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Now, the first level of Oreha’s Well, Aira’s Oculus, requires Lost Ark players to be at least Item Level 1325 and to be more than familiar with all the complex Raid mechanics they should’ve experienced in Tier 1 and Tier 2 Abyssal Dungeons. That said, compared to Oreha Prevasa, something like Aira’s Oculus has a lot less to go over, so let’s get started.

First Section: Defeat The Converging Mayhem Legion

The first section of this long-awaited Tier 3 Abyssal Dungeon is actually pretty boring. It doesn’t have the flair of the Phantom Palace’s Hall of the Twisted Warlord or the unique mechanics of the Gate of Paradise’s Sea of Indolence.

Players just run around the same sort of “tropical” area as they did during the Main Story Quest for Punika’s Dungeons in its relatively-long storyline and clear out the Mayhem Legion Demons. Thankfully, it’s pretty short and doesn’t take long to get through this and right into the Frenzied Cicerra Boss fight.

Second Section: Frenzied Cicerra

The first boss players will be up against in Aira’s Oculus is Frenzied Cicerra, and the “Frenzied” part of his name actually plays into the mechanics of his Boss fight as well. Essentially, every time this Boss is Staggered or incapacitated, he gains a stack of a Frenzy buff that increases his overall attack power. At three stacks, this buff gets absurd, and Cicerra quickly becomes able to one-shot players with ease. So, the optimal outcome of this fight is to Stagger Cicerra as often as possible for free damage, while also keeping his Frenzy stacks low for survivability’s sake. But, how is a party supposed to do both of these things at once? Well, that’s where Cicerra’s main mechanic comes in, his Grab Attack.

Important Mechanic: Grab Attack

After every second use of his Directional Flail Attack (described below), Cicerra will flash red and then attempt to grab any player standing directly in front of him. When grabbed, Cicerra won’t let go until a Stagger Check is passed. If the party Staggers Cicerra in time, he’ll drop the ally as well as lose a stack of his damage buff.

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This is the primary way to stop Cicerra’s damage from ramping up to one-hit kill levels. Once he hits two stacks, players should start to look out for his Flail Attacks and intentionally stand in front of the Boss afterward to get grabbed or full-commit to a DPS race and focus on killing Cicerra as fast as possible while dodging any Grab Attacks he attempts.

Keep in mind, however, that getting grabbed after Cicerra reaches 3+ stacks is essentially a team wipe, as he’ll immediately slam the player into the ground, killing them and sending out a wide AoE shockwave that usually wipes the rest of the party as well.

Also, players can just remove any Stagger Skills or Stagger increasing Runes until after this boss, but that’s much more involved and is sort of a workaround more than a solution.

Regular Attacks

Frenzied Cicerra only has one gimmick to worry about, which might seem low considering this is the Tier 3 Abyssal Dungeon, but in exchange, he has a decent number of high-damaging Regular Attacks that players should be wary of.

Third Section: Destroy The Music Boxes Of Madness

After Cicerra is another mob-clearing section of Aira’s Oculus that is pretty similar to the first mob-clearing section, but a bit more tedious. Instead of just clearing out more Mayhem Legion soldiers, players also have to look around for the Music Boxes around the second part of the map, destroy them, and then clear the mobs that spawn out of them.

And, after the final Music Box is destroyed the party goes up against an elite enemy, Woopir the Mad King who just looks like a carbon copy of Shamos from the Chaos Gates players grind to sell materials and make more money. After the ten seconds it takes to beat this elite mob, they then suffer through a long vine-climbing animation before getting to the checkpoint that takes them face to face with the grotesque Demon that is Seto.

Final Section: Lost Seto

Moving to everybody’s “favorite” Boss fight in all of Lost Ark, the battle against the creepy clown known as Lost Seto. Seto is quite the unique fight as all of his attacks are based around wacky colors and circus equipment. He throws hula-hoops, runs around on a ball, has a lot of sparkly particle effects, and much more. Mechanically, Seto actually probably has the highest number of “systems” players should know about out of all the previous Abyssal Dungeon Bosses before him, including the Sea Dragon Drakhan.

Regular Attacks

While it may look like Lost Seto also has a lot of regular attacks that he uses, that’s actually a good thing. A good number of Seto’s attacks have large windows for the party to avoid and then inflict damage while his animation plays out.

It’s hard to see, but one of the telegraphs is actually a bit more transparent than the other and fades into the ground more. The second and more dependable method is looking for the telegraph that disappears first. The one that fades first is the Feint while the other is the actual attack.

Of course, because neither of these two telegraphs are hard to avoid, players can just get away from Seto entirely to avoid them 100 percent of the time.

It only uses the same keys that players use for their skills, AKA Q-W-E-R-A-S-D-F. The key inputs never form a word, just a random combination of these letters. Players can miss an input once or twice and still make it in time to avoid the Wipe attack no problem. While it usually happens during the second phase of the fight, Seto can use this attack just about anytime, so try and be ready for it at all times.

Three allies are imprisoned with one still free. The ally that can still move must attack their allies and deplete the purple bar to free them. After a set amount of time, red telegraphs appear under allies and instantly KO them if they’re still imprisoned. Not long after, the ally that was still free is imprisoned. The three other party members must inflict as much damage as possible to drain the purple bar underneath that ally before the red telegraph appears.

Normal & Hard Mode Differences

Despite the big Item Level Jump required to attempt the [Hard] Mode versions of Oreha’s Well (and all the failed Honing attempts), the two difficulty options aren’t all that different. Other than some general buffs to both HP and Damage, players can go into Aira’s Oculus expecting just a bit more of a challenge when fighting either Lost Seto or Frenzied Cicerra. But, to be more specific, here are the exact differences:

Hard Mode is locked behind Item Level 1370 minimum. There are different Material drops in Hard Mode that build into Legendary Grade 1370 Gear as well as similar Item Level Accessory Rewards. Both [Normal] and [Hard] Mode share the same entrance counter, meaning that if a player has already cleared Aira’s Oculus on [Normal], they won’t be able to attempt the [Hard] mode until after Weekly Reset. In general, Bosses are just a little tankier and do a good chunk more damage to players with all attacks. Frenzied Cicerra starts with 1 stack of its Frenzy Damage Buff instead of the 0 it starts with in [Normal] Mode. Lastly, some of Seto’s Explosive Ball-based attacks have additional telegraphs to dodge and it seems like Seto uses his more involved mechanics a bit more often, though this could just be a result of him having more HP.

Recommended Consumables & Other Related Items

Because the Seto fight is so mechanically involved, there are actually quite a few Consumables that can make a difference in the player experience of Aira’s Oculus, such as:

HP Potions, a (hopefully) obvious choice. Elemental HP Potions are highly recommended as well since they can be used in Dungeons an additional two times. Dark Grenades are useful in both Boss fights but are especially helpful for those who want to try and DPS their way through Cicerra instead of worrying about his damage buff stacks. Flame Grenades help a lot actually in Seto’s fight as the constant “trigger” of damage from the flames the grenade applies to the ground can help free allies from the Imprisoned Status without having to actually attack them. Time Stop Potions can be helpful for tanking one of Cicerra’s high damage buffed attacks but are much better used to get through Seto’s more annoying attacks such as the Explosive Ball Bombardment And of course, as always, players should have many of the Skill Point Potions already collected and their Raid Class Setup equipped with regard to their Gear, Faceted Ability Stone, Engravings, and Accessories.

Lost Ark is currently available on PC.

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