Midnight Skypetal Plains
By: Litewarior
When nightfall arrives, the Moonlight Chi turns the creatures of the Skypetal Plains into aggressive beasts. The once peaceful Sacred Longgui became cursed with old age and madness, and is now spreading his plague across the plains.
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 or Warden, 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 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, 15,000 points are needed to spawn the Sacred Longgui. 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 mobs, the “Moonlight Poison” debuff is applied to you that reduces your Recovery 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, die, or use the escape button (ESC -> System Menu -> Escape). Killing a Grassquatch will grant the “Moonlight Poison Neutralization” buff which dispels all stacks of the debuff, grants immunity to the debuff, and regenerates 8,135 HP per second over 10 seconds. 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 large seed, a hole appears in the ground, another camp will spawn nearby, and one of the three minibosses will spawn.
Putting the seed in the hole will spawn one of four mobs:
Worthless Bulbari, gives few points to the bar and nothing else, just ignore and move to the next camp. Far and away the most common result.
Treasure Plant, doesn’t give many points, but it can drop a locked soul shield box. Only the party of the person who picks up the box can bid on the box.
Spiny Woodfiend, gives some points to the bar, killing it grants the Spiny Woodfiend Energy buff which makes you immune to the Moonlight Poison debuff for 5 minutes.
Golden Mushroom, will instantly fill rage bar to max.
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 soul shield 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.
If you die, simply respawn and come back to the fight. Do not respawn if the boss is dead, or you won’t get any loot as you are respawning.
Loot is only given to people who hit the boss at least once, so wait until everyone is ready before going in.
Phase 1:
HP: 104,000,000
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, resetting their aggro if not iframed.
- One of two possible special attacks:
- Neck slam. Extend his neck and slam it down in a line in front of him. Will send anyone hit by this flying backwards, resetting their aggro. Unblockable, must be iframed or avoided.
- Spin. Curls into his shell and rapidly spin, dealing damage over several hits and knocking back on the last hit. Can be blocked.
- Circles of Death. Will create circles around him that deal damage and dazes after a few seconds. Unblockable, must iframe or avoid.
If at any point in time the tank is out of melee distance, the Sacred Longgui will jump on them. This will do AoE damage at the landing point, and knockback everyone hit by it. Unblockable, must be iframed or avoided.
Phase 2:
HP: 146,900,000
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, dealing 300-500 damage per 2 seconds.
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).
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 are a total of 5 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.
This poison does negligible damage, and is usually ignored.
Phase 3:
HP: 225,600,000
Circles of Death Barrage
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.
This attack is very 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 third attack), the tank should move 11m 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.
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 eat something off its back, and then create a poisonous swamp around him that deals damage to everyone in its area, also applying the “Poison” debuff that deals 1,330 damage per 2 seconds over 10 seconds and stacks up to 5 times. The tank needs to back off, so the Sacred Longgui 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 requires heavy coordination but is generally considered unnecessary and not used.
Phase 4:
HP: 383,800,000
Counterspin
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 will do a 16 meter AoE around him, dealing massive damage to everyone near him and knocking them back 50 meters, and resetting their aggro. It is extremely important for the tank to reset the Sacred Longgui’s attack pattern before this attack. The attack itself is instantaneous and very difficult to avoid, 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 farthest person, and proceed to do a spin attack toward the next 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 minibosses (Spiny, Thrasher, Minotaur, Shambling, or 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, 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: 680,800,000
Roar
At 70% and 30%, before the Sacred Longgui jumps to emit 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: 1,284,000,000
Enrage: 10:00
Enrage
Starting at Phase 6, the Longgui will enrage and wipe the raid if it is not killed within 10 minutes.
Acid
When Sacred Longgui emits the poison cloud at 70% and 30%, he will also create a second damage over time debuff called “Acid” that does around 1,700 damage per 2 seconds. 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
Sacred Longgui Treasure
Each stage of Longgui drops a lootbox. Stages 2, 4, and 6 also have dynamic box rewards.
Sacred Longgui Reward chests contain Soulstone Crystals, Sacred Crystals/Orbs, Moonstone Crystals, or Elysian Crystals/Orbs. Stages 4, 5, and 6 also have Evolved Stones, but requires a Sacred Longgui Key to open, with Stage 6 using 2 keys.
Nightstone
These are currencies for the shop. Longgui Stages 1-3 possess Verdant, Stages 4-5 have Tawny, and Stage 6 has Lavender.
Shop
Each of the Talus Posts have a shopkeeper. The shop contains a variety of items found through dungeons, raids, and battlegrounds, including Draken/Hellion Accessories, Soul Badges, Hearts, and Soul Shields.
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