NOTE: This news is out-dated; if you’re after information on the Bloodfire Strongholds, please refer to the more updated [Guide: Bloodfire Strongholds] article.
The recent 510MB PTS update showed off the Bloodfire Strongholds in 2.6, amongst other things. This article provides further details and screenshots about this concept.
Summary:
- There are 7 Bloodfire Stronghold Bosses (6 encounters).
- There’s Level 15, 30 and 60 versions.
- They require an Infernal Conduit to summon gained from completing a Bloodfire Behemoth Zone Event.
- They drop Burning Cores used to upgrade a “Torrid Ember”. Upgrading it 50 times turns the Torrid Ember into a Magma Walker mount.
Please Note that as this is PTS, everything is subject to change/fixes/improvements.
The Portal
A Portal has spawned off the coast of Silverwood near Sanctum and in Freemarch near Meridian.
This is a Stronghold Portal that sends you to the Stronghold instance (Infernal Dawn Fire path). You need an Infernal Conduit in your inventory in order to be able to enter the portal with your group/raid.
The Quest
You’ll find an Icewatch Scout NPC near the Stronghold Portal who will give you a quest to collect an Infernal Conduit. Once you have successfully done so and entered the Stronghold Portal, you will receive a ‘diamond icon’ reward with a Torrid Ember (Level 1) item and Eternal Crystallized Insight (PA XP).
The Mount: Magma Walker
The Torrid Ember (Level 1) can be upgraded to Level 50 where it is converted into a Magma Walker Mount . You need an item called Burning Core to upgrade the Torrid Ember. Burning Core drops from Bloodfire Stronghold bosses.
Although not shown in the preview, this is likely to have a Fire-based glow effect, according to the follow datamined file:
Infernal Conduit
You obtain an Infernal Conduit by completing a Bloodfire Behemoth Zone Event. These zone events can occur in almost any zone and mainly involve finding the zone event boss and defeating him.
The Infernal Conduit is a requirement to enter through the Stronghold Portal into the Bloodfire Stronghold Instance.
You can use an endless amount of Infernal Conduits whilst in the Bloodfire Stronghold Instance – so if you are allowed to bring in a raid of 20 players, it might be beneficial to do so (as you’ll have – hopefully – at least 20 Infernal Conduits to use).
The Bloodfire Strongholds
The Bloodfire Stronghold instance is within Infernal Dawn’s Maelforge encounter location. It is officially named “The Bloodfire Tear”.
The Areas
There’s 3 locations where you can summon the Bloodfire Strongholds.
- Maelforge’s starting location during Eggs encounter which has Level 15 bosses.
- Up the stairs to the right is a portal that sends you to an area not used during Infernal Dawn that summons Level 30 bosses.
- Up the stairs to the left is a portal that sends you to the top final area of the Maelforge encounter with Level 60 bosses.
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The Portals
Each Area has a portal or two that ports you to the other areas. You are auto-mentored down to the level of the area. So if it is an area for Level 15s, you’ll be auto-mentored down to Level 15.
The Bosses
The Bloodfire Strongholds themselves are not like the Strongholds in The Dendrome. Instead, they are boss fights – no add phases, just boss fights (and any adds that are part of the boss fight).
There are 7 bosses that you can fight in Level 15, Level 30 or Level 60:
- Charr’Denor
- Cinduryun
- Melidrak
- Pyrongryo
- Renak Ladne
- Swarmlord Ilodron
- Warlord De’Ator
Below is a preview of some of the bosses. Note that some mechanics aren’t working properly or require damage adjustments before these bosses hit Live.
Swarmlord Ilodron
A Spider boss that hides and summons adds called “Illodron’s Brood” every now and then. Doesn’t seem to deal much damage or anything to worry about at present.
Cinduryun & Pyrongyro
This is a twins fight with two mechanical constructs. Cinduryun and Pyrongyro.
Imbue Power
These an interrupt mechanic for both bosses where they’ll emote something like “Cinduryun concentrates his power on Pyrongyro!” which provides a buff to the boss, increasing the boss’ out-going damage dealt by 25% and reduces damage taken by 15% per stack.
Javelin
They will occasionally cast “Javelin” at a random player that does AoE damage in a red AoE bubble.
Balance Unbalanced
There looks to also be a % hp twins mechanic like other twins fights where if they are too different in hp they’ll gain stacks of outgoing damage called “Balance Unbalanced”. 10% damage increase per stack.
Pyrongyro raises his blade!
Pyrongyro will emote “Pyrongyro raises his blade!”. He will aim at a random player and charge towards them dealing ~30% damage.
Firestorm
One of them – in our case Cinduryun – casts “Firestorm” with the emote “Cinduryun calls down a firestorm!”. This creates two swirling Fire vortexes that moves around the place. Interestingly they lasted ~2 seconds – probably a bug.
Raging Flame
Pyrongyro casts a Raging Flame Channel at his location. Apparently supposed to deal damage but we didn’t see any. Probably bugged.
Resurrect
If one of the Twins dies, he’ll resurrect to full hp. You’ll still get the kill for that boss – you just need to kill the other boss for both to stay dead. Be extra careful of this. You want the bosses to die at nearly the same time because once one resurrects, their hp difference will be such that “Balance Unbalanced” 10% out-going damage buff stacks on the bosses will start stacking at a rapid pace.
Melidrak
Melidrak is a fire-based forest drake (if that makes any sense). The Level 62 version had 3.3mil hp.
Melidrak Flame
He does a fire-breath attack with emote “Melidrak inhales deeply…”. During testing it didn’t do much damage. Bugged damage.
Melidrak’s Tear
Melidrak’s Tears are the yellow orbs that spawn around Melidrak. They provide a 5% damage boost per stack but also deals ~3k damage to you when you pick them up (by running over them).
Melidrak’s Seed
At around 20% he flew up into the air and casted Melidrak’s Seed, spawning a Level 15 fire crystal on the ground with 1,369 hp. Tooltip states: “An ember laid by Melidrak that will grow into a Ward of Melidrak after 8 seconds. Takes 90% more damage from attacks while growing.
Unfortunately we defeated him before the Melidrak’s Seed could grow; and the Level 15 part sounds like a bug.
Renak Ladne
A pirate like ole’ Rusila Dreadblade! She starts off with an add “Renak’s Cinderling”. Level 62 version had 2.5M hp.
Suffocating Sphere
Everyone gets a reactive called “Suffocating Sphere”. Tooltip: “Burn out the oxygen in a small area preventing the reignition of Renak’s Cinderlings. Lasts 10s.” 30sec CD, oGCD.
Basically, Renake’s Cinderlings (she generally has 2) will continuously respawn unless they die whilst within a Suffocating Sphere. These Spheres you can drop at your location and they appear as a blue sphere.
Scorched Earth
Random players gain a ring around them with the Scorched Earth debuff. It is a Red-ish ring. Those with the Scorched Earth ring will deal damage to those with the Flash Point ring. Deals around 1.6k damage per tick.
Flash Point
Random players gain a ring around them with the Flash Point debuff. It is a white ring. Those with the Flash Point ring will deal damage to those with the Scorched Earth Ring. Deals around 1.6k damage per tick.
Dark Energy
Renak will emote “Renak Ladne begins to channel dark energy into the ground. This hits the entire party/raid for several ticks of ~3k damage.
Roaring Flame
“Renak begins to siphon power from her cinderlings….” is emoted during the channel. For every Cinderling that is alive, she gains a 5% out-going damage increase per stack.
Burning Shroud
Occasionally you’ll get a ‘Burning Shroud’ debuff that – according to the tooltip – deals 25,087 Fire damage each second, per stack. However it only did 1,853 damage per tick to me, so I’m assuming this is a tooltip error and it’s 25,087 Fire damage over the entire course of the debuff.
Charr’Denor
Charr’Denor (aka “Charred Dinner”) is a mechanical construct with a shield mechanic.
Swirling Smoke
She has a 10-stack shield on her that “Shields the Black Lord from all damage.” You need to pick up orbs and use the reactive on her to destroy the shields.
Rolling Ash
This is an AoE attack on a random player. Once the AoE lands, an orb will appear with a blue AoE that you need to pick up. The orb is called Decaying Smoke.
Decaying Smoke
When you pick up an orb that lands after Rolling Ash, you’ll get Decaying Smoke. You get both a debuff and a reactive.
Debuff Tooltip: “Deals incoming Death damage each second. Removed when Decaying Smoke is used on The Black Lord.”
Reactive Tooltip: “Can be used to remove Swirling Smoke from Charr’Denor. Increases damage taken by Charr’Denor by 10% per use, if Charr’Denor is not affected by Swirling Smoke.” Melee Range, oGCD.
Note: Currently on the PTS this reactive doesn’t work.
Legionnaire Adds
She will emote “Charr’Denor shouts, “Legionnaires! Deal with these fools!”” and this will summon two Charred Legionnaires. If you don’t kill the adds they’ll eventually overwhelm you (since she spawns 2 at a time, and doesn’t wait for the previous 2 to die before she summons more).
Charred Blast
This is similar to the other Blast mechanics (a rectangular bowling-alley AoE with a fast-moving wave). Avoid it.
Other Mechanics
If there are any other mechanics they are unknown at this point. Dev_MikeD had to force-kill her because the shield-removing ability “Decaying Smoke” wasn’t working.
Further Information
Well that’s what we’ve seen thus far from the Bloodfire Stronghold. I’ll update some more if we can poke around for some of the remaining Bloodfire Stronghold bosses. If you want to know more about what Patch 2.6 holds for RIFT, check out the following articles:
RiftGrate 
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