Last month, Jagex added the Elder God Wars Dungeon to RuneScape 3. The new God Wars Dungeon continues the story of the Elder Gods attempting to remake the world, but our heroes trying to stop it. Kerapac is the newest boss included in the first front of the dungeon. While Kerapac is a more traditional boss, the upcoming boss, the Arch-Glacor, is set to be RuneScape’s most unique boss.
RuneScape 3 – The Glacor Front
The Glacor Front features the Elder God, Wen, and her army attacking the citadel on the southern front. Jagex has previously stated that Elder God Wars will not follow the traditional format of God Wars Dungeon 1 and God Wars Dungeon 2 (The Heart of Gielinor).
The Nodon Front, which features Kerapac, the Unbound, is the section of Elder God Wars Dungeon that will be similar to its predecessors.
With the reveal of the Glacor Front and the boss that comes with it, we can see that it is drastically different from the previous front. The Arch-Glacor is set to be both the easiest boss in RuneScape and also one of the most difficult.
The Arch-Glacor is scalable and customizable. There are 6 legendary mages helping to fight against the Arch-Glacor by suppressing its powers. Each of them is responsible for containing a mechanic of the boss. This means that you can freely toggle any of the boss’s abilities that will be used in the fight.
Obviously, if you choose to have the boss not use any of its mechanics, then it will be extremely easy to defeat and will even be easier than one of the easiest bosses in RuneScape currently.
Of course, the rewards for fighting the boss without any of its mechanics will be less than if you choose to give the mages a break and allow the boss’ mechanics in the fight.
The Arch-Glacor’s Mechanics
Each of the mechanics that the Arch-Glacor has is intended to teach players mechanics typically found in other boss fights. In this way, the Arch-Glacor is considered as an entry-level boss that can help players get into PvMing (player vs monsters), since players can toggle any of the mechanics on or off.
Here is a quick run down of the Arch-Glacor’s mechanics during the boss fight:
- Creeping Ice: This mechanic teaches basic movement, and this one is always enabled, even if you have all the other mechanics turned off. Ice Shards will approach slowly from either side and force players into a specific area of the arena. This occurs before any of the other mechanics in order to teach players how to prepare for incoming attacks.
- Glacyte Minions: This mechanic teaches ADDS (add on monsters) management and target switching skills. Like the original Glacors, the Arch-Glacor will spawn multiple Glacyte minions. The Arch-Glacor will be immune to damage until the Glacytes are killed.
- Flurry: This mechanic teaches Prayer flicking and reading attack animations. The Arch-Glacor will switch between two different damage types with damage in their respective style. Players will be to switch (flick) to the corresponding Prayer protection to prevent most of the damage.
- Pillars of Ice: This mechanic teaches advanced movement and kiting. The Arch-Glacor will force the players to one side and element beams will fire from the sky. Itwill follow the player, then splits into two to further harass the player on two sides. Being hit by the beams will result in damage and prayer drain.
- Front Cannon: This mechanic teaches shield switching and using defensive abilities. The Arch-Glacor will turn into a cannon and fire a huge beam of ice energy at them. It is unavailable and players will need to mitigate the damage by using a shield and defensive abilities.
- Exposed Core: This mechanic teachers DPS checks and survival abilities. The Arch-Glacor will release its frozen core into the center of the arena and block both sides with its arms. The core will continuously deal damage that applies a stacking debuff on players. Players will need to deal damage to either of the arms to get past them and escape the core’s area of effect.
In Normal mode, the above mechanics (besides the Creeping Ice) can be freely toggled on or off depending on what the player wants to learn or wish to not deal with. Toggling on more mechanics will increase the rewards when the RuneScape boss is killed. Rewards include new tier 85 dual wield weapons and a new wing cosmetic.
Furthermore, the boss can be massed in normal mode, so you can bring as many players in the boss encounter as you want. And if players die in the normal mode encounter, they will be safely teleported out by Azzanadra, so it will always be a safe death. Hardcore Ironmans will not lose a life.
Hard mode
The sixth toggle for the Arch-Glacor is essentially a toggle between normal mode and hard mode. If players turn on hard mode, all of the above mechanics will automatically be switched on, deaths will no longer be safe, players will not be able to teleport out, the boss can only be fought solo, and will add additional changes that increase the difficulty.
The hard mode encounter also features a “copy and paste” of Telos’ enrage system. Telos is considered the hardest solo boss monster in RuneScape. As with Telos, the Arch-Glacor will become more difficult based on its enrage setting.
The Arch-Glacor will have the same streaking system, in which players can forgo claiming their loot and risking it. They will fight the Arch-Glacor again in a higher enrage and doing killstreaks will improve your loot.
However, with the increased difficulty and risks involved, the boss will have a chance to drop components for crafting the new tier 95 dual wield melee weapons by upgrading its tier 85 counterpart.
Release
The Glacor Front is expected to release on Tuesday, August 31st, since the Monday of that week is a bank holiday in the UK. The Arch-Glacor looks incredibly promising and we can hope it will help players get into PvM, as well as being a considerable challenge even for the experienced players.
After the Glacor Front, there will be two more sections of Elder God Wars Dungeons, and it will be interesting to see what Jagex has in plan for them, considering they will also be different in their own ways.
