Asurendra

Asurendra, sometimes referred to as Asura, is the sorcerer who created the mirage world and the game's final boss, always found at scene 10, Mirage: The Finale.

## Attack pattern

Asurendra is by far the hardest boss in the game. His bossfight is made of three different phases, in which his attack pattern changes drastically. After beating each phase, two Health Potions drop nearby Asurendra to fully restore the player's health before entering the next phase.

### Phase 1

In this phase, Asurendra moves by teleporting. He mostly ignores the player and relies on ranged attacks to try and get to them. He cannot be dazed or stunned by attacks in this phase and is also immune to fear. He can use these attacks:

* **Armor Piercer:** Spawns a blue bullet that travels slowly and homes in on the player. When it touches the player, it deals no damage but explodes after a moment. The player has plenty of time to leave the blast radius before the explosion happens. If the player is caught in the blast, they immediately lose all their shield, but never take any health damage or stun. The blast cannot be blocked by any means, only avoided, by leaving the area or by using invincibility frames. This is almost an immediate loss if Hearted Shroud is present.
* **Mind Laser:** Does a laser attack that burns the floor. Asurendra can either fire one laser that reaches further or several shorter lasers in a cone shape. The laser itself deals no damage, but after a moment, the burn marks on the ground activate, and small pillars of energy appear from them, damaging the player.
* **Flame Geysers:** Asurendra does an animation, focuses power and screams, and then reticles appear on the ground several times a second for a while. These reticles in turn erupt into small flames that only last a moment, damaging the player a bit if they touch them. This attack can be hard to dodge in the heat of the battle, and is especially dangerous since Asurendra can use other attacks while this move is still active. He does not use this attack until his health has dropped a bit.
* **Misdirection Field:** Spawns a mirror-looking object nearby him, which rotates around itself and lightly damages the player if they touch it, dealing no stun. Any compatible projectile that touches the mirror will be reflected at a random angle back towards its source's general direction, dealing small amounts of damage if it hits the player or any allied things. Projectiles reflected like this are slower than usual. Most projectiles do not get reflected at all, but notable examples where this attack works are Akaisha's arrows, Oli's bullets and the soul missiles from the Sacrificial Katana and The Last Offering, which will home in on the player when reflected. Through reflection, it's possible to apply debuffs to the player that they would never otherwise experience, like fear or freeze, although some will have no effect on them, like confusion. Projectiles summoned by enemies summoned by Gather Warriors are also deflected.
* **Gather Warriors:** Once his health is getting low, Asurendra starts using this attack. Asurendra goes invincible and spawns three enemies from a random scene one after the other close by him. He can spawn enemies that usually only appear in Hard difficulty or higher even if you're playing on Normal. These enemies are the most dangerous part of the phase if your damage output isn't sufficient, and stick around in later phases if not killed.

Once his health reaches zero, Asurendra jumps up and temporarily disappears from the screen, then falls back down, starting the second phase.

### Phase 2

Asurendra still moves by teleporting and is much more aggressive now. He has fewer moves and lacks range, but is still very powerful. Due to the wheel he usually has on his back having disappeared, he is no longer immune to daze and stun from attacks, but he keeps his immunity to fear. This is the phase where he is the most aggressive, but also the one where he has the least health. If the player flees far from Asurendra before the phase starts, he will not try and attack them until they get into a suitable range or hit him. These are the attacks he can use in this phase:

* **Speed Blow:** While teleporting, Asurendra sometimes performs a weak punch. This is hard to react to, but slows down his teleporting pace, making him easier to cope with.
* **Six-arm Flurry:** Asurendra performs a fast flurry of punches on the spot that hit the player multiple times for some considerable damage.
* **Black Hole Fist:** Asurendra targets the area in front of him. Some of the tiles on the ground disappear as he pulls the everything in the zone towards the area where he'll strike. After hitting the player, he fires a projectile that hits any player or ally several times and drags them to the other side of the arena. The most reliable way to dodge this entire move is by rolling behind Asurendra, which leaves him open to damage.

In this phase, it's a good idea to treat this boss a bit like Tengu: only attack Asurendra when he leaves himself open to damage, which is often enough, and try to rely on dazing moves. Once his health reaches zero, Asurendra disappears again and starts materializing on the right side of the screen just outside the arena.

### Phase 3

Asurendra is massive in this phase, being roughly the size of the screen's entire right side. However, Asurendra does not occupy much space of the arena the player usually fights him in. This is the phase where he has the most health, but also the phase where he is the easiest to hit. To attack him, you must hit the gem in his chest, which is exposed at all times. Asurendra can perform several attacks to try to keep you from damaging the stone, summoned by changing the shape of his right hand, which is on the fighting area and acts as a solid object. He is immune to all control effects, and also the slowing effect from failed stun. These are Asurendra's attacks in his third phase:

* **Lightning's Core:** Asurendra spawns a dark ball that roams the screen, following the player. The ball grows progressively lighter over time, and when it becomes completely yellow after a set amount of time, the ball starts zapping places on the stage, indicated by reticles.
	+ Hand gesture: Asurendra touches the tips of his thumb and index finger together, like the classical "nice" hand gesture.
* **Fist Drop:** Asurendra targets the player’s location indicated by reticle, then a fist falls down on that area, causing anything in the area to take damage. The arena's tiles ripple outwards for cosmetic effect after this move happens. When Asurendra's health starts getting low, he'll use this move several times in quick succession, which doesn't change much of anything since, in this case, the attacks will always hit roughly the same spot.
	+ Hand gesture: Asurendra curls his middle and ring fingers into his palm while keeping the others raised, like the classical "rock" hand gesture.
* **Light Clones:** Asurendra only does this attack when his health starts getting low. Asurendra disappears from the right side of the screen, and the tiles in the arena darken completely. Bright white clones of Asurendra's second phase start materializing, and if the player is within a suitable range of them, they will teleport to them and attack them with a short-ranged punch, repeat this process once more and then disappear. First punch of the clone deals 1 damage and second - 16 damage. Asurendra himself can't take damage during this state, but the clones can't deal much in return. When Asurendra starts this move, it's a good idea to run away constantly, since you can't do anything to stop the final boss in this state. The clones often struggle to cope with you if you move up and down, so you can do this to dodge their attacks.
	+ Hand gesture: Asurendra curls his middle finger into his palm and then curls his thumb onto it. The other fingers remain extended and somewhat bent.
* **Power Spheres:** Asurendra spawns a couple of small slow-moving energy spheres from his left hand that travel at different angles. An easy way to dodge this move is to move away from Asurendra, wait for the projectiles to travel a bit and then move between the gaps. Alternatively, you can just go to the bottom of the arena, and all the projectiles will miss you because it is the blind spot of this attack. However, these projectiles are powerful, and it might be hard to dodge them if they're mixing up with other attacks. The lower Asurendra's health, the more waves of orbs he spawns.
	+ Hand gesture: Asurendra curls his ring and little finger into his palm, then curls his thumb in as well, placing it above the other two fingers. His index and middle finger remain raised.
* **Cosmos Beam:** At the start of the fight, Asurendra creates a cover over his chest gem that has 6 bars of health and completely negates damage to the boss itself. Once it is destroyed, Asura will stop attacking for 8 seconds, and after a short period of invincibility, his real health bar will become available for you to hit him. Once the period of downtime is over, Asurendra will wind up for 2 seconds, showing a warning, and blast the center of the stage with a massive beam. It covers the stage's whole length, dealing insane amounts of damage to anything caught in it. After the move is finished, his shield regenerates. Asurendra is still exposed to damage during the beam.

Once Asurendra's health bar reaches zero for the third time, the boss will be defeated and the game ends in a win.

## Real Mirage

* Asurendra now has 116 bars of health in his first phase, 72 bars of health in his second phase and 115 bars of health in his third phase. The cover on top of his chest gem in phase 3 now has 10 bars of health instead of 6.
* Asurendra can attack while his shield is down, but Cosmos Beam comes less often.
* Asurendra’s Fist Drop now begins at 3 fists and increases up to 6 as his health decreases, and now applies daze for 3 seconds upon hit.
* During phase 3, after losing a certain amount of health, Asurendra disappears from the screen, becoming completely immune to any damage while a reticle appears in the middle of the stage. After a short delay, an enormous light beam pierces the previously indicated area and expands quickly. The only way to avoid this attack is to stay at the edge of the stage, and deals heavy damage multiple times at an extremely rapid rate. Getting caught in the center of this move is a guaranteed death.
* Asurendra’s Power Spheres are now larger, appear more compactly, travel further and in a larger cone, and can potentially have different special effects applied on them, indicated by their colors. Red indicates fire, green indicates poison and blue indicates freeze.
* Asurendra will only drop hp pots after his first phase.

## Tips

Unsurprisingly, this boss is hard. Asurendra possesses a wide range of different moves, all of which deal quite a lot of damage and are used frequently. However, if you fight him often, you will realize that these attacks are actually quite slow. There are almost always patterns indicating how he will attack, making him rather predictable.

Although slow, these attacks have the major trait of being dangerous, and that is their high frequency. Due to the stun you get when you are hit, you will be stunned and hit multiple times by different attacks, linked together closely, and considering their ridiculous damage, this can easily result in defeat. This is why you should never underestimate any of his attacks. Although some may deal little damage, they will stun you and a huge attack will hit you square.

Remember to be patient. For some bosses, you may be able to do a blitz attack and shower them with moves, killing them in seconds before they get the chance to fight back. Asurendra is not one of them. He is immune to stun and daze except in his second phase, so he will be able to retaliate when you do a blitz attack. He also has so much health that it is pretty much impossible to kill him in a single face to face match, unless if you have perfect items and skills.

As for the Health Potions he drops every phase, it is best to save them until you are below half health. Drinking a whole bottle just to restore a few points of HP is a waste, because you only get 2 every once in a while, and you might have to plough through up to 40 health bars before you can collect the next 2 bottles.

Lastly, remember that he will become more and more dangerous as he has lower health. When he is low on health, he will attack so frequently you will pretty much lose by getting stunned once. You may seem to be winning, but this is the time to be the most careful.

### Real Mirage tips

Since Asurendra has multiple phases, his health increase respective to his usual form is much larger, so players lacking enough damage output can easily be dragged into an extremely long fight and it is easier to make mistakes as the length of the battle increases.

Though Asurendra’s first and second phase don't change much, they are still great at grinding your shield down and wasting your Health Potions. With an empowered moveset, Asurendra now punishes the player way harder for their mistakes. Even if the player has what would be considered a lot of health in an Epic run, Real Mirage Asurendra will crush it as if it's nothing. With his increased attack frequencies to keep you away from his gem and long invincibility window, his third phase will be a long and dangerous fight even if the player has a perfect item setup for maximum damage.

There are many things that can kill you. Get hit once and you're likely toast. As such, he deserves his title as the final boss. To emerge victorious against him in Real Mirage requires a lot of patience, reaction and a bit of luck.

## Trivia

* This boss's third phase was drastically changed in version 1.5.6, causing his old laser move to be removed entirely, and with it the point of the chest gem's cover. The move was restored to him in 1.7.1.