My map changed when I exited the zone, but I did not have access to the hidden spots.

I did it, I beat Kowlla and her problematic wisps! Here is a step by step of what I did! This is by no means the only way to beat her, its just the way that made sense to me (mathematically) and actually worked!


The Challenge:

Kowlla summons 2 Wisps that are extremely lethal to your party! I have not found a way to prevent their summoning (despite much effort), so the next best thing is to defeat the wisps before they can attack you. Unfortunately you only have one turn to attack them before they insta-murder your whole party. Each Wisp has 36,000 health, so you need over 72,000 point attacking power in one turn! I have yet to make it through 2 of their attack turns. They attack first, and no quick attack or blocking works here. If you can beat these first 2 Wisps, you should be able to win. You'll find out quickly enough, huehuehue....


The Strategy:

Use a Water Tank to absorb damage and provide Surge buff for the whole party. Use 2 Air Cannons with Decimate attack on the Wisps.


Pets used: max stats, all level 70s, rank 4 abilities

- 1 water tank (in first slot): 1 health, 2 Strength, 2 Agility; Tidal Lord Vinethorn +2
- 2 air cannons: 3 Strength, 2 Dexterity; Storm Caller Vinethorn +2



Prepare:

- have your pets ready, practice their abilities if you aren't familiar with them. It is a good idea to test Kowlla in battle first so you get an idea of what to expect.
- make sure the boss is waiting for you (seems obvious, but just in case)
- It is best to make the journey when the cave shift allows shortest travel distance to the boss. There is an opening on the right side of the first long hallway that looks like it has a pink rock at the entrance. Go through here, go up immediately through that opening, and Kowlla is at the top left of that cavern. This is the shortest distance. The party I used is not good for exploring, so run from all the enemies if possible. If you failed at running, defeat the enemies so you keep your mana.
- Enable the Elite and Named Tactical Bonus from the Training Grounds if you can. Give yourself extra time for multiple battles (an hour plus). My Training Grounds were Rank 2 when I did this.
- Ensure your party has max health and mana. When my party died (many times!), I would exit the Lost Grove and use potions from my inventory to restore max health and mana. This is more sustainable than mending through the Temple of Light.
- have a reserve of grove elixirs and potions


The Battle:

Ok, so you have your battle party ready with full health/mana. Make sure the Training Grounds bonus is activated, and take the Portal to the Untamed Forest (if you have it).

- Journey to Kowlla's hut. Run from enemies if possible; if you can't, use lesser attacks to keep mana high.

1. Begin battle by using small attacks (attacks 1 and 2) on Kowlla, but keep your mana high so you can do Attack 3 and 4 back to back.

2. Block at 100 Mana to avoid Infection. (I forgot a couple times and still made it to the end.) This can be problematic when she is at 100 mana and decides to Summon at the same time. I started skipping turns if it looked like her health was getting to 80% when her mana bar was nearing 100.

3. Around 80% health, Kowlla will throw a Summoning buff. Keep an eye on her health so you know when to do these next steps:

- when she is near 80% health, but before you see the Summoning icon, have your water tank use their Shield (attack 4). If you see Summoning, you are too late and should abort. Don't do it too early, it only lasts 8 turns.

- When you see Summoning, all pets use attack 3

- The Wisps will pop up next turn. Have each of your Air cannons use Decimate (attack 4) on the Wisps separately (Cannon 1 attacks Wisp 1, Cannon 2 attacks Wisp 2). Have your water pet use attack 1 on one of the Wisps as well. (One of my pets had a slightly weaker decimate attack, so I had the water pet attack the same Wisp as the weaker Air pet).

At this point, ideally both of the Wisps will be defeated. If so, this is a great sign! Keep battling.
If you have 1 defeated, and 1 nearly defeated, you can try to defeat the remaining Wisp by hitting it with whatever pet attacks will do the most damage. Your party will take a serious hit and might survive.
If both Wisps are still there (even if they have only 1% health), you are doomed and should abort/run if you can. The only exception would be if you have debuffs on the wisps that will do enough damage to take them out next turn. Remember, turn order for these guys are: debuff actions, enemy attacks, pet attacks.

4. Use small attacks (1-2) to build up mana and heal if needed. Save at least 120 Mana on all pets at all times, so you are ready for the next round of Wisps.

5. Around 15-20% health, Kowlla begins the Summoning cycle again. Make sure you are ready! Here you will attack Kowlla directly with everything you have! If possible, you may want to have you water pet use Shield before you see Summoning again.

Note: I was not ready for the Wisp return (as this was the first time I made it past the first round of Wisps) and only had enough mana to Decimate with one Cannon. Luckily it was a critical hit of 90k! I did not use water's Shield this time either.

6. When you see Summoning again, use attack 3 with all pets (if mana allows, Air pets save 100 at minimum for next turn). Using attack 3 here will increase your chance of a critical hit in next turn.

7. When the Wisps pop up again, Air cannons use Decimate on Kowlla, and water pet uses attack 1 to deal damage to Kowlla as well.

8. Hopefully Kowlla is gone now. Her Wisps still remained and it made me really nervous. I picked one, attacked with all 3 pets, and I was victorious! I think the battle ends when they realize she is gone lol.



I know this is a novel, but it has all the info I can give you to help on your own battle journey. :) I'd love to know if you find another way to beat Kowlla and her dreaded Wisps. Post here and ping me if you do!

Many thanks to GoldGryphon for loaning me their battle pets to make this happen. Thanks Somneli and Cyradis4 for brainstorming the battle with me and helping find things that didn't work xD

I don't think the cave shift is tied to elites- It's shifted at least three times for me (I caught the message two times: 1, 2) and as one might be able to tell, the spots we got it are nowhere near any of the elites (additionally, one took place after a fight, the other just randomly when we took a step forwards).

At the moment it seems kind of like it's just random when it swaps.

There are several rooms that can become inaccessible on any given shift, and many places where doors can appear or disappear. Meaning sometimes to get somewhere you have to go the extra long way around to something, just because it Shifted and closed off the door that led right to the spot.

For instance, last shift for us, the first door on the right of the 'main' corridor (the one that comes down from the village) was open, so we could really easily get to the two-hut room. This Shift that one is closed and I have to go through the bottom door of the main corridor and all the way around
(also, last Shift the door that led to the room outside Dia's room was open, now I have to go through the top left door off the main corridor (door not marked on those maps- it's above the treasure chest spawn point, directly opposite the spot where the right door appears) because it's the only door on that side for us at the moment.)

-Edit/update-

It seems like there's a trigger spot right in the first or second tile of the labrynth- it triggered right as we entered, so I suppose the one where we weren't in a fight with an enemy did that too but we didn't catch it until we'd taken some more steps.

I'm going to guess that if you leave the cave and then come back and cross the labrynth threshold it triggers a Shift

[04:59:56 PM] The grinding of stone echoes throughout the tunnel ahead.

I stepped into the village and back out again - so it seems just leaving the deep caves might be enough to trigger it? o: I didn't fight any elites this time.

I haven't made it to the caves yet, but could it be that the shift is on a timer? Something like it shifts every 18 or so hours (or maybe after the first step you take in the cave after 18 hours since the last shift). It's just that I noticed that Scathreoite's two shifts were exactly 18 hours apart.

no, It seems like it's definitely triggered by the first tile of the labyrinth- we've gotten a couple more screenshots of the "grinding stone" message, and it always happens when we pass the threshold coming in

I'm trying out my luck with Dia and used a genetic scanner on one of her minions:



I'm not sure how much health Dia herself has.

this is Dia's gene scan

also:
"Turn 6: Dia, Du'Vhal's Hand's Energy Prison was Avoided by Voulges Force!" we chose "block" on the turn before the Disciples were summoned, seems to have worked to protect us. Take that, energy prison


Additionally, there does seem to be some sort of time-based cooldown on the cave shifting

Since people keep asking about Demora in chat, thought I'd put something here in case someone reads it.

Demora summons golems, which work just like normal golems. Gotta switch pets around when they get shards.
You also have to block when Demora has full mana.

Cyradis4 also figured out that you can take Demora out first, and then finish the battle against the golems. That way Demora can't keep summoning more. The battle should be pretty easy that way, if you can manage it.

First of all, congrats Bunne! Those wisps are no joke! I just tried Kowla for the first time.

Just a couple notes, it looks like the icon to summon wisps arrives at the 80% mark, not the 75% mark...

Also, mathematically, conflagrate should be equivalent to decimate at enemies' full health if you are targetting two pets. So Water/Fire/Fire (or Water/Fire/Air) should have a similar effect using this strategy (for those who ranked fire instead of air).


Alas, my party is simply not strong enough!

When I used decimate, when wisps are 100% health, it did about 3.5-4k damage, a tenth of what is needed! xD I suspect training bonuses, better gear, and ranking up will all be necessary for me! xD