Lucid for Dummies

Hey everyone. I'm vireys and I play a dualblade's disabled little brother in the D2J server of MSEA. I've seen a couple of guides around, but felt like most of them could be improved on (e.g. some guides covered some details that others didn't), so I figured I'd make a one-stop shop for this boss fight, so to speak.

Lucid is a Black Mage's Commander and Master of Wet Dreams of Depressed 12 Year Olds. She also happens to be the next major step in power level after the CVel/HMag tier and the Lomien tier. She is usually the hardest boss that most casual f2p's will hope to be able to reach, and really the line most people aim to cross to call themselves the Big Boys of the Arcane River.

She also drops Butterfly Wings Drop Stones which are required for Fantasma Coins to buy Arcane Shade weapons and armours, but ever since Kishin was murdered in MSEA it's not like 99% of Arcane weapons aren't bought from HWill/HLucid runners anyway xd

Requirements

Obviously everyone's going to have their personal preferences for requirements (e.g. some people may have higher requirements because they'd rather get routine weekly runs done faster), but in general a party full of 6 attackers (with no support) will be able to clear Lucid safely if everyone has 540 ARC and can solo Damien or clear Dojo 44F. I've seen Dream Breaker F90 as a requirement too, but I've also seen people demand 15m range party members, so let's just accept that some people weren't born to lead boss runs.

Particularly helpful classes to look out for are Wind Breakers and Cannoneers on top of Bishops and Kannas. Kannas are Kannas and come with great support overall (even though their binds aren't that useful in this particular boss fight), while the utility of the other two will become apparent when I go through the attacks.

Note that Lucid is also probably the first boss you'll encounter that not only has a weekly clear limit but a daily attempt limit; the boss can only be entered once a day at all. An upcoming Adventure patch will allow people to enter a practice mode that doesn't use up this attempt, but until then parties will have to settle for daily practice runs.


Lucid of Dreams

Lucid begins the fight by unfurling her wings and sending your party into a dream of a forest with a waft of her dusty armpits. Being the master of dreams she's content to sit on a flower and cavalierly fuck around with you in this dream fight, so it's your job to whack that smug grin hard until she realises you mean business. Problem is, that face has 10 lifebars with 1.2T (Normal) or 5.4T (Hard) HP each. Combined with the standard 300% DEF that all high level bosses come with, and a 5-second potion cooldown, you have quite the fight in front of you.

Summon



This animation is what you'll see Lucid be doing for most of her Phase 1. When she does this, she'll summon one of three things:



The motherfucking Golem of Nightmares is what you'll be seeing most of, and provides the chief source of grief in this phase. When a Golem is summoned, it unceremoniously drops down onto the map and knocks any unfortunate sucker back an extreme distance while dealing 50% HP in damage. The knockback can be prevented by stance, so Knight's Watch, the Mikhail link skill will be particularly useful for classes without 100% stance by default.

After the initial summon, the Golem blocks people from walking past them and attacks anyone nearby with the above animation which also deals 50% HP. Anyone who has a Golem drop on them without Stance can easily be batted into a nearby waiting Golem for a one-two punch, giving them an opportunity to swap out their Ark link skill for Mihile's while dead. It's not like you were living long enough to stack that link skill 5 times anyway.

Having a golem sit on your face also places you under potion-lock for a few seconds, so no, you can't auto-pot your way out of this. If you see a golem dropping, get the fuck out of the way.

They take about 300 lines of damage to clear and are the reason why Cannoneers are uniquely valuable; their BFG clears literally half the map of Golems in a single cast. Wind Breakers and Wild Hunters are also welcome with their multi-target rapid-fire skill, and in fact in many KMS Normal Lucid parties they have dedicated golem-clearers who just stay on the left side on the map laying down those 500k damage lines.

In Hard mode, their damage is no longer capped, but they have significantly higher HP (above 300b, below 340b), making them significantly easier to clear than in normal mode; paradoxically, golems are easier to deal with in hard than in normal (for people who qualify for Hard in the first place, of course).

At this point is where some Maplers think "300 lines? fuck that" and attempt to jump over or teleport past the Golem. Joke's on you, because doing so will make you eat the 50% HP in damage regardless and if you bypass two golems at once you're dead. This is the leading cause of death of most people who are getting carried and they don't even know it, so let's try to be better than them, ok?

Note that these Golems can also be bound and deal no damage to bypassers when they are.





Lucid can also summon these butterflies which fly around the map and create a bullet hell of little pellets that deal 20% HP in damage and quickly wear down any party members who don't have auto-pot. The healing from Bishops greatly improves the party's survivability by mitigating this chip damage.



Her rarest summon is the Toadstool of Nightmares which walks around and deals 50% HP (70% in Hard) upon contact with his vest of thorns. I'm not entirely sure on how many lines of damage to kill him, but it's less than the Golems for sure.

Background Butterflies



Throughout the fight, seemingly-harmless butterflies will slowly accumulate in the background up to a point where they've had quite enough of the boredom and chase after you, assaulting you with a flurry of about 30 hits of 20% HP each.



The attacks are actually delayed and can be avoided with enough movement, but let's be real. If you're in need of a Lucid guide you're probably not going to pull this off, so let's clear the butterflies out instead.

On the left and right sides of the map are statues of cherubs. Holding the NPC Chat key (a la Damien altars) will cause them to blow their trumpets and cause all the butterflies to vanish. There's a limit on how you can do this, however; you get one use every time you clear one of Lucid's HP bars, and it can only store up to 3 uses; you can see how many charges are stored at the bottom of the statue.

A common reason for party failure is forgetting to clear the butterflies. So once Spread Throw is down you should remind the NL in every bossing party to clear the butterflies because by staying in the middle of the map they're only slightly less useful if they were just trying to get upskirt shots of Lucid. It's generally good practice to clear the butterflies every time you reach the ~20% mark on each HP bar.

Wind



The previous GIF with the butterflies conveniently also shows this attack; Lucid jumps up from her flower momentarily to fart out several gusts of sweet slow-moving flatulence that Gasmask kindly reminds you to avoid touching or else the "dream gets stronger". For obvious reasons, most people call this attack "sickles" instead. They deal 30% HP in damage every 0.5 sec, so you'll very much likely be able to just walk past one gust and live to tell the tale, but the danger of this attack mostly comes when your movement is limited by Golems. Please don't be fucking retarded, and clear the damn golems.

Forced Random Teleport



Lucid can also force party members to teleport to random places on the map. This doesn't do damage and isn't dangerous on its own, but parties without a Golem-clearing class quickly find themselves carnally assaulted both ways to next Thursday after Lucid teleports them inbetween 2 Golems.

The Dragon





About 5 seconds after Lucid gives a conjured green dong a quickie, a large dragon will float down to either the left or right edge of the map and projectile vomit across the map for two seconds for 100% HP, and unlike Chaos Vellum's breath it's not safe to walk into the breath between the beginning and the end of the attack. There are a number of ways to avoid this instant kill:

1. Float above the breath; Xenons, Illiums and skilled Mercedes players will have little trouble with this attack if they preserve their cooldowns. Wind Breakers and Demons will have to be careful to not accidentally glide over Golems.
   
2. Invincibility frames; Mages' Ethereal Form and Dual Blades' Final Cut and Chains of Hell all outlast the duration of the breath
3. Hiding behind the dragon like a little bitch when it shows up, which often requires moving past golems and is sometimes just not an option. If your invincibility frame is too short, you can still use it to bypass the golems and safely get behind the dragon; e.g. Shadowers have Eviscerate -> Shadow Assault to get to either side of the map quickly.

#3 requires your party to communicate which side it's coming down on as soon as it's visible. If you pay attention to the background of the map you can even see the little fellow flying side to side and lurking in the forest (it's on the right side before being summoned in this video's case). However, this seems to be unrelated to whether the dragon comes on the left side of the screen or the right; in this example the dragon is floating on the right but gets summoned on the left side. As far as any Mapler knows right now, which side the dragon comes on is pretty much random, and it floats slow enough that there's time to get behind it regardless.

Flowers

Also visible in the last gif is the attack where lines of flowers appear on the screen and detonate for 30% HP. They are the most common attack and are pretty easy to avoid, though they may require crouching or jumping from time to time. Note that this attack still happens even if Lucid is bound, which says quite a bit to how useful (or not) binds are in this boss fight in general.

Bombs



Throughout both Phase 1 and 2 bombs will randomly show up on top of players without any warning. They deal 198% HP once the timer ticks down, but their damage is split across all party members in range; sharing the bomb with one other member barely lets a full-hp person survive.

The bombs' damage is completely negated by Holy Magic Shell which makes Bishops situationally better than Kannas for this boss fight. However, if a bomb detonates on one person alone it will spread to another party member. This is shown in the gif (bottom right had someone tank a bomb solo, and then it reappeared on the Bishop), but in the original video it spreads up to 6 times because Steve's party wasn't aware that's how it worked (and also because Bishop's Shell was just fucking ridiculous pre-nerf). You may think you're smart by isolating yourself from the party and solo-tanking the bomb with an i-frame, but clearly whoever designed Lucid is smarter. Don't be cray, share bombs today.

Enrage

Around the time you get down to her 3rd last HP bar, Lucid decides she's had enough of your bullshit and summons Golems 2-3 at a time instead of just one. The entire map will quickly be filled with golems ravenously waiting for a perfect random teleport to fuck you in the ass, but this can be delayed by binding her, which prevents her from summoning anything. It's only 10-20 seconds of relief, though.



Crumbling Clocktower

After you chew through all 10 of her HP bars, you begin to break through the dream she's put you in and continue to fight her on the pieces of your shattering dream. Lucid doesn't have a flower to sit on anymore, but this means she's free to fly around the map. Note that binding her in this stage will prevent her from casting any attacks but will NOT prevent her from moving and making people cry while she sits out of reach at the bottom of the map while waiting out your party's burst cooldowns. Lucid gets 10 more HP bars with the same amount as before; 1.2T (Normal) or 5.4T (Hard).

Usually a safe time to phase her in Normal mode is with 22 minutes left. That might sound weird to the mathematically inclined, since phase 1 and 2 have the same HP. The problem is, half of your time in phase 2 is spent chasing the fucker as if you want a restraining order while she flies around. Phase 2 also gives Lucid a lot of time in which she can't be attacked.

Falling to the bottom of the map will teleport you to the middle platform. In Hard mode, falling off also causes you to lose 50% of your current HP as well, on top of disabling potions for 8 seconds. It's a fun thing to do and sometimes a mobility option, but people regularly die because they re-teleport into the middle of a dragon or a fart so, again guys, let's not be retarded.



Enhanced attacks

• Sickles are the same as P1, but now deal 50% HP, 70% in Hard mode.
• 
• Golems no longer block movement, but destroy platforms when they spawn and attack for 40% HP in a wider range.
  
• The butterfly shooters are pretty much the same.
• 
  
• The accumulated-butterfly attack now forces your party into a bullet hell where your entire party is floating and Lucid shoots a mass of bullets that deal 50% HP each (100% in Hard). The top of the map (centred from left-right) is a very safe place and this attack won't cause too many fatalities, but the main thing is that Lucid is invulnerable during this time, which is a reminder to the weaker members of the party and any carry-ees to actually be useful and use the trumpet statues.
  
• The dragon now floats up and down while puking and covers all platforms except for the ones highlighted in yellow; Rope Connect is invaluable for getting to the top platforms quickly.
• Occasionally Lucid will decide to be more of a little bitch than normal summon the dragon (forcing you to the top platforms), and calmly fly over and fart in your face. You'll either have to save your invulnerability for this bullshit, jump over to the other platform, or just embrace sweet, sweet death.

"Lucid is about to use a powerful attack!"

When this message is announced, Lucid will do one of two things.

Rush (Touch damage)





Lucid will disappear from the map, turn red with pubescent angst and fly around the map in a fixed path ramming anyone she comes into contact with for 70% HP (100% in Hard). She is invulnerable during this. The safespots are the platforms circled in pink; the two statues and the middle platform (after she leaves the middle). It is also possible to stay on the bottom-most platform and crouch.

Lasers



Lucid goes into the background and bombards you with targeted lasers which explode after ~2 seconds. Each laser does 34% HP (50% in Hard) in damage, and lasers are instanced; everyone in the party sees their own lasers. Rope Connect makes dodging this much easier and is very, very useful in Hard mode where people can't afford to jump off willy-nilly and lose half of their HP. Otherwise, this attack is pretty easily dodged just by being on the move. Aim to move perpendicular to the lasers to minimise the likelihood of getting hit.

For both of these attacks, Lucid will reappear where she disappeared for the duration of the attack.

In Normal mode, after you're done with the 20th health bar you're done; you're free from the wet dream and awaken at the top of the Clocktower with a music box where Lucid was, and whoever has the highest drop rate should attack it to increase the Soul Shards / Drop Stones that the entire party receives. Make sure to cancel any summons by right-clicking them in the buffs on the top right of the screen, so that you don't accidentally attack and have the drops be based on your droprate.

In Hard mode, however...

Lucid Phase 3



Hard Lucid decides that you're not quite done with her yet and unleashes her true fury, charging up a colossal dream attack that outright ends the dream and causes an unconditional FAIL for the party. You have 40 seconds to deal 31.5T damage, with a catch. As a final fuck-you to HLucid runners, there is a 3-second period of invulnerability after the 2nd-last healthbar is down, so you'll need to be a bit faster than 4 seconds per healthbar.

Lucid stays in the same spot in the middle of the map during all this and all other attacks stop, which leaves you free rein to just deal as much damage as possible. However, the extreme damage output required means that you WILL have to coordinate with your party beforehand to save everyone's burst cooldowns and %final damage buffs before clearing Lucid 2's last health bar.

One thing to note is that Lucid 3 attacks the entire map for dmaage (you will see the edges of your screen flash for 20% HP periodically, so Risk Taker Rings won't be useful here.



And that's it for the gude. If I've left out anything feel free to leave comments.

GIFs shown in the guide are taken from OrangeMushroom's pages [1] [2], or videos already on YouTube, all credits to original uploaders: [1] [2] [3]