Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty

Story-related; cannot be missed.

This will unlock upon completing the third main battlefield of this DLC, The Rampant Demon Emperor.

This stage has the mission-specific achievement The Dark Clouds Part (15G), and I highly recommend making sure to do it. I actually didn't know it was possible to finish the mission without destroying all five crystals, but apparently if you don't, the boss fight against Yuan Shu is much harder because each crystal buffs him. You should therefore destroy all crystals before fighting him, and you can tell your progress by the flames on the ceiling in the starting room, at the base of the stairs leading up to the boss fight.

As for the boss fight itself, it is absolutely brutal - at least as difficult as the final boss of the first DLC, if not harder. He has a huge reach, is very fast, and is absolutely relentless in attacking. The other thing that's a pain is that he does not care about your NPC Reinforcements whatsoever. He will only target you the entire fight, so they're not much help here except for adding a little extra damage each time you stagger him. The only plus side is that his melee slashes aren't terribly strong, but after you take off the first 25% of his health, he starts doing elemental attacks with each element in the game, and he has two attacks per element type, each with different timing, making this an incredibly challenging fight. On top of that, he has very little downtime for you to attack him. Personally, I found the rock pillar attack Imposing Slab (which is the same I used for all other challenging boss fights in previous content) to be quite effective. It's fast enough to cast between his attacks, it does decent damage, and it shrinks his spirit gauge. You'll quickly find out that staying near this boss is actually the best thing to do, despite his continual melee combos. You'll get used to handling them (deflecting and/or blocking), and then can squeeze in an attack before his next combo.

My experience is that, once the elemental attacks start, you just need to get lucky. He will routinely jump back across the arena from you, then launch an elemental attack that is really tough to time, or he'll do the same but rush across the screen. Either way, he is constantly moving away from you, making it really difficult to damage him, and prolonging the fight so much that it really puts your deflection skills to the test. If you manage to get through the first phase, you'll get treating to the surprise of a full second phase.

The second phase has almost entirely new attacks compared to the first phase. He will still do attacks of all elemental types, but they're essentially all new attacks, so you get to learn attack patterns all over again. Once again, you should aim to stay relatively close to him, because his ranged attacks can be brutal. What you want to look out for is his electricity attack where he swings his weapons around in front of him continually for some time. Immediately dodge or deflect while sprinting towards him to get right up against him. He can't hit you if you're right next to him, giving you lots of time to attack him while he's doing an attack that can't reach you.

Speaking of lots of time to attack, if you manage to deplete his spirit gauge and stagger him, deliver and fatal blow, and then it's important to realize that there is a huge amount of downtime before he starts attacking again. Unlike virtually every other boss in the game who "powers up" by glowing red and sending out a shockwave, when this boss does it, it neither hurts you nor knocks you back. Therefore, whenever you stagger him, wail away on him, do the fatal strike, and then continue to go to town on him while he's getting up, hovering, turning red, etc. You can easily get in four or more combos during this time, and it's the best time you really bring his health down. This goes for the first phase especially, but works decently on the second phase too (he just gets up and doesn't hover as much like in the first phase).

Once again, my experience with the second phase is that you need to get pretty lucky or just get insanely good at deflecting. If he does his electricity attack multiple times, that's free time for you to do lots of damage. If he keeps jumping away to do sweeping fire attacks, for example, there is essentially no opening to hit him, and you need to constantly ensure you don't slip up and let him destroy you. You'll need to play this fight VERY defensively, because if you try to be aggressive, he will absolutely destroy you. Cross your fingers that he does simple melee attacks often, red attacks (his are relatively easy to deflect, but they're rare), or his electricity attack. The rest don't leave much opportunity to deal damage, so you're stuck holding out as long as possible until you have an opening. Abuse Imposing Slab as much as you can, and with enough practice you should finally be able to beat this beast of a final boss.