Laz and Ennead, Fire and Void

The Ennead has more bosses than any other organisation, with three major boss fights and two bosses in the final battle. This brings us to a total of four big bosses. And don’t forget, you have to defeat the last two twice. This expedition also starts out with Ancient enemies, but with a Brimstone flavour, so if you’re getting toasted, you can consider adding some Fire ward. 

The first boss you encounter is Godling Khepri Supernal, a giant scarab beetle. You need to use the architecture of the room to avoid his laser beam, by running around to the other side of the pillar once he starts casting. As long as the group works together, this is a pretty easy fight.

After getting through the twists and turns of the first maze-like section, you will use three Azoth staves to burst a Corruption bubble and encounter a series of Corrupted enemies. This culminates in the second boss fight, with General Crassus. He goes through three phases and summons a lot of adds, so it’s worth having dedicated DPS keeping them under control.

The final boss fight is a doozy. It starts with Anpu, aka Big Guy, who has some nasty elemental attacks, reaching out with ranged spikes and causing an AOE spin, as well as smacking down like a regular brute. The one attack you can control to some degree is his charge, which is usually targeted at the furthest player. If they keep a pillar between Anpu and themselves, he will bonk his head and stop his charge. Make sure you don’t stand in the trail he leaves when he charges, as it does major damage.

Once you knock Anpu over, his little buddy, Heru (aka Small Guy), turns up. He is infinitely more annoying, because he requires the whole team to work together. When he enters his levitation stage in the middle of the arena, four players need to be at each of the floating pillars and use their azoth staves, while suffering massive tick damage. It’s worth drinking a regen pot just before using your staff, to keep the ticks under control. He also stuns and creates damage zones, so be careful.

The real fun starts once Heru goes down, as at this point they both get up and the place becomes chaotic. If you don’t kill them both within 30 seconds of each other, the other one respawns, so one strategy is to get Small Guy down to almost dead, then focus on Big Guy, then when he is almost dead, take them both down. Just careful of Small Guy going into his levitation phase while you’re trying to fight Big Guy, it’s good to have a lot of DPS here to get this fight over and done with. 

It’s all purple in the Ennead this week, with the Eternal mutation transforming the enemies to Void damage, so go with the theme and protect yourself with Amethysts. Paranoia is particularly annoying, with stacks building up as you hit the enemy. When you reach 4 stacks, a purple pool appears at your feet, dealing 40-70% damage. This is easily dodged as an individual, but when the melee are crowded together, you can end up with some big spikes of pain. It might be an opportunity to try a ranged DPS team for a change, with the tank holding aggro and 3 bow users shooting from afar. Creeping enemies Empower their friends when they die and Oblivion enemies use a life leech that heals them when they hit you. 

When you get to M3, Festering enemies start to appear, dealing disease against you so your incoming healing will be reduced. Remember, debuffs can be Purified in a number of ways. Slicer enemies also turn up, adding 30% base Void damage, which works well with your protective gems in this mutation.

The Curse of the Eternal Ennead is Desiccated, which is your basic dip and nae-nae. When a player gets a void ring around them, they need to dip all team members in order to remove their Shrivel. But make sure they nae-nae away before the timer ends to avoid spiking others with a chain Void for 50% of their max health. If you’re unlucky enough to be left shrivelled, damage and healing will be reduced by 50% until the debuff wears off.