield conversion that also feeds Aegis Gale damage.

Swap Expertise for Arcane Aegis or Arcane Barrier in endurance for a stronger shield-regen safety net.

Vazarin Protective Sling for the on-demand 5s i-frame, and Vazarin's Guardian Break for faster shield regen on a broken shell.

Madurai for cast speed and 40% Strength.

Taxon with Molecular Conversion and Guardian, or a Raksa Kubrow with Protect, both feed shields directly.

Pillage affects Kubrows and Moas but not sentinels, so a Raksa stays topped up just from your casts.

The shield pool plus the passive i-frames plus Pillage refuel.

It fails to a single hit that exceeds the whole pool in deep endurance, and to toxin, which bypasses shields entirely.

There is none.

Shields are the resource, and Pillage plus companion support keeps them full.

Toxin.

Very deep endurance where one hit deletes the pool faster than the passive can respond.

Aegis Storm's drain if you build low Efficiency without companion support.

A Molt-mobility Hildryn for speed.

Strong: no energy management, a spammable area nuke, a strip that also heals, very tanky in most content.

Weak: toxin-vulnerable, drain- heavy without companion mods, falls off in the deepest endurance.

Players who want a low-maintenance nuke-and-tank that never thinks about energy.

Hornet Strike is the mandatory 220% base damage; do not use Galvanized Shot, Balefire is 100% area and does not benefit.

Primed Fulmination widens the blast; Primed Heated Charge plus Primed Convulsion build the element.

Secondary Enervate adds roughly a flat 80% crit chance for yellow and orange crits.

Corrosive-heat for general use, viral-electric for Corrupted and Murmur, magnetic-toxin or heat for Corpus.

Hildryn-locked.

Slow charge on the alt-fire.

Storm of Shields (#010) and The Drifting Bastion (#078) are the Hildryn frame builds this pairs with.

Hildryn players who want the exalted pistol as their nuke.