Five Bosses That Were (Almost) Impossible to Beat

One of the greatest things while watching Rift grow, was the people learning the game. We didn’t know about the capability of the rifts, the consequences of the invasions and especially the tactics for beating the dungeon bosses. I remember how many times we were dying because we didn’t know what a certain boss does. Also, some people were slower in learning the tactics shared by the group, so we had to deal with them too. There weren’t any dungeon guides, so many times we were forced to learn on the go. There wasn't a LFG tool as well, so getting new people to fill for the quitters was kinda painful.

Similar thing happened when expert (T2) dungeons were introduced. The encounters below gave many people a hard time. Today, they are easy and can be done really quick even on expert difficulty. 

Gatekeeper Kaleida

Michael Bringhurst / Dungeon: Darkening Depths (Normal)

Although everyone’s favorite werewolf has a very simple tactic, sometimes he was a real pain. He must be tanked away from the moonlight which is giving him a brute strength. He would even one-shot the tank. He has an ability that stuns the whole group, so if the tank isn’t fast enough to stop him getting his moonlight dose, the whole group ends up dead. 

Gatekeeper Kaleida / Dungeon: Deepstrikes Mines (Normal)

Gatekeeper Kaleida’s crystals brought death to many players. To this day, most rage-quits I’ve seen in Rift were because of this guy. During the encounter, he will spawn crystals, one to deal damage to the party, and the other to heal him. There was a time when those crystals were a DPS run,  so we either wiped or he would heal himself to an insane amount of HP. Killing Kaleida took a lot of  time to beat, because of the low gear we had.

Konstantin / Dungeon: King's Breach (Expert)

Most hated boss for newbie healers and tanks. The strategy is very, very simple – avoid the spikes and you’ll live. And he spams those spikes coming out of the floor every second, from circles, in different locations. The tactic is to move from circle to circle, while doing the usual thing that a party does in a dungeon. Just move quick. Once you learn how to move at Konstantin’s chamber, it’s easy. Anyhow, Konstantin frames an Ascended head in his hideout from time to time, even today.

Chillblains Winterfrost  / Dungeon: Realm of the Fae (Expert)

Tank and spank boss but set in a foggy environment where all you can see are the name frames. He spawns Vortex adds that deal a solid amount of AoE damage. The people would DPS those adds  instead of simply avoiding them. That’s it. Easy, once you die a couple of times.

Jultharin  / Dungeon: Chalmer’s Caldera (Expert)

Shortly after you start beating Jultharin on the edge of a cliff, a chain of sparkly magic will start going towards the party, eventually pushing them to their horrible wipe. It’s sort of a timed DPS race, so you must defeat him as fast as you can. In the days when the party DPS was low, we were dying like crazy. In most runs today, we kill him in less than 100 seconds. There’s even an achievement for that.

to be continued...