The World of Darkness

This article is about the level 50 Alliance Raid. For the Feature Quest, see The World of Darkness (Quest).

Level: 50 (Sync: 50)
Item Level: 90
Difficulty: Normal

Party size: Alliance
24 man • 3 6 15
Unsyncing: Allowed
Time limit: 120 minutes
Duty Finder: Alliance Raids (A Realm Reborn)
Roulette: Alliance Raids
Tomestones: 100
Req. quest: The World of Darkness
Entrance: Mor Dhona (X:35.7, Y:20.0)
Location: The World of Darkness
Region: Mor Dhona
Patch: 2.5

“

In the twilight of his reign, the first and last emperor of Allag, Xande, desired power above all else. He turned to the terrible being known as the Cloud of Darkness, a ruler of the void, and asked of her strength to make the world kneel before his throne with a covenant of blood.
When Xande was slain, his ambitions were laid to rest alongside him. Yet the Cloud of Darkness still seeks to enter the material realm, and will soon find passage through the Voidgate set to manifest within Syrcus Tower. With the fiend's coming, can the fellowship of NOAH brave the void and rescue the three souls able to stem the Cloud's flood of shadows, or will the expedition itself vanish beyond the rift in the World of Darkness?

— In-game description

The World of Darkness is a level 50 raid introduced in patch 2.5. It is the third part of Crystal Tower.

Objectives

Clear the Eye: 0/1
Defeat Angra Mainyu: 0/1
Clear the Nape: 0/1
Defeat the five-headed dragon: 0/1
Clear the Jaws: 0/1
Defeat Cerberus: 0/1
Defeat Cloud Of Darkness: 0/1

Enemies and Bosses

While The World of Darkness also lacks an IL sync, as it is the last raid in the series it is much closer to the maximum Item Level for level 50 (IL 130). This means most mechanics must still be dealt with appropriately unlike in the previous two Alliance Raids in the Crystal Tower series.

The Eye

Enemies: Garm x3

Tanks should group up all three enemies. They use Marrow Drain, a small telegraphed conal AoE. They also have two interruptible attacks: The Ram's Voice (an untelegraphed point-blank AoE) and The Dragon's Voice (an untelegraphed donut AoE). Three large persistent AoEs will also cover most of the arena, inflicting burns to anyone who steps in them.

After defeating them, more enemies will spawn: Sacrificed Ninja x4, Sacrificed Kunoichi x2, and a Two-headed Dragon. These have no notable mechanics and can be grouped up and defeated.

Angra Mainyu

Updated World of Darkness Guide

Video Guide Part One

Video Guide Part Two

Double Vision, a floor-covering AoE that is split into red and white, which gives a stacking debuff depending on what colour you're standing on. The white AOE will give a "Sullen" debuff and the red AOE will give an "Ireful" debuff. The stacks will reset to 1 if you alternate which colour you stand on when it hits. If you get 2 stacks of the debuff you will take 2.5k damage. If you get 3 stacks you will die.

When he casts Mortal Gaze, anyone looking in his direction will receive a Doom debuff that kills you in 10 seconds. Stand on whichever one of the four circular platforms that is lit up to remove this debuff. You can also turn away from the boss when he casts the ability to completely avoid the Doom debuff.

Roulette, signified by a finger and a cone that rotates clockwise around the boss room, occurs when 4 Final Hourglasses spawn at the outer edge of the room. Kill the 4 Final Hourglass one by one. To avoid being killed, do not stand in the quarter that is lit up when the last Final Hourglass dies. As long as all four of the Hourglasses die, you will be able to run out of that section if you happen to be in it.

Level 100 Flare: Red ball spawns on a player and a red circle appears on the ground. This ability tethers several players to 1 player. You need to run out of the circle to cancel the ability. Players in the red circle will all take massive damage if the total number of players in the circle is an even number.

Level 150 Death: Purple ball spawns on a player and a purple circle appears on the ground. This ability tethers several players to 1 player. You need to run out of the circle to cancel the ability. Players in the purple circle will all die if the total number of players in the circle is a multiple of 3.

Adds should be killed or they will deal powerful raidwide damage.

The Nape

Enemies: Queen Scylla

Scylla will use Ancient Flare, an attack that will do raid-wide damage if not interrupted. Six Forbidden Gates will spawn, three west and three east, which will slowly begin casting Void Call. If not defeated before they finish the cast, they will turn into a Thor, which has no notable mechanics.

After defeating them, a fake Treasure Coffer will appear, which will turn into a Xande's Clone when opened, who will use Ancient Quaga, another interruptible attack. Six more Forbidden Gates will spawn, although two of them will be larger. The larger gates will turn into a Jormungand if not defeated in time, which has no notable mechanics.

Five-headed Dragon

Ice Floor's AoE expands if it hits a player. When you see a white, circular swirl on the ground, run away. Anyone who steps in these will be inflicted with Deep Freeze for several seconds and unable to move or take actions.

An orange circle AoE telegraph will leave behind a poison puddle that will spawn multiple Poison Slimes. These need to be killed to stop them from joining together and casting silence (The Last Song) on the entire raid. Killing them causes them to burst into poison resistance buffs. At least one player should stand in the puddle to prevent more slimes from spawning and turning into a Toxic Slime. This must be killed or it will explode for high damage (Fermata) and inflicting a stack of Vulnerability Up.

When the boss channels Discordance you have to kill the 5 extra heads that appear or the raid will wipe. Defeat them all with AoE attacks. The boss could use this multiple times, so stay on your toes if your DPS is slower.

The boss will occasionally mark a player with a stack marker. When this happens, a small number of players (usually 3-5) need to stack on this player to split the damage. If this does not happen, the player will receive 9999 damage.

When you see Prominence orbs appear, red circles spawn on the ground followed by red or white balls, kill the orbs ASAP before they explode (Radiance) and deal damage, inflicting stacks of Vulnerability Up.

An untargetable Dragonfire Fly will tether a player and inflicts a stacking Suppuration debuff, reducing their maximum HP and increasing damage taken. The player needs to run and touch another player to transfer the tether before the debuff kills them.

Heatwave is a raid-wide attack used when the boss' HP is low. For 5 seconds, every action you make will deal 500 damage, so players should stop moving and attacking.

The Jaws

Enemies: Howling Atomos x3

Each party should split off, with A going left, B middle, and C right, to isolated platforms, each containing a Howling Atomos.

A random player will be marked with a crosshair, indicating the Atomos will use an untelegraphed conal AoE on them that will suck in anyone hit. Ideally, other players should avoid the marked player. Anyone sucked in will then be spit off the platform to the lower ring. A player on the upper platform will need to stand on the glowing white circle to activate a jump pad allowing lower players to return to the top.

The Atomos will also use Shockwave, an untelegraphed radial knockback. Stand right under the mob when it's casting Shockwave because if you're not in that purple puddle you will get knocked off. The knockback can be prevented with Arm's Length or Surecast.

A Sacrificed Soldier add will also spawn on each platform and should be defeated. A spinning yellow disc will also move across the platform and should be avoided to prevent damage.

Cerberus

When Cerberus becomes unchained and starts Thrashing, a group of players (usually Alliance B, plus any DPS that want to) needs to execute the following in order:

Stand next to the Gastric Juice mob to get hit by Mini spell and shrunk to a small size.
Stand in the purple puddle to get Devoured by the boss. (Do not stand in the puddle if you don't have the Mini debuff, as Cerberus will instantly kill you.)
Once inside, kill the adds on the wall in his stomach.

When the adds are dead he will stop thrashing, and will slump to the ground in pain. Groups outside the stomach need to use the two tethers to re-chain him while he is weakened - both tethers need to be re-attached to each of the Open Fetters on his sides by interacting with them. Players who pick up the chains should not linger too long with these.

If there are fewer than 5 living players outside the belly, Cerberus will immediately eject all players inside him without collapsing.^[1]

If his belly adds are not killed or he is not re-chained, Cerberus' Haste and Damage Up buffs will stack out of control and wipe the raid. There are two meta strategies for handling this mechanic:

DPS Rush

All DPS should get swallowed to burn down the stomach walls as quickly as possible. One (1) healer joins them so they don't die.

DPS Rush is both faster and safer, as B alliance can be people who don't know how to get in the belly or are new. The ABC strat below is just included for reference and should only be used if most of the alliance insists on doing it.

ABC = Adds/Belly/Chains

Alliance A should pull and kill the adds, Wolfsbane, which are quite dangerous if not tanked because their attack is a large cleave poison.
Alliance B should go into Cerberus' stomach.
Alliance C should tank Cerberus, and focus on re-chaining Cerberus whilst he is weakened.

Due to gear creep, DPS Rush is more common nowadays.

Cerberus has a Tail Swipe attack that hits players behind him in a cone.

Ululation is a roar that causes players who are not around other players to become feared for 15 seconds. Stay near your party members to avoid the fear effect.

Cloud of Darkness

Cloud of Darkness targets the tank with a powerful auto-attack that also deals damage over time, so keep your tank safe.

A random player will get targeted with red crosshairs (Feint Particle Beam). After a few seconds, blasts will start chasing after the target player at running speed damaging anyone nearby. Each blast adds a Vulnerability Up debuff and it kills you quickly if you stop moving. The player targeted should run towards the outside edge of the area, away from all other players.

Any time she moves around the ring, she fires a massive laser (Zero-form Particle Beam) through the center of the area. When she disappears, immediately move to the sides. This attack will give a Vulnerability Up debuff. This does not have a ground telegraph.

Throughout the fight, she will spawn comets on yellow circle markers (towers). At least one person should stand in each one before the comet reaches the ground or the raid suffers moderate damage (several empty comets will wipe the raid). The person in the comet area will take a small hit.

Mid-fight, the floor of the area will light up and smaller Dark Cloud and larger Dark Storm adds will start spawning. Kill them before they get close enough for the boss to eat them and gain stacks of Damage Up, or she will wipe you if she eats enough. The smaller adds will give her one stack, while the larger attacks will give three. The clouds can be affected by Heavy but not by Bind. If anyone stands between the clouds and CoD, it will add the Heavy effect to them. After the cloud phase is done she will do a raid-wide attack.

Next, she will spawn 3 Hypercharged Clouds in a triangle formation. These clouds have a box shaped outline around them and cannot be damaged outside the box after a few seconds, so move into one of the boxes and kill the clouds. A, B, and C should have their own cloud and this can be marked ahead of time with waymarks, although it is not critical to evenly split the alliances. If they are not killed before Particle Beam finishes casting, they will explode for massive damage.

If your raid DPS is very low, worm adds (Shadowlurkers) will spawn around the area before the cloud phase. Hitting them once or twice causes them to disappear. The worms add many debuffs like Morbol's Bad Breath to anyone standing too close to them. Stay away and let the ranged DPS handle. If they are left alive for too long, they will target random players with a massive AoE (Black Thunder) that deals damage and inflicts a stack of Vulnerability Up.