We turn away from the First Circle of Pandaemonium, and head into the Second. Following the end of Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker’s main scenario, we dive into the secrets of Elpis. Underneath that idyllic place lies the mighty jail of Pandaemonium, where ancient monsters await.
Each encounter in Asphodelos is a single fight, similar to a trial. Your second fight pits you against one of the creations trapped within, Hippokampos. You’ll fight within a square arena. Make note of the raised sections of the platform and the sluice gates between them. When you start the fight, the outer edge of the arena will also become a blue hazard zone that’ll kill you instantly if you touch it.
Be warned that raid guides contain spoilers. If you prefer to preserve the surprise of raids for yourself, give them a try first before referring to a guide. Then, come back here for some help if you have trouble!
How to Defeat Hippokampos – Phase One
Deep within the reservoir, you’ll need to avoid the tainted waters if you want to survive. This dragon-like creature can test you if you’re not prepared for certain attacks. This phase starts off real easy though.
- Murky Depths: This is the raid-wide AoE. Simply heal through it.
- Doubled Impact: This action is the dual-target tankbuster, requiring both tanks to stack together to share the damage. Use your cooldowns as well, tanks.
- Spoken Cataract: This is the primary mechanic of this phase. The boss’ head and body will face in two different directions, with the red arrow marking the head and the yellow being the body. The head will attack with a full-side cleave, while the yellow will be a chunky line AoE through the entire platform. Make sure you’re behind the head, but not in the path of the body’s attack.
- Sewage Deluge: A heavy-hitting raid-wide AoE that you need to heal through; it’s also the marker for Phase Two.
Phase Two – Flooding
In this phase, the available area of the platform is severely constrained. A few seconds after the Sewage Deluge attack, the water level will increase everywhere, with the safe spaces being the raised sections of the platform and the sluice gates between them. Avoid the water to save yourself from the Dropsy damage-over-time debuff.
- Tainted Flood: This targets six raid members with circle AoE markers. Spread out to avoid stacking the damage. This deals a good amount of damage, so be prepared healers.
- Predatory Sight: This is the opposite of Tainted Flood. Instead, everyone will be marked with stack markers. Stack up with at least one other person to minimize damage.
- Shockwave: The boss will mark one of the platforms with a huge knockback marker. At the end of the cast, it’ll jump and knock back the entire raid from that point. You want to be on that platform, positioned so that you’ll get pushed back along the sluice gates. This ends this phase.
Phase One/Two Enhanced – Dissociation
These phases are similar to what came before, but with new attacks and some other combinations. This means you’ll see attacks like Spoken Cataract and Dissociation during the second phase.
- Dissociation: Hippokampos’ head will fly off and park itself at a spot outside of the arena. It’ll then grow another head. After a few seconds, the head outside of the arena will fire a huge line AoE straight across at its position. This will cover half of the platform, so get to the other side to avoid the damage.
- Coherence: This action has two markers. The first is a radial spread marker on the tank, while the second is a line stack marker on the rest of the raid. The tank needs to move far away from the raid, while the rest stack up to share the damage. The tank attack will do around 80% of the tank’s health, so they may want to use a cooldown.
- Sewage Eruption: Fairly large circle AoEs appear under random raid members, twice in a row. Dodge them.
Keep moving and dodging all these attacks in tandem to make it through.
And with that, the second circle of Pandaemonium Asphodelos is done. Ready to move onto the third? Our guides will help you polish off all four circles of this raid wing in no time.
If you need help getting prepared for the Pandaemonium raids, be sure to check out our Tomestone of Aphorism and endgame gear guide. And if you want to get different Jobs to level 90 and raid-ready, you can use our fast leveling guide for alternate Jobs. Pandaemonium isn’t the only endgame content available in Endwalker, so make sure you’ve unlocked and played through the optional level 90 dungeons Smileton and The Stigma Dreamscape.
We also have guides for the other circles!
