During The Fathom Menace, the mission board in the Den shows two lines: the main task, Launch Operation: Ingress Oblige, and an optional one, Talk to Luco. The optional objective is easy to miss because it never points you at a room. Luco Bronc is not standing where the story leaves you — he is one level down, in the Den’s social hub.
Quick answer: Open the Den map, travel to The Pit, and walk to the back corner where Cobb is standing. Luco Bronc is beside him. Start the conversation and the optional objective clears immediately.
Where Luco Bronc stands in The Pit
The Pit is one of the Den’s named areas, listed on the facility map alongside the Command Center, Armory, Medbay, Recruitment, Personnel, Customization, Upgrade, Office, and the Memorial. It sits away from the main floor you spawn on, so you will not bump into Luco by walking your usual route between the mission board and the Armory.
Inside The Pit, head straight for the far corner rather than sweeping the room. Cobb is the marker to look for — Luco is standing right next to him, and that is the only spot in the Den where the Talk to Luco prompt appears during this part of the story.
Complete the Talk to Luco objective
How to confirm it worked
Two things change once the conversation ends. The Talk to Luco line disappears from the objective tracker, leaving only Launch Operation: Ingress Oblige on the board. A new optional operation, Where’s Geryon?, also becomes available.
Operations are the non-combat jobs you fund from the galaxy map rather than deploy a squad for, and you can run several at once as long as you have the resources. If Where’s Geryon? has not appeared on your board, the dialogue did not finish — go back to The Pit and speak to Luco again.
| Before talking to Luco | After talking to Luco |
|---|---|
| Objectives: Launch Operation: Ingress Oblige, Talk to Luco | Objective: Launch Operation: Ingress Oblige |
| Where’s Geryon? not on the operations board | Where’s Geryon? available as an optional operation |
Why the objective is worth clearing before you deploy
Missions on the galaxy map only stay available for a limited number of cycles, and the clock advances when you commit to a tactical mission. Launching Ingress Oblige pushes the campaign forward, so it is safer to handle the Den conversations first while nothing is ticking down.
Luco is also one of the Authored Operators who gates content. He is the Umbaran sniper who fought the Republic’s invasion of his homeworld, and two missions — Help Luco Get Revenge and Storm the Experimental Facility — cannot be run without him in the squad. Keeping his personal thread moving through Den conversations is how that content stays open to you.
Note: permadeath applies to authored characters as well as recruits. An Operator who goes down takes an Injury, and three Injuries on standard difficulty means they are gone for good, along with any missions that require them.
The Den rewards a slow lap between missions. Optional objectives like this one rarely put a waypoint on your screen, so it is worth checking The Pit, the Personnel quarters, and the Office each time the story hands you a new task — that is usually where a squadmate is waiting with a conversation that opens something else up.
