HCCO/Guide/8
Passive Slot
Chapter VIII: Into The Mist
The
upgrade is required to complete
. The minimum recommended gear is full 
Terran, 
Aeris and 
Glacia God Armour, but it can be completed pre-Terran just with more active strategies (swap Terran Gear for 
Ancient Gear and swap 
Earth Layered Shield for 
Dragonfire Shield.) Recommended skill levels are
,
,
,
, and
,
and
. Each of the 3 phases of the boss can only be damaged by an attack type that matches their own. Melee vs melee, ranged vs ranged, magic vs magic. The DR numbers provided assume a max HP of 1000 from
and 
Finn, the Cat. (500 max HP after affliction).
You can either
your way through this dungeon, or hold down the Eating button in order to spam food when it is available. The most important thing to understand about
is the Affliction debuff, which lowers your max HP by 1% for every stack and stacks up to 50 times. Every time an attack hits you while in this dungeon there is a 70% chance to gain a stack of affliction. This means that in long fights, your max HP will drop to 500, which puts your
threshold at 200. The only way to remove affliction is to defeat the current monster or run.
Afflicted Monsters
For Afflicted Monsters, you will want to be using your strongest
,
and
sets. Swap sets according to the attack style of the monster to gain Combat Triangle advantage. Due to the variability of the monsters you face, this phase can either be very easy or very hard. Keep your eye on your current
threshold (which will drop from 400 to 200 as the fight continues), and the max hit of the monster you are currently facing (keeping in mind status effects like sleep, stun, and freeze.) You will likely need to eat manually in this section. This phase is not a race against time, unlike Phase 1 and 3 so there is no need to rush.
Mysterious Figure - Phase 1
Recommended Gear
Recommended Prayers
+
if using 
Darksteel Dagger, otherwise
+
or
if using 
Ragnar Godsword.
Attacks
Mark of Death (50%) (Auto Eat req: 34% DR)
- An unavoidable attack that deals 300 damage, and applies +1 stack of Mark of Death to you (Maximum 3 stacks). Mark of Death gives 50% decreased damage reduction regardless of number of stacks. One stack is removed after each of your turns.
Cursed Edge (35%) (Spam Eat)
- An avoidable attack that slices at you 2 times, dealing 600 damage each.
Reap and Return (15%) (Auto Eat req: 56% DR)
- An avoidable attack that hits 7 times, plus an extra time per Mark of Death stack applied to you. Deals 450 damage each and heals the enemy for 100% of damage dealt. Removes all Mark of Death stacks from you after attack.
Strategy
For this fight, it is very helpful to use a weapon with attack speed lower than 2.6. This means that you can avoid getting hit while you have a stack of the Mark of Death debuff. Mark of Death is survivable with
at max affliction provided you have at least 34% DR. Cursed Edge can kill you through
at high affliction stacks, so spam eat for this attack once its max hit is higher than your
threshold. With 56% DR, you can survive Reap and Return using just
even at maximum affliction stacks. This fight is a race due to the healing the boss receives from Reap and Return. For this reason we use
to limit the amount of healing the boss can do. It is important to not use 
Sandstorm Ring, since the special attack will stop you from clearing the Mark of Death stacks before being hit. Darksteel Dagger is very strong here due to how the bleed scales with enemy max HP and Ragnar Godsword's unavoidable special attack helps a lot due to the low accuracy the player has during this fight.
Even though Ragnar Godsword is better DPS, it is considered harder to use, increasing the chance of accidentally dying. The low attack speed makes clearing Mark of Death debuffs harder, and it also means it is easier to interrupt your attack when manual eating.
Mysterious Figure - Phase 2
Recommended Gear
| Slot | Item (most effective → least effective) | ||
|---|---|---|---|
 |  Aeris God Helmet | ||
 |  Aeris God Platebody | ||
 |  Aeris God Platelegs | ||
 |  Aeris God Boots | ||
 |  Aeris God Gloves | ||
 |  Infernal Cape |  Cape of Prat | |
 |  Deadeye Amulet |  Fury of the Elemental Zodiacs | |
 |  Guardian Ring | ||
 |  Ancient Throwing Knife | Error creating thumbnail: File missing Ancient Crossbow | |
 |  Scaled Shield |  Earth Layered Shield |  Dragonfire Shield |
 |  Sapphire Bolts | ||
Recommended Prayers
+
or
depending on
level.
Attacks
Mark of Death (50%) (Auto Eat req: 34% DR)
- An unavoidable attack that deals 300 damage, and applies +1 stack of Mark of Death to you (Maximum 3 stacks). Mark of Death gives 50% decreased damage reduction regardless of number of stacks. One stack is removed after each of your turns.
Concealed Danger (35%) (Auto Eat req: 56% DR)
- An avoidable attack that hits 1 time(s), plus an extra time per Mark of Death stack applied to you. Deals 450 damage each. Removes all Mark of Death stacks from you after attack.
Shadowstep (15%)
- The enemy is surrounded with mist, gives the enemy +20% Global Evasion,+40% Damage Reduction and -20% Attack Interval for 1 of the enemy's turn. If buff is already active, perform a Normal Attack instead.
Normal Attack (Instead of repeating Shadowstep while the effect is already active) (Spam Eat)
- 772 Ranged Damage
Strategy
For this phase, we are once again avoiding the Mark of Death debuff by using a fast attack speed weapon. In this case, our attack must be faster than 1.75 which 
Ancient Throwing Knives with the rapid attack style allows us to do. Mark of Death is survivable with
at max affliction provided you have at least 34% DR. With 56% DR, you can survive Concealed Danger even with maximum affliction. The attack which you must watch out for is the normal attack, which happens instead of Shadowstep if the boss already has the buff (the attack bar of the boss will be blue rather than yellow). This attack can kill you through
at high affliction stacks, so spam eat for this attack once its max hit is higher than your
threshold. This phase is not a race against time, so slow and steady will work for this phase.
Ahrenia
Recommended Gear
Spell
It is highly recommended to wait until
to speed the fight up, which saves on runes and reduces the chance of dying due to affliction stacks ramping up. If the player accepts these downsides then
can out dps the healing of the boss on average and can be used. Having a lower
level will also necessitate an offensive magic shield in order to meet the accuracy requirement.
Prayers
+
, or
+
. Note that
has a lower accuracy bonus than
and gives less magic evasion than
, so
should never be used when using Ancient Magicks.
Attacks
Shadow Burst (70%) (Spam Eat)
- Fire off 3 large, avoidable, dark explosions that deal 800 damage each. Gives you -1% Global Accuracy that stacks up to 40 times.
Into the Mist (15%)
- The enemy disappears into the Mist. Gives the enemy +10% Damage Reduction each time they are hit for the duration of this attack (Stacks up to 10 times) and gives Regen that heals 10% of the enemy's max Hitpoints over 10s.
Fallen Light (15%) (Auto Eat req: 50% DR)
- The Mist breaks away and the sky opens up to an unavoidable, falling ray of Darkness, dealing 400x15 damage over 2.8s.
Strategy
For this fight, you will first and foremost need to achieve accuracy higher than 25k before accounting for prayers or pets. Since accuracy buffs/debuffs interact additively, this threshold will allow us to stay above the 20k net accuracy requirement for Ancient Magicks while accounting for max stacks of the Shadow Burst debuff. This threshold can be met outright with the recommended gear setup with
, or by substituting the
prayer with
and
. One can also opt to use
for the majority of the fight to reduce the rate at which affliction stacks are accumulated, then swap
to
only after dipping below the 20k accuracy mark. For
, this occurs at 37 stacks, and each
level increases the stacks you can withstand by 1. The only pet that increases accuracy is
, and this pet is equivalent to 1 additional
level. For concreteness, with this pet, the above quoted thresholds would be changed to
and 38 stacks respectively. Besides accuracy, the next consideration—as always—is DR. You want to try to get at least 50% DR in order to be able to auto-eat through the Fallen Light special attack even at full affliction stacks. The above setup with
gives 55% DR. With this DR, you can survive Shadow Burst as long as your max HP is still above 900. As soon as your max HP drops below this threshold due to affliction, you will need to hold to spam eat through Shadow Burst attacks. Hopefully you will be able to dodge enough attacks due to
to keep the affliction stacks low and maximise your DPS. Without
, the threshold is 920 HP instead.
Into the Mist healing the boss means this fight is a race against time. This is why we're going to use 100% accuracy Ancient Magicks, as the magic defence on 
Ahrenia is extremely high.
is the best choice of spell, but if you are desperate and do not want to wait the final
level or have the
clears to use this spell, then the next choice is
. It will get the job done, albeit with a much, much longer fight, mostly due to the fact that the boss will heal more with the lower dps.
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