12-5: Crimson Tower of Howling Flames

Main Mechanics

The four heads of the Crimson Calamity will be placed about a circular arena, and will independently attack players near them.

If a head is killed, it will retreat into the pit. If a head is dead for a little more than 30 seconds while at least one other head is still alive, that head will return to the battlefield at full health.

Because of this, killing each head individually is not an option - players must bring each head down to low health, then kill all four heads in one sweep.

As a warning, the opening of this battle is a bit unusual in the fact that the heads will start attacking a second or two before the opening cutscene ends and players can actually move - watch carefully, or you could be killed right out of the gate.

Attacks

All of the heads' attacks have distinctive movements leading up to them, as well as specific sound effects that signify what will be coming. Learn these tells, and you'll be able to dodge/punish accordingly.

Headbutt - after a short roar, the Calamity will lunge forward with its head into the foreground, damaging and knocking back anyone in range.

• This attack has two hits, the second of which is much stronger than the first.
• If you fail to punish this move, just accept being pushed out of the way to avoid taking unnecessary damage.

Head Swipe - the Calamity will move its head to either the left or right side of the platforms it is over while emitting a low growl. Afterwards, it will rapidly swing its head in the other direction, hitting anyone in the way multiple times.

• This attack can hit you a number of times, depending on if you're still in the head's path as it continues onward, and can result in fatal damage if you take the full assault. Mana break if you're caught in this and need to escape.
• The head swipe has a fixed horizontal range - you'll be safe if you get outside of it.
• The head swipe will miss you if you go under the Calamity's head before it can start moving.
• If you can gain enough height, you can go over the Calamity's head as it passes the platform - not every character can do this, however.
• Since the head swipe moves past the platform, and can take a lot of movement to evade normally, using a special active to I-frame through this move and hit the Calamity (or do other setup) is fairly common.
• Some opening movements of the Calamity's head leave it resting right next to the edge of the platform, leaving it particularly vulnerable to attack. If you can punish this with a move that's long enough to I-frame through the head swipe as well, this is an even better opportunity.

Flame Breath - After backing into the background for a few moments, the Calamity head will roar, quickly move back into the foreground, and breathe fire downwards. Anyone caught in the fire breath will take multiple hits; the fire breath will also ignite a significant area of the ground for a short period of time.

• Only the ground will be on fire - the platforms are perfectly safe here.
• So long as you aren't directly in the fire breath, you can stand next to the Calamity head and attack it without being harmed.
• Keep an eye out for flames on the ground if you're moving about the arena - the fire breath covers about 25% of the ground floor, and can occasionally end up blocking your path.
• The fire breath utilizes multiple hits to do its damage - you can easily mana break to escape it if you get caught in it.

Meteor Rain - The Calamity head will loudly roar, move into the background, and look upwards. Afterwards, it will shoot three flaming meteors at a player (all three target the same person). Bright pink vertical lines will indicate where the meteors will fall. After the meteors contact the ground, they will remain there, burning in place for several seconds as a stationary hazard.

• The meteors will not fall for a couple of seconds after the last pink line appears - it is perfectly safe to move while being targeted to get the meteors to fall in another location.
• This attack has a very obvious start-up, making it easy to bait away. You'll want to do this, so that you won't have to deal with the meteors' stationary flames while attacking the Calamity or dodging its other attacks.
• The meteors have to target someone near the head. It is rare to be targeted by meteors from any head other than the one you're fighting at the time.
• Be wary of the Headbutt and Head Swipe while there are meteor flames on the platforms/ground - it's easy enough to get pushed into the stationary flames by these attacks, and having three meteor flames in the same spot can cause damage at an alarming rate if you don't stay out of them.
• The meteors will explode on the first solid floor they hit - even if you're on the ground, they'll still hit a platform above you if there is one.
• The stationary flames from the meteors can't reach below the floor they're on... the initial explosions from the meteors hitting the floor, however, will reach below the floor. Be careful if you're going below the platforms to try and find safety against this attack.
• Be wary if the Calamity head gets frozen or petrified while meteors are targeting someone: this can cause some of the meteors to be delayed until after the Calamity head starts moving again.

Flame Pillar - All living Calamity heads will retreat into the pit while emitting a growl. A few moments afterward, a faint pink line will target each player as the Calamity heads roar. A large fire pillar will be emitted at these locations, which will remain there for 10 seconds. Every hit of this pillar does extremely high damage, burns MP, and ignores I-frames. The heads return to the battlefield afterwards.

• This attack will only be used by the Calamity heads once every 70 seconds.
• Like with the Meteor Rain, try to bait it to another location, or go to another player to put multiple Pillars in the same spot. These pillars last long enough for the heads to use an attack before the pillars vanish, so you'll want the pillars far away from the platforms.
• Be especially careful if the Calamity heads use a Headbutt or a Head Swipe. Getting knocked into a Flame Pillar is almost always fatal.
• If all four Calamity Heads die near the point where the heads would have used this move, it's possible for the heads to take longer to die, and Flame Pillar may trigger despite the boss dying. Don't let your guard down until the transition to phase 2 begins.

The following attack can only be used by a Calamity head if it has 50% health [35 bars] or less.

Covering Fire - the Calamity head will turn around, and shoot meteors upwards. These will land in fixed locations on the other side of the arena, making the area near the head on the other side much more hazardous to navigate.

• Naturally, be cautious of the stationary flames on the other side, as there's no way to manipulate where the meteors from this attack land.
• Be wary of being displaced by Headbutts or Head Swipes while near the meteors' flames.
• Go under the platforms if you need to wait out the flames.

Pitfalls to Avoid

Many of the Calamity heads' attacks involve movement into the background. While the head is in the background, most attacks will miss them. Time your attacks accordingly so you don't whiff and use up MP to do little or no damage.

Once you have all the Calamity heads at low health and are set up to kill them, consider when the last Flame Pillars were fired. If they were not fired recently, it is wise to wait until the next use of Flame Pillars occurs: the Calamity heads will have no problem diving into the pit right in the middle of your attempt to kill all the heads to use the Flame Pillar attack. If this happens, this will cost your group a lot of time, and Calamity heads might be able to revive themselves.

While you want to get the Calamity heads to low health in order to kill them quickly, don't get them very low unless you know for a fact the battle is well-controlled. Players' pets may end up attacking the heads at will, and some special actives with homing may smack other heads. The last thing you want is a Calamity head suddenly dying to a stray attack when you weren't ready for it.

Group Strategies

Modern 12-5 groups, out of fear of doing damage too quickly and killing a head by accident (since boss health bars only update every few seconds for people who aren't hosting), tend to start by having everyone focus on the head they spawn next to. They will whittle down the head down to a specific HP bar amount (5-7 bars is usually a fair stopping point), then move on to other heads to help others get their head set up.

Alternatively, weaker groups might approach phase 1 by focusing down 1 head at a time - this lets buffs and debuffs be used as effectively as possible - down to a specified health amount. This amount varies based on the strength of the group - the more damage the group is capable of doing, the higher this value. A stopping point of 15 HP bars for a head is common, though very powerful groups might try to stop as soon as 25-30 bars. Once the group reaches the stopping point, most of the group will rotate to the next head (rotating to the right is common). One or two players, however, will stay behind at the previous head to "tune" it, lowering it down to 3-5 HP bars before joining the rest of the group. This allows the group to get the head down to a safe amount of health to kill it quickly later on without risking an accidental early head kill by having all 8 players attack it at once.

Once three heads are at a point where they can be easily killed and the group is at the fourth head, the group will either:

• Go ahead and kill the fourth head, and attempt to sweep through the others heads to end the phase
• Bring the fourth head down to 3-5 HP bars (with all due caution), then set up to sweep through the heads.

Which strategy is used here depends on the group, as well as whether or not the group needs to wait on a Flame Pillar attack. Communicating whether to "wait" or "kill" is important, ensuring everyone is on the same page. No one likes having to kill a head all over again.

Phase 2: The Crimson Soul

Battling the Crimson Soul is easily the most dangerous and difficult part of the 12-5 Raid. Players will need to exercise a large amount of caution and acknowledge the boss' attacks in order to succeed, as even some of the Soul's more normal attacks can result in swift deaths.

Main Mechanics

The fight against the Crimson Soul is an escalating one. As the fight progresses, the Crimson Soul will gain more and more attacks to utilize, and will continually become more threatening. Groups need to be able to find opportunities to attack the Crimson Soul, and do so quickly before the group gets overwhelmed by the boss' attacks.

Most of the Crimson Soul's attacks are fire-based, and will inflict the Ember of Combustion debuff on anyone hit. Any player afflicted by this debuff will lose 5% of their maximum MP each second, with the debuff lasting up to five seconds. This means that there is an active penalty for getting hit beyond losing health, and players need to watch their MP carefully to make sure they have the resources they need to attack or mana break when they need to.

Many of the Crimson Soul's attacks require it to teleport to a player's location. Whenever it performs an attack that requires this, a blue symbol will appear over the head of the player being targeted. This is a warning that an attack is about to be centered on that player's location, and they need to take evasive action.

Attacks

Flame Scythe - The Crimson Soul will teleport to a player's location. Upon arriving, it will swing its scythe either horizontally or vertically. The swing will leave a flame aura along its path, which will remain burning in place for a few seconds. The Crimson Soul will sit idle for a few seconds after finishing this attack.

• The hitbox on this attack is much larger than you would think it is. The solid line representing the scythe swing is NOT the swing's hitbox - the flame aura is the hitbox. It is deceptively easy to get hit by these swings.
• The flame auras from the vertical/horizontal swings have massive ranges that will usually stretch as far as you can see. Be careful about these even if the Soul is off-screen.
• The flame auras inflict the Ember of Combustion debuff.
• It is difficult to react to which swing the Soul will be using, and the flame aura's size makes moving out of the way troublesome. If you want to evade this attack without I-frames, moving diagonally away from the Soul is your best option.
• Be careful when trying to go above the Soul to evade its horizontal swings. There is a quirk in the game's positioning system where the game thinks a player's position is lower than it actually is while the player is airborne and is nearing a platform. If you jump on a platform that's directly above a horizontal slash, the odds are fairly high that you will get hit by the slash/aura thanks to this oddity.

Pursuit - The Crimson Soul will teleport to a player's location, and use Flame Scythe either horizontally or vertically. The Soul will repeat this pattern of teleporting and attacking a number of times in quick succession before stopping and going idle for a few seconds.

• The Crimson Soul gains debuff immunity just before starting this attack, and will maintain that immunity until the Pursuit is over.
• A blue targeting symbol will be shown for each individual teleport.
• Due to the duration of this attack, do not expect to avoid the entire Pursuit by utilizing I-frames - at some point or another, you WILL eventually get caught in a flame aura or scythe swing if you try this.
• This is the Soul's most intense attack, and getting barraged by scythe swings can kill you fairly quickly. Mana break as needed if your life is in danger... just be wary, as the knockback from the scythe swings might throw you off platform ledges, making you take more damage from the flame auras before you actually KD.
• If you're running away from the Soul, sticking to diagonal movements away from the Soul is best. Keep the locations of the flame auras from previous Flame Scythes in mind as you continue to move. Try not to move away from the Soul more than you need to, or you could end up getting yourself stuck at a wall - at that point, you'll likely be forced to take a hit.
• At the start of the battle, the Crimson Soul is capable of performing up to three Flame Scythe attacks in a single Pursuit. This number will increase as the Crimson Soul loses health.

Scythe Grind - The Crimson Soul will teleport to a player's location, and cast a large phantom scythe in one direction. After a few moments, it will drag the scythe along the ground. Anyone caught in this scythe's path will be launched horizontally in the direction of the scythe at high speed, and will receive a Leg Wound debuff (HP loss over time, cannot dash) for several seconds. The Soul will sit idle for a few seconds after using this attack.

• The Crimson Soul gains debuff immunity during this attack.
• The Soul cannot ever use an attack immediately after this one - it must idle after using this. This ensures that the group will have an opportunity to attack the Soul after it attempts this move.
• The phantom scythe is large, and hits several platform tiers above the Soul. However, it will struggle to hit players below the scythe, and will always miss people who are behind the Crimson Soul. Staying near the Soul and getting behind it is often the best strategy for avoiding this attack.
• Since this attack leaves no flame aura (and doesn't inflict the Ember of Combustion debuff), timing a special active with the scythe drag is another good method to both avoid the attack and assault the Crimson Soul.

On reaching 80% health [56 bars], the following changes occur:

• The Soul becomes more likely to use Pursuit than singular Flame Scythes
• Pursuit will involve an additional use of Flame Scythe (4 total)

The Crimson Soul also gains access to the following attack. If enough time has passed in the battle, the Crimson Soul will automatically use this attack upon reaching this HP threshold.

Crimson Storm: The Crimson Soul will teleport to the ground floor in the center of the arena. Afterward, it will make a gigantic swing with its scythe in one direction, launching any players in the way. The same swing also casts energy along the ground, creating a tornado on that side of the map, and the Soul will start building up energy. Players must jump into the created tornado (it won't hurt you) to stay high in the air. After a few seconds, the Soul will release its energy in a massive area attack, instantly killing anyone caught in the blast.

• The Crimson Soul will be debuff immune during this attack.
• The blast will ignore I-frames, and is guaranteed to kill you if it hits you. The blast not only inflicts very high damage, but will also burn HP equal to your remaining health, ensuring that you die to this attack.
• Note that the Crimson Soul MUST teleport to the ground floor in the center of the arena to perform this attack. This is a dead giveaway that a Crimson Storm is incoming, and players should learn to notice when this happens.
• Be very careful of the opening scythe swing. Players hit by this swing will be airborne for quite a bit of time, and may even fall off a platform ledge, making it take even longer for them to get up. By the time they get up, they might not be able to make it to the tornado in time. If you can react to which direction the scythe is being swung, be on the other side of the Soul so you don't get mauled. If you're worried that you won't be able to make it to the tornado in time, consider bringing a Ventus elixir along to increase your movement speed - this will often help ensure that you get to the tornado even if the scythe swing launches you.
• Though it takes some practice to get used to the timing, it is quite viable to I-frame through the opening scythe swing to do some damage to the Soul while also avoiding any risk of being launched. It's definitely a technique worth practicing.
• When running to the tornado, avoid being in super armor or I-frames at all costs. If you are in I-frames, the tornado can't hit you. If you are in super armor, the tornado can't launch you upwards. Either of these happening can mean the tornado won't get you airborne, and you'll almost certainly die to the Crimson Storm. This is also why Eclipse is a very poor title to use in this phase - Eclipse has a chance to give the player super armor when they get hit, and the tornado's launches count as hits!

On reaching 50% health [35 bars], the following changes occur:

• The Crimson Soul is more likely to use Pursuit than singular Flame Scythes.
• Pursuit has an additional Flame Scythe added to it (5 total)

The Crimson Soul gains access to the following moves. If enough time has passed in the battle, upon reaching this HP threshold, the Crimson Soul will attempt a Crimson Storm, immediately followed by this new move:

Crimson Memories: The Crimson Soul will teleport to a random location in the arena, and enter an invincible state. Six orbs - Crimson Memories - will appear. Players have 20 seconds to destroy all of these orbs. If every orb is destroyed, the Soul will end the move and nothing will happen. If the 20 seconds end with any Memories still alive, the Soul will recover health based on how many Memories survived.

• The orbs are resistant to being influenced by hitstun. However, they can be pushed by moves that push super-armored targets, and be sucked in by black hole effects. Use this fact to gather the orbs, and kill them in groups.
• The Memories are capable of moving on their own, and will wander randomly if given the chance. This can be disruptive if you let this happen.
• Take care to ensure that orbs on the top platforms, or near the walls, don't end up surviving due to being out of harm's way for too long, or just aren't noticed by players. Consider making these orbs priority targets so that this doesn't happen - push them down and towards the center.
• Strangely, the Crimson Memories are immune to debuffs.

Cross Slash - The Crimson Soul will teleport to a player's location. Upon arriving, it will use Flame Scythe either horizontally or vertically, then do so again in the other direction without moving. The Crimson Soul will sit idle for a few seconds after finishing this attack.

• This attack only reinforces the utility of getting diagonally away from the Soul. The two swings are performed quickly enough that both swings' flame auras will be active at the same time, often making trying to escape vertically or horizontally rather futile.
• If you can react to which scythe swing is coming first, a special active with long I-frames might be able to get through that direction's slash. If you keep your distance, you'll also stay out of range of the second slash, letting you attack the Soul while remaining safe.

On reaching 20% health [14 bars], the following changes occur:

• The Crimson Soul is more likely to use Cross Slash and Pursuit than singular Flame Scythes. At this point, you will rarely see a single Flame Scythe used.
• Pursuit has two additional Flame Scythes added to it (7 total).
• The Crimson Soul's attack power doubles.
• The Ember of Combustion debuff has changed. Now, in addition to burning MP per second, if any player who has the Ember of Combustion debuff attacks the Crimson Soul, their attacks will heal the boss according to how strong their attacks were. I'm still uncertain as to the exact magnitude of the healing, but by my estimates, the Crimson Soul will heal for roughly three times the amount of damage it would have received.

On reaching this HP threshold, if enough time has passed in the battle, the Crimson Soul will use a Crimson Storm, followed by a set of Crimson Memories.

This berserk phase for the Soul is, by far and away, the most dangerous part of the 12-5 Raid. All of the Soul's attacks will become very dangerous, and the Soul will use its most threatening attacks with high frequency. Exercise maximum caution during this portion of the fight, as deaths during this section are VERY common.

The attack choices used by the Soul also leave it less vulnerable to opportunities to attack, especially since players can't attack it while they have the Ember of Combustion debuff. Many players consider bringing Water Orbs (or other moves/elements that freeze the Soul in place) in order to get more chances to attack the Soul and end the phase faster.

Pitfalls to Avoid

You will need to mentally adjust to several things in this battle. Be ready to make mistakes multiple times regarding the range of the Flame Scythes' flame auras and the slow timing of the opening swing to Crimson Storms.

Monitor your MP carefully. If you're caught in a flame aura and received the Ember of Combustion debuff, you might be caught in a situation where you'll lose MP and suddenly won't be able to use a special active you wanted to, or mana break if the Soul is chasing you. Be ready to keep your MP high if things get dire.

During Pursuit attacks, keep moving away from the Soul, but also keep an eye out for the blue symbols. Monitor these, and you'll see where the Soul will strike next... if you don't watch out for them, however, you could end up running yourself right into a scythe swing.

In groups with latency, it's possible for Crimson Storm to glitch. If this happens, the Crimson Soul will spawn in an offset location, which can move the tornado and its hitbox. In some cases, this might put the tornado outside the map and make it impossible to use. If you find yourself in a group where this is happening, not all hope is lost. As SolaceLite (AKA Sa1ka) discovered, the Crimson Storm AOE is as wide as the room, and is centered around the Crimson Soul itself. Because of this, if the Crimson Soul gets displaced in a direction, the Storm will be displaced by an equal amount. This can create safespots where they wouldn't normally exist:

• If the Soul is too far to the left, the right side will have an area unaffected by the AOE.
• If the Soul is too far to the right, the left side will be safe.
• If the Soul ends up spawning on upper platforms, just remain on the ground floor - the Storm's floor is based on where the Crimson Soul is, so the ground floor will probably be safe.

Group Strategies

Most Raid groups in phase 2 of 12-5 tend to focus on trying to end the battle quickly. To do this, they generally insist that everyone stay in the center of the arena, at the bottom level. Since the Crimson Soul has to teleport to players for most of its attacks, if every player is in one location, the Soul will have to go there, meaning every player is nearby to attack it. Just be wary of the Soul's attacks as this happens. (Though many players just seem to focus on using special actives to I-frame through most of the incoming attacks)

When a Crimson Storm is launched, some players (often in cases where there are players suffering from high latency or very low framerates) will call out which direction the tornado is in party chat, usually with a "<" or ">" to help others out.

When Crimson Memories are summoned, the group will either tackle the left and right sides of the map separately, or push them all to one location (e.g. the center - if the group is doing this, they'll probably state that they're doing so before the phase begins). The group will allow certain party members to use black holes on the Memories or push them, and the rest of the party will attack accordingly.

While the main strategy is to focus on attacking the Soul in the center, this often simply isn't viable during the berserk phase when the Crimson Soul uses a Pursuit attack. The Crimson Soul simply does too much damage for continual attack to be possible - the group will often scatter about the arena just trying to survive. This makes it imperative that the group makes the most of what attack opportunities they can find, only further encouraging the use of Water Orbs.

If you've made it here, it's quite likely that your group is going to beat the 12-5 Raid. The worst of it is indeed over.

You should also have some ideas as to what you should be doing and evading in this section, since the heads behave similarly to how they did in phase 1. However, you have different platform layouts, attacks that are different depending on which head used them, and roughly twice the amount of health (compared to phase 1) to get through, so keep on your toes.

Because a lot of things are similar to phase 1, this section will be abbreviated, mostly noting the differences in the attacks you should be aware of.

Main Mechanics

As before, your goal is to kill every head in succession before any head spends more than 30 seconds dead and revives itself.

This task is slightly more difficult than before, however, due to the arena being much more unorthodox in shape, paired with a long climb. It will take players much longer to get to each head, so players will have to be efficient with their execution of killing the heads in order to succeed.

Attacks

Every single one of the heads still has audio and visual tells for its attacks. However, in this phase, the visual tells are unique for each head - you'll have to learn them independently. Given the differing platform layouts, some safe zones from attacks either no longer exist, or have been given new locations.

Headbutt - the Calamity head will ram its head into the center area of the platforms in front of it. The path the head takes when returning to its normal position varies from head to head.

Head Swipe - the Calamity head will swipe its head across the platforms after winding up.

• You can go over the second head's Head Swipe by standing on the top platforms in that area.
• You can go under the fourth head's Head Swipe by standing on the lowest platform in that area.
• The first and third heads don't provide many outlets to evade their Swipe attacks without doing some serious relocating (the first head's swipe will cover nearly the entirety of the starting ground platform) - learning to time I-frames for these attacks will likely help quite a lot.
• Though the attack will have stopped by this point, be careful of how the heads retract, especially with the second head. While moving back in position, the head can't hurt you, but it can push you a significant distance - make sure this doesn't place you in any other hazards.

Flame Breath - the Calamity head will prepare itself in the background, then breath fire downwards. Various platforms under the head (not just the ground floor anymore) will be lit on fire for a few seconds.

• For the first head, the top platform and the ground floor will be set on fire. The middle platforms to either side will be safe.
• The second head will set the platforms below it aflame. The platforms that let you stand right next to the head are actually fairly safe to be on (so long as you don't walk right into the flame breath), and give you a nice opportunity to attack the head.
• The third head sets the top and bottom platforms on fire, while the middle platforms (on the sides) are safe.
• The fourth head sets the top two platforms on fire. The bottom two platforms in the lower right are safe.

Meteor Rain - the Calamity head will roar, foam fire at the mouth, and shoot meteors into the air as it did in phase 1. This time, four meteors will be shot instead of three.

• The extra meteor doesn't add much time pressure. You can still easily wait and bait the last meteor away before moving with very little risk of actually getting hit by these.
• You have a lot of platforms to work with on the second and fourth head. Since the meteors have to smash into these platforms, you can use these to disrupt the attack, or otherwise get away from it.

(The following attack is only used by a Calamity head once it reaches 50% health [40 bars].

A head will only use this attack one time. This used to be usable again if the head died and revived, but as this video shows, this is no longer the case due to the NA patch received on July 17, 2019.)

Flame Pillar - The Calamity head that hit its HP threshold will growl as before, and shoot fire into the air. A single player will be targeted with a faint pink line that erupts into a Flame Pillar, possessing the same traits as it did in phase 1. However, once the Flame Pillar fades, a Crimson Soul will appear, which will teleport about the arena on occasion to perform singular Flame Scythe slashes. The flame auras on these slashes still have the Ember of Combustion debuff (you can't heal the boss if you have this debuff at any point during phase 3).

• As before, be ready to bait this attack to minimize its inconvenience. Since this attack is tethered to an HP threshold on the head, and the head must use Flame Pillar as its next attack on reaching the threshold, it is completely predictable so long as you're watching the head's health.
• Like the Meteor Rain, the Calamity head has to target someone nearby with this attack. If there's no one nearby, no Flame Pillar will ever be fired - by extension, no Crimson Soul will be summoned, either. Don't expect this fact to be usable in most Raids, since groups will just bait the pillar away and keep attacking, but if there are few people left alive, keeping Crimson Souls from appearing could be quite helpful.
• The Crimson Soul has no health bar, and is invincible.
• The Crimson Souls in phase 3 must follow a rigid attack pattern: appear, teleport (complete with a blue symbol as a warning), Flame Scythe, disappear. Use this fact: if you see a Crimson Soul pop up without a symbol showing, you know this means the Soul is just getting ready to attack. You might be able to take advantage of this by baiting the Soul into teleporting somewhere where it can't interfere with you attacking the Calamity heads.

Pitfalls to Avoid

As before, time your attacks carefully. The Calamity heads still have various movements throughout the background and foreground, greatly varying when they're vulnerable.

Be careful when maneuvering between heads. There are a number of curves on the map, and it's surprisingly easy to miss platforms thanks to missing camera changes on these curves. Missing a platform in this way can easily mean falling down and having to climb back up, wasting a fair bit of time.

If you drop down to a head, be cautious, as you haven't seen what that head was doing in the past few seconds. You could be about to land on a platform that's on fire. It's also very difficult to react to anything below you when you're falling at maximum speed, and the drops are of such great height that mentally timing when you're about to land on a platform becomes very difficult. Be ready to mana break in case there's a hazard where you happen to land.

Group Strategies

The general pattern for the group is similar to the strategy in phase 1 - focus down a head (or split into two groups, if the group has very high damage output), have most of everyone move on while one or two people tune, and repeat this process for the four heads. In fact, cooperation in focusing the heads is slightly easier here, because it's quite natural for everyone to tackle the heads in order (from bottom to top).

The difference here is in the fact that the heads have roughly twice their phase 1 health, can be somewhat harder to hit, and some party members might be dead at this point (meaning the party does less damage). As a result, expect the group to usually aim for lower HP stopping points. Examples could include 10 HP bars when the group should move on to the next head, with tuning stopping at 2-3 HP bars.

Continue to bait away Meteor Rains and Flame Pillars in order to minimize the interference those attacks will cause for the rest of the group.

When it is time to kill all the heads, since the heads are much further apart, it's not uncommon for the group to split up to try and tackle killing the heads in smaller, separate groups. One possible strategy is to have half the group finish the top head and work their way downwards, while the other half drops down to the first head and works upwards.