Guide contains locations, tips and the strategies I found for beating the Ethereal Eel, the Ethereal Puppet, the Ethereal Mantis, and the Ethereal Djinn.
Contents
Ethereal Truth: Guide to the Eel, Puppet, Djinn, Mantis
By DRN.
Wondering what those strange bosses you occasionally run into with 0.4% appearance chances are? Look no further! They’re part of the Ethereal Truth Quest, a fun boss gauntlet that can net you some fantastic loot both for now and future runs.
You trigger this quest by exploring either the Castle on the Bridge or in the School Grounds.
Tasked with tracking down and killing four ephemeral bosses you’ll be given a Mirror accessory to help you find them.
Gearing Up
However it is strongly advised not to go galavanting off hunting these mythical beasts unprepared. They are all strong enemies and it will serve us well to go into these fights properly armed. If you aren’t strong enough yet to farm the School Grounds then wait a while and gear up here first.
We’ll want to finish off upgrading our Enhancements with Books, particularly those that yield combat stats, and loot at least a +2 set of Mythril Armor, and a +2 Saber and Shield to match. Thankfully they’re all 100% drop rate items here in the School Grounds so getting the required 9 copies of each is a breeze.
Mythril Armor
Mythril Saber
Mythril Shield
If you’ve been blessed with an Ant infested Woods leading up to the school then you can farm the Ant Berserker there for it’s 0.2% drop the Mythril Greatsword if you prefer. It’s a very strong weapon for this stage in the game!
(Alternatively just craft them once you reach Fire Level 36, needing 8 Mythril Ingots each, so 24 Mythril Ore a pop).
Mythril Greatsword
Another good weapon choice is if you’ve reached Mind Level 31 there’s the craftable Spectral Sword, it comes with a good amount of Accuracy built in which will be really handy as you’ll soon see. It’s relatively cheap to make needing only Mind Prisms so it’s easy to reach high levels on it. The Mana cost on hit downside is negligible once we’re pumping out 5k+ mana a second. Check out the stats on my +8 version.
Spectral Sword
Now we’re both forewarned and forearmed, let’s go hunting!
Boss 1: Ethereal Eel (The Sewer Hideout)
Equip the Mirror of Truth to a secondary gear slot so we can swap it out quickly once we find our quarry, the elusive Ethereal Eel. This fight will set the trend for all the Ethereal Bosses, they have great stats and a notably high Dodge rating for this stage of the game. You’ll need your Eagle Eyes (Mind Level 8) for their accuracy. If you’ve got it then hop into Eagle Form (Life Level 27, Shapeshift Eagle) for the extra Accuracy boost and keep Landslide (Earth Level 18) on Perma Cast for it’s -40 Dodge debuff on hit.
The Ethereal Boss’s solid Accuracy rating makes Dodging hard. Combine this with Grounded from Landslide preventing Airborne, the Twister (Air Level 13) accuracy debuff, from sticking all make it a lot harder to rely on Dodge to avoid hits. Suggest we rely on our shiny new Mythril Gear with it’s super high defence stats!
Example Loadout:
+4 Saber, +2 Armor, +4 Shield and a +1 set of Agility Boots. This set was probably overkill but I was just farming Mythril gear for the quest Exclusive Lesson in the School Grounds anyway, so waste not want not.
How to win? Just out last the boss’s damage output! Easier said than done but keeping your health total topped up with the staple Perma cast Life and Water spells will definitely help. For damage we’ll either rely on direct damage from our weapon and slay the fiend by hand or use steady dps spells of your choosing. Poison is always a reliable option with Intoxicate (Poison Level 26) being more than adequate for the job so long as we make sure the casts hit our elusive non-corporeal foe!
When the beast is slain you’ll have earned your first Ethereal Essence. Each boss drops a unique variant of this and we’ll need all 4 to claim our reward. Onwards to glory and riches!
Boss 2: Ethereal Puppet (Burial Chambers)
This puppet is no walk over! He’s got some nasty debuffs that he’ll hit us with right out the gate and leave us reeling. Wizard’s Disarray will make all our Wizards half as competent with their casts, causing merry havoc with our Perma Casts if we’re not careful. Thankfully our Familiar can take this on the chin so long as we’re careful to swap them into the front row during the cast.
However Defense Equalization and Attack Equalization will be the bane of our trusty Familiar if we leave them out in front for too long.
The way these debuffs work, whichever of your Attack or Defence stat is lower at the time of casting will become the fixed stat for their counterpart too. There’s a few ways around this; either match your stats closely together (Our Mythril gear set is fairly reliable for this) or sneak around the debuff using the bonus damage on the Spectral Sword, or by swapping gear sets depending on what debuff the boss chooses to cast, having one super high Defence set and one super high Attack set.
Whichever route you choose to take to avoid the debuffs, you’ll find the rest of the fight fairly easy. Just don’t let your familiar get K.O.d if you can avoid it, they’re a very handy meat shield for the nastier casts if you’re diligent at swapping them in and out in a pinch. With some patience and care you’ll have yourself another of the vaunted Ethereal Essences, good work!
Boss 3: Ethereal Mantis (Subterranean Sanctuary)
Thought we were done with hot swapping our Minion to the fore? Nay say I! This fiend of a Mantis demands yet more Scarab tanking once again. You can use Knockout and Paralysis to interrupt the Sap Health casts if you prefer too. Beyond that the Mantis hits a little less hard with only 360 Attack so the stellar Defense stats from our Mythril gear will keep us safe provided we can maintain those steady heals.
That 400 Dodge rating combined with his hefty 450 Defence is still a pain though, giving the boss a lot of effective HP. Don’t forget your accuracy buffs from Eagle Form (Life) and Eagle Eye (Mind) and the Defense debuff from Sear (Fire) to help push our damage through in a timely manner. Slow and steady wins the race here.
Three down and one to go, almost there. Keep it up, you’re doing great!
Boss 4: Ethereal Djinn (Castle on the Bridge)
This fight revolves around either ignoring the Mana Limiter debuff or circumventing it.
You either go for high defence and massive player damage (Hello Mythril Greatsword!) or try and be sneaky and use the Gloves of Spell Fluency (Water Level 30) to still get most of your spells out from under it even if they are a bit smaller than usual.
Gloves of Spell Fluency
Once you’ve navigated your way past this boss’s gimmick it’s actually a fairly simple fight – none of his attacks hit terribly hard, he’s even weaker than the Mantis! So steady heals from the lower level Water and Life Elements will stand you in good stead as we plug away at that meat health bar. Keep at it long enough and he’s sure to fall!
Rewards
After killing all Four Bosses, hand in their Ethereal Essences to receive your pick of the spoils. You can choose an item to be yours forever, both in this life and the next! The Weapon is great for starting runs off, the Boots are a fantastic source of Dodge for the mid-game while the Armor will make early enemies nary a threat in the slightest.
Ethereal Weapon
Ethereal Footwear
Ethereal Garment
Thank you for your time and I trust you found this little guide useful.
This guide is incredibly helpful. The game is new enough that I have just been getting Reddit threads with no information. Thank you for keeping it informational and clean. I would bump you to the top of Google if I could