Stygian Onslaught 7.0 Guide

Stygian Onslaught features 3 Bosses which require different teams and separate equipment for those teams. It has 5 'Normal' Difficulties, up to Difficulty 5 or Fearless, and an additional hidden Difficulty 6, Dire.

This guide will be focusing on the bosses and their mechanics and solutions for primarily Fearless Difficulty, but the advice is generally applicable to Dire Difficulty with higher investment.

Chimeric Winged Lion

The most recent of this Stygian lineup, this is a new boss introduced in 7.0. The Chimeric Winged Lion is the second in what will most likely be a long line of bosses that significantly favor Stellar teams.

• It has a very large HP pool of 10.75 Million HP in Fearless (23.35 Million in Dire).
• A few seconds after entering the fight, it will give itself a massive Electro Shield of 40 Gauge Units.
• Each Elemental Reaction will remove a portion of that depending on how much Element was applied. If hit by a Stellar Reaction, it will immediately lose 16 Units of the shield.
• After its shield is destroyed, it will take damage corresponding to the amount of damage it took, and give itself significantly reduced Cryo and Anemo RES for a short period.
• A few seconds after it gets back up, it will fly up and start performing attacks. Once the attacking phase is over, it will begin an orb phase.
• It will spawn several Anemo Orbs around it. If these Anemo Orbs come into contact with Pyro/Hydro/Electro/Cryo, they will absorb it and explode.
• After all the Orbs explode, or alternatively after the boss received Stellar Glimmer DMG, it will enter another down phase.
• After this, it will get back up and repeat the cycle.

Due to the reduced Cryo and Anemo RES, as well as the inherent advantage Stellar teams will have against it, Stellar teams will have a significantly easier time against this than anything else.

Veteran Wind Operative

The Fatui Operative is back with a fresh Elemental Coat. Mechanically, it is functionally identical to the Cryo Operative of 6.1, except with a larger HP pool of 8 Million HP in Fearless (17.5 Million in Dire) and dealing Anemo DMG instead of Cryo DMG. The latter is actively good, as it allows teams without Bennett to not have Cryo Aura applied on them, which otherwise slows them down. She also has increased Anemo RES instead of Cryo RES.

• After the fight starts, the Fatui Operative will perform 'Hunt Down'. She consumes a portion of her HP, gains a large White Damage Shield, and launches an attack. White Damage Shields prevent damage increases from Vaporize and Melt, but otherwise act like a healthbar.
• If this attack hits a character that isn't protected by a Shield of their own, the Operative will heal her HP and apply a debuff to the active character that deals large amounts of damage over time.
• Concurrently, while the Operative's Shield is active, she will apply a very large Bond of Life to all of your characters. This Bond is functionally unhealable.
• The combination of the DoT effect and the constant Bond of Life means that you are necessitated to either dodge the Hunt Down attack or have a shield of your own to block the debuff.

After the Shield is broken, the Operative will take damage equal to the damage received while the shield was active. Depending on how fast you break the Shield, the Operative can gain it around 3 times per fight.

Knuckle Duckle

Knuckle Duckle is back, and with no changes. This infamous boss favors Lunar-Charged teams above all, and does so massively. It is possible to take it down without Lunar-Charged through simply having enough damage, but doing so will typically require vertical investment to some extent.

• Knuckle Duckle has an HP of 13.1 Million in Fearless (25.9 Million in Dire), and takes little self damage.
• Very soon after the fight begins, the Knuckle Duckle will give itself a White Damage Shield and give itself incredibly high RES. This RES is too high to have the shield be brute-forceable.
• Additionally, it will spawn little 'Stomping Devices', or Ducklings. These Ducklings are far easier to kill, and when one dies, it will reduce the Duckle's Ward by a decent amount.
• Alongside being able to kill them through damage, the Ducklings will record instances of Electro-Charged and Lunar-Charged damage. After being hit enough times, they will be automatically dismantled. Those types of damage are also more effective on them.

After all Ducklings are killed, the Knuckle Duckle's Ward will be destroyed. This will remove its additional RES, and further reduce its Electro RES. It will take a bit of damage corresponding to how much it took while in the Shield, but the amount isn't very high. It will stay un-shielded for some time, but put its Shield back up eventually.

Chimeric Winged Lion

Strongest Team: Stellar-Conduct

Sandrone or Wriothesleyor Traveler (Cryo)+

- Odette -Yae Miko or (C6) Alyosha- Flex Slot

Alternatives: Team that can deal with the Electro Shield

• Pyro DMG Teams: Mavuika, Arlecchino, Varka
• Non-Stellar Cryo DMG Teams: Skirk, Lohen
• Dendro DMG Teams: Nefer

Veteran Wind Operative

Strongest Team: any Arlecchino team

Arlecchino+

Support Pool: Citlali, Nicole, Chevreuse, Fischl, Mona, Sucrose, and more.

Alternatives: any team with sufficiently high damage

• Mavuika
• Skirk
• Lunar Teams: Nefer, Zibai ( Flins should be busy with Duckle)
• Stellar Teams will likely be busy with the Chimeric Lion, but they work.
• Varka can do the job, but he requires more than most due to the Boss's increased Anemo RES.

Knuckle Duckle

Strongest Team: Flins Lunar-Charged

Flins- Columbina- Ineffa - Flex Slot like Sucrose

Alternatives: Non-Flins Lunar-Charged, very high damage teams

• The first includes any Lunar-Charged core with Bineffa. This can apply to a lot of on-fielders, such as Mavuika, Arlecchino, Zibai, and mostly any Hydro or Electro on-fielder. Their damage will take a big hit.
• Teams with very high investment into them can brute-force the Duckle. Usually, this requires vertical investment. The strongest teams for it are:
• • Mavuika and Arlecchino Melt or Hexerei Vape
  • Skirk
  • Nefer
  • Zibai
  • Stellar Teams (which will likely be occupied)

Chimeric Winged Lion

Stellar teams are significantly incentivized against this boss. Stellar-Conduct is best, but Stellar Swirl will also do. The ideal Stellar-Conduct structure for this boss will look like so:

• Cryo Stellar-Conduct DMG dealing on-field DPS ( Sandrone, Wriothesley, Traveler (Cryo)). Cyno is viable, but will have a noticeably harder time against this boss compared to the Cryos.
• Stellar-Conduct Supports: Odette is the strongest option here. For Wrio she will enable the Stellar-Conduct Reaction, and she will significantly increase the damage of all of them. She also has decent Cryo Application, making Shieldbreaking much faster.
• • The other best options include the classic Stellar-Conduct Supports. Yae Miko is excellent but a little worse than usual due to the boss's favoring of Cryo Damage.
  • Qiqi, Escoffier etc provide additional Cryo Application and buff Cryo Stellar-Conduct damage.
  • Alyosha is Electro but his focus is on buffing the on-field character. He's particularly strong at C6.
  • Sucrose will not be able to Swirl Cryo while the Electro Shield is up, so she's a little worse than usual.

What other, non-Stellar Glimmer teams require are two main things.

1. Sufficiently high Elemental Application that reacts with Electro. Cryo, Pyro and Dendro are the best for this.
2. High enough DMG to get through the unreduced RES and its high health.

This narrows the selection down, especially since the other two bosses are also quite difficult.

Mavuika is an obviously good choice here. Skirk will certainly do the job, but she is actually better with a Stellar-Conduct enabler than her usual teams due to the highly increased Shieldbreak rate. Arlecchino, Lohen and Varka also work well here. Similarly to Skirk, Lohen might also want to play one of his Stellar-Conduct teams here. Nefer is very good here, but she's likely better into the Fatui Operative.

Veteran Wind Operative

Due to the massive Bond of Life it constantly provides, Arlecchino's damage skyrockets. She is easily the strongest DPS for the task, and pretty much any of her teams will demolish this boss. Melt and Vaporize are less favored than usual due to the boss's White Damage Shield, which blocks the damage increase provided by those Reactions.

The other strong teams will follow similar rules here. Any sufficiently high damage team will have a fine time into this boss, though teams that deal significant Anemo DMG will be less favored.

Shields are very favored, so Citlali tends to be a great pick even if she makes the team a Melt team. Nicole is excellent here. Any Shield amount will work for what you need it to, so even Beidou is fine here.

Knuckle Duckle

Due to its various mechanics focused around it, it is obviously a boss that favors Lunar-Charged unlike anything else. The degree to which it favors this reaction makes it one of the most rigid bosses to tackle; you require either strong Lunar-Charged teams, vertical investment in other teams, or both.

Flins is the obvious choice here, but he wants Ineffa in his teams even more than usual. The Duckle deals significant Electro DMG, so Ineffa's strong Electro Shield makes it much easier to focus on dealing with the Ducklings.

Columbina + Ineffa cores tend to be strong enough to beat this boss, and can even do so on their own alongside other Supports.

If you don't have Lunar-Charged units, you'll have to throw your most invested team at this beast and pray you have enough damage. The Ducklings do not the Duckle's increased RES, so it is certainly doable.

Mavuika and Arlecchino Melt and Vaporize teams can do it, as can Skirk teams, Varka teams, other Lunar teams, and Stellar teams. It is highly likely multiple of them are occupied with other bosses though.