Undead Bannerman

Overview

The Undead Bannerman is a boss residing in the Gravefells, and defeating it is part of the quest to obtain the Pure recipe. While someone must be at the appropriate stage of the quest to reach the Bannerman's location, helping players need not have taken the quest to aid in the battle. However, credit for the Gravefells questline will not be awarded for the player not undertaking the correct stage of the quest.

Once the Gravefells questline is completed, the zone will revert to being peaceful, but the boss may be rematched by speaking to Darval and asking to relive the memory of such.

The Bannerman will drop a black pearl when defeated.

Lore Entry:

As discussed in the previous section, the best way to perform an exorcism of non-aggressive lingering ghosts is to help them re-enact memories and emotions strongly associated with the event of their death. The primary reason for the re-enactments is that ghosts trapped in such a curse exist in a false reality that cycles in upon itself. By replaying the events of their lives, the unfortunate souls may then be reminded of their eventual fate and, perhaps belatedly, embrace it.

The case of the curse upon the Gravefells, however, was a unique one. In addition to the curse, an entity in the form of a bannerman was placed upon the battlefield in order to ground the curse's effects. Even though the re-enactment had been sufficiently accomplished, the curse could not be broken so long as the bannerman existed.

Taking this to heart, the freeswords involved faced a literally uphill battle in struggling against the bannerman, whose origins are still unclear. Although at a glance it seems to be one of the Queen of Death's minions, the nature of the abilities and powers it displayed suggested that five different Corrupt Court spirits had a hand in its creation, not to mention the five different weapons it wielded. This spells for considerable trouble if such cooperation continues, and calls for unity amongst those who would oppose them.

- Excerpt from LaVos' Compendium of the Supernatural, special edition, by Anton "The Magician" LaVos.

Strategy

The main trick of the fight is the Bannerman's banners. Every five actions, the Bannerman will summon a random banner to battlefield. Only two banners may be out at a time, and no two of the same kind may be present. If more then 5 rounds have passed with two banners out, he will immediately summon the next banner once the last is destroyed.

The banners are as following:

Dread Banner: Causes a stacking DoT on the entire party. This starts off weak, but rapidly ramps up.

Bony Banner: Makes the Bannerman invulnerable to all damage until destroyed.

Bloody Banner: Gives all enemies on the field about 50 darknessdamagereturn.

Terrifying Banner: Both buffs allies and heavily debuffs enemies. Some of these debuffs come in the form of negative buffs and hence ignore debuffresist.

Rallying Banner: Summons a headless soldier every 4 actions. There is no limit to the number of headless soldiers that can be summoned this way.

It soon becomes apparent that destroying each banner as soon as possible is of vital importance. If left alone, a single banner will cause great strain on the party and likely cause a wipe.

The Bannerman will also summon waves of headless soldiers to his aid at 50% and 25%.

In addition to other abilities (mostly causing darkness damage), the Bannerman also possesses five weapons with considerable modifications, namely, life drinker, long spear, battlefield purification, inspiring shout, and war hammer. Most of his big hits abilities are single-target, while the DoT effects are area of effect. Plan accordingly. Tanks unsure of themselves may find use out of Gilded Armor.