Gollux

Gollux Strategies

So I've made several attempts to kill Gollux on various difficulties and wanted to try to organize my thoughts on him and see if anyone else figured out something I didn't.

The Basics:
The difficulty modes are determined by the number of body parts left alive before entering the head.
3 dead = Easy
2 dead = Normal
1 dead = Hard
0 dead = Hell

I do not know if killing the non-critical body parts (shoulders and torso) affect his difficulty at all.

For those interested in farming green coins for 150 items:
You can gain virtually unlimited entry to Gollux by looting purple keys then killing shoulders and torso for coins. If you do not kill the head, it doesn't count as a clear so you can continue entering as long as you have keys.

If you do Monster Life this is even simpler. Monster life mobs can spawn below the platform at Shoulders. Apparently there is a bug that will resummon shoulders after death if any monster remains on the map. This means you can simply exit and reenter the map to kill shoulder infinitely when there is a monster on the map.

The exp is actually decent. I gain ~2% per run (without killing head) at lvl 193.
You can also very easily max your Willpower and Ambition traits since the mobs, located at all minor body parts, give large amounts.

Gollux Head:
Please note that you WILL LOSE EXP if you die at any of these stages. You lose the full 10% exp. Do not experiment at high difficulty modes at high levels unless you just leveled.

The head works in 3 stages which I will call Jaw (1st), Eyes (2nd), Jewel (3rd). Each stage has progressively less hp.

The jaws are the simplest for any archer with Puppet. Simply puppet on the opposite side of his face and he will always attack in that direction letting you avoid 100% of his attacks. For those without puppet, watch Gollux's eyes. When the purple flames appear, switch sides of his head to dodge the attack.

The eyes have 3 attacks. Two are very similar to the Demon Slayer Skill Demon Cry. One does ~60% hp damage and can easily be avoided by standing on the edge of the platform to out range it. The 2nd Cry is a 100% attack with a larger range. Thus far, I believe it to be unavoidable. It's also glitched so that it's animation appears ~2s after the attack occurs. The 3rd attack is a key reversal skill similar to other bosses, but with a red debuff animation.

For both eyes and jaw:
Do make sure you continue to kill the Golems spawning on the left and right of the map before the reach the center. If they reach the center, a "curse counter" will appear. When it reaches 3, you die. Puppet cannot distract or delay these summons.
If you have left the shoulders alive, Gollux's arms will attack you occasionally. The arms do 100% hp damage. You can avoid these by being on the opposite side of where Gollux is looking. This can be rather difficult during the eye stage.

The jewel on his forehead is the simplest part. Kill it before it kills you. Each difficulty has a progressively shorter amount of time (with more hp) that you have to kill it. If you fail to finish it in time, it will perform a Von Bon style attack and kill you (OHKO). I believe this may also end the fight even if you have lives remaining.

Drops:
Thus far I have only seen lvl120 gear drop for me. I have successfully beaten Easy and Normal modes a few times. Despite what the "Known Issues" list says, it does appear that harder difficulties of Gollux drop better equipment.

My experience:
Easy mode should be very beatable for most low funded high level players.
Normal mode definitely requires some funding to solo, but not outrageous amounts. I'm able to beat it fairly easily with a 300k range WA.
Hard mode should only be attempted as a duo or by those with extreme funding.
Hell mode is basically impossible. The jewel requires that the party do 40b damage in under 2 minutes. This will only be possible for 0.01% of the maple community even in parties.

I am currently working on trying to solo Hard mode. My main difficulty is being able to kill golems during the eye stage without getting killed by DI attacks. I currently have two basic choices. I can ignore the golems and attempt to kill the eyes as quickly as possible. This will result in several deaths since I cannot kill them before 3 golems reach the center. The second option is to work on my timing to see if I can go down to kill golems just after a DI attack and get back up and out of range before he attacks again. I [i]think[/i] this is possible, but very difficult.

I would really welcome and appreciate any advice people have from soloing Hard mode and how they beat the eye stage.

Potion CD Glitch:
There's a glitch with the potion cooldown. If you attempt to heal within ~30s of a familiar buffing you, the pot cd is activate but the potion is not used.

Source: [url=http://www.southperry.net/showthread.php?t=69448]Last few pages of this thread[/url] and my personal experience.