The Abyssal Fracture (Extreme) - Zeromus

Next up is Visceral Whirl. The boss will cover the arena in it’s tentacle claws preparing to damage it with huge aoes. There will always be two triangular shaped safe spots to stand in, one in the northern half of the arena and one in the south.

After the claws AOEs go off, you will notice 3 purple glowing x shaped marks on the ground. Each X mark will expand into a large X shaped line AOEs following the shape of the X that extends the length of the arena. To resolve this, you must find a safe spots where the line AOEs do not overlap. Like the previous mechanic, there will always be 2 safe spots.

What you need to know is that the safe spot will always be on the opposite side of where you are standing to dodge Visceral Whirl. I’ll show you the different patterns and their safe spots now. As long as one person knows where to go, there’s enough time to follow them if you’re not sure but I suggest studying up on the patterns so that you don’t have to rely on someone else.

Flare

Next, Zeromus will cast Flare which spawns 2 large towers in the northwest and southeast corners of the map. We want 4 players in each tower. For this mechanic, we split into 2 groups with melees handling the north tower and ranged in the south to maintain uptime. After the tower is soaked, a fire orb wil linger on each tower so move away to avoid taking damage.

Shortly after, each orb will have lines projecting out indicating large line aoes that will shoot out from each orb. Like the earlier mechanics, you must fine the safe spot where the lines do not hit the arena. This can often be in the center but it may have you standing in the center of the northeast quadrant or the east edge of the northeast quadrant. The lines will expand a lot from the initial size of the telegraph so take care to not get clipped.

Void Bio

After this, Zeromus will cast Void Bio which will place a bunch of green orbs at the north of the arena. Immediately after, the boss will cast Visceral whirl again. In a random order, these green poison orbs will slowly begin to move south. You have to dodge these while also making your way to a safe spot. Other than dodging the poison orbs, visceral whirl is the same as before. Refer to earlier in the video if you need a refresher on the possible patterns because they are the same here.

If a player is hit by an orb, they will gain a very strong damage over time effect that is likely to kill the player. It is possible to save a player hit by this if both healers can react quickly enough but try not to rely on this.

Big Bang

After this, Zeromus will cast Void Bio which will place a bunch of green orbs at the north of the arena. Immediately after, the boss will cast Visceral whirl again. In a random order, these green poison orbs will slowly begin to move south. You have to dodge these while also making your way to a safe spot. Other than dodging the poison orbs, visceral whirl is the same as before. Refer to earlier in the video if you need a refresher on the possible patterns because they are the same here.

If a player is hit by an orb, they will gain a very strong damage over time effect that is likely to kill the player. It is possible to save a player hit by this if both healers can react quickly enough but try not to rely on this.

Void Meteor

Now that the arena has been transitioned into space, Zeromus will cast Void Meteor. A bunch of proximity aoes will appear signaling meteors that are about to land. The party can safely stand in the center to take minimal damage. If you haven’t noticed the effect spinning around your character, this is a good time to mention that all members of the party were given various debuffs so it’s a good time to look at those because they’ll be going off after the next mechanic.

Meteor Impact

Now, we get to the highlight mechanic of the fight, Meteor Impact. Let’s break it down. This is what our support and dps group orders from earlier are for. There are a few things to manage here. 4 players will be marked with proximity tether lines coming from the south. The players will either be all supports or all dps. After a delay, Zeromus will shoot meteors at each player with a line. Any players standing in a meteor’s travel path will die. The meteor will stop once it hits the marked player. If the meteor overlaps with any existing meteor, the party will wipe. The line is really handy here since it shows the size of the meteor and changes colors from blue to red if the meteor path is going to overlap. This means that if you see red, you need to adjust your position. No matter what else, you must not have any red lines.

Secondly, the tether also will kill the player if they aren’t far enough from the south of the arena. You can tell when you’re a safe distance away because the inner line of the tether will change from purple to yellow. If it’s purple, you’re too close.

The reason we have the order is because this is how we space out our meteors.

Each player should try to get their meteor as close as possible to the north without overlapping. This is because not long after the first 4 tethers appear, the other 4 players will then be marked. Their meteors will be shot after the first group is finished. This means that each player in the first group has to make sure that they are leaving room for the next group to also place their meteors. This is why it’s critical to get it as close as possible to the north.

Following the order from earlier, left to right, we position Tank 1, Tank 2, Healer 1, Healer 2.

Same goes for Melee 1, Melee 2, Ranged 1, Ranged 2.

While there are specific patterns for this, I don’t think that the mechanic is complicated enough that players need to study each one. You have more than enough time and space to place each meteor and using the left to right order should make things easy enough.

That being said, if you’d like to study anyway, I can link the album with each pattern and meteor placement solution for you to review.

Something important to keep in mind is that it’s only a wipe if a meteor overlaps. If the previous group placed their meteors poorly (which will happen in party finder prog parties), it’s better to die than to ever let your line stay red. It’s very easy to recover from a death or two here so focus on keeping your line blue above all else even if you’ll die because you’re too close.

Once all of the meteors are placed, they will all detonate with mildly large aoes so stand in the center to avoid taking damage as well as prepare for the next mechanic.

Visceral Whirl 2

Next up is another Visceral Whirl. This time however, while Visceral Whirl is the same, those debuffs from earlier are about to go off in addition to the new chains we just got. The chains need to be handled first. This is why we stood in the center at the end of the meteors because you need enough distance to break the chains.

Remember now that Visceral whirl will always have two safe spots. One in the north and one in the south. We will split players between these two spots to break the chains. Conveniently, the chains always tether to one support and one dps. To keep damage uptime for melee dps, the dps group should take the north safe spot while the supports head to the southern spot.

Notice that your debuff timers are really close to wearing off which means that their effects will happen. First, all players have to handle their acceleration bombs. Like every other instance of this debuff, you must be standing still and not attacking when it wears off or you will take damage.

Keep in mind that Visceral Whirl will leave the x shaped marks on the ground again so you have to move to the safe spot for this after the acceleration bombs go off.

A few seconds after this, the divisive dark debuff will activate creating small circle aoes around each player. Create distance from each other the moment that Visceral whirl is finished so that you don’t overlap the AOEs with other players.

After this, there should be 3 players with debuffs remaining. One will be marked with Beckoning Dark which is a stack marker. Two DPS will be marked with Forked lightning which will create a small aoe around the player. While all of this is happening, the two tanks also have to deal with another Dark Matter tankbuster. Tanks will take these to their respective northern corners to avoid hitting the party. The player with the stack marker can stand in the center. The players marked with forked lightning should stand away from the party and the tanks. All other players should stand in the middle to soak the stack damage.

Black Hole and Fractured Eventide

Once all of this is over, Zeromus will begin to cast Black Hole and Fractured Eventide. Like in normal mode, this mechanic revolves around a giant laser beam sweeping across the arena as well a black hole that will instantly kill any players that touch it as it grows in size to cover most of the arena. The twist in extreme is that one player will be marked with a defamation marker which will place the black hole where they are standing.

The safe spot to stand for this will be near the corner that Zeromus starts the beam in. Zeromus will always face torwards the starting point before the beam appears. You want to stand on the side of the beam that is closest to the edge. There are a few different ways to place the black hole but what I recommend is to place the black hole in the north corner on the side of the beam. You have more than enough time to safely run away from it while maintaining uptime as well. Your positions should look like this. I’ve seen stuff about people wanting to place it south to then be rescued through the beam to the safe side but I don’t want to promote a strategy that risks players getting a vuln stack especially when it’s not necessary at all to dodge the mechanic.

While there are other strategies going around, I’ve found this to be the simplest way to keep everybody safe while maintaining uptime. It may not be ideal for casters but losing a bit of damage here shouldn’t be the difference between a clear and an enrage wipe. I don’t recommend relying on healers rescuing you in party finder, especially in prog parties. Save that for optimization runs.

As the beam travels, run with it without running into it to avoid getting sucked into the black hole.

Big Crunch

After the black hole is finished, Zeromus begins to cast Big Crunch which works exactly the same as Big Bang. Dodge the aoes and mitigate accordingly. The boss will proceed to use Abyssal Nox and Sable Thread again. These work almost the same as before except Sable Thread hits 7 times instead of 6 now.

Sparking Flare and Branding Flare - Towers

Next up, we have two towers appearing. Zeromus will either cast Branding Flare of Sparking Flare. Pay attention to these move names. We split into light parties to soak the towers. Mitigation or healing is helpful here because everybody will be hit with unavoidable damage shortly after soaking the towers. Immediately after, if you remember those pairs we setup at the start, now is the time to break into those quadrants. If you’re having trouble remembering, you should be in the quadrant on the side of your light party. Ranged jobs will be in the south and melee jobs will be in the north.

Each tower will turn into a fire orb that shoots line aoes in all 4 cardinal directions. This means that each quadrant will be nicely blocked off by a line aoe.

If the boss used Sparking Flare, all players should spread away from each other to avoid overlapping an untelegraphed spread aoe that will happen to every player. You have plenty of space to avoid each other. Just stay away from the center of either edge to not get hit by the fire. If the boss used branding instead, the players should stack together to mitigate a 2 person stack attack on each pair.

While all of this is happening, 2 players get marked with chasing AOEs. These will be gigantic purple orbs that follow you slowly hitting 5 times. You want to make sure to place this in the corner at the start. As soon as the AOE for this appears, run towards one of the other corners. There typically isn’t a set direction but running to another corner will keep you safe. Since you may sometimes run into the situation where two players with the chasing aoe are running at each other, one should try to correct by turning and heading in the other direction. This can create an awkward pattern for the party but you want to avoid overlapping these orbs. The rest of the party can stand in the center to dodge these but pay attention in case someone accidentally runs this into the party. Committing to run in a clockwise or counterclockwise direction can help with the chasing AOEs but I see most parties winging this so it’s good to know what to do in this situation.

Post Tower Loop

After this, Zeromus will mix in all of the previous mechanics from this phase including Void Bio, Dark Matter, Sable Thread, and another sequence of towers until you get it to around below 30% hp which will initiate a transition into the final phase of he fight by casting Rend The Rift.

Rend The Rift

Rend The Rift itself does raidwide damage to the entire party. After the arena transitions, many baited ground aoes will appear while Zeromus will prepare to case Nostalgia. The aoes are small and delayed enough that most shouldn’t need a strategy to bait these. Just dodge as best you can.

Once Nostalgia is casted, Zeromus will punch the ground 4 times dealing small raidwide damage each time. It will then follow up with 3 screams each doing raidwide damage with extra damage on the last scream. Mitigate and heal appropriately.

Flow of the Abyss

Next up is Flow of the Abyss. A huge line will shoot across the arena from west to east hitting one third of the arena. You can see where this line will be by looking to the west of the arena where Zeromus will be shooting out a small beam from its chest. While this line happens, The party will have to deal with either a stack, 4 enumeration pairs, or spreads.

For the stack, it’s easy enough to just stack in center of the safe areas.

For the enumerations, 4 players will be marked with blue circles. If these blue circles don’t have 2 people in them when they go off, the marked player will die. For these, we just have each of the quadrant pairs standing together. You should be with the same person that you stood with for the Branding and Sparking Flare. For positions, we can roughly use the same position ordering that we established for meteors.

For the spreads, they will leave lingering AOEs that you must run out of after the initial hit.

Chasmic Nails

After this, Zeromus will cast Chasmic Nails. This attack involves cleaving the arena in 5 coned shaped AOEs in an order that is telegraphed during the cast time. At the same time, another Flow of the Abyss laser beam will shoot across part of the arena in addition to more baited ground circle AOEs appearing under the players. The same cone will never be hit twice so a safe way to resolve this is to stand next to a cone that will get hit first and then move into it once the cone the aoe has gone off. Just make sure to do this in a part of the arena that isn’t being hit by the laser beam while also dodging the ground AOEs.

Healers should know that if a player is hit by one of the cone AOEs, it isn’t lethal but but it will leave a damage over time effect on the player that can be cleansed with Esuna so try to do that as soon as possible if someone is hit.

At this point, you’ve seen every mechanic and they will just happen in different assortments until enrage is hit. Zeromus will alternate between Flows of the Abyss, Chasmic Nails, and Nostalgias until you kill it or it wipes the party with enrage.

If you’ve enjoyed this, be sure to leave me a comment with any feedback as this is my first time making a guide. I’m happy to answer any questions in my discord as well. Thanks so much for watching and I’ll see yall in the next video!