The instrument

The instrument
Scenery 31 of 31 · the great central hearth. Alone · Nightmare · Arcanist.

This is a long fight, not a dangerous one. In 60 test runs the Arcanist never fell below 85% health, but the fight lasted between 11 and 39 minutes. On Nightmare the instrument ignores marks, so the Arcanist's marking game does not work here. Your damage is what ends it.

What you hold

You reach the instrument holding 16 spells. That is your two starting spells plus one spell from each of the fourteen boss drafts before it. Taking an upgrade ranks up a spell you already have instead of adding one. Three of the ten tested draft orders took one and held 15.

• Tap: Footnote. A Halt that deals no damage and marks a body for the next element. On Nightmare the mark does not land on the instrument.
• Hold: Banked light. An arcane Beam whose damage banks while you hold it and all lands when you let go. You cannot move while channelling, and being interrupted loses whatever has not banked.

Each draft deals four cards. Card one is always one of the Arcanist's own spells, and from the third draft on one card is an upgrade. The rest are random. The rule: At each boss draft take, in this order: a new damage, control or summon spell; if none is offered, an upgrade of a damage, control or summon spell you hold; if neither, any new spell. Between two equal cards, take the Arcanist's own.

The build we used. Card-one picks: passed along, house colours, consecration, the grain, note in the margin, signed and countersigned and left over. Random cards: needleglass, judgementfall, sunwell, the long push, draw down, hammerbrand and ashenline. It cleared every run, in 15 to 24 minutes.

If the deal differs: all ten draft orders cleared every run. They held seven or eight Arcanist spells beyond the starting two. On Nightmare the instrument ignores control. A card whose only job is to mark, slow, root, stun or weaken does nothing here, so prefer raw damage.

Talents

You have 30 talent points, and the runs put all of them into the Marginalia tree. Talents are your choice. Each point went to the deepest open row, a new talent before a second rank; rows open at 5, 10 and 15 points, the ultimate at 20. In the order bought:

• In His Own Hand ×2: arcane +3% per point.
• The Placed Page ×2: Halts +3% per point.
• Low Lean ×1: +2% maximum health.
• Annotated Again ×2: Halts recharge 3% faster per point.
• He Does Not Stop Writing ×2: enemy statuses wear off 2% sooner per point.
• Still Blank ×1: +4% to enemies carrying an uncashed mark of yours.
• Written in His Own Colour ×2: +4% per point to enemies whose mark of yours names arcane.
• Alone With the Page ×2: +4% per point to a marked enemy with nobody within 4 m.
• The Note Moves ×1: an expiring mark may move to a nearby enemy.
• A Deeper Hand ×5: hits in your mark's colour +4% per point.
• A Second Colour ×5: a spent mark leaves its colour, and hits of that colour deal 10% more.
• Which Form ×4: the first hit to answer your mark deals 8% more per point.
• Errata ×1: cashing a mark marks every enemy you hit for 5 s (25 s cooldown).

The last eight of these, 21 of the 30 points, need your mark on the enemy. Your mark never lands on the instrument on Nightmare, so in this fight only the first five do anything.

The fight

1. The hall holds the instrument and nothing else: no adds at any point. Every spell you have goes into it.
2. Eight fires stand on a ring around the hearth. They look like fire and never burn you.
3. Phase one has eight abilities: The draw (strafe), The surround (kite), Channel margin (kite), The samples (strafe), The grid (jump), The cold channel (kite), The kerb (walk out) and The relight (strafe).
4. At 75% the instrument adds The outer arc (jump) and The far draw (blink). At 50% it adds The hold (walk out) and The inner ends (strafe). At 25% it adds The return (strafe) and All eight (walk out). Earlier abilities keep running.
5. Almost every tell the Arcanist met was a jump tell, from The grid and The outer arc. Hits from tells cost no measurable health in any run.
6. Stopping a tell: standing in the fire nearest you when The draw resolves stops it. When All eight comes in the last phase, standing in any of the eight fires stops it.
7. Keep casting. Hold Banked light and release it before you have to move, so the banked damage lands. Fire your heavy spells as they recharge. Keys: cast (Left mouse / South, hold to channel), jump (Space / North), next and previous spell (E/Q / R1/L1).
8. The fight ends when the instrument's bar empties.

What goes wrong

• Over-dodging. The style that left every footprint took 16 to 39 minutes. The style that stood and cast took 11 to 29.
• Nightmare has no pause, and this is the longest fight in the game.
• Going down alone still ends the fight. The runs never came close to that, but a fall is still a wipe.

Tested

60 automated runs on the shipped rules: ten random draft orders, three play styles and two skill levels. All 60 cleared. The fastest took 11.3 minutes and the slowest 39.1. The lowest health in any run was 85%. These were automated test runs, not human play.

Screenshots

One complete fight in the current build, played by an automated test player with the game's normal controls: the Arcanist alone on Nightmare, holding the build used above. The fight took 15 min 57 s of game time.