King's Fall's first serious boss test is hard-puzzling and hard-hitting. D, P and S are the letters of the day.

Down to business. You've had a taste of what King's Fall offers with the opening of the Basilica door, but now you're facing the first of the new Raid bosses.

The Warpriest fight is complex but not complicated, so don't be discouraged by what can appear at times to be an insurmountable task. As with the door puzzle, let's go through the mechanics and running order of the instance step-by-step before moving on to some practical tips.

Mechanics

• There are three plates (circles on the floor) central this this encounter: left, centre and right.
• The left plate is on a raised platform.
• You'll see three large, vertical stones covered in glyphs standing between the plates and the black ball (the Oculus) on the boss platform.
• Put three people on the right and three on the left. A person on the right side should be designated to run down to the central plate as necessary.
• Stand on the plates until they glow white to start the instance. The Warpriest will walk out onto his platform.
• Keep shooting the adds until the Warpriest roars. Three Hallowed Knights will appear on the left, middle and right. Kill them.
• Once the Knights are dead, you'll see the message, "Glyph sequence started," on the left of your HUD.
• One person now has to look at the back of the glyph stones and tell people to stand on the plates in the correct order. The back of the first stone will be marked with a glowing blue light.
• Players have to stay on the plates until all three have been activated in the right order. If someone steps off before the sequence is completed, you'll see a message saying it's been "broken" and you'll have to start again.
• If anyone stands on the plates out of order they'll turn red and start causing damage. Everyone should stand off the plates and start the sequence again from the beginning.
• Once all three plates have been activated, whoever was standing on the final plate will become enclosed in a red bubble.
• The rest of the team now runs to the bubble-holder and stands in the red bubble. You can only damage the boss when standing inside the bubble. Your screen will turn red and you'll see the marker, "Aura of the Initiate," on the left side of your HUD when you're inside.
• If you have a titan on the team, they should pop a Weapons of Light bubble at the back of the red bubble. Everyone shooting the boss should pick up Weapons of Light by moving into the Titan bubble then back into the red bubble to increase DPS.
• The bubble-holder has to keep the bubble up for as long as possible by shooting adds. Every time you shoot one, the bubble's counter resets to nine seconds.
• If the bubble-holder allows the bubble counter to reach zero, he'll die and the bubble will pass to someone else inside the bubble.
• After a certain amount of time shooting the boss, you'll see the message, "The Warpriest calls upon the Oculus," and the bubble will disappear.
• Everyone now has to group on whichever plate you were shooting from.
• The Oculus will flash with light and the glyph stone in front of the plate on which everyone's sheltering will be destroyed.
• Now return to your starting positions.
• The entire sequence now begins again, starting with the killing of adds and waiting for the three Hallowed Knights.
• Once the glyph stone in front of a plate has been destroyed, the plate's place in the glyph sequence before the spawning of the red bubble is denoted by a pillar of light in the air.
• You have four rounds to kill the boss. After that, there are no rocks left to protect you from the Oculus and the Raid will wipe.

Play tips

Oh, boy. There's so much going on here, and you'll only succeed when the mechanics click for the whole group. You're going to die a lot, but don't be disheartened. The kill will most likely come quickly when everyone gets it.

The Warpriest is a massive prick. He has an enormous amount of health, but there are two simple tricks you have to know to turn this fight from "impossible" into "done and dusted".

Firstly, whoever's holding the bubble has to space out their add-kills. This is absolutely vital. The idea is that the bubble-holder shoots the adds while the rest of the group hits the boss from within the bubble. Every time the bubble-holder shoots an Acolyte or Thrall, the bubble's counter replenishes. To keep the bubble open for as long as possible - allowing the rest of the team to do maximum damage to the boss - the bubble-holder has to wait until the counter is down low before the next add-kill.

I'd start shooting the next add when the counter has three or four seconds left, depending on how confident you are and the efficiency of your weapons. If you leave it too late you increase your chance of hitting zero and dying. The bubble-holder has to balance the protection of the team with sustaining the bubble. If they just shoot all the adds without paying attention to the timer, the Warpriest will summon the Oculus quickly and the round will end prematurely. That means you won't do enough damage to the boss and you'll probably fail.

Secondly, you should try to make sure you have at least one Titan on the team with a Weapons of Light bubble, and preferably two. If you have two, you can have a bubble down for each round with the red bubble. The blue Weapons of Light bubble greatly increases the amount of damage a Guardian can deliver, so the team shooting the boss should weave in into the Weapons of Light bubble then back into the red bubble to hit the Warpriest. Remember, and this is super-important: do not put the Weapons of Light Bubble up inside the red bubble. You can't shoot out of it, meaning no one will be able to hit the boss. It needs to go behind the red bubble. The Titan should call it out when it's being spawned.

Those two tips are the most important for this battle. The key to winning here is doing as much damage as possible as quickly as possible. Prolonging the red bubble and using a Weapons of Light bubble is crucial to that end.

Other stuff. The Warpriest is the bullet-sponge to end them all, so you need to equip for max damage. His head is the weak spot. Sniper rifles, rocket launchers and heavy machine guns are the order of the day. Avoid shooting him with primaries, as you'll just tickle him. You have to seriously kick his ass, so give it everything you have.

It's also worth noting that the severity of the add waves increases dramatically in the later rounds, ending with Taken spawns. You should have two Guardians up on the left platform at all times, and they should be able to handle Major Taken Captains up close.

Finally, there's some stuff you need to know about the red bubble. The bubble-holder may have to move, taking the bubble with them, to get onto a plate which is protected by a glyph stone. This being the case, you have to communicate to make sure you know where the bubble's going, or you won't be able to damage the boss and you'll lose a round. Also, the red bubble offers no protection at all, so the Guardians shooting the boss are reliant on the bubble-holder to keep the adds away.

On a lighter note, the Raid machine gun, Qullim's Termimus, drops from the kill. Cross everything you're the lucky one: it's a beast.

That's it. Good luck. Stick with it. It's all worth it when he finally goes pop.

Head back to our King’s Fall Raid guide, or on to the next stage: Golgoroth's Cellar and the Golgoroth boss fight.