Aetherian Archive Trial Guide

The first trial in ESO was released with the Craglorn zone.

Drops

• Mending (Healing Mage) (light armor) 2/5
  Utility: Healers
  This set is often considered a little bit old-fashioned, because the damage debuff is not that strong, and it doesn’t provide any offensive options. It can be used in beginner groups for arenas like Blackrose Prison, where the group is tightly stacked and there’s a lot of stuff that needs debuffing.
• Quick Serpent (medium armor) 1/5
  Utility: Stamina DD
  Sustain-oriented stamina set. Quite useless, because Craglorn trials also drop Vicious Ophidian (Vicious Serpent) set, which provides permanent Minor Slayer and additional weapon damage
• Defending Warrior (heavy armor) –1/5
  Utility: Tank
  “Selfish” tank set that does a little bit of damage to surroundings. Not used in mid-tier and end-game raids, but can be helpful in beginner groups with very sloppy healing. Overall, if you feel like you need this set, you are either building something very niche, or you need to change your group 🙂
• Infallible Mage (light armor) – 2.5/5
  Utility: Support (for no-warden groups)
  This set became somewhat outdated after the introduction of the warden class (their Fetcher Infection skill gives the same debuff) so you can use another set, but some solo-dps builds and groups without wardens still use it sometimes.
• Vicious Serpent (Vicious Ophidian) (medium armor) – 3/5
  Utility: Stamina DD
  A better version of the Quick Serpent set, that gives Minor Slayer and increases your weapon damage. Useful for stamina solo-builds and sustain-heavy fights (sacrificing damage compared to damage stacking sets).
• Eternal Warrior (Eternal Yokeda) (heavy armor) – 1/5
  Utility: Tank
  Niche and selfish tanking set. Generally, if your fight plan as a tank includes your health dropping below 25% health, and your way of countering it is to hope for a proc with a 1 minute cooldown, you should be aware that there are better ways of dealing with/mitigating the incoming damage.

Group composition

There are different ways of tackling this trial.
Experienced/score-pushing groups: 1 tank, 1 healer, 10 dds.
Intermediate groups: 1 tank, 2 healers, 9 dds
Beginner groups: 1 tank (2 tanks for the last boss to taunt the axes away), 2 healers, 9 dds (one relogs to a tank on the last boss)

Adds before Lightning Storm Atronach

When you enter the first corridor, you will encounter 3 groups of adds. The first one will be a group of fire atronachs.

After that, you need to run through a room with little whirlwinds. If you touch them, you get stunned, just roll dodge and continue your journey to face the next group of adds: two frost atronachs.

While running upstairs, you will notice a little glowing yellow pad before the door. If you stay on the stairs for too long, lightning will zap you, but while you’re standing in the circle, you are safe. This mechanic will be the only important mechanic on the first boss, so remember how those pads look. You can ignore them for now.

Once you go through the door you will see a large group of adds consisting of smaller enemies and enemies with banners. We will encounter them throughout the whole trial, and they will be our first priority:

• Overchargers are your first priority. They have two important mechanics
  • Overcharge. A random player gets a lightning aoe around them. The overcharged person takes damage, anyone not overcharged stepping into aoe will get even more damage. So overcharged players need to move out of the group.
    Does elemental damage so can be shielded and mitigated with champion points.
    Note for healers: you should be able to outheal one overcharged player stacked with the group. If there are two and they overlap it becomes really hard, so don’t blame yourself if that happens.
  • Call lightning. A random player is followed by lightning splashes that spawn on the player’s position. You need to move around to avoid damage while the effect is active.
• Chainspinners are the next priority. A random player will be focused by their attack which looks like a static aoe that needs to be avoided because it deals damage to everyone inside and then explodes..
• Nullifiers heal other targets, which should be interrupted.

Lightning Storm Atronach (51 747 104 HP)

The first boss of the trial has 2 mechanics. It will always alternate between two and open with…

• Impending Storm.
  A lightning aoe explosion with huge radius. Need to be blocked on low CPs, can be ignored on high CPs. If you are at full health, there’s no need to try and avoid it. Just stack and block/ignore.
• Lightning Strikes
  Reaction check.
  The sky will become darker, and a little glowing pad will appear in one of the 5 fixed spots around the arena. The whole group needs to run towards the pad and stay inside, until the mechanic is over.

Resurrect people who died during the fight, and repeat the process.

Raid lead notes

In beginner groups, you need to call out which pad to go to. Assign numbers or just separate them into left, front, back, and right pads, and call out those general directions.

Adds before Foundation Stone Atronach

After the group reunites in the main room, a bridge will form. Upon crossing the bridge, several waves of adds will spawn. The best strategy for the whole group is just to stack on a boulder in the middle of the arena, healers focusing that area heavily and tanks stacking everything. Just stack tight, focus overchargers, and trust your healers.

After that, you can either mount and jump down (as one group) or stand on the pads and get teleported to the arena below you to meet the…

Foundation Stone Atronach (41 397 688 HP)

Another rather straightforward fight that is defined by two mechanics

1. The atro will stomp its middle part on the ground (“Big Quake“). DDs stay stacked in the middle behind the boss, healers behind them, and you just continue damaging the boss, no blocking/shielding needed, no way to avoid damage too.
2. Starting at 75% the Atronach will put its legs diagonally, and start shooting boulders at random players every second (“Boulder Storm“). The group needs to form a loose stack around the boss and avoid stacking with each other. Boulder have splash damage and stun if unblocked even if you’re just standing close to the target, so stacking can lead to unnecessary damage and deaths.

After the first boulder storm, the boss will always alternate between those two mechanics. Periodically, the Chainspinners/Nullifiers will spawn and leave an aoe under a random player/heal adds around. They need to be taunted by the tank, and can be stacked with the main boss and cleaved down together or ignored.

Raid lead notes

In beginner groups, you often need to call out people who stack with others or run too far back. In that case, make sure you call out the boulder storm in advance so that your group has enough time to spread out.

Adds before Varlariel

Varlariel (62 096 528 HP)

This boss is also relatively straightforward, also having two important mechanics (and several additional ones). The main mechanic of this boss is splitting into 3-4-5-6 copies of itself, and then, around 20 seconds later absorbing the copies and exploding. The more copies are absorbed, the stronger the explosion will be. The group with 18-19k+ HP can comfortably survive one copy still being alive at the moment of explosion, two copies or more will one-shot most if not all dds / healers.

There are different ways to tackle this fight. Beginner groups assign 2 dds per pillar and everyone focuses their copy on splits, some groups dedicate 2-3 dds to killing copies. The main point remains the same: kill them within 20 seconds and come back to the boss.

For the first part of the fight the team splits into 2 groups (4 dds (5 if you’re going 1 heal/1 tank) and a healer), you stack on one side of the boss and parse it. The boss has a small aoe near it, and also throws little aoes on random positions around the arena (aka Raindrops) which apply maim, reducing your damage done.

Around 16-17 seconds into the fight, the boss will split into 3 copies that will fly towards pillars 1, 2, and 3. Dedicated DDs go out of the group and kill all the copies but leave #1 (the group can survive 1 copy being alive, so it’s a waste of DPS on the main boss), and rejoin the groups. If your group does this raid with 2 tanks, ask the off-tank to run around and debuff the copies

Raid lead notes

1. You can time ults (horns/colossus/destros) and drop them around 14 seconds into the fight to deal as much damage to copies as possible once they’re still near the boss
2. It doesn’t really matter which copy you decide to spare, we leave #1 out, because it saves us some time even on the first spawn, and it’s easy to remember (exit)

Don’t forget to loot several chests and heavy sacks before standing on the pads to the next room. Before porting you will see 3 interactable crystal orbs sitting on pedestals. If you destroy all of them it will turn the hard mode for the last boss on. The change is irreversible (the only way to turn it off is to restart the trial).

Adds before the Mage

Before the final fight begins you need to defeat 2 waves of adds, each of them consisting of 2-3 overchargers, nullifiers, and chainspinners, tank needs to taunt all the bannered adds and run towards the edge of the arena (the right one if you’re looking from the entrance) to stack ranged adds in the middle and then bring the melee ones to the middle. The group needs to remember to take overcharge aoes out of the stack and focus the overchargers first. After the second wave is dead, the Mage will fly down to the arena, and the fight will begin instantly.

The Mage (68 996 120 HP)

Compared to the previous bosses, the Mage requires a bit more coordination and offers more mechanics to deal with, and the fight also has stunning visuals at the end 😀

The boss has a 180-degree vision, so you want to avoid standing in front of her if you’re a dd or a healer, otherwise, you can be targeted by her light attacks (Chain Lightning)

Once the fight begins the group should form two stacks behind the boss, similar to what you were doing during the Varlariel fight. The tank faces the boss away and DDs stay still and parse the boss.

The only danger that can appear at this stage is if the boss turns around towards the group. Her light attacks are chained lightning which will bounce between players dealing the more damage, the more people you have in the stack, but if the group stays in 2 stacks, no one will be one-shot

After the beginning of the fight, based on the timer, Conjured Axes will spawn. They do light attacks, doing moderate damage to dds and minimal damage to tanks, they have a heavy attack (indicated by yellow sparks) that stuns a player if unblocked and depending on resistances can also one-shot a dd with 16-17k HP. If you’re a tank and you got stunned, you need to renew taunt on all the axes, otherwise, they will fly away and try to harass the group.

DDs and healers can ignore the axes, they don’t need to get killed, it’s just slight tank coordination and sustain checks. Just call it out if an axe is attacking you so that the tank would know it’s loose.

Axes don’t have health bars so it can be tricky to taunt them, tab targeting is your best friend to handle it.

There are different ways to tackle axes. Most tanks just solo it, restoring resources after axes heavy attack and holding them by the boss.

There are two other strategies to deal with axes if you are struggling to hold aggro on them and they kill the group

At around 55% the main boss will start spawning Conjured Reflections (aka mini-mages aka copies). Upon spawn they create an explosion that stuns everyone not blocking and deals significant damage, after that they beam people, dealing medium damage to the group. They are a priority target until the execute phase, so the group stays in positions, but turns around and kills the reflections

The boss also spawns Black holes (huge expanding aoe covering a large area), if you walk into them you will get constant damage until you get out or die – just avoid them

And the other mechanic is Daedric Corruption Mines that look like small aoes with a shining light in the middle. If you walk into them they will explode and stun you, dealing medium splash damage. You can avoid them or hold block and walk into them on purpose to deactivate them and free up a bit of space.

At 15% the boss will slam her staff into the ground, stunning everyone 3 times in a row. This will destroy all the axes, but leave all reflections that are still alive. After that, a huge sun will appear from the skies and will apply an ever-increasing dot (damage over time) on the group.

If you’re a part of a beginner group that doesn’t deal a lot of damage, it can become a slight dps check, but overall the content is quite old, so it shouldn’t be much of a problem.

At this point in the fight, it’s better to stack up right behind the boss and ignore everything else, just burning the boss down, because if you start focusing on reflections but the group damage isn’t too high, there’s a high chance of the dot will become too high and the group will wipe

The Mage hard mode (86 245 152 HP)

In addition to all the previous mechanics, and more damage from them you will get 3 extra things to deal with

1. Storm Atronachs (2,875,839 HP). The tank has to taunt them as they spawn and stack them on top of the main boss. Below 20% they start exploding every second, dealing significant damage that can be lethal if it overlaps with anything else. So kill priority becomes:
   Atronachs at 30% HP and lower -> Mini Mages -> Mage (+stacked atros)
2. Meteors. Just an aoe falling from the skies at random spots, stuns and deals a lot of damage if not blocked, so make sure to block them.
3. Boss heals with every stomp before execute. For around 2% each time. If you have some damage on her, shouldn’t be a problem.

You can either stay in the same positions as for non-hard mode or spread out a little more to be faster on killing reflections and safer if the boss turns around and zaps someone with the chain lightning

Congratulations on successfully clearing the Aetherian Archive on vet!