Questions and Answers
Q: Where is Golden Citadel dungeon? I can't find it.
A: Read the section below, "How to access Golden Citadel".
Q: What order should I do the rooms in?
A: It doesn't matter. Most people go clockwise or counter-clockwise. Some people start with the Fire room, as the burn debuffs are pretty strong and some people prefer to get this room done and over with first. Some people start with the Green room, as the boss can be difficult for beginner players.
Q: What to do in the Fire room when lava is everywhere?
A: Each person should stand on a different floating platform to avoid the explosions that happen under the lava. The debuff you get from touching lava will never kill you. It will keep draining a percentage of your current HP, but will never kill you. Keep attacking the teleporting crystal until it dies.
Q: How to avoid freezing in the Ice boss?
A: Theoretically, using one of the devices in the 4 corners of the map should protect you from freezing for a brief amount of time, but from my experience it doesn't work most of the time. You'll have to just bite the bullet and accept the freezes.
Q: Final boss kills me when I'm freezed!
A: A few pieces of advice: when you feel like you might get frozen soon, make sure not to stand in flame or light AoE pools/attacks. Try to pick a safe place where you'll survive getting freezed. Anticipate the moment when you might get freezed. Apart from that, try to kill the black freezing miniboss quickly, so you potentially only get frozen once during the final boss.
How to access Golden Citadel
Complete all casual raid quests, then accept a quest from Io in Ruin Fortress that will guide you to talk with Booker TV in District 6. From there, talk to Azin in District 6 and select the new icon that will teleport you to Golden Citadel lobby. Complete the quest by talking to NPC in that area to unlock the portal to Golden Citadel.
Recommended Gear/AR Cards/Party Composition
The best scenario is if you have crafted Grave Guard MK III or Raid gear and got lucky to get decent stats on it (HP bonuses, Crit Rate, Crit Damage, Attack, Attack Speed). It's advisable to have at least 30-40k HP in Golden Citadel, as you cannot revive there if you die. If you crafted MK III or Raid gear but you got very unlucky with the stats, it's better to buy some cheap level 50-55 blue gear from the market with good stats (alternatively, farm it by doing Arkship Episode 4). Spending days to craft another set of MK III or Raid gear is not worth the money and time.
For accessories, it's advisable to have a full set of accessories dropped from doing Arkship (most people farm Episode 4, but you can also drop those accessories in other Episodes; some people farm Episode 1 as it's the shortest one). The set effects from those accessories are very good. If you can, get a pendant/earring with 4-5% Attack Speed, and two rings with Crit Rate/Crit Damage.
As for AR Cards, you don't need Junk Knight or Deus Ex Machina, as this dungeon doesn't have trash mobs. Take some healing AR Cards in case your Stella cannot heal you in time. Take Big Puppet, Rita or Glutton Army if you were lucky enough to get those cards. Take Asphalt Golem (3-star version) to take aggro of the minibosses.
Make sure to have at least one Stella in your party. The enemies in Golden Citadel hit pretty hard, and you cannot revive if you die. You only have one chance at staying alive. You cannot enter Golden Citadel if you don't have 4 party members.
Drops
This dungeon is necessary to get gear and items to do Primal dungeon. Armors from GC will make it possible to survive Primal attacks. Weapon and accessories from GC will increase your damage to Primal enemies.
Items you can drop in Golden Citadel:
- blueprints and materials to craft Aurite gear (necessary to survive and do more damage in Primal)
- Aurite accessories (necessary to do more damage in Primal)
- BP (Booker Points), you get more BP with better rank
- Primal Tickets (necessary to enter Primal)
- Elemental shards (only in Elemental mode, which will come at a later update)
Green Zone (Lion boss)
You can do the 4 rooms in any order. After beating all 4 side rooms, you can enter the final room and challenge the final boss. I like to do the side rooms clockwise, starting from the room on the left. All side rooms follow the same pattern: minibosses spawn in set locations, and beating them all spawns the room's boss.
In this room, be careful with the wolf-type minibosses. They will do a circular AoE that deals damage and paralyzes everyone in range. When they're about to use that attack, they will lower their heads first, then rise it high and start howling. Learn how far you need to get away from them to avoid getting paralyzed.
Be careful when 3 or 4 minibosses get together. While it's a great opportunity to AoE kill them all quickly, it's also a danger because they can gang up on you and kill you pretty quickly. You can use Asphalt Golem AR Card to focus aggro of the minibosses on your summon and to drag those minibosses together.
When you get to the boss, you'll have to follow the mechanics if you're not geared. On the map, you'll find a golden pylon that you have to destroy quickly. Be careful not to stand in the paralyzing green laser right next to the golden pylon. The pylon takes 1 damage with each hit, so it takes some time to destroy it. If you destroy it, the boss' attacks will deal less damage and he will not do the whole-map AoE howl attack. If you fail to destroy the golden pylon quickly enough, the boss will hit harder and he can 1-shot AoE the whole party.
After destroying the pylon, concentrate your firepower on the boss. Keep checking around you every few seconds to see if another golden pylon has spawned. If it did, then have 2-3 people concentrate on destroying it. As long as you remember to destroy the pylons and dodge the boss' attacks, you should be fine.
Purple Zone (Harpy boss)
The theme of this room is slow/silence debuffs. Many minibosses aren't super dangerous by themselves, but they will make your life miserable by slowing down your movement and attack speed, as well as silencing you for a few seconds (so you can't use any skills). It's especially dangerous if your Stella gets silenced and she cannot use healing or SG buff.
Use similar tactics for the minibosses as in the previous room. There is not much of advice that can be given. Get decent at dodging so your Stella can concentrate on giving you SG buff more often. If you don't dodge, then Stella will have to heal you instead and you won't be receiving SG buffs.
The boss is fairly simple. He will fly up and appear in a random spot around the map, which is kinda annoying. He's not a big threat. If you managed to kill the Lion boss, you won't have problems here. The harpy boss can slow you down and silence you just like the minibosses in this room. You can theoretically stun the boss by activating 3 flowers around the room, but in my experience it didn't work. Honestly speaking, I've never seen people go for the flowers, nor did I feel the need to waste time trying to stun the boss.
Red Zone (Fire boss)
The minibosses in this room can cast AoE flame pools on the ground that will drain a percentage of your health if you stand inside them, plus they will give you a burn debuff that will gradually eat away your HP. This room is very dangerous if you're not careful. Always watch where you stand and try not to get surrounded by too many minibosses at once.
The boss has an interesting mechanic. When his HP falls below a certain point, he will summon lava all around the floor and become invincible. The lava will never kill you, as it will put a debuff on you that drains a percentage of your current HP. This means your HP will keep shrinking lower and lower, but will never reach zero. However, you can die if you keep standing in the lava at the wrong place, as the boss will summon AoE explosions under the lava that might be the final hit that kills you.
Anyway, once the lava spawns, each person should stand on a different floating platform and observe the teleporting Red Crystal. Your objective is to destroy that crystal. It will randomly teleport from platform to platform. It will start in the lava near the boss, so classes with long-range skills can try sniping it. Advanced parties can try to move between platforms while avoiding the explosions under the lava to reach a platform with the red crystals.
After the crystal is destroyed, everyone should run near the boss and wait for Stella to heal them. The boss won't attack you for another few seconds, so you won't die by standing right next to him.
It's possible to nuke the boss before he summons the lava. You can do that by either nuking him while he's busy performing an attack animation, or you can use your SA Breaking skills to break his armor, then nuke him while he's recovering.
Blue Zone (Ice boss)
The minibosses in this area don't have any particular traits like in the previous two rooms, but they can deal a lot of damage and run around the stage a lot. Be especially careful about the miniboss with the gun. He can snipe you from a very long distance, easily taking away a huge chunk of your HP.
The boss is more annoying than difficult. He will freeze the party in random intervals, and some party members will get frozen sooner than others. It's theoretically possible to avoid getting frozen by activating one of the devices around the map, but from my experience it usually doesn't protect you from the freeze. There's nothing much you can do to avoid being frozen. The boss doesn't hit hard and the chance of dying here is pretty minimal.
Yellow Zone (Light boss)
This is the final area, and thankfully there's no more annoying minibosses here. The boss will be surrounded by 4 ghosts of the previously defeated bosses. Those ghosts don't have too much HP and can be dealt with pretty quickly. They can freeze, burn, slow and paralyze you just like in the previous rooms. The final boss himself can deal some pretty high damage up close. He can also summon light pillars that will deal damage over time if you stand near them. Be careful not to get frozen when you're surrounded by the bosses, as it might lead to you dying while being unable to move. You can kinda predict when you're about to get frozen, as it usually happens between 10-20 seconds since starting the fight. You can try to kill the freezing miniboss quickly to avoid getting frozen more than once. Try not to stand in a bad spot when you're feeling like the freeze might come in a few seconds.
If the boss is too much, you can try to lure the boss away from the 4 ghosts and have a much safer experience. However, it generally wastes time so only try this if your party keeps wiping.
Elemental Mode
This mode will not be available at launch, it will come with a later update.
In this mode, all enemies will be more difficult, and the bosses in each room will all have an element corresponding to the color of the portal. The Lion boss will be Green (Poison) element, the Harpy boss will be Purple (Dark) element, the Fire boss will be Red (Fire) element, the Ice boss will be Blue (Ice) element, and the Final boss will be Yellow (Light) element. Since there are a total of 6 elements in the game, this means there is no boss in GC that corresponds to the White (Health) element.
The consequence of there being so many bosses of different elements is, if you have, for example, 2x Dark element socketed into your weapon, you will deal bonus damage to all the bosses except the Harpy boss. You will proc the element most often on the Final boss because his element (Light) is the opposite of the element on your weapon (Dark).
If you take two Health soulstones, you'll deal bonus damage to all the bosses in GC, since no boss there is resistant to Health element.
If Health element is too expensive for you to buy, there's also the option of equipping 3 Soulstones on your weapon, which means you will have 2 Soulstones of one element and 1 Soulstone of another element. This allows you to deal some bonus damage against the 1 boss that is resistant to the main element of your weapon, but it also means you'll have 1 less Critical Damage socket equipped. Generally in that situation I think it's worth taking 3 Soulstones instead of 2. The choice to which type of Soulstone you want to use is up to you.
