Forked Tower: Blood

What is the Forked Tower: Blood?

Forked Tower: Blood is the first iteration of high-end large-scale raiding content, that’s normally seen in Field Ops, for the Occult Crescent. Inside this half of the tower are dangerous foes, hidden traps, fiendish bosses, and most importantly… LOOT! Namely Forked Tower allows players to complete their occult record books they’ve been keeping up with. As well as upgrade their Arcanaut’s gear to the +2 version with Sanguinite, this raid’s unique currency earned from chests all inside.

The raid consistent of multiple encounters some of which are bosses, others are more puzzle-like, or require players to traverse dangerous pathways. In order of appearance the raid plays out as follows:

Demon Tablet
Hallways
Dead Stars
Bridges
Marble Dragon
Lockwards
Magitaur

Similar with Baldesian Aresenal in Eureka - being made to return out of Forked Tower while dead will force players to lose Knowledge XP and subsequently level down to 19. So be warned! This content is punishing! Though, re-leveling is more tedious than anything. Getting back to level 20 requires doing at least 1 CE after patch 7.4’s changes to XP loss on return. The biggest loss here is the time of waiting to re-enter Forked Tower.

Limited Raising and Lives

While in Forked Tower: Blood a Resurrection Restricted debuff will be placed on participants. This debuff starts at three stacks and act as your “lives” while inside the Forked Tower. After you die and then accept a raise, you will lose one stack of debuff ( or “lifes/lives” here on). When reaching 1 life, dying, and accepting another raise - your Ressurection Restricted will turn into a Ressurection Denied.

From this point onwards, your next death is premanent. No method of raising can revive you and you are required to return out to Base Camp and causing you to level down. Don’t worry though, getting back to level 20 is just 1 CE away (or gold farming a little bit).

The methods in which you can be raised are limited. So far, there are only two methods in which you can be raised are

Phantom Chemist with the Raise ability (unlocked at level 3)
Healer Limit Break 3.

Both methods will consume 1 life and the healer limit break 3 does not circumvent the resurrection denied status.

Required Phantom Jobs

The list of actually mandatory phantom jobs is really short. You just need a two time mages, thieves, bards, geomancers, and a single berserker for specific mechanics/sections. However, there are other jobs that aren’t “required” but will definitely make your experience much easier. In no particular order the following phantom jobs are strongly encouraged to be brought.

List and Explanation of Useful Phantom Jobs

Phantom Time Mage: A required phantom job to complete Forked Tower: Blood. Needed for dispelling specific adds at Demon Tablet, Bridges, and Lockwards. Can also slow a majority of adds throughout Forked Tower.
Phantom Geomancer: A required phantom job to complete Forked Tower: Blood. Uses Levitate to walk over hazards during Hallways and the Bridges encounter. Also uses Battle Bell to buff an individual’s damage (namely main tanks, berserkers). You can see more about Battle Bell timings on the in-depth phantom job guides page
Phantom Bard: A required phantom job to complete Forked Tower: Blood. Helps increase a party’s damage with Offensive Aria and Hero’s Rime. Noteably uses Romeo’s Ballad to stun the Tower Idols during the Bridges encounter. If left unstunned, the Tower Idols will instantly wipe the group with Ancient Aero 3.
Phantom Thief: A required phantom job to complete Forked Tower: Blood. Percepts hidden traps and opens locked/hidden passages to help the group earn more Sanguinite. Also uses Pilfer Weapon to remove a buff off an enemy during Lockwards. You can learn more about percepting on the in-depth phantom job guides page
Phantom Berserker: A required phantom job to complete Forked Tower: Blood. Used at Magitaur to kill the purple canister with their Rage ability to avoid being afflicted with Hysteria for 60 seconds. A massive DPS carry job if allowed to play into Rage’s gimmick of taking damage to deal more damage. You can see more about Rage mit and timings on the in-depth phantom job guides page
Phantom Chemist: This is your only method of raising outside of Healer Limit Break 3. Progression groups are reccomended to bring a LOT of these for safety.
Phantom Knight: Provides a 10% damage mitigation for 30 minutes when using Pray near a knowledge crystal. Knights are also used to tank bosses, adds, and sometimes clear out traps with Pledge. Noteably knights are great at taking the Marble Dragon “Dread Deluge” with Guard and the Magitaur Cannister’s “Arcane Recoil” with Guard or Pledge.
Phantom Ranger: Can safely detonate/pop traps (hidden or visible) with Occult Falcon. Commonly used to pop the unstable/mega traps hidden throughout, especially on Bridges, so players can safely move around.
Phantom Dancer: Free damage increase to the entire raid’s damage through Mesmerize’s similarly named debuff. Can also increase their party’s damage by 2% when using Quickstep near a knowledge crystal. Mesmerize does not stack with cannoneer’s Silver Sickness.
Phantom Cannoneer: An a lternative to Phantom Dancer. Increases the raid’s damage by 5% with Silver Shot inflicting Silver Sickness. Mesmerize and Silver Sickness do not stack and will overwrite each other.
Phantom Mystic Knight: Free 5% damage increase to the entire raid’s damage through Blazing Spellblade’s Blazing Bane. Blazing Bane can stack with Mesmerize or Silver Sickness.
Phantom Samurai: Majority of players should be on this phantom job as it’s the highest, most consistent DPS phantom job currently available. Using Zeninage in 2 minute bursts along with Iainuki whenever its available. Iainuki can also be used in the Hallways and Lockwards sections to have a 10% chance to instantly kill a mob when hit.
Oracle, Monk, and Gladiator: More DPS options but they require more work or babysitting to be effective phantom jobs. Phantom Samurai is by far the easiest option for 99% of cases, but agruments can be made for the power that these three jobs can bring. Feel free to check out the specific section on the in-depth phantom job guides page to learn more.

Alliance and Party Set Ups

These lists are more catered to prog-type groups. If you are in reclears or speedrun modes you lists can and will look much more different than these. Ideally anyone who is not on a main role should be playing a DPS oriented phantom job to help make beating enrages easier.

Required

You should have one of these in alliances ABC and 123 due to mechanics that split the raid into two alliances. Back ups are encouraged just in case one perma-dies in prog.

Phantom Thief (one per side)
Phantom Geomancer (one per side)
Phantom Time Mage (one per side)
Phantom Bard (one per side)
Phantom Berserker (Only one is required for the whole raid)

Strongly Encouraged

These are really, really nice to have to either reduce damage taken, increase the party’s damage, increase damage for whole raid, or make the hallways just a little safer.

Phantom Knight (one per party)
Phantom Bard (one per party)
Phantom Chemist (one per party)
Phantom Ranger (one per side)
Phantom Dancer (one per whole group)
Phantom Mystic Knight (one per whole group)

If not assigned a key role…

You should be playing Phantom Samurai. It is the easiest and most consistent source of damage due to Iainuki and Zeninage being so powerful. Phantom Monk is a strong DPS option too! However it suffers from having the 15y kick. If you play Phantom Monk please exercise large amounts of caution when pressing Phantom Kick.

Preparing for Forked Tower: Blood

Getting ready to enter Forked Tower: Blood requires you to complete a list of objectives before even considering entering the Forked Tower.

Complete the “Past and Crescent” quest just past the point of completing the “Calamity Bound” Critical Encounter.
Reach Knowledge Level 20
Obtain a Sanguine Cipher(s) (purchased with either Silver or Gold pieces) from the Expedition Antiquarian
- Everyone is required to offer a cipher to enter Forked Tower: Blood.
Fully level (or “master”) a few different Phantom Jobs to fully unlock their kits and gain a few stacks of Phantom Mastery.
- At a minimum you should master one phantom job before attempting Forked Tower.
(Optional) Obtain a few pieces of Arcanaut’s gear for your preferred role(s).

For a list of phantom jobs to focus on leveling, please consult the image below.

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Entering Forked Tower: Blood

Forked Tower: Blood can only be entered during Auroral Mirages weather. These mirages are a brief 5 minute period in which the South Horn turns an eerie red and the Forked Tower is just barely visible in the North West corner of the area. Auroral Mirages appear in a random, yet predictable, manner.

Forked Tower: Blood Spawn Mechanics

Under the hood there is a hidden timer. In a fresh, new instance this timer starts at 5 minutes. In an existing instance, meaning the first Auroral Mirages has already passed, the timer begins at 60 minutes instead. This will slowly tick down until zero and then check for some extra conditions to be met. If met, mirages will appear and Forked Tower will open for recruitment. This timer can also be reduced by completing FATEs and Critical Encounters.

Completeing FATEs (Pots included) will reduce the timer by 1 minute.
Completeing Critical Encounters will reduce the timer by 5 minutes.

Once this timer has elapsed, a few more checks are made before the zone switches into Auroral Mirages.

There are at least 24 people of Knowledge Level 20 in the instance.
There are at least 24 people with Forked Tower: Blood unlocked
- This can be done by progressing past the “Past and Crescent” quest.
There are no critical encounter currently recruiting or in progress.
- If you are in an pre-organized group, do not spawn any critical encounter as you will delay the tower spawning.

If these three conditions are NOT met, the timer will ‘pause’ in its elapsed state until the conditions are all met—which causes the mirages to spawn instantly.

How to get into Forked Tower: Blood

24 unique players must offer Sanguine Ciphers to the reliquary during the Auroral Mirages weather. This weather window only lasts 5 minutes long so please be hasty about inputting your ciphers!

If the 24 unique cipher minimum is met at the 5 minute recruitment period: the pad will glow even brighter and everyone on the pad, up to a total of 48 people who also offered ciphers, will be teleported into Forked Tower: Blood after roughly 30 more seconds.
If there are more than 48 ciphers offered, the people who offered enough ciphers to meet the “Offering Threshold” in the Cipher UI will be guaranteed entry.
- All other spots, if any remain, will be randomly selected from the people who offered any amount of ciphers.
- However, if less than 48 ciphers were offered, only those who offered ciphers will be allowed entry into Forked Tower.
You must be on the pavillion when teleportation occurs when given the “Right of Entry” buff to enter the Forked Tower. Else, you will not be teleported into the tower nor will you cipher(s) be refunded.

How the Cipher UI Works

In patch 7.3 we were given a brand new UI for the cipher reliquary! Most notably it adds a warning saying that Forked Tower is difficult content and informing players that coordination is required. Also there is a mention that entry is not guaranteed along with other statistics about:

You have offered: Amount you of ciphers you’ve offered.
Offering Threshold: The amount of ciphers in place to guaranteed an entry. You must offer that many ciphers plus one more to be guaranteed entry [Unconfirmed, Logical though]. This concludes we have a TIER based system similar to notoriety for duels.
Current Participants: Number of participants means there’s that many unique players offering ciphers.
Seeking Passage: The amount of people who have entered ciphers but do not have a guaranteed entry as they have put in a number of ciphers BELOW the offering threshold (2 in this case).
Remaining Places: Number of spots left that are guaranteed by meeting the offering threshold.
Priority Places: Number of people who have offered enough ciphers to garauntee entry (see the little yellow text below my offer amount).

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Pre-Organized Forked Tower Entry

Players can enter the South Horn in groups of 2-48 players. When entering as a group of 24 or more and assuming everyone meets the conditions listed below—the group will be placed in a private, locked instance of South Horn. No one can enter this instance for the next 10 minute period or whenever the first Auroral Mirages has passed. This help alleviates any stress a pre-organized group might have with getting everyone in their group into Forked Tower.

Private Instance Requirements

Group of 24 or larger queueing in together
24+ members are Knowledge Level 20 (or higher)
24+ members have progressed the quest “Past and Crescent” enough to have unlocked Forked Tower: Blood.

Setting up a Party Finder

It’s simple! Use the Party Finder UI under Alliance > Field Operations and set the activity to The Occult Crescent: South Horn! From there you can select which party to put yourself in and modify the party compositions by either right clicking to cycle through a normal Full Party (2 tanks, 2 healers, 4 DPS), an alliance raid full party (1 tank, 2 healers, 5 DPS), or completely open to any job regardless of role/combat. If you want to more finely tune a specific party you can left click one and hand select the specific role or jobs for that spot. This can be useful in anyprogs or free-for-all password drop runs where everyone rushes to join the party finder first.

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Alliance Level Editing

Shown is right click the various parties to change their inital make up

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Party Level Editing

For each individual spot in a party you can pick and choose which role or even down which specific jobs can join. Useful in an anyprog to ensure a 5% stat bonus for each party!

Also you can make spots free (allowing anyone of any job to join it) or completely omit the spot preventing anyone from joining it.

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Reminders Before Joining a Run

Ideally you do these before joining a party finder but its always good to stress them again and again…

Make sure you are Knowledge Level 20!
- You can confirm this by either talking to Jeffroy in the Phantom Village and asking to confirm level and currencies OR by entering the South Horn solo to check there instead. Both methods work as long as you confirm you are level 20.

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Ensure you have Ciphers!
- As of patch 7.3 anyone who wishes to enter Forked Tower: Blood must offer a Sanguine Cipher to the Reliquary to even be considered a possible entrant. This can be done in the same method by asking Jeffroy or entering South Horn.
Bring Food, Tinctures, and any Arcanaut’s gear you can get!
- Food is for viatility and extra substats, tinctures is for your openers and other burst windows if allowed, and Arcanaut’s gear is just a flat damage increase!

Once Inside South Horn

The group can feel free to do what they want until the weather changes into mirages—finding chests, getting ciphers, etc… Please just remind people to not die in awkward spots or really just avoid dying at all. Now is also a great time to check for level 19s if any managed to slip by. You can easily do a mini-gold farm on level 27 mobs in the South West to quick bring them back to level 20 if desired.

Marking Important Players

Each party can use head signs (head markings) to mark important players. This is good for especially phantom chemists so they can recognize each other in the case one dies or a wipe is happening and you need to chemist cheese to allow another pull.

Commonly it’s suggested to

Mark chemists with attack 1-8
Mark thiefs and/or rangers for your alliance with an ignore 1-2
Mark Bell Targets (main tanks, berserkers) with a bind 1-3