Gain Access
7,600 Item Level and level 70
Guild run composition including max newbies
1 Tank – Paladin or GF
1 Healer (Optional) – Paladin or DC
3-4 DPS - CW, TR, GWF, SW, DPS Cleric and DPS Paladin or GF
Tactics/Game Play
To get to the first boss, you will be fighting the traditional mobs, including some melee, and ranged. Many of these mobs hit hard, so make sure you are paying attention to the red to avoid being one shot.
Before you arrive at the first boss, there will be a room with 5 tears in it, these portals will transport you to a different area, and you will be required to kill a small mob. Each person should be able to do a tear, but at times the tank or healer need help.
First Boss:
The big head known from the original version of Castle Never is the first and most basic boss of the dungeon. It’s pretty much only a big AoE dodge party in which you need to pay attention to three attacks. The first one is a hard-hitting AoE line that splits the room from east to west and needs to be avoided. The other two are from the boss, who can disable players with a roar and kill everyone but a tank with his AoE circles. These circles also apply a debuff to anyone standing in it even if the target does not take an damage. Because of this you should avoid dodging into the area as DPS. The debuff plays a role in the boss’ third attack, which is a laser that does ~20k damage sporadically, but several 100k if debuffed.
One big thing introduced in the Tal’Gath fight is linking/bonding two players that are slowly dragged towards each other for several seconds. If they touch they get thrown in the air and take a significant amount of damage. Affected players should move into opposite direction and avoid contact.
Before arriving to the second boss, there are a couple of things to do.
The first is the hall of mirrors, in which there are many zombies to kill. Some groups can take them all at once, others may need to pull smaller groups. There is a balor to defeat at the end of the hall.
After that, you will go into the sphere room. There is a green ball in the middle of the room, and it does damage to you if you get too close. Your job is to kill the zombies before they get to the green ball. If the red bar fills up before you kill 20 zombies, it is a large AOE that hurts.
Second Boss:
The second boss mainly requires the correct moving pattern from the group. In the cut scene the camera pans to the ceiling and reveals spikes. The room inverts every so often and in case players were standing beneath the spikes, they fall into them. They hit hard and disable characters, making you an easy target for the otherwise not very challenging adds. Those spawn directly next to the player holding the aggro though whenever the room flips, so be prepared to block or dodge.
The spike pattern changes with every room change, so make sure to check the ceiling and position yourself correctly.
In order to get to the final boss, you must now navigate the darkness. In these rooms, you can either run down the middle of the room and kill the undead, or you can hug the right wall, jumping on the benches to avoid the mobs.
Once through this area, there is another room with green death spheres, you will complete the maze, while avoiding the death spheres. There are safe zones in every room, or you can dodge through them. There are a couple of mobs to kill around this area as well.
Final Boss:
Orcus has three major attacks and all of them are deadly to anyone not the tank. His wand crush and sweep attack hit for 800k and as a ranged class there is no need to go near him, especially because the attacks are AoE ones. Melee classes position themselves on the opposite side of the tank as usual. The boss also has a Finger of Death ranged attack that hits similarly hard, but can be dodged. So everyone but the Scourge Warlock has an easy way of avoiding it.
The one thing making the boss predictable is the fact that he always prioritizes melee over ranged attacks and the aggro table. If he can hit something in front of him, he’ll always do it instead of using Finger of Death on a ranged target. So as long as the tank is alive, hugging the boss and out-aggro-ing any melee DPS, no one else will get hit.
Every so often, the boss will raise his arms and roar, initiating a randomly picked special mechanic. These include:
1. Sphere of Annihilation interlude: A sphere you should already know from the run spawns, and the group again has to prevent Undead Adventurers to reach it. It’s a bit more difficult than the baby version before the second boss, but it should be no biggie. If the sphere gets charged, it’ll take away 80% of the HP of each group member.
2. Rifts: Three rifts appear on the battlefield and can be entered and cleared just like those in the Foyer. As long as the rifts are open, Orcus gets an additional 80% damage resistance that can’t be mitigated. Most groups decide to pull through and live with the low damage, but it’s probably faster to let the DPS just close the rifts. The phase lasts 90 seconds.
3. Two players are bonded, pulled towards each other and take significant damage on impact. This is the mechanic from the first boss and Servitors and can be countered by moving/dodging away from each other.
4. Moving death spheres / poison balls: This is probably the only really challenging mechanic of the fight. Orcus can spawn up to three death spheres / poison balls that you already needed to avoid in the last section of the run. They are randomly bouncing around and kill on impact. Since this is the worst that can happen, you should always prepare for them to appear and start dodging and blocking whenever Orcus starts his animation.
5. Nothing. No matter which outcome, you always take 80% of your HP as damage, but sometimes no extra mechanic is started.