Exar Kun

Pre-Requirements[]

You need to finish the Controlling Spirit Pre-Quest

Introduction[]

To enter this instance, you must go to the Archeological Dig Site, click on the "An Ancient Brazier" and use " Descend into Exar Kun's Temple to enter Exar Kun's Temple". Or you can go to Aurilia and take a flight to the Dig Site.

Buffs needed for Kinetic and Fire DOT damage (the disease at phase 2 is not very bad) This instance utilizes every style in the game quests and heroics so far plus new ones. You'll need to utilize all the strategies from them, PLUS watch the NPC dialogue for hints and timing. Like Nightsister Chamber of Banishment you can clone and come back, you start at the boss you wiped at.

Either LS or DS Jedi will do fine in some of the tanking roles. It can be done with no LS Jedi if you have a good Commando tank, or a very good DS Jedi - ours doesn't struggle to get upto 29k health and has yet to incap on us. I've not tried this with less than 2 Medics. There's so much constant healing required its unbelieveable... this is probably the most intense instance for a Medic. Others like Tusken Army can be done without a Medic, but Exar Kun requires the 2 Medics to be very focused. If you wish to brave it with 1 Medic, I would strongly advise they have a 5-piece First Responders jewelry set for those heal cooldown resets.

Officers bring not only the best DPS but decent action regeneration too, which is crucial. Jedi' Forsake Fear doesn't really offer much action regen, sadly. If you take an Officer with the 5-piece General Heroic Jewelry set, your action bar isn't likely to budge. This makes overall group DPS awesome.

This instance is awesome for Commandos too. They provide awesome sustained DPS and can perform all of the key tanking throughout the instance.

Bounty Hunter setup to tank are useful on phase 5. You could also take another DS Jedi.

Smugglers with Pistol Whip are very useful on phase 3 - as they will stop the Executioner in his tracks.

Spies have no real unique profession contribution to offer, sadly. With my Spy I have become adept at the elementals section of phase 5 - although a Bounty Hunter or Commando is more desireable for this role.

Special note when progressing through the rooms of the instance: Make sure all group members properly enter the room. When the instance begins, a door (which you cannot see at first) will close behind you. Anybody still in the corridors will be locked out.

Pet usage: Several stages benefit greatly from a pet, however there are instances in which a pet poorly managed can be a problem.

Easy to read List for a great EK group[]

Medic[2]

Commando[2-4] Or any other DPS proffesion [Spies, bounty hunters ETC.]

Light Side Jedi[1]

Officer[1]

Phase 1: The Open Hand of Hate[]

"A marathon, not a sprint"
The main boss = The Open Hand of Hate (TOHH)

Part One - taking out the cultists[]

Have a look around the room - you will see 8 inactive NPCs called "Exar Kun Cultists", as well as The Open Hand of Hate - ready to be attacked.

To trigger the instance, Jedi tank will attack The Open Hand of Hate. The Jedi can use what specials they like, although they'll most likely just focus on basic attacks and keeping themselves healed, with one of the medics healing him. The Jedi should keep The Open Hand of Hate in the spot he starts at, as best as they can. Some running around may be required, but try not to take The Open Hand of Hate near the group as they will be using AOE and you don't want to lose aggro.

The 8 inactive "Exar Kun Cultists" will become attackable, one at a time. It is the job of the group to kill these Cultists as fast as possible. They're fairly easy, just have the group attack them with everything they have. With the Jedi & The Open Hand of Hate over the other side of the room, the group is free to spam away on the cultists as they become active.

Whilst all this is taking place, you will see some green circles of energy fall from the ceiling and land on the floor. As you kill more cultists, they fall faster and more often. Standing in these green circles will hurt - they will attack you with "Static Shock" - similar to the circles of fire in Axkva Min. If you receive the de-buff "Static Cling" (which has the graphic of "Electrified") then these Static Shocks will target you.

Part Two - taking out TOHH[]

The group needs to be very disciplined on this stage. The most success I've seen is when the group has not used special attacks. Attacks which mitigate the damage or defenses of the target (e.g. a Spy's Flash Bang, Smuggler's Pistol Whip etc) are fine - just do not use any major damage dealing specials.

The "Static Cling" de-buffs and green energy circles continue, and now you'll encounter another de-buff, which looks like Commando's "Base of Operations", called "Shared Pain".

Now, when the group is attacking The Open Hand of Hate, the entire group will take damage which is proportional to your DPS on him - hence the reason to only use basic DPS. However, group members who have the "Shared Pain" de-buff will recieve an amplified amount of damage. At least 1 group member will always have this de-buff. So if someone fires a special, this will hurt the group member.

As stated, constant medic healing is required here, but the group members need to take some responsibility as well - if a player's health is very low, the best thing you can do to help is simply stop shooting for a few seconds, and wait until the Medic has had a chance to heal the player. This is really a balancing act if anything. Keeping an eye on the group is what keeps the group alive. Be kind to your medics and to your companions - if you see someone low on health, just stop firing.... if it takes a couple of extra minutes to kill this boss because you're being cautious, that is far more desireable than 10 minutes worth of re-buffing and travelling back to the instance.

BEAST MASTERS: Set your pets to "passive" - if they're "breaking away" they'll attack the The Open Hand of Hate and cause un-wanted damage to you and your group!

DARK JEDI: If you're the only tank in here, you might as well use the Stance - using Force Drain is only going to hurt you so go into Stance and just use basic hits.

MULTIPLE COMMANDOS: Coordinate using different Heavy Weapons to maximize your damage potential.

Phase 2: The Minder of Weak Wills[]

Minder-of-weak-wills — Minder of Weak Wills

A new corridor will open to you. There's 6 "Tomb Flier" bat-type NPC's to kill, very easy, then you will see 3 named bosses:

Vin'rith (bat)- 255k health
Mother Luresh (skreeg/monkey) - 355k health
Minder of Weak Wills (MWW) - 623k health

Part One - taking out Vin'rith and Mother Luresh[]

Have your Jedi/tank aggro The Minder of Weak Wills.

Stasis the monkey, and everyone focus on the bat. (Incidentally, you can do this the other way around, I've found it makes little difference).

Whilst you're killing these two, tomb flier bats and skreegs will spawn - ignore them and let the AoE take care of them. Officers and Commandos are great on this phase, but basically any profession with AoE, use it!

You'll find that the NPC's can give you an action disease. Its very useful if you have a skill to remove DoTs - specifically disease. For Spies - have Run Its Course in your template for this section, for Officers - Environmental Purge.

MEDICS: Try and keep an eye on people sustaining the action disease. It reduces their action very quickly and can really take them out of the fight - use "Cure Affliction" as soon as you spot this on a group member.

OFFICERS: This phase is a "Superior Fire" moment - none of the bosses hit particularly hard, but shifting the spawns of tomb-fliers and skreegs quickly is essential! Using Superior Fire from the start shouldn't get you into too much trouble

COMMANDOS: Like with Officers, this is time to unleash as much AoE damage as possible, and its a good place for Position Secured to conserve action. Use a fast stacking DoT and Plasma mines for the bats and skreegs that spawn.

WARNING: The Mother Luresh NPC can become unattackable/invulnerable if she is not defeated quickly (potentially within 2-3 minutes).
If the NPC can not be defeated, player access to subsequent stages of the encounter is gated. This is not by design, and will be addressed in a future publish or hotfix. We do not have an ETA at this time. (source Knowledge Base 21098)

Part Two - taking out MWW[]

Very simple, just fire everything you have on the final boss. Should be easy enough
Killing this boss the first time activates a collection.

Phase 3: The Caretaker of Lost Souls[]

Caretaker-of-the-lost — Caretaker of the Lost

Caretaker-protector — Caretaker Protector

Have a look around the room and get a feel for your surroundings.

You will see the main boss, The Caretaker of Lost Souls (COLS) in the middle. You will see an inactive NPC, The Executioner (Exec) towards the right - go and stand near him. You will also see upon the platforms at either side of the room, 4 Caretaker Protectors (protectors). There are more names to learn as well...this is a complex phase.

Part One - CPT[]

As per usual the Jedi/tank will aggro the main boss, COLS, to start the instance. However, unlike the other phases, the Jedi/tank will not go and tank COLS. Instead, the entire group should stand near the inactive executioner. Throughout the instance, they should never enter the central square of the room.

Once COLS is active, 3 new NPC's will spawn. These are:

Calming Influence (C)
Pain Bringer (P)
Tomb Guardian (T)

They'll have a tendency to attack your medics. So it is important that your tanks - be they Jedi, BH or Commandos - are quick to pick up the aggro of them. I would strongly advise that a player is assigned to pick up the aggro of each NPC.

Then, you should all focus on one NPC at a time. Typically, you'll kill them in order of C - P - T.

So once the aggro is safely off the Medics, everyone should focus on kill C, then P, then T as fast as possible.

Once dispatched, you will see 2 spatial messages - the first will be a prisoner saying they think they know a way out of the room. The second is COLS instructing his execution to go and kill the prisoner. You will get this system message in yellow text - this is an indication to the group that the Executioner is "live".

So, Exec will become attackable. He will move slowly around the room towards the prisoners. You must kill him asap. When he's down to roughly 1/6th health, he will reset and go back to his starting position.

As for COLS, he only fires an attack in between every CPT spawn, otherwise he's fairly dormant until the end.

SMUGGLERS: Pistol Whip is very useful for this - because he cannot be snared, or statis'd, but he can be Pistol Whipped. He won't attack you back. However, should he reach a prisoner, he'll kill the prisoner. 4 dead prisoners = instance fail.

Once you've stopped Exec, a Protector will become attackable - someone will have to aggro him with a ranged weapon which will bring him towards the group.

Now its rinse and repeat, however, the instance is not so kind to necessarily wait for you to kill certain bosses before the others re-spawn. As you're killing your first Protector, CPT will spawn again. If you have enough DPS, you should be able to kill them before the Exec becomes active again. Then you'll get a second Protector become attackable. Things will really start to cross-over after that. You'll have CPT spawning whilst the Exec is active - which is dangerous as your group will be getting hurt, but you'll have to focus on stopping the Exec so as not to fail the quest.

After your 4th Protector is dead, you are done with the Executioner, and on to the main boss.

I would advise that when the 4th Protector goes live, you do not attack it, at first. No matter how fast you kill it, you'll get another spawn of CPT - so I'd wait for them to come, kill them first, then dispatch the Protector. It means you have less to worry about on the next section...

Part Two - taking out COLS[]

The instant your 4th Protector dies, you will see some green gas emerge in the center of the room. It will spread from the center towards your group. Co-ordination is key here.

The best method to survive is to nominate a Medic to follow. This medic will walk around the room. Decide in advance if you're going to walk clockwise or counter-clockwise. The entire group must keep pace with the Medic, as in, stand on top of them. Not slightly ahead, not slightly behind, but on top of them.

What will happen is the gas will aim for the group, but, it is slow. So if you walk slowly around the room, it will never catch up to you. It lingers in place, so if someone was to run around the room too quickly, they would catch up to it. The gas will pretty much equal instant death... so you can't afford to get this wrong if you intend to live.

COLS should now be attacked. I would stick on auto-fire while you get your bearings. He has a number of special attacks that will hurt:

Vengeful Aura (kinetic AoE ~1k damage)
Lifesap (electrical 5k+ damage)
Energy Storm (electrical 5k+ damage)
Break of Kun

As a spy, you'll find yourself using Avoid Damage (if you have it), and cloaking occasionally to get a cloaked heal. Once your team has sychronized their walking around the room, keep a constant DPS going. You'll want to keep your action pool high enough to perform a couple of heals should you take a big hit. It will take a while to kill COLS, but if your full group has managed to survive to this point, you shouldn't struggle.

BEAST MASTERS: When the first 2 Protectors spawn, they're out of range of the group - use your pets to gather them over to the group.

Phase 4: The Clenched Fist of Hate[]

Part One - Tomb Guardians[]

You'll encounter 6 Gold Tomb Guardians to kill before you reach the boss. You can take them on 2 at a time, no problem. You will cross a bridge to reach the final 2 Tomb Guardians, then you'll see the boss.

Part Two - The Clenched Fist of Hate (CFH)[]

As per usual, the Jedi/tank will begin the instance by attacking CFH. I prefer that a commando (or DSJ with Guardian set) does the tanking on this boss, since they generally have the better DPS which will enable the group to unleash a lot of their specials without risk of the tank losing aggro.

The two medics will have a healing order worked out with the tank.

It is important that the tank maintains aggro throughout the instance. I would advise giving them several seconds (upto 10 seconds) to build up a substantial level of hate from CFH. Specials that Stun or mitigate the damage of CFH are extremely desireable here.

Once CFH has lost about 1/8th health, the group should be safe to unleash as much damage as they can.

During this fight, you can be affected by 2 debuffs.

The first, after CFH fires "Immolation", sets you on fire. The tank / player with primary aggro, will not get this debuff. Everyone else, at some point, is likely to....sometimes several times. The debuff icon is fire. You will be on fire. It is surprisingly easy to not notice you're on fire. I would keep a constant watch of your own buff bar to see when you're on fire. It can take mere seconds for this fire to kill you, however, its easy to deal with if you spot it - simply move around the room... head back across the bridge away from the action whilst it wears off, but do not stand still.

Tiny problem. if you run around the room, you will set the room on fire. If you run over another player, you will set them on fire. So all you need to do is carefully move away from where you were stood and away from the action - no running around like a headless chicken! If you're a medic, run around the area where TFH is. If you're anyone else, run back across the bridge. Flames will eventually subside, and you can get back to work.

The other debuff you can receive is called Grevious Wound. The tank can get this debuff. It basically causes you to take damage when you use action. So clearly, if you spam a load of specials for its duration, you'll hurt yourself.

This phase is simple if done correctly, but with so much potential to go horribly wrong if not! Similar to the first boss, its a marathon not a sprint - no-one should be spamming specials right from the start or they risk taking the aggro off the tank, and this is very hard to recover from.

COMMANDOS: Use "Position Secured" but be ready to switch it off if you set on fire!

MEDICS: Make sure you've got your heal order figured out between yourself, the other Medics, and the tank!

Phase 5: The 4 Horsemen[]

The last room of EK is difficult, especially if you don't make certain you are melee/ranged weapons on the correct enemy, but if done with this in mind, isn't a problem.

There will be 4 bosses lined up in front of you. From left to right they are:

Lingering Harmony (Harmony - can only be killed with melee attacks, gets stronger from ranged.)
Promised Vengeance (Vengeance - can only be killed with ranged attacks, gets stronger from melee)
Unquenchable Wrath (Wrath - can only be killed with ranged attacks, gets stronger from melee)
Embraced Chaos (Chaos - can only be killed with melee attacks, gets stronger from ranged)

Lingering Harmony & Embraced Chaos - Tanking

2 Players, normally Jedi, will stand at either end of the room.

One will aggro Harmony, the other will aggro Chaos. They will attack with only standard melee hits. So long as no ranged attacks are used, these NPC's will not deal much damage. Ranged attacks will give him a huge buff. Once aggro'd, Harmony and Chaos will run between the 2 Jedi. There's a reason for this. The Jedi should not move - they'll play tennis with the 2 NPCs, hitting whichever one runs towards them. If you're short on tanks, the bosses here don't hit too hard, you could try using a Medic.

Unquenchable Wrath - Tanking, Healing

One player, who must have all elemental weaponry, will aggro Wrath. He can only be killed with Ranged attacks. Melee attacks will give him a huge buff. Once aggro'd, an elemental ward will appear on his toolbar and yours; that will be either Fire, Cold, Acid or Electricity. It is active 10 seconds. During this time, you must use the corresponding elemental weapon. You can spam whatever specials you like so long as you're using the correct elemental weapon.

5 seconds before the current ward is due to expire, you see flashing on the NPC's toolbar what the next ward will be. So you always know what weapon type to switch to next. The ward elemental types cross over - so you can switch to the next weapon type before the current one has expired. You should have one of the medics focus on healing the person who is doing the elemental switch on Unquenchable. Finding a medic that can also do the weapon switch along with the person they are healing is very useful at times. Should the main person go down, the aggro will go to the medic who can pick up with the weapon switch. The second medic will then need to rez the main person as the medic doing the weapon switch will be unable to do both. The medic is not a good choice for the main person doing the weapon switch simply because they do not do much DPS and it takes longer for unquenchable to die, but a medic as a backup can save the whole group from dying and having to start the room over.

With a little practice, this is quite easy. I have my elemental weaponry on hot-keys so I just have to press one of four buttons to switch to whatever elemental is coming next. Alternatively you can setup a blank toolbar with just 4 weapons on it. Just make sure when you're changing weapon, it does actually change - a good tip is to click twice (since you can't un-equip a weapon in combat, only switch).

Its crucial this part is done correctly, because if not, the NPC does 40,001 damage to whoever has his aggro!

However - only the person who has his aggro need do the elemental swapping. I would suggest once the boss has lost 1/4th health, others can join in to help speed up the process - so long as they never take aggro.

MEDICS: If the person with the primary aggro of the Unquenchable Wrath dies, use Stasis on the boss ASAP and rez the player! Otherwise, guess what - you're next in line for a hit of 40,001 damage! However, if you are set up to do the weapon switch, as discussed above, you will not need to stasis and can continue attacking Unquenchable, you will easily survive until the main person can be rez'd by the other medic.

COMMANDOS: Commandos are well-suited to this role. With great defense and offense, they can make a massive dent in this boss. You do not need to worry about passive DoT application - DoTs can tick on this boss and not wipe you - you only need to ensure you have the correct weapon equipped.

Promised Vengeance - Tanking, Killing

The remainder of the group will DPS Promised Vengeance. Keep in mind that Promised can only be killed with ranged weapons and any hits from a melee weapon will give him a huge buff. The group should use specials but need to be very careful with AoE - if their AoE is to hit the Unquenchable Wrath, they risk drawing its aggro and getting a 40,001 hit! This is why its a bit of a tricky part for Commandos and Officers - who will need to ensure that if they are using AoE, it is well out of range of the Unquenchable Wrath.

This boss hits the hardest out of all 4, so you'll want a Commando or BH as your tank here.

Unquenchable Wrath - Killing

Normally the Promised Vengeance will die before the Unquenchable Wrath. By this time, your player controlling the aggro of Unquenchable Wrath should have built up a good level of hate to ensure that they'll retain aggro. So you can begin attacking Unquenchable Wrath as well, and do not need to worry about what elemental weaponry you use. If the player controlling its aggro hasn't caused much damage, then hold back on damage so that you don't steal the aggro (and if you do, 40,001 damage to you...). Otherwise if its lost a lot of health, feel free to go all out.

Lingering Harmony & Embraced Chaos - Killing

With Vengeance and Wrath down, everyone switches to Melee. The Jedi should still be at either end of the room, with Harmony and Chaos running between them. The remainding group members can split up so that at either side of the room, there's 2 groups of 4 players.

As you attack an NPC, he will build up resistance to your attacks. You will see this in the form of a debuff on your toolbar. After you've hit him for about 10 seconds, this resistance goes up to 100%, IE, you can't really hurt him anymore with direct attacks (however elemental damage gets through). To lower the buff, you simply attack the other NPC. So if you become 100% resistance to Harmony, attacking Chaos will reduce it back down to zero, then you will start to build up resistance to Chaos.

Since Harmony and Chaos are running from one end to the other, and the group members will essentially stay still, you shouldn't build up too much resistance to either, and their health should drop more or less equally. If one of their health bars is dropping significantly faster, the group should do less DPS to that NPC, so that their health levels begin to even up. Inevitably one will die before the other, but if the remaining NPC has a lot of health left, it will build up 100% resistance to your direct attacks...elemental damage will still get through but it will take a little time to kill. So killing them at the same time, or as close to as is possible, is the best method.

Now - if this doesn't go according to plan, and either Harmony or Chaos die long before the other one does, you will find that you're doing very little damage to the remaining boss. The debuff you have will say he's mitigating 100% of your damage, but a fraction gets through. There's an easy solution - stop attacking. It will take 2 minutes for the debuff to wear off, but if you stop attacking, it will reset to 0%. It will of course, quickly re-built to 100% but by this time its likely you'll have dealt enough damage to kill of the boss.

Phase 6: Wordbearer[]

The Exar Kun Wordbearer will spawn. He has some nasty area attacks so if you're not a tank, just shoot him from range. Everyone but the tank should go up on the stage. This NPC hits real hard so let your tank do the tanking, you don't want to spoil it all by stealing aggro and wiping at this point! He shouldn't cause too much trouble, but, those green "Static Shock" energy circles will start to fall around the room again, so don't lose concentration. If you are on the stage you don't have to worry about the green "static shock" energy circles. At about 1/8th health, he'll de-spawn.

Phase 7: Massassi Blade & Exar Kun[]

Exar Kun will spawn, he doesn't really hit very hard - anyone is capable of tanking him.

An actual floating sword, the Massassi Blade, will also spawn. Have the group fire everything they have, kill the Blade first then Exar Kun. Neither is of much trouble.

If he goes down, everyone in the group and in the instance will get a bonus of +1 to Evasion Chance, with a maximum stacked bonus of +10, and an Exar Kun Token of Heroism.

The Exar Kun Heroic Loots[]

An Exar Kun Fresco
Exar Kun Mural - Extremely rare drop
Replica of Exar Kun Brazier Schematic
Replica of Exar Kun Torture Table Schematic
Replica of Exar Kun Table Schematic
Massassi Guardian Carbine Schematic
Massassi Enforcer Blade Schematic
Exar Kun Torch
Exar Kun Floor Claw
Exar Kun Ceiling Claw
Exar Kun Roots 1
Exar Kun Roots 2
Exar Kun Roots 3
Exar Kun Roots 4

Collection Items

Storyteller Tokens

Rare Junk Loots

Credits: TheRockStar, Spy Senator