The Sith Shrine is the newest, hottest content on Empire in Flames. Set in a Sith temple buried deep on Coruscant, adventurers are asked to investigate…in spite of the disappearance of previous teams. Up to five players can venture into the Shrine to confront danger and potentially emerge with previously-unacquirable loot!
The Sith Shrine starts by speaking with a very grumpy Dug in a diner in the Collective Commerce sector on Coruscant.
Ultimately, there are six boss encounters along the way, though two of them are relatively easy. Players should be prepared in advance with equipment, food, and drink. Some suggestions are included.
The server team has run the Shrine with multiple groups and found, in general, the best groups include a main tank, an off tank, and at least one doctor. Remaining roles have been filled with a variety of classes and skill setups with varying degrees of success.
Every player should be equipped with a suit of armor, PSG, and at minimum a very good weapon. Doctor and entertainer buffs are highly recommended; in event of a wipe mid-instance, at minimum the tank characters should be re-buffed with doctor buffs. Suggested food and drinks are included in boss fights tips.
Players should be familiar with their specials – even basic DPS players should be using several. Boss characters should always be stated with as many states as possible. Intimidation is the most important, as it reduces damage output from NPCs. Bleeds and burns are also important on high-health bosses, as those cause boss characters to rack up battle fatigue, which reduces the effectiveness of their armor.
Boss 1: The Hulking Dark Trooper
Known exclusive loot: Dark Trooper painting, Elite Dark Trooper painting, Droid Armor Mesh schematic, Dark Trooper Exoskeleton armor schematic
The Dark Trooper is your first boss, a massive war machine left in place by the Shrine’s master. He is completely stationary, but has a nasty rotating cannon he uses at range and is a powerful melee fighter in close.
During the fight, he occasionally spawns four astromech droids around the room. If those droids are not destroyed, they will repair any damage the Dark Trooper takes during the fight. If the astromechs are not suppressed, the fight will take a long, long time.
Primary tactics: Tanks fight the Dark Trooper directly. Doctor focuses primarily on heals, with secondary focus on shooting astromechs. Remaining players focus on droids the moment they spawn and offer DPS on the Dark Trooper when droids are all down.
Suggested food and drink: Accaragm (action regeneration), Vasarian brandy (mind regeneration)
Boss 2: Terentatek
Known exclusive loot: none
The Terentatek is a creature of the dark side, twisted into being by devotees of the Sith. They are ugly, hungry beasts who seek out and destroy Jedi. However, a well-armed group of adventurers should be adequate to the task.
Primary tactics: tank and spank. Keep ranged fighters well back to prevent them from being caught by the terentatek’s massive AOE knockdown.
Boss 3: The Dark Side Sorcerer
Known exclusive loot: Various zombie paintings.
A devotee of the dark side, the Sorcerer has delved deeply into unnatural abilities. He will call upon the shadow of the Force to attack adventurers with lightning and telekinetic abilities, but most disturbingly, he will raise an army of undead to fight on his behalf.
Worse, if these undead are struck down, he draws strength from the destruction, regenerating health with each of his minions struck down!
Primary tactics: One tank focuses on the sorcerer. Secondary tank taunts all zombie spawns to keep the focus away from the group. All characters use single-target specials to fight the sorcerer and prevent unexpected deaths of zombies that prolong the fight.
Secondary tactic: Ideally, the “zombie magnet” is not a primary or secondary tank. Most ideally, the character is a fencer, as they dodge attacks entirely. Swordsman tend to do poorly in this role, as counterattack secondary defense means the zombies will die during the fight and prolong it. The character in this roll will take a lot of small attacks and likely stack up large amounts of battle fatigue and take reduced heals, which is detrimental during the Sun Guard fight.
Suggested food and drink: Pikatta pie (defense), synthsteak (damage reduction), exo-protein wafers (damage reduction)
Boss 4: Terentatek (redux)
Known exclusive loot: none
Players have already fought a Terentatek once; exercise those tactics again, and this Sithspawn will not be a problem.
Primary tactics: tank and spank. Keep ranged fighters well back to prevent them from being caught by the terentatek’s massive AOE knockdown.
Boss 5: The Sun Guards
Known exclusive loot: Sun Guard armor schematics
Sith cultists or loyal mercenaries, depending on the source, the Sun Guard is one of the most feared mercenary groups in the galaxy…and for good cause.
In battle, the Sun Guard will fight exclusively melee with force pikes with a full range of deadly polearm attacks. They also fight as a unit, and will heal each other periodically in combat. Success against previous bosses is no guarantee of victory here; many have died at their hands.
Primary tactics: Main and secondary tanks each take a Sun Guard and draw them to the back wall. Doctor focuses exclusively on healing from the front wall, which should be just out of reach of the Sun Guards’ AOE attacks. Non-melee characters also cluster against the front wall to keep doctor healing requirements at a minimum.
Secondary tactics: The Sun Guards will periodically compare HAM, wounds, and battle fatigue; when they do, each Sun Guard reverts to the higher level of each. As such, they must be brought down together rather than focusing one and then the other. While stating is important in all boss fights, during the Sun Guard fight it is critical as a non-intimidated Sun Guard can quickly put down a tank.
Ideally, a fencer should not tank a Sun Guard. While it is possible, fencer’s low toughness means he will rack up damage faster than other melee classes and put more pressure on the doctor to keep up.
It’s important for players focusing on burns and bleeds to switch targets constantly to lay a consistent level of bleeding and burning on each boss, or much of their effort will go to waste.
Players must keep a very close eye on food and drink during this fight; failure to do so may result in party wipe. It’s also worthwhile for tanks with meditate to power boost before this fight.
Suggested food and drink: Pikatta pie (defense), exo-protein wafers (damage reduction)
(Due to the long nature of this fight, tanks will get more use out of the low-filling wafers than they would out of high-filling synthsteak.)
Boss 6: The Sith Initiate
Known exclusive loots: Nightsister bicep schematic, Sith mask schematic, Mandalorian mask schematic, Lightsaber pike schematic, Holocron, Sith Holocron
There are always two Sith Lords – a master and an apprentice. However, there are initiates, candidates, and others who have pursued the dark arts but not risen to the rank of Apprentice.
These initiates can be deadly and dangerous in their own right…
The Sith Initiate will not fight players alone, but with three telekinetically controlled floating lightsabers!
Primary tactics: Area attacks are king. Draw the floating lightsabers in and use area attacks to bring them down along with the Initiate.
Secondary tactics: Keep an eye on the initial spawn of lightsabers. They have a tendency to all pick a single player and focus on him. If that player is the primary healer or a ranged character and isn’t ready, they could rapidly be killed. Once past the initial spawn stage, the fight tends to be much easier than the Sun Guard battle. Burns and bleeds can bring the initiate down much faster than strictly DPS.
Suggested food and drink: Pour on everything for this fight – it’s your last, so don’t let your stomach space go to waste!