Midnight Skypetal Plains
By: Litewarior
Midnight at Skypetal Plains is the first 12 man raid to come to Blade and Soul, and it has the coveted legendary Soul Shield. But how does one kill the Sacred Longgui to get this Soul Shield? This guide shall explain how to do the raid.
Forming a Party
The Midnight at Skypetal Plains raid is located in Zaiwei, by the Cardinal Gates.
In order to enter Midnight at Skypetal Plains, you must have completed Act 4, Chapter 31. You must also be in a 12 person alliance, which is comprised of of two teams of six people.
This is not the same as 24 man zones in the past (Beastbog, Grimhorn Wilds). This is more like a 12 man dungeon, where only the people in your party can enter, and you start it from the beginning.
In order to make a 12 man alliance, you simply need to invite someone to a full 6 man party, and you will be prompted to create an alliance.
Party effects such as buffs and iframes only work in each individual party, therefore, you need to consider each party’s composition. An optimal 6 person party composition would include a Warlock, a Kung Fu Master or Assassin, a source of a party iframe (Force Master/Destroyer, Blade Master/Blade Dancer, or Assassin/Summoner can all fulfill this role), and a healer (Soul Fighter or Summoner). A Force Master/Destroyer specifically is preferred for phases 5 and 6. These will all make the kill faster or smoother, but none are required.
Spawning Sacred Longgui
When you first enter the raid, your map will look like this:
You will have infinite windwalk duration in this zone.
Each of the moons represents an encampment. Each encampment has one mushroom that is invulnerable, surrounded by 6 grassquatches, and surrounding those are a large amount of small yeti creatures, similar to the mobs in Twisted Grimhorn.
This is Sacred Longgui’s rage bar. You fill this up by killing mobs around the area. Each mob gives a set amount of points towards the rage bar, and the amount of points required goes up with each stage. The optimal methods to fill the bar will be explained in this guide.
These gates are scattered throughout the area. Running through one gives you a 30 second movement speed increase.
Whenever you kill one of the small yeti mobs, the Moonlight Poison debuff is applied to you that reduces your healing by 5% and your max HP by 3%, negates natural regeneration, can stack up to 20 times, and is permanent until you leave the dungeon. Killing a Grassquatch will grant the Moonlight Poison Neutralization buff for 10 seconds which dispels all stacks of the debuff, grants immunity to the debuff, and gives healing over time. When all of the mobs around a mushroom are killed, both small and large, the mushroom will become vulnerable, and you can kill it.
When the mushroom is killed, it drops an egg, a hole appears in the ground, and one of the three minibosses will spawn. Pick up the egg and place it in the hole to spawn a mob from the hole, the next camp in your area, and one of the three bosses.
When you put the egg in the hole, 4 mobs can spawn.
The most important event is spawning the three bosses. When you put an egg in the hole, a random boss will spawn that is not currently alive. Each location spawns a specific boss.
The Thrasher will spawn in the north, the Horned (Minoutaur) will spawn in the east, and the Shambling (Ironclad) will spawn to the west. Killing any of these bosses gives 1600 points towards the rage bar, and lightning will strike every one of the adds in every camp, delling massive damage (one shotting everything up to stage 5, one shotting all the small adds for every stage) and stunning the adds for a period of time.
Killing the Horned will also cleanse the Moonlight Poison across the raid, and killing Shambling will also heal the raid.
After killing a miniboss, there is a small chance for a rat to spawn. The rat can drop a soulshield box, again, only the people in the party who pick it up can bid on it.
Small chance for the Magma Woodfield to spawn here after killing one of the three main bosses, fights similarly to a Terror from Soulstone Plains. It will disappear after 1-2 minutes if not engaged. Successfully killing will cause Mites to spawn at each of the trees.
These Mites have low HP and fill up bar very quickly. Also a daily.
Once the rage bar fills the Sacred Longgui will spawn. Each of the trees will spawn a dragon pulse that leads back to the center.
This process repeats between every Sacred Longgui phase. All the minibosses will despawn, but any cleared camps will stay cleared.
After you kill a phase of Sacred Longgui, there is a chance for a golden pig to spawn.
The pig spawns next to any of the spiders on the map, locations below.
Killing the golden pig instantly fills the rage bar to max.
The golden spider can spawn whenever you kill a normal spider. Killing the golden spider gives 10,000 points to the rage bar.
Killing the Sacred Longgui
There are 6 phases to the boss, between each phase you need to go through the spawning procedure. Phases 2, 4 and 6 each have a dynamic quest involved, which gives you a dynamic quest box. Every phase of Sacred Longgui adds new mechanics to the boss, increases its HP, and gives it an enrage.
Phase 1:
HP: 7,150,000
Enrage: None
CC Bars: Immune
No special attacks, just a standard attack rotation.
- Stomp attack, can be either stomp forward with one foot, or Sacred Longgui will turn sideways, and first stomp in front of him, and then stomp behind him. Both of these attacks can be blocked.
- One of two possible attacks:
- Neck swipe in a cone in front of the Sacred Longgui. Can be blocked..
- Bite attack, bends neck down and grabs the tank. If successful will chew and then throw the tank away. Must be iframed by the tank, otherwise they will be thrown far enough away to lose aggro.
- Neck swipe in a cone in front of the Sacred Longgui. Can be blocked..
- One of two possible special attacks:
- Neck slam. Will extend his neck and slam it down in a line in front of him. Will send anyone hit by this flying backwards. Unblockable, must be iframed or avoided.
- Spin. Will curl into his shell and rapidly spin, dealing damage over several hits and knocking back on the last hit. Can be blocked.
- Neck slam. Will extend his neck and slam it down in a line in front of him. Will send anyone hit by this flying backwards. Unblockable, must be iframed or avoided.
- Circles of Death. Will create circles around him that deal damage after a few seconds. Unblockable, must iframe or avoid.
Phase 2:
HP: 11,144,000
Enrage: None
CC Bars: Immune
At 70% and 30% of the boss’s HP, he will jump to the center of the arena, emit a 16 meter unblockable AoE that stuns, and the ground will start emitting poisonous gas. This will constantly reapply the Poison Cloud debuff to everyone within a 100 meter radius that does damage.
Every phase increases the number of stacks of this debuff, one stack at phase 2, two at phase 3, three at phase 4, etc. The only way to remove this is by watering the plants, which shall be explained below.
How to Water the Plants
From phase 2 onwards ,5 groups of 6 brown Gnarlox mobs will spawn around Sacred Longgui as soon as you engage in the locations listed.
When you kill all 6 gnarloxes in a group, a bulbari will spawn where they were (nonaggressive).
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Attacking the bulbari will cause it to disappear, and a Grassquatch to appear where the bulbari was.
When you kill the grassquatch, it drops a watering can, and after a short while the gnarloxes will respawn.
Around the edges of Sacred Longgui’s area, there will be plants that look like venus flytraps by the gnarlox packs.
These plants can be watered by the watering can. Every watered plant reduces the number of poison stacks by one.
For phases 2 and 3, this poison is usually ignored, it can easily be outhealed until phase 4. Phase 4 and on, the poison is cleansed because it’s too much to ignore at that point. Detailed strategies will be gone over later in the guide.
Phase 3:
HP: 16,573,500
Enrage: None
CC Bars: Immune
Starting at this phase, the tank should reset the Sacred Longgui’s attack pattern every 3rd attack.
From phase 3 and onwards, the Sacred Longgui’s 4th attack in their pattern can be devastating to the raid, causing potential deaths, and even a wipe. To prevent this attack, after the Sacred Longgui does the neck slam or spin attack, the tank should move 14m away from the Sacred Longgui to force it to jump to them, which will also reset its attack pattern. Once the tank see the Sacred Longgui start to gather itself to jump, they can move back to melee distance so that it jumps in place.
Note: a special attack (poison cloud or the poison swamp described later) does not reset Sacred Longgui’s attack pattern, despite the Sacred Longgui jumping to start it. The tank must keep this in mind when considering when they should force a pattern reset.
Moving Circles of Death
Instead of his normal circles of death move, Sacred Longgui will instead do a barrage of circles. The first one will have a long warning time like normal, but will be followed up by 4 additional sets of circles in random spots around him. If this attack is not prevented by the tank, players should either spam iframes, or use a party iframe to prevent the circles from killing their party.
Poison Swamp
From phase 3 onwards, the Sacred Longgui will add a new special attack. In phase 3, at 80% and 40%, this message will show up.
The Sacred Longgui will appear to eat something off its back, and then create a poisonous swamp around him that deals damage to everyone in its area. The tank needs to back off, so the Sacred Longgui jumps at them and moves out of the swamp area, otherwise melee characters will not be able to hit the Sacred Longgui without taking massive damage. After several seconds, the poison swamp will disappear.
There is a method to prevent the poison swamp from appearing. If enough flowers around the edge are watered (two for phase 3, three for phase 4, etc.) in the time between Sacred Longgui eating the poisonous herb, and it creating the swamp, then instead of creating the poisonous swamp,, it will instead create a buff zone.
While you are standing in the AoE, the buff is constantly stacked. It lasts for 2 minutes, and gives you 3% bonus Attack Power, stacking up to 50 times. This buff is generally considered unnecessary and not used, unless you are doing a phase that has enrage such as phase 5 or phase 6.
Phase 4:
HP: 32,021,000
Enrage: None
CC Bars: Immune
Counterattack
Starting in phase 4, the Sacred Longgui will add another attack to its basic attack rotation, and this one is the most dangerous of all of them. After his neck slam/spin attack, he will retreat into his shell, and as soon as any attack hits him, he shall do a 16 meter AoE around him, dealing massive damage to everyone near him and knocking them back 50 meters. It is extremely important for the tank to reset the Sacred Longgui’s attack pattern before this attack. The attack itself has very little warning, and if it is not iframed or prevented, it will likely kill a portion of the raid, and cause trouble for the rest.
Boss Summon
Starting in Phase 4, the poison swamp phase is changed from 80% and 40% to 90%, 50% and 10%, and an additional mechanic is added.
After he summons the poison swamp, he will jump at the tank, and proceed to do a spin attack toward the farthest person, the number of spins increases in later phases (phase 4 has one spin, phase 5 has two spins, etc.). When he starts the spin attack, he will summon one of the bosses that you kill to fill the rage bar (Thrasher, Minotaur, Shambling, Magma), but with a few caveats.
These bosses are unrootable, their CC bars are rarely vulnerable, and they have special attacks like the terrors in Soulstone Plains. The Retro Sheet by Praetor19 has all of the possible special attacks listed under the “special skills tab”. They will aggro onto the tank when they spawn, unless someone else draws their aggro.
The spiders around the raid zone will drop web balls, similar to the spiders from Gloomdross Incursion. These web balls can be used to immobilize the bosses that spawn for 15 seconds. This is the only way to prevent the bosses from just moving to the tank, and if they start using their special skills in the middle of the fight, it can cause the fight to become a mess.
These are the locations where the spiders spawn. The usual strategy is to have one person go kill the northern or southern spider before the miniboss is summoned, and be responsible for webbing the miniboss when it spawns.
Phase 5
HP: 47,920,000
Enrage: 7:00
CC Bars: Immune
Enrage
Starting at Phase 5, the Longgui will enrage and wipe the raid if it is not killed within 7 minutes.
Roar
At 70% and 30%, before the Sacred Longgui emits the poison cloud, he will do a 16 meter roar. This roar will do 9 hits over about 5 seconds, and applies stun on each hit. Either a Force Master/Destroyer needs to sheath this, or party members attacking need to spam iframes (if they are not killing the adds on the edges). This can be Second Wind, so a common tactic without a Force Master/Destroyer is to use a shorter party iframe, tank a hit and use tab escape and other iframes to avoid the roar damage.
Phase 6:
HP: 61,560,000
Enrage: 7:00
CC Bars: Immune
Acid
When Sacred Longgui emits the poison cloud at 70% and 30%, he will also create a second damage over time debuff called Acid. This is cleared when all 5 flowers are watered.
Second Miniboss
When the Sacred Longgui creates the normal poison swamp, he will summon 2 minibosses instead of 1. Split the raid evenly to deal with both before they start causing trouble.
Rewards
The rewards from the Sacred Longgui are ultimately the legendary Soul Shields. The 3 and 8 set effects are unique for each class and the stats as well as set effects can be found in Praetor19's cheatsheet, and each individual class for the unique effects.
When you clear a phase, you get a locked box (normal keys to open). On Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, the boss will drop 2 boxes. This is what is contained in the phase 6 box.
The box is guaranteed to contain one piece of Lunar Twilight Flower. Each phase’s box can contain more grass. 20 grass can be combined into a Lunar Twilight Flower, which is the currency used in the raid’s shop.
The box also has a chance to give you a Soul Shield box, the pieces depending on the phase. Phase 1 can give 1-3, phase 2 can give 1-4, phase 3 can give 1-5, phase 4 can give 1-6, and phase 5 can give 1-8.
As stated earlier, the raid shop’s currency is flowers. They can be used to buy outfits, Soul Shield boxes, Stones of Wisdom, and Flowers of Lament.
FAQ
Q: How long does it take to clear stage 3/4/5/6?
A: It’s partially RNG if you get a golden pig or not, and partially how fast you can DPS. Stage 3 should take you about 15 minutes, while Stage 6 can take 30 minutes or more.
Q: What classes should be soloing the adds in phase 5+?
A: Summoner, Force Master (with dragonchar/shadow grasp for AoE) and Warlock are all good, Destroyer and blade masters can do it very well too. The main things you want are someone who can provide good aoe (for the gnarlox camps) and good single target damage while tanking (for the grassquatch).
Q: How do I tank?
A: watch the videos below.
Q: I’m getting extremely low FPS, what can I do to fix it?
A: Same as everywhere else, hide players, optimize for combat, put settings to low.
Q: Are there any self damage mechanics for this boss?
A: No.
Q: What gear is required for this raid?
A: Absolutely nothing, you could do this with gear fresh out of story. Skill/ping can outweigh gear, all you care about is if you can hit the enrage on phases 5 and 6 (requires around 13k DPS at minimum).
Additional Resources
- Detailed explanation of how to optimally use flowers from the raid.
- Video explaining how to tank the rotation
- Stage 6 from tank POV
- Stage 5 from Warlock POV
- KR BNS wiki page for this raid
Credits
- Exteinz, Siangg and Meiyu for providing information about the raid in TW
- Praetor19 for his cheatsheet
- Exteinz and Airix for providing screenshots used in the guide
- Shadovv for guide corrections