Master Road Overview

Master Road dungeons are nothing but boss fights, focused on dueling with corresponding El Masters or important figures in Elrios. Every character must complete the Master Road dungeon corresponding to their character many times in order to fully unlock everything Master Class has to offer, so knowing the mechanics of those fights will ease the process immensely. Furthermore, exclusive Force skills are tied to the Hell mode versions of these battles, so being able to repeatedly clear these battles efficiently will vastly improve your chances at getting these drops.

Let's get started by looking at the shared traits of each Master Road dungeon.

Basic Mechanics

Master Road dungeons are split between two difficulties, Normal and Hell. Normal mode has a minimum CP requirement of 300,000, and primarily exists for the job advancement without putting players through overly difficult battles. Hell mode, on the other hand, has a minimum CP requirement of 600,000, and features significantly longer battles, more dangerous mechanics, and extra attacks to learn.

Any boosts to item drop rate do not work in Master Road dungeons. This includes drop rate boosts from events, unless Master Road dungeons are specifically stated to get the boost. Additionally, each Master's Force skill drop is exclusive to the Hell version of each fight, and Hell mode tends to have higher drop rates in general. Though quite rare, it's also possible for standard Force drops (like Head Hunter) to drop from Master Road dungeons as well, and these can be found outside of Hell mode.

As each dungeon is nothing but a boss fight, Head Hunter is heavily recommended, as almost all your damage will be to bosses. Having this will speed up any grinding tremendously.

Each Master Road dungeon utilizes a debuff equal to the Demon Realm debuffs seen in Varnimyr and Rigomor dungeons, and will reduce your attack and HP by 30%. Adaptation will reduce this debuff at a 1:1 ratio (1% Adaptation will reduce the debuff from 30% to 29%, and so on).

Master Road bosses may be affected by hitstun if they aren't attacking, but have super armor during all of their attacks. A large majority of their moves also ignore I-frames. Such attacks will be listed in a different color to distinguish them. Lastly, Master Road bosses can sometimes be knocked down by your attacks; players should avoid this, as these bosses will be invulnerable while they stand back up, creating longer fights and potentially whiffed attacks.

Master Road bosses will have 300 HP bars. However, in Normal mode, the fight will end once the boss is reduced to 150 bars.

Hell Mode Differences

Hell mode is where the real battles are within Master Road. Players will be forced into lengthy fights and must learn each boss' patterns to survive.

While Normal mode does nothing to restrict resurrections, Hell mode places a limit of 1 resurrection per run, so mistakes must be kept to a minimum.

In Hell mode, in addition to the boss having increased stats compared to Normal mode, the fight will not end at 150 HP bars. The boss will instead initiate a transition into a second phase; the boss must be brought to one quarter of a HP bar to end a Hell mode boss fight. (The sole exception to this is Dominus Angelus, whose health must be fully depleted.) Numerous important changes will affect the boss once this happens:

1. The boss will gain persistent debuff immunity, with one exception.
2. The boss will gain immense defensive buffs.
3. The Master Road stat debuff will increase to 70% during phase 2 only. This is the highest stat debuff seen in the game so far, and makes it absolutely paramount that you bring all the sources of Adaptation you can into these battles.
4. Some boss attacks may be modified to make them more dangerous.
5. The boss gains access to an ultimate attack. These possess the ability to instantly kill you if they hit you, but the boss is left fatigued after using them. During this fatigue state, the boss loses its debuff immunity and defensive buffs, creating a massive attacking opportunity. Additionally, even after the boss recovers, the boss' defensive buffs will be permanently weakened for the rest of the fight, and will weaken further with each following use of an ultimate attack. (Only Dominus Angelus ignores this defense reduction rule, always maintaining its full defense while outside fatigue.)

The above, pairing the boss' vastly increased durability with the gigantic debuff placed on players, causes the second phase of each boss fight to progress far slower than it did in the first phase. The significant drop in players' maximum health due to the increased debuff also means that getting hit by boss attacks is far more dangerous than it was before the transition.

Combat Strategies

Against each Master fight, since most boss attacks will ignore I-frames, it tends to be in your best interest to avoid attacks before launching attacks of your own. There may be situations where the attack you're trying to I-frame through does damage minor enough to ignore, certainly... but you have to keep the other effects of the attacks in mind. At the very least, being hit by these moves could displace you while you're performing special actives, potentially messing up your attack's placements and making some of them whiff. Some boss attacks also have the ability to put your skills and/or items on cooldown, which would cripple your offensive ability for several seconds and make your previous special active no longer worth the cost.

In Hell mode fights, evasion becomes an even greater priority due to the lower maximum health you'll be working with - a small number of mistakes added together could certainly result in a death if you aren't being careful.

Hell mode, with how the bosses' passive mechanics are set up, also gives you sparse, but enormous chances to get damage in. In particular, the initial defensive buffs you'll encounter are extreme, and no player should reasonably expect to do more than 10-15 bars of damage with high effort against them without very strong equipment. This defense does degrade, but it still maintains a large presence throughout the fight, so you must make the most of every fatigue state the boss gives you. Learn the ultimate attacks so you don't die to them and lose attacking time, using whatever buffs you can during the wait to prepare yourself and Hyper Acceleration to aid you with any needed movement. When the boss is open to attack, unleash everything you have, inclusive of Water/Wind orbs and any MP restoration necessary to attack as much as possible; you won't get the fastest or most effective fights without doing this.

Rewards

I won't go into much detail regarding quests here, since most information about them can easily be found from the in-game quest log, or on Elwiki. However, I will point out that while the quests for obtaining Master Class and obtaining the 2nd stage of the Master skill do not restrict dungeon difficulty, the 3rd and 4th stages have quest chains that require beating Hell mode, implying that you must meet the 600,000 CP requirement for that difficulty.

Also, note that the second part of each Master skill quest does not restrict which Master Road dungeon you can earn progress in, and more than one Mark of Power can drop for progress toward it in a single run (2 drop from each Normal run, and 3 drop from each Hell run), so this segment is shorter and more flexible than it would seem. Short Master Road dungeons in Normal mode, such as Gaia, can be used to complete these quests very quickly if you can withstand the stamina usage.

Completing a Master fight gives you a small chance to obtain Artifact accessories, Artifact Power scrolls, Master accessories, and if you're playing on Hell difficulty, that fight's exclusive Force skill. Artifact accessories can be equipped to your Master Artifact for bonus stats, and Artifact Power Scrolls can be used to reidentify the stats from the Artifact's stage 3 bonuses. The Master accessories have small stat bonuses (albeit in important stats like all skill damage or % attack power), but also share a powerful set effect. Equipping 3 Master accessories will grant you 3% attack power, +20 max MP, 3% Polarize, and 3% Adaptation; this is a mighty combination of bonuses that is well worth pursuing. These accessories are naturally very rare drops, but with enough effort, you're eventually guaranteed to get them due to Master Road marks.

Beating a Master Road boss will earn you 0-2 Marks of Acknowledgement in Normal mode, and 2-4 Marks in Hell mode. These Marks are shared by all Master Road fights, and will stack with one another. If you gather 1000 of them and go to the Elrianode accessory merchant, you can obtain any Master accessory you want. You're bound to get a large number of these Marks just from completing your Master Class advancements, so keep in mind which accessories you'd want to pursue.