Defeating Empowered Enemies

As you venture across Rokar and seek out the Aether Horror, you will face many enemies in the form of the Unraveled. Of these many opponents, the most fearsome are those which have been Empowered; Augmented by corrupt Aether to become faster and incredibly aggressive. To help our Rune Knights prevail against these monstrosities, a list of common strategies and tactics has been compiled and passed down.

### A Word Of Advice

* In the later stages, Rune Knights may have to face multiple Empowered enemies at the same time. In such a situation, avoid enraging several enemies simultaneously at all costs. Focus on taking them down one at a time, and attempt to use any narrow corridors to your advantage to funnel your enemies and force them to attack you one at a time.

### Empowered Knights

*Infused with Corrupt Aether, these Empowered Knights augment their skill with enhanced speed and ferocity.*

* Serving as a Rune Knight’s first encounter with an Empowered enemy, you will first face these Knights on stage 12. After losing half of their total health, Empowered Knights enter an invulnerable rage animation, glowing bright red and unleashing an incredibly fast ‘Savage Flurry’. Many Rune Knights fall to these flurries in their first few encounters.

* One thing to note, however, is that you can avoid dealing with this enraged state by breaking the guard of an Empowered Knight and killing them in a single combo. Thus a common strategy is to deliberately stop bringing down an Empowered Knight’s health just before they enter their enraged form, then breaking their guard again and killing them in a single combo with critical strikes or Supers.

* Alternatively, once the Knight enters their enraged form one can use a highly damaging super like Soul Burn III/IV or Shardstorm IV and let their enemy’s health deplete while dashing away from any attacks. Catching the enraged Knight in a Stasis Strike or Void Trap and breaking their guard before they can attack you is yet another valid strategy.
* Do note that while these flurries are blindingly fast and trying to block them may seem futile at first, with practice a flurry can be blocked with just one hand even on Nightmare difficulty. Try practicing against the Empowered Knights on a lower difficulty first and memorizing the attack patterns (There are only 2 unique combos, so committing them to muscle memory doesn’t take too long).

### Empowered Captains

*Empowered with Corrupt Aether, these enhanced Captains are able to channel their rage into devastating area of effect attacks.*

* These enemies are very similar to the Rokari Honor Guards a Rune Knight faces in the second boss fight, but with one key difference: Empowered Captains can channel their powerful Rush attacks from the get-go, unlike the Honor Guards who must enter a rage first. Additionally, their AOE attacks are much faster than those of the Honor Guard (before the final phase).
* As such, these enemies are highly disruptive. Stick close and keep them within your line of sight so you can interrupt the AOE with a critical strike and don't get blindsided by a sudden Rush attack.
* However, if you're simply too far away to stop the attack or stuck, do note the the AOEs have a limited radius and you can simply run away from these attacks. Note: While limited, this radius is still rather large and may end up covering the entirety of the smallest levels, in particular the ones by the cliffside.
* When enraged, not only do the Captains become faster, but the window to interrupt their AOE attacks and deliver critical strikes becomes much smaller as well. Remain vigilant!
* While you can potentially kill Captains before they enrage as well, it's much harder to do so due to their much larger health pool. In any case, it may be useful to keep this in mind if one happens to end up with an incredibly powerful weapon.

### Empowered Spellweavers

*Drawing from the prevalent Corrupt Aether, the* *Empowered Spellweavers are able to throw volley after volley of magical attacks, and evade danger frequently.*

* The last of the Empowered enemies, and the only ones lacking an enraged form. This, however, does not make them any less lethal.
* Empowered Spellweavers not only attack faster than their common counterparts, they dodge attacks much more frequently as well. keep multiple dashes ready to chase after them should you try to attack one.
* A common strategy for dealing with them is to leave them guard-broken and then quickly deal with the other enemies -or perhaps a second Spellweaver- uninterrupted. Guard breaks leave an enemy staggered for a long time, and a Spellweaver's guard breaks relatively quickly.
* Using Soul Burn IV to take them out from far away is another option, though you will have to utilize both Soul Burn bolts to fully drain their health.