Post by OnyxBlade on Nov 7, 2007 7:47:10 GMT -5
Udunion - A Guide
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I hope this is the right place to post this! Essentially, I wanted to put a guide out there since there are very few guides on this guy right now. Comments and suggestions of what to change/add are welcome!
--
Udunion
On Saturday, July 21, 2007, The Meaning of Haste defeated Udunion, the hardest challenge we've ever faced in this game yet. Many thanks are in order:
Jethrai for researching the strategy, keeping us focused, and buying a lot of tokens
Arufa for catching many debuffs, buying many tokens and staying on top of that staff operation
Starrynight for her awesome healing, constant willingness to run with us, and the first killing blow on Udunion we've ever seen!
Tibernoft for handling the difficult timing of that scroll of ruin and continuing to try even when the scroll wouldn't work
Drus for keeping Udunion ticked off at him and begging his wife for just one more run - three times
A number of kinmates (Celyana, Ausar, Lerch, Zarkain, and if I forgot to add you in here please tell me we've done so many runs) for participating in the many attempts it took for us to nail down the battle!
PREPARATION
Special Items
The scroll and staff required for the battle with Udunion are found on the sorceresses in the east and west wings of the fortress. The horn is upstairs in a chest that is guarded by a cargul.
The use of the staff and the horn are utterly crucial to survival - failure to use them at the correct time causes instant death to the entire party. The scroll is vital to finish the battle, but failure to use it does not cause instant death - it heals Udunion. The items must also be used in specific places in Udunion's room when he says specific things. The areas and quotes are listed below with the corresponding relics.
It is extremely useful for multiple group members to have the same item. Three main relic users are assigned. If one of them can't use the relic for any reason (dead, suffering bad potion cooldowns), a fourth person who has all three items can be available to cover for them. It wouldn't have been possible for us to win this fight without having such cover available.
Staff of Dark Shadows - Left Sigil
"Shadow take you!"
The timing with this item is easy when practiced. Do not use the item until immediately after he is finished saying the phrase. If you fail to use the item, the party is one-hit killed.
Scroll of Ruin - Right Sigil
"Come dark fire!"
This item seems to have the most difficult timing, possibly because the audio clip may be the longest. Frequently, we've seen the scroll fired but it fails to work. Failure to use this item correctly allows Udunion to heal for about 30,000 morale.
Horn of Anor - Middle Sigil
"Burn!"
Rather easy timing. Failure to use this item allows Udunion to hit the party with about 3000 fire damage. It is occasionally possible for some individuals to live through this attack, but very, very unlikely. For example, we once had one person live through this attack while the rest of the party died.
Buffs, Potions and Equipment
Because this is a long fight, any buffs that assist with power regeneration should be used. For captains: You may be tempted to put your critical buff on the DPS classes, but power is more important in this fight. The critical buffs may be helpful near the end (when he's 15k or less), but you'll probably be too busy to be handing out buffs in mid-battle.
Udunion makes frequent use of shadow and fire damage and sends attacks at random people occasionally. Equipment that adds to vitality is recommended, if possible. Have a bite of Roasted Chicken before entering the room for a modest boost to Vitality.
Hope tokens are a must. Two +5 tokens are highly recommended. You might be able to get by with a +4 for the warmup battle.
Every member must bring a number of Flasks of Conhuith (fear cure) and Healing Draughts (wound cure) - minimum 5 per member to be sure, 10 or more recommended for security.
Classes
Heavy DPS is highly recommended for this battle. The battle is on a timer that causes Udunion to start throwing double death debuffs that can very easily get out of hand. For this reason, it is ideal to defeat him as fast as possible.
Here are the classes we used in this first victory:
Captain, Champion, Guardian, Hunter, Hunter, Minstrel
One hunter had the Staff of Dark Shadow and the other had the Scroll of Ruin. The Champion had all three items for backup use. The Captain had all three items but focused on using the Horn of Anor. The Guardian and Minstrel needed none of the items.
The Captain's fear cure was used frequently to handle debuffs that were getting out of hand. Minstrels can cure fear as well if needed. Three battle rezzes were available - at least one was used.
Communication
The importance of communication in this battle can't be stressed enough. Depending on your group makeup, you may need members with multiple relics to cover each other if one person dies or their potions and cure skills are on cooldown. Many deaths can be prevented by group members letting each other know about death debuffs (discussed later). Ventrilo is highly recommended because, in my experience, it is noticeably faster and clearer than the in-game chat.
THE WARMUP
The warmup consists of a sorceress, three caretakers, and numerous ghosts that the sorceress summons. Udunion does not bother you during this phase. The room gives dread, so pop a token before going in. Bring down the caretakers as fast as possible. Caretakers have been occasionally observed to absorb damage when standing on the fire, so keep them off of it if possible. Lure the sorceress off of the fire grating - she appears to only summon ghosts while on the fire. Luring her away can be difficult. It's possible to know when she'll follow you by watching to see whether she's engaging in melee or not.
When she is at about 15,000 morale, the sorceress will start using a powerful attack that saps all members of the fellowship of a huge chunk of morale and transfers all of it to herself, usually healing several thousand morale. If left uninterrupted, she can chain these attacks to last almost indefinitely. Timing is important in this phase of the battle to avoid drain chains. If she chains too much, you'll end up starting the final battle on low health and power.
Conserve power by autoattacking until the sorceress is down to about 15,000, then start laying on heavy DPS. Use your interrupt skills when you see her bend down very briefly to her knees - that is the signal that she is about to start the attack. The champion Clobber skill does not seem to interrupt her, but the guardian Stomp skill does. The skill must be carefully timed to succeed. The sorceress' drain can occasionally be resisted.
If you get a conjunction and your party is low on power, anything that will replenish your power is recommended. All blue works well. If your party has a lot of power, all yellow is good. Of course, if you have multicolor conjunctions that you've planned to use, it's great to use them, but you have to make sure that you can hit them. In this battle, it's usually best to go with a 'safe' conjunction that the party will get something out of even if one or two people miss a color - there's too much at stake, including hope token timers.
UDUNION - OPENING MOMENTS
It is highly recommended to gather together and use a +5 Hope Token as the sorceress drops below 2000 morale, but only if you know that she's not about to heal herself. When the sorceress dies, the tank needs to immediately begin drawing aggro on Udunion. Udunion begins the battle by unleashing extremely damaging ranged fire attacks.
Captains, you might be kissing your poor heralds goodbye in this initial barrage. (Udunion once specifically nuked Waheed before he did anything else, that monster...) If your herald lives, park him somewhere near the tank and the healer. I found that having him stand off near the left sigil, off the fire but still within buff range of the tank, worked well. Just don't have him attack Udunion - he'll perish at the hands of flame rather quickly.
DPSers, hold off on attacking for a little while. Udunion isn't particularly dangerous while he's above 50k morale. Let the tank build up aggro while you autoattack, or you're likely to find that Udunion will be quite violently unhappy with your involvement in the fight later on.
DEATH DEBUFFS
A few words about these before moving on, because they can pop on you at any time during the fight, even at the very beginning on occasion.
There are two debuffs Udunion randomly uses. They last about 7 seconds. (This number is a guess - we should try to look at the tooltips in the next fight and get a definite figure.) One looks like an eye with purple color and the other is the same eye but with a reddish color. These can be somewhat difficult to tell apart at first, but with practice, the distinction will become easy to make.
The purple eye is a fear effect and the red eye is a wound effect. These can, and must, be removed either with fear/wound potions (mentioned above) or class-based fear/wound cure skills. Captains and minstrels can remove fear while loremasters, with a certain trait, can remove wounds in combat. If these debuffs are allowed to wear off naturally, they instantly kill the target.
Look out for your groupmates and be sure you know which debuff is on them before you tell them to do something. Most of the time, when a person is in a hurry to cure something, they'll listen to the first person who called out the debuff. You have about seven seconds to cure the debuff. Taking two or three to look, think and then very clearly state, "Arufa, wound," will go a lot further toward success than falling all over yourself in a panic and and stuttering out the wrong debuff. Make sure you tell the person forcefully and confidently so they are sure about which potion they need to take.
You have to coordinate closely with those who can cure effects. If you get both debuffs on yourself and only one cure skill is available, use a potion to cure the effect that your fellow can't cure while the fellow cures the other effect. Group members should try to let each other know how potion/skill cure cooldowns are doing if the debuffs are getting out of hand.
Thanks to Chizow of the LOTRO forums for the following tidbit: Anything that can give you resistance to fear or wounds, i.e. the Captains' fear cure/resist buff, helps to avoid the debuffs since they can be evaded and resisted.
50,000
Slowfight Udunion for a while, using mostly autoattack. When he hits about 50,000 morale, he'll unbind from the floor and be able to move around the room. Hopefully, the tank will have generated enough threat to keep Udunion roughly still. Back off on DPS when appropriate if Udunion starts attacking people other than the tank. The tank should try to keep Udunion away from others as much as possible.
Whoever has the Staff of Dark Shadows should be on the alert for their signal around this point in the battle if not before. Preferably, this person is a hunter so that they never have to leave their spot beside the sigil.
45,000
The user of the Scroll of Ruin (again, preferably a hunter) should start getting paranoid about his signal at this point. Crank up the DPS a little - remember, you want this fight to go as fast as it possibly can without making things too hard for the tank.
40,000
The user of the Horn of Anor needs to be paranoid now. For the rest of the fight, the main relic holders should not leave their stations except for emergencies (running a short distance to cure or be cured) or when ordered by the leader. DPS should be churning out pretty hard at this point.
RELIC USE
While standing on a sigil, you are affected by a debuff that makes you 'vulnerable to a special attack.' This appears to cause you to catch the death debuffs a lot more easily. Because of this, it's important to spend most of your time off of the sigil. Step onto it only far enough to activate the item, then step back off as quickly as you can.
Relics should be hotbarred for ease of use. Keep every relic you have hotbarred so that you can access them all quickly if you have to cover for someone.
Try not to use skills that have long induction times if your phrase is likely to be shouted at any time. Try to wait until immediately after any phrase is shouted and then acted on until you do anything that'll keep you from using your item for any length of time. This is the best way to prevent accidents caused by skill lag.
THE REST
The most important things to remember are to act swiftly while staying focused, communicating, and thinking before you act. Pay attention to your potion/skill cooldowns. If you're a captain, your fear cure is on a 30 second cooldown and should be saved for emergencies.
The group may have to make a conscious decision to let someone die in order to avoid disrupting the rest of the members' efforts too badly in regards to skill cooldowns and item use. Hopefully, battle rezzes will be available to fix the situation. For example, we had one relic user die, and our cover member took over my position while I used a rez. This turned out to work extremely well, and is actually how we really discovered how useful a 'cover' member is.
If you've used your relic very recently (within the past 20 seconds or so) and Udunion yells your phrase again, you may want to have your cover member fire the relic instead so that you don't get tagged with a debuff that can't be cured because of cooldowns.
There are more subtleties to this fight, especially depending on your group composition and communication, than can be described in a guide. After you attempt this fight enough times, you start to get a decent feel for approximately when he'll do something. The fight can be nerve-wracking and extremely tense, but try to remember that the many threats of 'instant' death aren't exactly instant. You do have time to perform what actions need to be performed as long as you aren't trying to do too much at once by yourself.
The only times the fight gets truly unmanageable are when Udunion uses the same phrase a bunch of times in a row or decides to put a lot of random debuffs on someone in a short time, stressing potion and skill cooldowns and usually killing the person. One death can be overcome with a rez and a cover member if needed, but we usually kick ourselves out of the instance and start over if a second person dies.
Good luck to all groups who attempt this extremely challenging battle. May you defeat him in far less attempts than it took us.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I hope this is the right place to post this! Essentially, I wanted to put a guide out there since there are very few guides on this guy right now. Comments and suggestions of what to change/add are welcome!
--
Udunion
On Saturday, July 21, 2007, The Meaning of Haste defeated Udunion, the hardest challenge we've ever faced in this game yet. Many thanks are in order:
Jethrai for researching the strategy, keeping us focused, and buying a lot of tokens
Arufa for catching many debuffs, buying many tokens and staying on top of that staff operation
Starrynight for her awesome healing, constant willingness to run with us, and the first killing blow on Udunion we've ever seen!
Tibernoft for handling the difficult timing of that scroll of ruin and continuing to try even when the scroll wouldn't work
Drus for keeping Udunion ticked off at him and begging his wife for just one more run - three times
A number of kinmates (Celyana, Ausar, Lerch, Zarkain, and if I forgot to add you in here please tell me we've done so many runs) for participating in the many attempts it took for us to nail down the battle!
PREPARATION
Special Items
The scroll and staff required for the battle with Udunion are found on the sorceresses in the east and west wings of the fortress. The horn is upstairs in a chest that is guarded by a cargul.
The use of the staff and the horn are utterly crucial to survival - failure to use them at the correct time causes instant death to the entire party. The scroll is vital to finish the battle, but failure to use it does not cause instant death - it heals Udunion. The items must also be used in specific places in Udunion's room when he says specific things. The areas and quotes are listed below with the corresponding relics.
It is extremely useful for multiple group members to have the same item. Three main relic users are assigned. If one of them can't use the relic for any reason (dead, suffering bad potion cooldowns), a fourth person who has all three items can be available to cover for them. It wouldn't have been possible for us to win this fight without having such cover available.
Staff of Dark Shadows - Left Sigil
"Shadow take you!"
The timing with this item is easy when practiced. Do not use the item until immediately after he is finished saying the phrase. If you fail to use the item, the party is one-hit killed.
Scroll of Ruin - Right Sigil
"Come dark fire!"
This item seems to have the most difficult timing, possibly because the audio clip may be the longest. Frequently, we've seen the scroll fired but it fails to work. Failure to use this item correctly allows Udunion to heal for about 30,000 morale.
Horn of Anor - Middle Sigil
"Burn!"
Rather easy timing. Failure to use this item allows Udunion to hit the party with about 3000 fire damage. It is occasionally possible for some individuals to live through this attack, but very, very unlikely. For example, we once had one person live through this attack while the rest of the party died.
Buffs, Potions and Equipment
Because this is a long fight, any buffs that assist with power regeneration should be used. For captains: You may be tempted to put your critical buff on the DPS classes, but power is more important in this fight. The critical buffs may be helpful near the end (when he's 15k or less), but you'll probably be too busy to be handing out buffs in mid-battle.
Udunion makes frequent use of shadow and fire damage and sends attacks at random people occasionally. Equipment that adds to vitality is recommended, if possible. Have a bite of Roasted Chicken before entering the room for a modest boost to Vitality.
Hope tokens are a must. Two +5 tokens are highly recommended. You might be able to get by with a +4 for the warmup battle.
Every member must bring a number of Flasks of Conhuith (fear cure) and Healing Draughts (wound cure) - minimum 5 per member to be sure, 10 or more recommended for security.
Classes
Heavy DPS is highly recommended for this battle. The battle is on a timer that causes Udunion to start throwing double death debuffs that can very easily get out of hand. For this reason, it is ideal to defeat him as fast as possible.
Here are the classes we used in this first victory:
Captain, Champion, Guardian, Hunter, Hunter, Minstrel
One hunter had the Staff of Dark Shadow and the other had the Scroll of Ruin. The Champion had all three items for backup use. The Captain had all three items but focused on using the Horn of Anor. The Guardian and Minstrel needed none of the items.
The Captain's fear cure was used frequently to handle debuffs that were getting out of hand. Minstrels can cure fear as well if needed. Three battle rezzes were available - at least one was used.
Communication
The importance of communication in this battle can't be stressed enough. Depending on your group makeup, you may need members with multiple relics to cover each other if one person dies or their potions and cure skills are on cooldown. Many deaths can be prevented by group members letting each other know about death debuffs (discussed later). Ventrilo is highly recommended because, in my experience, it is noticeably faster and clearer than the in-game chat.
THE WARMUP
The warmup consists of a sorceress, three caretakers, and numerous ghosts that the sorceress summons. Udunion does not bother you during this phase. The room gives dread, so pop a token before going in. Bring down the caretakers as fast as possible. Caretakers have been occasionally observed to absorb damage when standing on the fire, so keep them off of it if possible. Lure the sorceress off of the fire grating - she appears to only summon ghosts while on the fire. Luring her away can be difficult. It's possible to know when she'll follow you by watching to see whether she's engaging in melee or not.
When she is at about 15,000 morale, the sorceress will start using a powerful attack that saps all members of the fellowship of a huge chunk of morale and transfers all of it to herself, usually healing several thousand morale. If left uninterrupted, she can chain these attacks to last almost indefinitely. Timing is important in this phase of the battle to avoid drain chains. If she chains too much, you'll end up starting the final battle on low health and power.
Conserve power by autoattacking until the sorceress is down to about 15,000, then start laying on heavy DPS. Use your interrupt skills when you see her bend down very briefly to her knees - that is the signal that she is about to start the attack. The champion Clobber skill does not seem to interrupt her, but the guardian Stomp skill does. The skill must be carefully timed to succeed. The sorceress' drain can occasionally be resisted.
If you get a conjunction and your party is low on power, anything that will replenish your power is recommended. All blue works well. If your party has a lot of power, all yellow is good. Of course, if you have multicolor conjunctions that you've planned to use, it's great to use them, but you have to make sure that you can hit them. In this battle, it's usually best to go with a 'safe' conjunction that the party will get something out of even if one or two people miss a color - there's too much at stake, including hope token timers.
UDUNION - OPENING MOMENTS
It is highly recommended to gather together and use a +5 Hope Token as the sorceress drops below 2000 morale, but only if you know that she's not about to heal herself. When the sorceress dies, the tank needs to immediately begin drawing aggro on Udunion. Udunion begins the battle by unleashing extremely damaging ranged fire attacks.
Captains, you might be kissing your poor heralds goodbye in this initial barrage. (Udunion once specifically nuked Waheed before he did anything else, that monster...) If your herald lives, park him somewhere near the tank and the healer. I found that having him stand off near the left sigil, off the fire but still within buff range of the tank, worked well. Just don't have him attack Udunion - he'll perish at the hands of flame rather quickly.
DPSers, hold off on attacking for a little while. Udunion isn't particularly dangerous while he's above 50k morale. Let the tank build up aggro while you autoattack, or you're likely to find that Udunion will be quite violently unhappy with your involvement in the fight later on.
DEATH DEBUFFS
A few words about these before moving on, because they can pop on you at any time during the fight, even at the very beginning on occasion.
There are two debuffs Udunion randomly uses. They last about 7 seconds. (This number is a guess - we should try to look at the tooltips in the next fight and get a definite figure.) One looks like an eye with purple color and the other is the same eye but with a reddish color. These can be somewhat difficult to tell apart at first, but with practice, the distinction will become easy to make.
The purple eye is a fear effect and the red eye is a wound effect. These can, and must, be removed either with fear/wound potions (mentioned above) or class-based fear/wound cure skills. Captains and minstrels can remove fear while loremasters, with a certain trait, can remove wounds in combat. If these debuffs are allowed to wear off naturally, they instantly kill the target.
Look out for your groupmates and be sure you know which debuff is on them before you tell them to do something. Most of the time, when a person is in a hurry to cure something, they'll listen to the first person who called out the debuff. You have about seven seconds to cure the debuff. Taking two or three to look, think and then very clearly state, "Arufa, wound," will go a lot further toward success than falling all over yourself in a panic and and stuttering out the wrong debuff. Make sure you tell the person forcefully and confidently so they are sure about which potion they need to take.
You have to coordinate closely with those who can cure effects. If you get both debuffs on yourself and only one cure skill is available, use a potion to cure the effect that your fellow can't cure while the fellow cures the other effect. Group members should try to let each other know how potion/skill cure cooldowns are doing if the debuffs are getting out of hand.
Thanks to Chizow of the LOTRO forums for the following tidbit: Anything that can give you resistance to fear or wounds, i.e. the Captains' fear cure/resist buff, helps to avoid the debuffs since they can be evaded and resisted.
50,000
Slowfight Udunion for a while, using mostly autoattack. When he hits about 50,000 morale, he'll unbind from the floor and be able to move around the room. Hopefully, the tank will have generated enough threat to keep Udunion roughly still. Back off on DPS when appropriate if Udunion starts attacking people other than the tank. The tank should try to keep Udunion away from others as much as possible.
Whoever has the Staff of Dark Shadows should be on the alert for their signal around this point in the battle if not before. Preferably, this person is a hunter so that they never have to leave their spot beside the sigil.
45,000
The user of the Scroll of Ruin (again, preferably a hunter) should start getting paranoid about his signal at this point. Crank up the DPS a little - remember, you want this fight to go as fast as it possibly can without making things too hard for the tank.
40,000
The user of the Horn of Anor needs to be paranoid now. For the rest of the fight, the main relic holders should not leave their stations except for emergencies (running a short distance to cure or be cured) or when ordered by the leader. DPS should be churning out pretty hard at this point.
RELIC USE
While standing on a sigil, you are affected by a debuff that makes you 'vulnerable to a special attack.' This appears to cause you to catch the death debuffs a lot more easily. Because of this, it's important to spend most of your time off of the sigil. Step onto it only far enough to activate the item, then step back off as quickly as you can.
Relics should be hotbarred for ease of use. Keep every relic you have hotbarred so that you can access them all quickly if you have to cover for someone.
Try not to use skills that have long induction times if your phrase is likely to be shouted at any time. Try to wait until immediately after any phrase is shouted and then acted on until you do anything that'll keep you from using your item for any length of time. This is the best way to prevent accidents caused by skill lag.
THE REST
The most important things to remember are to act swiftly while staying focused, communicating, and thinking before you act. Pay attention to your potion/skill cooldowns. If you're a captain, your fear cure is on a 30 second cooldown and should be saved for emergencies.
The group may have to make a conscious decision to let someone die in order to avoid disrupting the rest of the members' efforts too badly in regards to skill cooldowns and item use. Hopefully, battle rezzes will be available to fix the situation. For example, we had one relic user die, and our cover member took over my position while I used a rez. This turned out to work extremely well, and is actually how we really discovered how useful a 'cover' member is.
If you've used your relic very recently (within the past 20 seconds or so) and Udunion yells your phrase again, you may want to have your cover member fire the relic instead so that you don't get tagged with a debuff that can't be cured because of cooldowns.
There are more subtleties to this fight, especially depending on your group composition and communication, than can be described in a guide. After you attempt this fight enough times, you start to get a decent feel for approximately when he'll do something. The fight can be nerve-wracking and extremely tense, but try to remember that the many threats of 'instant' death aren't exactly instant. You do have time to perform what actions need to be performed as long as you aren't trying to do too much at once by yourself.
The only times the fight gets truly unmanageable are when Udunion uses the same phrase a bunch of times in a row or decides to put a lot of random debuffs on someone in a short time, stressing potion and skill cooldowns and usually killing the person. One death can be overcome with a rez and a cover member if needed, but we usually kick ourselves out of the instance and start over if a second person dies.
Good luck to all groups who attempt this extremely challenging battle. May you defeat him in far less attempts than it took us.
