Whitestar Airship

Arcane Runes!

What is Whitestar Airship

Whitestar Airship is a weekly 6-man instance that puts your group against three waves of bosses. This content is very tough and has special effects that change out every week that make the encounter harder such as providing shields that require magic damage to break, slowing you get too close, or taking you SP every time you hit, just to name a few.

This content rewards you with Arcane Runes as well as the materials used to upgrade them.

How to Unlock

Once you reach base level 160 this content will unlock in the instance menu.

Location of Whitestar Airship in the Instance menu

Primary Goal of this Instance

Defeat all enemies as fast as possible, while scoring as high as possible to maximize rewards.

Preparing for Whitestar Airship

This content features two difficulties, each with up to 15 stages. You can clear the instance up to five (5) times per week and, after your first weekly clear, you can use the Raid feature to complete the other four instantly. Given how difficult this instance can be this is a blessing, provided you can beat it in the first place.

Before we start you should always check the weekly affixes. These are effects that you have to deal with in order to clear the dungeon and they change every week. No matter what difficulty or stage you choose you always have to deal with these affixes, they do not change until the weekly reset.

To see what they are go to the Instance menu and select Whitestar Airship. On the right above the boss portrait are icons. Tap on either of those to bring up the Affixes screen.

Location of weekly Affixes

Here we can see the two affixes of this week, "Break the Law" and "Confine". You can also click on the View All Affixes button to see a list of all affixes that can roll for this instances. Some of them aren't an issue but many are awful to deal with and may greatly change how your group handles things.

Examples Affixes for the week

Onto the topic of bosses, you can see that there are five (5) bosses to contend with. Each difficulty and stage has different bosses. You may have to adjust your difficulty if you cannot handle certain enemies. You can preview them by scrolling left or right in the boss portrait section on the right side of the screen.

Boss of Elite, Stage 5 (Stormy Knight)

Boss of Elite, Stage 4 (Garm)

Score Influencing Mechanics

Your score will be influenced by the mechanics outlined below. Since your overall rewards are influenced by this these are important to know.

Speed

The faster you arrive the better your score. You can check your speed and overall progression in the ship interface on the far right side of your screen. This interface shows you overall progression, current air speed, a count of all monsters currently onboard, the amount of treasure remaining, and a total ressurection count.

The more monsters on the ship, the slower the ship goes. This means picking off several weak mobs will speed the airship up while you widdle away at the primary bosses on board. Try your best to keep the ship going as fast as possible.

Total Progress through Instance w/Boss Markers

Speed with no monsters on board

Number of monsters on board, much slower speed

Furnace

Your ship's engines are fueled by your Furnace which can be found as you enter the instance near the center of the ship. The faster you reach your destination the better your score so you'll want to keep this safe if possible.

If this furnace is destroyed it will limit the top speed of the ship. To protect it, keep an eye out for Steam Goblins. The captain warns you about them just before they attack but keep and eye out for them in case things get heated. Normal monsters and MINI/MVP's cannot damage the furnace so you don't have to worry about them hurting your furnace, just watch out for Steam Goblins.

Anyone can repair the furnace if it takes damage. Just stand next to it in order to bring up a context ability "Repair the power furnace". Click this to start repairing the furnace.

Treasure Location on the Ship, showing the Repair option

Treasure Chests

On the top side of your ship you'll find six treasure chests you need to protect. Stings will periodically spawn and try to take them. Loosing treasure chests decreases your score so try your best to protect all of your treasures from them to maximize rewards.

Treasure Location on the Ship

Number of remaining chests in the Airship Interface

Dying

Resurrections decrease your score so try your best not to die, it will cost the team some rewards if it becomes excessive. If you are carrying people turn off auto res and make sure you only use it on people who can contribute enough to the instance.

Death Counter in the Progression Interface

Offensive Tools

While these don't influence your score directly they may help you deal with certain situations you may encounter on the ship.

Laser

Next to your Furnace is a Laser which can be activated to stun all enemies on the map. It will not last long on MINI/MVP's and lasts a bit longer on normal mobs.

There is a long cast bar that takes about three (3) seconds to activate so be aware of this when you want to use it. There is a long delay before you can use it again.

Location of the Laser and context button

Anti-Air Cannons

Creatures spawn off to the north and south side of the ship, out of reach of melee characters. They continuously bombard the airship with AoE attacks which may become a nuisance for the team. If you don't have adequate ranged damage you can use the Anti-Air cannons to destroy these creatures instantly.

Someone will need to walk up to the cannons and use the context option "Fire a gun". All cannons on that side are fired and all creatures on that side are destroyed so if you use the southern cannons, all southern creatures are destroyed.

Each set of cannons has a long cooldown so feel free to save this until a few creatures stack up. These AoE's can be deadly to some players so it's worth your time to get rid of these mobs using this tool.

Location of the Anti-Air Cannons and the context button to fire them

Location of the Anti-Air Cannons

Rewards

Your first few runs will unlock Arcane Runes that you don't already have. In addition, every run will reward you with Starshine Sand and Holyglow Crystals which are used to upgrade these Arcane Runes. Higher difficulties and better scores mean more rewards so try to clear the hardest difficulty possible every week!

For more on this read up on Rune Box, specifically the Arcane Runes section at the bottom of the page.