The Time Keeper

The same goes for everything in the three phases below: no defence lowers any of it. The only protection is not being where it lands.

It leaves. The Time Keeper steps into a gate of its own and is gone. Its health cannot be touched while it is away, and the clock keeps running. Dragged through behind it are 5 creatures out of the top of the bestiary — Drake, Dragon, White Wyrm, Lich and their like, drawn at random — each with 50 health for every raider who came through the gates, each coming for one of you picked at random, and tearing at whoever it reaches for 15 every 3 seconds. Your target becomes one of them on its own; click another to switch. Kill all 5 and it steps back through the gate.

The rim. From this phase on, the edge of the room is not safe — not while it is away, and not afterwards. Every 10 to 20 seconds sand runs down the walls, and 5 seconds later the whole outer ring of tiles erupts for 60 on anyone still standing against a wall.

The sands underfoot. When it comes back, the floor begins to run. Every 5 seconds 10 tiles are marked, and 5 seconds later each one erupts for 60 on anyone standing on it. This is the one attack in the fight you simply walk out of, which is exactly why it hits for what it does. The crushing blow and the falling sand carry on as before.

It burns red. Everything it does, it now does 2x as fast, and the crushing blow, the sands and the echoes hit 2x as hard: the blow lands for 56 every 4.5 seconds, and a marked tile erupts for 120. The falling sand and the rim stay what they were. This is a one-way door — nothing that heals it walks the phase back.

The rewind. Every 20 seconds it reaches for the glass, and 2 seconds later turns it over: 35% of every point of damage the raid has dealt since the last rewind goes back onto its health bar. This is the fight's real test. Out-damage it and it only slows you down; fail to and the fight cannot be won however long you stand there.

The echoes. Every 25 seconds a shape steps out of the sand wearing a real raider's face and name, with 90 health for every raider who came through the gates. It hunts the nearest of you and strikes for 10 every 1.3 seconds until it is put down. Never more than 3 at once. Click one to fight it; it does not stop on its own.

The hourglass. 8 seconds into the phase, and every 20 seconds after that, it sets an hourglass down somewhere in the sand, and a chain of light runs from the glass to The Time Keeper. The glass has 100 health however big the raid is, and a 15-second fuse. Click it and hit it like any other add and the chain breaks with nothing lost. Leave it, and when its sand runs out the light pours down the chain and heals The Time Keeper for 10% of its full health — a share of the number the gates set, not of what it has left — with the amount floating up green over its head. The chain brightens as the fuse burns, and the glass shakes for its last 4 seconds. Smashing one is the one thing in this phase a single raider can do alone.

When it falls you are paid like any World Boss: Boss Slayer Tokens for the top of the damage board, a share of the hoard by damage, and Virtue Binding XP — see the rewards. On top of that, every fighter gets one roll at its own treasure, below.

The shared pile is loot you could get anywhere — weapons, gold, scrolls, Cap Stones. These are different: they drop nowhere else in the world, and they are the reason to come back once your weapon is already a Vanquishing.

They are not part of the pile. Every fighter gets exactly one roll at them per kill — one roll, not one per piece of loot you happen to take home, so what you walk away with does not depend on how the pile happened to split. Damage decides the odds: do an average share and you get the standard chance, do twice the average and you get twice it, and swinging once at the end leaves you a real but small one. There is a ceiling on it, so nobody is ever simply guaranteed one. At most one per person per kill.

The rarity column is relative to the others on this table, not an absolute chance. Every one of them is rare: the roll only pays out at all a small fraction of the time, and the column tells you which piece you are most likely to see when it does.

Item	What it does	Rarity
Powdered Glass	Sand ground finer than sand, and still warm. A reagent no other kill pays out.	Uncommon
The Unwound Spring	Wind it down and for ten minutes nothing waits to be born — monsters step straight out of the dark. Once a day, and only while you are actually playing.	Uncommon
Vortex Basin	A shallow bowl with a sand vortex that never finishes draining.	Uncommon
Orrery of Dead Hours	Brass rings turning around nothing at all. Slowly.	Uncommon
The Stopped Pendulum Clock	Tall, silent, and always reading the minute the boss died. Your kill, not anybody else’s.	Uncommon
The Great Hourglass	Floor to ceiling, and it really runs — the sand shows how long the shard has stood since its last restart.	Uncommon
The Time Keeper's Head	Mounted. The eyes are still lit, which visitors find upsetting.	Uncommon
The Time Keeper	He sat for this portrait exactly once. The sitting took no time at all. A framed painting — hang it on a wall of your house. Only a World Boss's hoard gives one up.	Rare
The Loop Band	Now and then a swing happens twice, and only one of them was yours.	Uncommon
Band of Borrowed Time	Every buff you drink lasts noticeably longer. The hours come from somewhere.	Uncommon
Signet of the Second Chance	A failed craft sometimes simply did not happen — your materials are still in your hands.	Uncommon
The Chronal Seal	Spells find the seam. Casts can crit.	Rare

The five pieces of furniture go down in your house or your yard like any other placeable. Three of them are not still pictures: the Great Hourglass really runs and its sand reads how long the shard has stood since its last restart, the Orrery really turns, and the Vortex Basin really drains. Those three only move in the yard — indoors a fixture is scaled into a 32-pixel cell and shows its still sprite.

The Stopped Pendulum Clock is engraved with the minute the boss died, and the engraving never changes. Hover it to read it.

Two more — Sand of the First Morning and the Echo Shard — are cut and named but not yet in the hoard. They will start dropping when what they do is finished; until then the Time Keeper does not hand out things that do nothing.