The RRU Rough Guide to Dar Narbugud

[Raedwulf]

6 / 10

Dar Narbugud is the new Rift-style 12 man raid. The Rift it isn't - it's a little shorter, not as challenging, and a little lacking in variety - but it's a vast improvement on the stultifying tripe that has been The Watcher and The Turtle.

And we've beaten it.

Worth making clear, I feel. RRU has cleaned the place out, end to end, with no outside help, no spoilers, no guides or walkthroughs from anywhere else. Whilst this guide is written by an individual, the advice it contains are the fruits of many people's efforts & insight, based on what has been in front of them when they've set foot inside. Our tactics may be the same as in many other guides, there may be many other ways of doing some of it, and we may have missed little tricks along the way - we wouldn't know because we haven't looked elsewhere. And the author of the guide is the Raid Leader for the place, so he should know! ;)

Raid Leadership
The easiest way of telling you what to expect from this guide is to tell you how I lead. I am analyst by nature & by trade, but I come here to play the game, not to number crunch a spreadsheet. I also do not micro-manage. You will not find here second-by-second timings for what to do, the 7 class traits, 3 Legendaries, etc that you are expected to slot, or step-by-step instructions on what your class should be doing. I expect you to know how to play your class, and I have the courtesy to allow you to get on with it. Just don't let me down... ;)

The Golden Virtue of RRU play (the one you can't slot, but can learn) is Adaptability. This is why we will attack an instance with all sorts of odd combinations of classes, and why we usually favour ad-hoc round-the-clock Fellowship Manoeuvres. When I do give an instruction in a raid, I expect it to be followed, and if I state something explicitly here, it's probably a good idea to pay heed to it. Beyond that, if I tell you that X class should be running Y trait-set & you're more used to Z, or F, or Q, I'm only cramping your style & affecting your play. And, therefore, expect this guide to be painted with the broad brush for the most part...

Government Health Warning

The Government (Tyranny would be more accurate) of RRU wishes to warn you that this guide is incomplete, under construction, possibly shot full of glaring inaccuracies (never mind typo's), and if following it gets you killed, or just an enormous repair bill, that's your own bloody stupid fault, isn't it? But you were impatient and wanted some details on the bits you haven't seen, so here's the early drafts.

And yes, the thread is closed. You don't think I want your inane drivel cluttering up my literary masterpiece do you? There's a DN discussion elsewhere. Clear off & pass comment in that! ;) {More to the point, and more seriously, it's under construction, remember? Plus I don't believe in allowing Guides to be submerged in point & counter-point anyway. There's a discussion thread for that!}

[Raedwulf]

DN is a radiance-gated raid, with locks (boss kills) that reset once per week, early on Thursday morning. Under MoM mechanics, you required a minimum of 65 radiance to avoid cowering. This means a bare minimum of 55 equipment radiance is good enough, provided you can buy DP hope as well. Note that the mechanics of cowering have changed with Mirkwood. It looks like 35 equipment radiance is now the new minimum. Nevertheless the more radiance the better, since it affects the skill level of your abilities, as well as such factors as max hp, damage taken / dealt, etc.

Most of the time we've gone in with a "standard" party - BRG & GRD, 2 each of CPT, CHM, HNT, LM, MNS. Nevertheless, variants to the norm work, as you might expect. The loss of one set of buffs makes life a bit tougher if you only have one CPT, and you never want to raid with less than 2 MNS if you can help it, beyond that it's flexible. We've variously had no BRG; no GRD (CHM Main Tanking); 3 of CHM, HNT, LM, and/or MNS; even 2 GDN (in fact we killed the Blind One first time with 2 GDN). We've only ever gone in once with a WDN (Rhy) and never with a RK, simply because most people consider one of the older classes to be their mains, and there are few WDN / RK geared up enough to be eligible.

The layout of the place is as follows. You pass through the portal into an ante-chamber to a large cavern. This cavern contains a pillar of rock toward the rear, 5 groups of assorted Trash, and two very large & ugly trolls (the first bosses). Once cleared, a winding, descending passage, populated by various groups of Trash leads you to a portal chamber with 3 portal exits.

The left exit will lead you to a linear system that ends with the easiest of the Globsnaga bosses. The right exit brings you face to face with a group of trash stood at the intersection of a passage beyond them, and a ramp down to your left. Fighting straight through will take you to the second Globsnaga boss, descending the ramp to the left will eventually bring you to the third & hardest of them. Once cleared, these areas remain clear for the remainder of the locks, so if you ever realise you've missed a quest location, you can always come back for it.

If you take the central exit from the portal chamber, you will eventually, after fighting your way through yet more Trash, find yourself confronting The Blind One, by some margin the most difficult boss in the raid. Until he is dead, the Trash that live in the passages leading from The Twins down to the portal room & through to The Blind One's cavern will respawn the next time you enter. Shortly after he is dead, the webbing in this room, that surrounds a central platform of rock, will disintegrate. Anyone standing on it will fall into the pool below. Anyone not standing on it will eventually have to jump anyway, as this is your route to the final boss, The Mistress. The 3 portals around The Blind One's cavern willl, at all times, kill you if you attempt to enter them! So jump down, swim out, and run down to the entrance to The Mistress's cavern - there are no Trash, just the final encounter.

Equipment & set-ups
Besides the radiance kit, you are expected to be carrying the usual assortment of food, scrolls, hope & healing pots. Failure to do so generally marks you down in people's estimation, especially the Raid Leader. So please ensure you have everything and are on time!

DN is strong on Acid damage (which makes Lamb & Mushroom soups very useful) and, in certain fights, on Shadow damage. You may wish to adjust equipments & virtues to accomodate. Champions will enjoy themselves, as there is plenty ofopportunity to AoE, though not to the extent that Deathstorm is a necessity. Wounds are frequent, but Lore Masters should always be slotting Proof Against All Ills for raids anyway, right? Having one LM on full Ancient Master is nice, but not a necessity. Any standard raid set up is fine for Minstrels (i.e. including Rally & Fellowship's Heart), and similarly, any standard raiding set-up is fine for other classes.

Don't get too hung up about traits - the most important thing is that you are comfortable with your abilities & know how to make best use of the particular idiosyncracies of your own choice.

[Raedwulf]

Under construction

[Raedwulf]

The Twins (AKA Bill & Ben, The Flowerpot Men)


This was a tough fight to conquer initially, but with a practiced group and higher radiance levels, it very quickly became routine. Routine doesn't mean easy, be warned! It was not uncommon to suffer multiple deaths, before the level cap was raised, though wipes were thankfully rare once we knew the tactics worked.

Blagh & Rung are Siamese twins. They are completely identical in every way, 300K+ hp trolls, and it makes absolutely no difference which you target first. There are two basic strategies for this 3 phase fight - the one we do, and the one we don't! (We tried a couple of times, but could never get it to work, so we reverted...). Your choices are fight them together (which we do), or keep them separated.

There several important features to these characters. The first is that you hurt one by hitting his brother. All damage inflicted, of any description, is passed to the twin, except for taunts which build aggro on the target. The major special attack is Acid Pools. A twin will punch the ground two or three times to signal this attack, and then create up to 3 acid pools on players in a 180-degree frontal arc. This does about 900 acid damage / tick (2s tick, less mitigation, more on crits) on anyone in it, and takes about 3 steps to clear from the middle. It operates for the whole of the fight.

There are two other specials. The first operates in phases 1 & 2. It is an uppercut punch, which will stun the player on landing. It's also, often, preceded by a twin running across the room to hit you, before running back to whoever is top of his aggro list. This can occur in phases 1 & 2. The final special is phase 3 only, when the troll will start dropping Killing Field Mushrooms. These persist for around 5 minutes, doing 964 acid / tick as long as you are in them.

Seconds out, Round One!
The Acid Pools are bad news for induction classes. One hit is painful, but get caught twice, or get caught in overlapping pools & it's real bad news; possibly terminal. The Twins targetting is not fixed, but it does appear to be biased, & they will tend to pick the same targets throughout. Therefore, when the Main Tank begins the fight, the other Heavies & melee classes will join in (on auto-attack only, to start with). The squishies / induction classes such as MNS & HNT will remain by the door (which has now closed behind you) for the first few sec's of the fight doing nothing, in an attempt not to attract attention.

The basic strategy is to reduce one troll (the one you're not hitting, remember) to around 170K, depending on the amount of AoE in the party. You then switch targets to the troll you've been hurting and hit him until his twin dies. Phase one is straightforward enough - stay alert for pools & follow the raid assist. There's no rush about this; it's more important to get through cleanly i.e. without deaths, than it is to get through quickly.

You won't like me when I'm angry...
Phase 2 begins when one brother is reduced to 125K. At this point, his twin gets a trifle annoyed with you all & starts building up buffs that increase his damage output markedly. In fact, if you've got the timing wrong & reduce both brothers below 125K, both will be generating these buffs. That's not as bad as it sounds, since one is going to die anyway, and it makes for a shorter phase 3.

If phase 1 is slow & steady, 2 & 3 are a straight dps race. The buffs stop building when the first twin dies and, ideally, you want the survivor to have no more than 4-6 of these (we have killed with around 10 on in the earlier days). When the twin you are killing is down to about 20K, the Main Tank needs to pull both to the edge of the cavern. It doesn't matter where, particularly, but you must get the twins out of the middle.

A bad case of gas
Once one twin is dead, phase 3 begins. Again, speed is of the essence here. The surviving twin will quickly drop one of those Killing Field mushrooms, and will continue to put them down regularly. Remember the duration on these things? Basically, you have to kill him before you run out of room. The tank needs to fight right on the edge of the cloud each time a new one is dropped, and must draw him around the edge of the cavern. It is very important that you stick to the margins - if you make the mistake of moving inside the free-standing pillar toward the rear of the cavern, you will wipe the party. Melee classes must enter & leave combat from behind the tank. It's the shortest way out of the cloud, and the tank will themself be coming out of the cloud backwards, so that's where you will want to be to recommence killing the troll. Everyone else should be more or less in the middle, clear of the gas, and alert for puddles which will still appear occasionally. And that's all there is to it! Easy, ain't it? ;)

[Raedwulf]

Zholuga

So boring and easy, he doesn't have a nickname. It has been said that the Trash are harder to clear than the Globsnaga Bosses. Face this muppet & you'll realise why. As with all bosses, it's wise to start on auto-attacks & debuffs only for 30s+ to give your Main Tank time to build up a head of steam. There's not much else to say apart from his colour phases. There are several runestones in pockets of his cave. Some will glow at certain points in the fight; three classes will be able to manipulate each.

Shortly after the fight begins, he will go to his blue phase, appropriate class activates the stone. He moves to his green phase; appropriate class activates the stone. He moves to his red phase; kill. Green & blue are quite nasty, which is why we switch him. Switches are: Blue - LM, HNT, BRG; Green - CPT, MNS, RK; Red - GDN, CHM, WDN. Aha! When I mentioned the theoretical yellow phase tonight someone went smart-alec and switched him again. He doesn't go yellow phase; he goes back to blue. So now we know. Isn't that nice? Except for those who died as a consequence of Oderid's impromptu... (who now owes the people concerned some repair money! :p)

He does occasionally have a nasty eyeball type attack in the earliest phase of the fight. Some groups like to send only the MT in & otherwise range him until he goes to his phases; we don't usually worry & just pile into him from the off.

Flagit
Otherwise known as Fail-git, Foul-git, or Paul for some reason (I know not why!). If the party lacks discipline, fails to pay attention, or is otherwise rubbish or off-form, you will fail this fight. There are 3 things to know about this one. One: he puts fight-long debuffs on you that increase the amount of damage you take. The longer the fight goes on, the more likely someone will get a fatal hit. Two: he has an eyeball attack. Three: he has a self-heal that is entirely dependent on the stupidity of the party to work (see above).

The eyeball attack starts green, turns red, and explodes for very high damage. Even if you survive it, it will quite likely kill someone (or several) nearby. There is an invisible threshold across the mouth of his cave. You must fight him from within this line, because you must cross this going out to cancel it. When you do, green or red, the eye disappears. If you start outside the threshold, run away & die somewhere out of range, because you will not be able to criss-cross the line to cancel the eye. For this reason, we fight Flagit reasonably close to the left hand wall going in, so that no-one has to move too far to get away. You have about 6s in total.

The self-heal is preceded by a red aurora around him, and is indicated by a green glow. When it first appears it occurs once per minute, lasting for 15s; once he is past about 50% hitpoints, it becomes every 30s for 5s. If you hit him when it is up, he receives 1% of his initial health back. This means 5K+ per strike, so don't do it! I've seen stupid parties heal him for 70K+ at a time. Do this sort of thing repeatedly & you will wipe, because the debuffs will get you.

Istum
Otherwise known as Wormbum, this is the toughest of the 3. He is an unpredictable sod, who will regularly run away from the Main Tank, regardless of aggro, before returning. He was tricky because of this, until we figured out a tactic for him; now he should be on farm (even ignoring the level cap raise). He has a nasty AoE swipe; and a pull attack, which will do several hundred points of damage & give you a 6s cripple when you land (bloody annoying if you're an induction class). In the last phase he will go fairly berserk, running around madly swiping at people. All the MT can do is stand & wait for him to come back again.

The real problem here is that he summons exploding crawlers. In phase 2, 4 of these will appear together in the middle of the room. For this reason fight him in the middle of one side. Why the middle? Because in phase 3, the worms appear one at a time, fairly randomly, in each corner. To deal with phase 2, LMs should keep Sticky Tar down in the middle of the room as much as possible to keep them slow when they turn up. Cracked Earth will then kill them (if you're quick), or HNT AoE, ditto. The only real alarm here is if a pull attack dumps you near the middle at the wrong moment - 3 or 4 worms exploding next to you probably will kill you. Phase 3 is even easier. Place one heavy armour in each corner & stay away from them. They can soak up the damage from one exploding crawler easily enough, even if they don't manage to kill it as it appears. I usually put CHM in the far corners from the door, CPT in the near, but it doesn't matter, so long as they're where they should be.

Common Ground
They are all 500K+ hp mobs, immune to the usual raft of stuff. All can be reset simply by running out of their area, if things go wrong. Each of the three might drop a trophy head in the loot - annoyingly you need all 3 to barter for the trophy. If you want to see it, visit the Nimminas Kin Hall in Long St, Etfield, Bree, as it doubles as the RRU Trophy Hall these days.

[Raedwulf]

Mr Smelly

This is the toughest fight in DN. The Blind One is by no means a Thorog or a Thaurlach, but he has been a formidable opponent. We can hardly claim he is on farm yet, but the first time we killed him it was "at the last attempt", we took him down against my expectations, and with an unconventional & inexperienced group. Which probably proves something.

Mr BO (as he is unaffectionately known) is another of the, by now familiar, Turbine 500K+ 3 phase boss fights. His room, as you will have gathered from the description in The Genera above, is a slightly odd affair. When you enter TBO is stood on a rock platform (actually the flat top of a column of rock) surrounded by a web, that surrounded by a regular cavern flooring. If the entry door is considered to be at 6 o'clock, there are large deadly portal doors at 3, 9, & 12 o'clock. Nothing goes into them, Darklings come out of them. Eventually. But more on that later.

Keeping at arm's length
Well, he pongs a bit. I mean, do you really want to go near him? No, me neither. So here's the plan... We'll send a couple of tanks in (those sweaty tin cans can't smell anything except themselves anyway) and the rest of us...

Remember I said the door is at 6 o'clock? There's a reason... Phase 1 we organise by the clock. The Main Tank and an Off Tank will engage Mr BO on his platform; everyone else operates from their clock points around the room, which the Leader will assign. Since 2 tanks will be in the middle, we leave 11 & 12 free, for reasons which will become clear. Beyond that, try to keep each group together so that fellowship-only skills function properly; then spread healer classes around so that everyone is in range of more than one. Generally, I place a HNT at 1 & a CHM at 10, and then organise the rest of it according to what is in the raid. On our first successful attempt, we had

1 - HNT
2 - CPT
3 - LM
4 - CHM
5 - MNS
6 - CPT
7 - HNT
8 - MNS
9 - LM
10 - CHM

with two GRD as the "sundial" tanking Mr BO in the middle.

A better set up would be

1 - HNT
2 - CPT
3 - MNS
4 - LM
5 - (non-healer type)
6 - CPT
7 - (non-healer type)
8 - MNS
9 - LM
10 - CHM

Draw a line between 4 & 8. When someone crosses that, TBO activates. Allegedly, it's only when someone steps on the web, but this doesn't seem to be the case in practice. The most important thing you need to know about our foe is that he maintains a damage aura, with quite a wide radius, around himself. Every time you cross that, in or out, it's 1,000+ damage. When you combine that with his anti-aggro knockback kick attack, you now know why we don't all charge madly in.

The kick is a frontal arc attack that will wipe all aggro on the principle target and send anyone in the arc flying out of his aura. Yup, out & 1K damage, run back in & another 1K. Now you know why we don't all charge madly in! ;) But this is why we have two tanks on opposite sides on him from the start. When the first tank gets the boot, he should turn on the second. By the time he kicks the second, he should turn again on the first, and so on.

He has two other special attacks in this phase, a green eyeball, and a red one. Each is on a short timer before it takes effect, & there’s nothing you can do to remove them. The green eye inflicts a fair amount of poison damage; the red just damage, but it also roots you. What’s worse is that both effects are AoE & they are contagious. Therefore, when either go off, anyone else within range not only takes the damage, they also acquire an eyeball of their own. How nice. If you get an eyeball, call it, colour and position “Green eyeball, 4 o’clock!” If someone next door to you gives this call, make sure you are far enough away, especially if it is a red one, because they will not be able to move away from you.

The tanks in the middle, in particular, must pay attention to this. In general, the Main Tank is not a target for a bosses special attack. However the Off Tank is, and in this fight Main & Off status will switch between the two in the centre more than once. It is perfectly possible for the Off to be infected and to then infect the Main, with an eye bouncing back & forth between the two several times. Whichever of the two can move must move toward the 11 / 12 o’clock position. That is what this free area is for, and others must not encroach into it for obvious reasons.

You’ll be delighted to know that both the kick & eyeball attacks are phase 1 phenomena, and will cease with the transition. As so often with phase 1 of boss fights, patience is the key. It’s not terribly difficult to get right, and there is no need to force the pace, so slow & steady and watch out for the eyes!

Slugs on speed
The clock positions can be abandoned in phase 2. Whichever tank is Main should take Mr Smelly down to the alcove to the left of the door as you came in (at 7 o’clock). This puts half of his damage aura into the rock walls, and saves us a deal of trouble. Everyone else can move. Where to? Ahhh...

In this phase, TBO has induction attacks that do a great deal of damage. If one of the tanks is not a CHM, then one now needs to join them in the corner, in order to Clobber freely. The other speciality of this part of the fight are some fast moving darklings, which appear from the portals at 3, 9, & 12, and also on the “sundial” in the middle. These need to be dealt with. If they are not, each one that appears will target someone create a purple portal thingie on the floor, and temporarily suck the victim down into it (for @ 6s), as well as triggering World Eater-style tendrils round about (NB: not sure if the tendrils are from the darklings, or another BO special). Whoever is setting them off, remember to get out of those tendrils when you can – they are a 90% debuff on healing. These tendrils are the reason why we’ve been trying to ensure squishy healing classes have the boots (-4s root).

Ideally, the CHM at 10 o’clock should be able to cover the 9 – 12 – sundial triangle, provided they haven’t had to go Clobbering. The 12 – sundial – 3 triangle should be covered by the BRG (if there is one), or another Off Tank (CPT is probably the most likely candidate, given the “norm” group). In theory, LM’s can do it, but induction times make life awkward – those slugs really are quite quick moving. HNTs should concentrate on Mr Smelly.

I prefer my spirits in bottles...
The last phase of this fight includes possibly the oddest special attack I've seen so far. We get 500K shadow Blind Ones appearing at regular intervals. They have the full 500K health, but they are stunnable, rootable, mezzable. They also take 50K damage from certain skills such as LM's Blinding Flash. If you've 2 LMs in the group, you should be able to get the first Shadow killed off. After that, if you can get rid of any more, that's all to the good, but the primary objective here is simply to keep them neutralised. Essentially, ignore these things & concentrate on finishing off Smelly. Finally, remember that that webbing disintegrates after BO is dead. You've about 6s to get off it, or you will drop straight down.

[Raedwulf]

The Mistress

AKA Jade, because she's fat, ugly, poisonous, and thinks far too much of her herself. Also, she's slightly green. And poisonous! Anyway, she begins accompanied by 4 World Eater Protectors. In fact, she doesn't begin, they do, but I'm getting ahead of myself (never get ahead of the Raid Leader! ;))...

Jade is a 500K+ hp 4 phase fight. She is roughly equivalent to Zogtark, the drake boss in The Rift, in difficulty, only without the slow bits. At the time of writing, we've only killed her the once, but that was the first evening we had a serious go at her, and she died on the 4th proper attempt. What does this tell you? That the fight shouldn't actually be that difficult, once you understand the tactics. Nevertheless, once phase 2 begins this is a fast-paced, intense & continuous scrimmage - it's quite good fun & there's no time to pause for breath. Allowing for bad luck, though, you ought to kill her every time you face her, even if not on the first attempt.

Scrum Down!
Jade does not activate initially. The 4 World Eaters will take exception to you barging into her quarters and try to throw you out. They're tossers, though (pun, geddit? Oh, nvm! :P), and will die in fairly short order. As with most phase 1 fights, there should be no real alarms. You've plenty of time to make sure things go smoothly.

The World Eaters (70K mobs again) have one peculiarity not shared by their lesser bretheren encountered earlier - they have healing auras. One of those, which heals any Nameless in the vicinity, is a complete red herring since there are no Nameless around when they are alive. The other allows them to heal their brothers of 1% health every 2 seconds if they are in range, though there is no indication that these stack, so it doesn't become 3% if all four are together. Whilst 700 / 2 secs sounds a lot, a raid will burn through that easily. What's more troublesome is the report that when one dies, his death gives a big spike heal to other Eaters in his vicinity.

There are two possible tactics for this fight. The foundation is that the Main Tank grabs the two to the left side of the cavern and tanks them at the far left; a designated Off Tank will grab & tank the one on the near right, and the raid will kill this one. The other one, at the far right (Hint: target mark with the Skull), will be taken by a second Off Tank (Champions are ideal for these roles).

In Variation One, the Skull will be taken to the Guardian, who will then occupy all three not being killed. Each time one dies, separate another from the MT group (ideally Skull first as it should be less strongly attached to the MT), drag it out of the remaining auras & kill it, repeat on the next, kill the last where it stands. If doing it this way, it is important the MT not overdo the aggro, as it will be hard for the OTs to pull the next one away.

In Variation Two, the Skull is simply brought to the Killing Group, and you kill them one after the other in their pairs. The healing slows things slightly on an individual, but the AoE damage on the other compensates. We need confirmation as to whether the healing spike on fatality does occur, but even that only makes the process slightly slower. Given the difficulty sometimes of separating the next Eater from the MT, even with a healing spike, V2 is probably no slower.

Jadey Fartpants
There is a pause before phase 2 begins, in which you drop out of combat. This is long enough to ress a dead fellow, to eat another portion of food, to re-summon a pet. Then it all gets a bit frantic, as Sleeping Ugly awakens...

Jade has a variety of attacks - she can throw things at you (in much the same manner that Nameless & Defilers do, only harder, naturally; they're kidney stones, I reckon, but it registers as shadow damage), she levers herself up on her arms and slaps her arse down (this pulls the target flying toward her, and may also do AoE), she just generally hits you. She also has an acid cloud effect, called "Gas Chamber" that will slowly grow in area & intensity for as long as you are in phase 2. In defense, she is most vulnerable to Beleriand & Light, is immune to Common, and has a variable number of defensive auras active at any one time. These are dependent upon a bundle of flying farts called Reflective Fungal Spores, that continuously spawn and whizz around the chamber at high speed.

The most important thing to note about the Spores is that they only take damage from Stun, Root, Daze, or Fear attacks; more, that nothing affects them except the CC component of that attack, which kills them (so it's the root of Cracked Earth that kills them, not the fire damage). It therefore falls mainly to LMs and HNTs (Rain of Thorns, if slotted, or Bard's Arrow) to deal with them. Nevertheless, other attacks, such as Champions' horn skills are also effective & should be employed wherever possible. When a Spore dies, it transfers a portion of the damage to Jade herself. However, when they are close to her, she recieves one of two buffs. One grants her 20% mitigation against melee, ranged, and tactical damage; the other reflects 20% of incoming damage as Acid. Why she gets which is unknown, and probably irrelevant since overall they work out much the same. Personally, I found that lobbing Cracked Earths directly at her was quite effective at also getting rid of the farts (remembering there is a delay on the root effect which will actually kill the clouds); but essentially phase 2 boils down to kill the farts while hurting Jade, and so you pass into phase 3...

Look at all the little Munchkins...
Armed with dirty great big axes! The good thing about phase 3 (or is it phase 4? I forget!), is that that bloody gas cloud disappears. Unfortunately, 4 successive waves of Normal orcs & goblins appear at the edges of the chamber. And then come screaming madly towards whoever happens to be nearest. The Heavies should group up under one of Jade's double-chins. The squishies, who inevitably tend to spread around the room anyway, will be targetted by the incoming; run into the Heavies; take the briefest of pauses whilst a huge AoE swipe / taunt takes place; run away again. Half of these guys are doing wide AoE attacks. If you stay in, you will see a column of red figures above your head (5+ attacks per second) and you will never get an induction skill off. After that, it's rinse & repeat until the last wave is dying. The real trick is to get back into the Heavies as the last few die, cos the last phase is a-coming...

Mushroom omlette, anybody?
Phase 4 comes as a bit of a shock when you hit it for the first time. You remember all those eggs around the room? You never noticed them? Ahhhh... Well, they were inert when you came in. They started pulsing rather unpleasantly (with sound effects!) in phase 3. And now? They just hatched out into a load of albino Overseers! And then there's the mushrooms that sprouted around the edges, like the Devil's pizzle on Viagra...

The mushies are Killing Field mushies, just like the ones that the surviving Twin drops in phase 3 of the first boss fight. Irritatingly, Jade now decides to start belching, as opposed to farting. A knockback attack, in other words, so you will, from time to time, be punted out into this. If you hear a cry of "Poison!", it is possible that it is a poison, but there's also a strong possibility that it's someone standing in the Killing Field. You'd better have poison pots for this bit, because the Hunter's number one priority is not going to be saving your ass, it's going to be...

The Overseers are a pain in the neck. Most stand around the edges inactive, and the mechanism by which they activate is currently unclear. It could be time, it could be proximity via the knockback attack. Whichever it is, usually 2-3 become active together. They're 8K sig's who charge around quite randomly until they suddenly decide to focus on Someone. Someone then gets a red eyeball and a stun. The stun itself is an acid effect seemingly (off with the fairies then) and cannot be removed or otherwise avoided. Within a couple of seconds of it taking effect, a timer debuff will appear against the target. You have 20s to kill the responsible Overseeer, or the target gets a bad case of Instadeath. Simple as that. The Overseers are stun immune; the attack is not an induction so cannot be interrupted; the only other chance of escape might be a friendly Burglar starting a FSM, which usually stuns even the stun-immune, but they may also be FSM immune, I never had a chance to use LM's Knowledge...

This last phase is a curious beast. On the surface it's frenetic and panicky - overseers running all over, Killing Field outside, timer Instakills appearing every so often - but all it needs is a calm head from the main RAT and a bit of discipline from everyone else. Don't worry about Jade; you'll wear her down with incidental attacks & AoE as time goes by. If the RAT is on Jade, hit Jade; if the RAT is on an Overseer, kill that. It's the Overseers that will cause a wipe here. What the RAT must do is kill active Overseers, focusing paricularly on any eyeballers as they occur. Once Jade is down to about 10K, you can ignore any further eyeballs, provided most of the party is still up. One or two may die, but so will Jade, and that's the important thing, innit? ;)

[Raedwulf]

Now added - The Twins; The Globsnaga Bosses; and The Blind One.