Trials are the games way of increasing difficulty. After level 11 you can access the heroic trial from any teleportation pad, and the super heroic after that. Cosmic is the final level of difficulty and cannot be attempted until level 60.
After beating a trial, press
before teleporting to any area to change the difficulty. This will grant you increased credits and EXP and allow more powerful gear to drop frequently.
The key to cosmic trials is proper gearing. You will want your character fully equipped with super heroic (purple) gear in all slots. Make sure the secondary effects of the gear benefit your play style. If you're a ranged attacker then you want + ranged damage on your gear for example. (If you don't know what type of attacks you're using, go to powers in the skills menu. Every power will have tags on the right hand side eg. Melee, Movement, Ranged, Magic etc).
I would say a major lifesaver in this trial is the "invisibilty when using med kits" perk. The easiest place to find this is on the Elektra medallion, however you can get it on certain catalysts. If you can find a ring which boosts your health, this will also be of benefit!
It would be ridiculous to try and give build advice for every hero in the game, so I'm going to share my build for Squirrel Girl. She's a very powerful and very cheap character, and therefore one I imagine most achievement hunters will have. This is also the build I used to beat my first cosmic trial, before having a single piece of cosmic gear.
Powers:
- Dire Squirrels
- Squirrelpocalypse
- Sic 'em
- Forestwalk
- It's Raining Rodents!
- Acorn Artillery
- Squirrel Presents
- Baffling Dialogue
Talents:
1 - Hulkbuster Squirrels
2 - Girl's Best Friend
3 - Squirrel Special Forces
4 - Pick 'Em Apart
5 - Squirrel Stampede
Gear:
The truly important things I had here were the Elektra medallion, a + health ring and my artifacts. The artifacts I used (and strongly recommend) are - Mask of Doom (guaranteed drop from story), Wicked Wand of Watoomb and Nutso the Squirrel (both very common drops in patrol).
The bread and butter of this build is Baffling Dialogue. This boosts enemy damage to an insane level, and causes them to attack each other. They'll rip each other to pieces faster than you ever could attacking directly. Other than that, it's just staying mobile and dropping your other skills as soon as they're off cooldown. They're all incredibly high damage, and the summons from this build tend to keep the enemies distracted while you cast. If you get hurt, dodge away and use your medpack.
An important thing to keep in mind; when the bosses appear use
to highlight and focus all your attacks on them. Baffling dialogue will keep working its magic on the mobs, you want all your DPS hitting the boss.
Watch for red circles on the ground. The AOE electric from Mandarin and grenade from Red Skull will basically instant kill you if you don't dodge them.
Other than that the only thing to remember is not rush. It's better to just keep running away, wait for your cooldowns and hit them from a distance than to stand there spamming your main attack.
Overall though I can't stress enough how important gear is. I spent hours failing this trial, then swapped my gear to the ones I listed here and a few pieces of armour which gave +20% health on medpack use and I passed it first try. If you keep failing, try something else, farm different gear and then come back.
I hope this guide helps, leave a comment if there is anything that needs adding, changing or clarifying.