Text Hints in The Burn Last Boss

Having gone in blind (twice), at first I had thought there was some kind of glitch in the swoop AoE during Mist Dragon's fog phase, because it was either coming out too late to react to, or entirely too early. Obviously, it turns out you have to find the boss in order to make its AoE marker visible to you, but herein lies the problem: the in-game text poorly conveys what we should be doing.

When the Mist Dragon flies away, we're told "The dragon is poised to swoop! Be on your guard!"

Telling me to be on my guard makes me think of having to watch out for where it will strike, like in many other instances where a boss leaves the arena to swoop through it. In no way does telling me to be on my guard incline me to run around in search of the boss. The text hint should be something like "The dragon is poised to swoop from hiding! Find it to reveal its attack!" and perhaps an extra bit of dialogue saying "You found it!" to actually convey that finding them is the correct thing to do. If not the former, then at least the latter to let the player know there is a correct way to handle that phase.

The key is not "Be on your guard!" but rather, "The dragon is poised to swoop!" which implies "don't stand in the middle", as many circular arenas have dashes/swoops through the center. The side effect of leaving the middle is that you have roughly a 1/8 chance of finding the dragon without actively searching for it or being told to, and after two runs, most people should have had an epiphany and discovered the implied instruction, "find the dragon". As you said,

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Originally Posted by TWOxACROSS

Obviously, it turns out you have to find the boss in order to make its AoE marker visible to you

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so it appears that after two runs you had this same epiphany, so I don't find the text problematic at all. Mechanics don't need to be obvious the first time. It's okay for them to take two runs to figure out.

What I wish is that the dragon would give us a clue as to where exactly he will dive. People claim you can see him but I never could.

what you do is you run around the outside. when you get close to the dive part the frost aoe shows up for you. then you just wait for the dragon and run around again after he dives to find the next one.

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Originally Posted by Rongway

so it appears that after two runs you had this same epiphany, so I don't find the text problematic at all. Mechanics don't need to be obvious the first time. It's okay for them to take two runs to figure out.

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Unfortunately no. After having run it twice, and having heard of a glitch in the newest Extreme Primal, along with houses randomly being demolished with little to no warning, I was wondering if it had to be some kind of bug, given how when not knowing the goal, it can look like the AoE is behaving wildly inconsistently, as if there was lag. Finally looking into it resulted in my current stance. I'm a fairly observant guy, but when this game outright tells you what to do, those hints should probably reflect what you actually have to do. I'm reminded of the original text in the Lv70 dragoon quest that was mistranslated, telling you to do the exact opposite of what you needed to do (use Elusive Jump).

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Originally Posted by Rongway

The key is not "Be on your guard!" but rather, "The dragon is poised to swoop!" which implies "don't stand in the middle", as many circular arenas have dashes/swoops through the center. The side effect of leaving the middle is that you have roughly a 1/8 chance of finding the dragon without actively searching for it or being told to, and after two runs, most people should have had an epiphany and discovered the implied instruction, "find the dragon". As you said,



so it appears that after two runs you had this same epiphany, so I don't find the text problematic at all. Mechanics don't need to be obvious the first time. It's okay for them to take two runs to figure out.

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What he said, and the fact that this mechanic isn't new. The bird in Neverreap has the exact same mechanic. In order to avoid its AoE blast, the party has to split up and find the bird in the fog. Once it is found, you run to them to avoid attack. Same thing here. Split up, run around. If you see one of your party members suddenly stop advancing, that means they are standing next to the AoE line, so align yourself to not be in its attack. Doesn't need to be obvious, because you've already done this mechanic.

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Originally Posted by Maeka

What I wish is that the dragon would give us a clue as to where exactly he will dive. People claim you can see him but I never could.

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I ran this dungeon a total of 3 times with several wipes at Mist Dragon but me and my teammates never could pinpoint where he was in that fog

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Originally Posted by RuleofThree

What he said, and the fact that this mechanic isn't new. The bird in Neverreap has the exact same mechanic. In order to avoid its AoE blast, the party has to split up and find the bird in the fog. Once it is found, you run to them to avoid attack. Same thing here. Split up, run around. If you see one of your party members suddenly stop advancing, that means they are standing next to the AoE line, so align yourself to not be in its attack. Doesn't need to be obvious, because you've already done this mechanic.

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I have never seen the dragon, and I always zoom out for that fight, I can see the whole arena, and the outsides of most of it, and not once have I ever seen it before it dives and I don't think I've ever seen anybody else go 'here' or stop or what not, we just strafe around the edge and pray we're near the edge of the AoE or out of it entirely.

That, and one thing I do hear, is lots of people complaining about framerate drops during the heavy fog/dive phase and even my computer stutters even though I get 60+ FPS everywhere else.

So he seems to randomly pick a side and charge through the middle. Ive seen N/S, E/W, NW/SE and NE/SW. If youre close to the side hes charging from you can see him and the charge marker is immediately visible. If youre away from his starting point, the charge marker appears more or less as he starts charging. If you do this with a set team of friends, next time plan to spread out and each of you do a specific check(ill do N/NE, you do E/SE, etc). One of you will spot him right away, and with warning everyone will have time to avoid.

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Originally Posted by RuleofThree

What he said, and the fact that this mechanic isn't new. The bird in Neverreap has the exact same mechanic. In order to avoid its AoE blast, the party has to split up and find the bird in the fog. Once it is found, you run to them to avoid attack. Same thing here. Split up, run around. If you see one of your party members suddenly stop advancing, that means they are standing next to the AoE line, so align yourself to not be in its attack. Doesn't need to be obvious, because you've already done this mechanic.

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Yeah see, it's not the same. Obviously once you know what you need to do, you can see a similiarity to Neverreap, but it's an explicitly different configuration than what happens in Neverreap. In Neverreap you find the boss so you can kill it, but in this, you don't even know you have to find it, the onscreen text that tells you what to do, doesn't tell you about finding it at all, it just says to "be on your guard."

And for the love of god, I know what to do, people can stop posting that it's easy and telling me what to do. My problem is legitimately that the help text just doesn't help you figure out what you need to do, and it leads to a lot of wipes because even when you do stumble upon the correct way to do that phase, it can be confusing that what you did was even right.

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Originally Posted by Frizze

So he seems to randomly pick a side and charge through the middle. Ive seen N/S, E/W, NW/SE and NE/SW. If youre close to the side hes charging from you can see him and the charge marker is immediately visible. If youre away from his starting point, the charge marker appears more or less as he starts charging. If you do this with a set team of friends, next time plan to spread out and each of you do a specific check(ill do N/NE, you do E/SE, etc). One of you will spot him right away, and with warning everyone will have time to avoid.

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It works out well enough to just group up and run in one direction. That way you don't have to communicate that you've found it, and people aren't still in the dark about exactly where it is. Splitting up has meant that people can see I've stopped and found the boss, but can still end up running right through the AoE.

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Originally Posted by TWOxACROSS

It works out well enough to just group up and run in one direction. That way you don't have to communicate that you've found it, and people aren't still in the dark about exactly where it is. Splitting up has meant that people can see I've stopped and found the boss, but can still end up running right through the AoE.

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You really only have to run to opposite sides of the arena. If neither pair sees the dragon, then the dragon is clearly not diving through party. It's not necessary to search the entire perimeter.
https://i.imgur.com/0H6jWLM.png

What I usually do is start running a circle halfway through the arena once he disappears until I see the dive AOE lit up. You then have enough time to dodge that dive attack.