SWTOR Nul Acolyte Boss, Children of Nul Operation Guide (PTS)

The first boss for the new operation Children of Nul is now on the Public Test Server! (PTS) This boss is available for testing in Story and Veteran, in 8-man mode. This boss has many mechanics, and relies on all raids members paying attention and handling their mechanics – it is not an “easy” story mode at the moment on the PTS.

If you test the new boss, leave feedback on the Nul Acolyte Boss fight on the forum thread here.

M4R-TN

A new droid has been placed in the boss room for the Nul Acolyte encounter. This helpful droid can be used to change parameters of the fight and balance it on the fly for players who are struggling or needing to test certain parts and mechanics of the fight by increased or decreased increments. Here’s the forum explanation of how to use M4R-TN effectively:

These adjustments will be shown as buffs/debuffs on the boss when applied.

Story Mode

This fight is very chaotic with many mechanics and visual animations.

Venn Diagram

When the boss does his ability literally named ‘Venn Diagram’, two players will be randomly selected to receive a red circle and blue circle. They should come together and overlap their two circles in the middle. Then, a third, different player should run in between them.

When done successfully, the middle player will get a purple icon. If there are too many people in the middle, it will not work.

Manifested Light and Dark Echoes

There will be some floating men around the room. Keep your eyes open for them. They attempt to cast “Light Empowerment” or “Dark Empowerment” on the boss, which will shield him.

The Light and Dark versions are slightly different. Both can be stunned, but…

Manifested Light Echo: Can be interrupted. Can not be pushed or pulled – they stand still with their arms raised near the library. If their Light Empowerment succeeds, gives the boss an absorb shield. 

Manifested Dark Echo: Can not be interrupted. Can be pushed or pulled – they try and float towards the boss and if they get close-ish they start casting Dark Empowerment, so you can try pushing them away or pulling them away early. If their Dark Empowerment succeeds, gives the boss a reflect shield which redirects damage back at your team mates attacking him.

Manifested Light and Dark Echoes will disappear when they get their casts off (or ideally, when you kill them before that).

Latent Light and Dark Remnants

Aggressive enemies will spawn around the room casting big conal attacks to step out of. Keep your eyes open for them and kill them as soon as possible. If they are attacking you, maybe try turning them away from your group mates.

If you do not get these Latent Remnants down to at least 50% within 20 seconds, they will do a massive attack that does a lot more damage.

You can se the timer for twenty seconds counting down as a buff on the remnant.

Light Side and Dark Side of Room

The room is divided into Dark (Red, creepy stuff on side of room, triangles on ground) and Light (Blue, holorecording bookshelves on side of room, flower symbol on ground).

As you stand in the red side of the room, you will get stacks of the Tainted Shadow debuff, which makes you do more damage and receive more damage. If you get 5 or more stacks, you become Overloaded and start taking damage. You can clear this by going to the blue light side of the room. This Overloaded effect is also shown by an animation of red lightning crackling down on your character.

As you stand in the blue side of the room, you will get stacks of the Tainted Radiance debuff, which makes you do more damage and receive more healing. If you get 5 or more stacks, you become Overloaded and your damage towards the boss is massively reduced. You can clear this by going to the red dark side of the room.

Split Forces

The half-circle with red arrows on the floor means you will be knocked back in that direction if you stand in it. Just walk out of it.

Freeze Tag and Purple Puddles

The boss will randomly select two players for Freeze Tag. They will be in a circle of lightning and have eye symbols over their head, will be taking damage over time, and  will be rooted and can not move.

A different, non-rooted player must save them by running through them.

The player that runs through will receive a lightning bolt symbol saying that that took over the purple circle and when the timer on the debuff runs out, they will drop a purple circle.

The debuff looks like a blue man raising his hands, so if you have gotten the purple lightning bolt, run away from your group and ideally against a wall to drop your purple puddle.

This run-through player will also be taking damage over time, but they will be taking half as much than the player who was frozen would have taken. If a frozen player is not saved, they will instead drop a puddle where they were frozen at the end of their debuff time (and take double the damage over time).

Using something like Force Barrier might allow you to move while frozen.. .but it may also accidentally pass the lightning debuff to another nearby player who wasn’t expecting it.

Everyone should avoid the big purple circles.

Tanking

I can’t imagine you’d need more than 1 tank for this fight in its current default balancing. The tank does very little in this fight.

The boss stands still and jumps around, you can’t really control him. If you run too far away he’ll pull you back to him as a tank.

Dual Saber Throw is aimed at a random player that isn’t the tank, and you can’t taunt during this time. (long red rectangle on floor) Others should step out.

Deadly Dual Saber Throw is aimed at the tank. (long light orange rectangle on floor). Others should step out and the tank should aim it away from the group.

Soft Enrage

When the boss has 3 stacks of the orange man with a headache (Shadow’s Claim) and 3 stacks of the blue man beaming light from his eyes in circles (Radiance’s Claim), he’s doing a lot more damage and extra fast mechanics and your group will likely die soon – so it’s time to kill him quickly!

More Details

This is not necessarily important to know in story mode, but this is how his personal stacks that happen when he jumps works:

The boss starts by picking a random side.

Whenever he jumps throughout the fight into the dark side, he gets a stack of Shadow’s Claim (orange man holding his headache debuff icon). Whenever he jumps into the light side, he gets a stack of Radiance’s Claim (blue man beaming a radial signal from his forehead icon).

As he sits on a side, just like the player, he will get stacks associated with that color. From the red side, he’ll get the Tainted Shadow debuff, which makes him do more damage (but also makes him receive more damage) and the Tainted Radiance debuff which also makes you do more damage (and technically receive more healing.) When he jumps to the opposite side, the previous’ side’s stacks will disappear and the new side’s will start stacking.

As time moves on and he jumps around, he will eventually get 3 stacks of Shadow’s Claim, and/or 3 stacks of Radiance’s Claim, from jumping back and forth. When he does, the matching stacks for the Light-side Tainted Radiance or the Dark-side Tainted Shadows won’t go away anymore when he jumps, so they’ll just keep stacking up all the way towards 10!

In addition, if he has three stacks of Shadow’s Claim, he’ll start doing Freeze Tag more often, and if he has three stacks of Radiance’s Claim he’ll start doing Venn Diagram more often. This state of having-three us represented by (another) blue man face icon and an angry red man glowing orange eyes face icon (Radiant Schism and Shadow Schism).

Veteran Mode

Veteran Mode seems quite a bit harder. I have only tried it a little bit, I don’t think I will have a high enough skill level to beat it on the public test server.

The biggest difference is that the boss does not jump from side to side on his own – the tank(s) now have the job of moving him back and forth between the two sides. This is very important, as it effects his stacks, the melee’s stacks, and also how often the other mechanics occur if not managed properly. You could try to have two tanks near the border tank swap back and forth, or one tank moving him between the two sides, when he gets 4 stacks of either Tainted buff, so he never gets to 5 of them.

The Echoes also get nastier. In Veteran Mode, the light echo will also heal the boss.

The dropped purple circles also grow huge in Veteran Mode.

And of course, more damage all around.

In short, you have to be better at everything.

If it’s useful, here’s an amazing chart that player Night has done that shows how each buff and debuff is related in this fight.

There is currently no Master Mode, and the developer have said they are looking to launch 8.0 with Story and Veteran in 8-man, but maybe we might see one in the future after that.

Loot? No.

Nothing drops when you kill him on the PTS.

Thank you to Team Disco and Guests for helping me fight this boss on the PTS! Especially thank you to Val for his patience explaining what he knew of the fight. Thanks Cogesh for help with some of the Veteran Mode mechanics differences as we played it on the PTS!