The Cloud of Darkness (Chaotic) Alliance raid was introduced in Final Fantasy XIV with Patch 7.15 on December 24, 2024. This high-end duty challenges 24 players to face off against the empowered Cloud of Darkness in a chaotic battle. Players can earn various rewards, including Clouddark Armor, Clouddark Demimateria, and rare items like the Shroud of Darkness mount and exclusive hairstyles. Mrhappy shared a detailed guide on his YouTube channel to help us defeat this boss. Let's explore what they are. However, for a faster way to conquer this raid, consider purchasing FF14 Alliance Raid boosting services from MmoGah. Only in one day can you get the rewards!
Blade of Darkness
For phase one, assign Alliance A to go west, B to stay middle, and C to go east. Then, split into light parties. At the start of the fight, make sure at least one tank in each alliance has aggro. The boss will do Blade of Darkness right away. This attack does one of three things: if she holds both of her arms in front of her, it does a large point-blank AoE; if she raises one of her arms, then the opposite arm will have a safe donut right next to it. Get to the arm that's closer to the ground.
Phase 1 Starts
Once the boss does two Blades of Darkness, she will cast Deluge of Darkness, doing a raid-wide plus bleed on every player while also changing the arena and starting her first phase. Make sure to have mitigation on this to reduce the bleed. After the phase begins, Cloud of Darkness will begin firing 11 attacks at the top aggro in each alliance, inflicting them with lightning resistance down. For every few autos, the tanks in each alliance should be swapped to ensure they aren't overwhelmed by the damage.
Grim Embrace
After a few autos, she will cast Grim Embrace twice back to back. Each time she casts it, she will tether 12 players and give them a deadly Embrace debuff. When this debuff expires, a hand will pop out of the player and attempt to give him a stack of damage down and a 5-second doom that, if not cleansed, will end the player. The hand will either lunge out in the direction the player is facing or behind the player. This is determined by Cloud of Darkness' animation during Grim Embrace, which either has her pulling the crystal towards her or pushing it away from her. You'll either need to backstep out of the AoE as it appears in front of you or run forward to get out of the AoE as it appears behind you. Her gripping behind the crystal means back up to be safe later; her pushing into the crystal means moving forward later.
When your debuff is about to wear off, try to aim the hand outside of the arena as best as possible, or at least as far away from the rest of the group as possible. Then simply take a small step back or forward when the debuff hits zero.
Cloudlets & Death/Aero/Flare
While your debuffs are resolving, Cloud of Darkness will do one of two mechanic patterns relative to what timer she assigned to everyone with Grim Embrace. First up, she will summon several cloudlets along the back edges of the room that will do four sets of line AoEs, all of which you need to dodge. You need to look at the back of the room, align yourself to be just outside the first two line AoEs, and then step into them as they appear. After the second movement, you'll be safe until all four of the lines are done.
However, during the cloudlet AoEs, Cloud of Darkness will also begin casting one of three spells: Death, Aero, or Flare.
- Death will pull players towards the center of the platform before an AoE goes off and inflicts doom on any hit. Right after the center AoE goes off, it becomes a donut, so players should step in right after the initial AoE goes off.
- Aero hits the center of the platform with a powerful AoE, likely killing anyone hit. This also knocks players back, so they should line up with the same spot used for Death and get knocked back into them. Knockback resist does work on both Aero and Death, but use it on the first set here; save it for later.
- The final option is Flare, which gives one player from each alliance a flare marker. These hit incredibly hard, so ensure you have a lot of mitigation and the marked players are very far away from the party and each other. Alliance A's Flare should head to the left side of the platform, B towards the back, and C towards the right.
After the Flare goes off, each alliance will get two light party stack markers, so split into light parties like we assigned earlier. Alliance A's light parties lean left, B back or middle, and C's to the right. Right after the Flare will be a Blade of Darkness, so respond accordingly. Grim Embrace debuffs will begin resolving after this, so every individual player should remember theirs and do it correctly.
Cloud of Enaero/Endeath
Cloud of Darkness will also cast either Endeath or Enaero. This makes it so the next time she does Blade of Darkness; she will also perform Death or Aero immediately after. A member of the alliance posting a macro for this for everyone to remember helps plenty, but she does leave a text box in your chat that will tell you which one she's doing—either "Wind abide in my breast" or "Death abide in my breast"—so you can use those as reminders as well.
Break
At this point, if you're getting tons of back-to-back debuff timers expiring after three sets, she will cast Break. This summons two eyes along the outer edges and petrifies any player looking at Cloud of Darkness or the eyes when the cast bar finishes. Look away from all of them.
Rapid Sequence Particle Beam
If only one debuff set goes off, then Cloud of Darkness will use Rapid Sequence Particle Beam. This targets each alliance with an eight-player split damage line AoE that hits four times back to back. It's also what we like to call a wild charge, dealing significantly more damage to the first two players it hits in each alliance. So Alliance A is to the left, B to the middle, and C to the right. Make sure that the tanks stand in front of the rest of the alliance and that there's decent mitigation.
En-Blade of Darkness
Regardless of which pattern you get, the rest of the phase plays out similarly, just with slightly different timings. The Break pattern has Blade of Darkness right after Break, which then sets off the Endeath or Enaero. The Rapid Sequence pattern summons a second set of cloudlets and then begins casting Blade of Darkness while they're still going off, which then sets off Endeath or Enaero. This timing is usually harder, so use your knockback resist for the end spell execution. Just ensure that if it's Death, step into the donut after the middle explodes, and if it's Aero, do not run to the center of the room and get killed by the initial hit.
As the final debuffs and cloudlets are resolving, there will be one more Aero, Death, or Flare. You'll be hit by Flood of Darkness for raid-wide damage, and the phase will end.
Phase 2 Starts
After Flood of Darkness, Cloud of Darkness immediately begins casting Deluge of Darkness to change the arena shape again. This attack also inflicts a bleed, so ensure there's a good amount of mitigation.
Once in this phase, every tank should try to have aggro on Cloud of Darkness. Cloud of Darkness will auto-attack the four tanks in the middle platforms; if any of them dies, then the outside tanks taking double autos is better than one of the DPS or healers randomly getting attacked.
As for position assignments, this image by Mrhappy assigns every player from every alliance a position.
It ensures there are healers in range of everyone in their own alliances across the entirety of the phase and allows for easy assignments and movement across both the outside platforms and PvP tiles in the middle. Please note that the positions of the six players on the outer platforms will not change, and they will never have to do PvP tiles. This is because of how the looming chaos swaps work. So, if you have a player who is struggling with PvP tiles or you're carrying a first-timer for the bonus, consider adjusting positions to give them one of these six spots.
While Deluge of Darkness is casting, be sure to start getting into position based on the diagram. Melees who are staying on the outer platforms can stay close to Cloud of Darkness and then move to their respective sides using the outer rings afterward if they want. Once Deluge of Darkness finishes, only players on the center tiles are able to hurt the Cloud of Darkness directly. Players on the outer platforms will instead have two Stygians of Darkness to hit. Fortunately, all damage done to the Stygians is inflicted on Cloud of Darkness at the end of the phase.
All center tiles can only support one player at a time. If two players step into a tile, it will instantly break and drop them to their death. You may also not stand on the same tile for longer than about 43 seconds, or it will break. Be sure to refresh tiles regularly between each major mechanic and to keep an eye on your allies doing their resets as well.
Atomos
The outer platform players also have to occasionally call the four Atomos that spawn in the intercardinal positions. These will tether to players shortly after spawning and deal massive damage over time to them. They will also eventually begin healing the Cloud of Darkness herself, so have ranged pick them off with a few GCDs whenever they respawn. The Atomos also leave behind a puddle that, when stepped in, will cause the player to teleport to the telegraph's location after 6 seconds. This can be used by the players on the inside when they die and are resurrected on the outer platforms to return to the middle. Players on the outer ring should avoid these puddles while doing any mechanics that require going near them.
Dark Dominion
Then, Cloud of Darkness will cast Dark Dominion, doing heavy raid-wide damage and changing the outer ring into a dangerous space, inflicting a very potent bleed on anyone who steps in it. Ensure players are healthy after the phase change and the bleed ticks have hit them.
Third Art of Darkness
Both Stygians will do Third Art of Darkness, which has two half-platform AoEs and either a line AoE spread or pair partners. The half rooms are designated by one of her tentacles lighting up - the pair partners if both of them light up, and the line spread if it's just her body that lights up. While the half platforms and line spreads are easy to understand, it's important to note that the pair partners are proximity-baited. The three closest players will each bait a paired AoE. Ensure that if you're not the baiter, step back from that person. Otherwise, you'll double up or, even worse, outrange the person who's baiting it.
Particle Concentration
Right after the Third Art of Darkness resolves is Particle Concentration. This summons towers that require players inside of them, both on the outer platforms and the PvP tiles. For the outer platforms, match three players into each tower. For the inner platforms, have all three players stand in a small triangle with two players closer to the cardinals and one player in the middle tile. One of the outer players will begin in a tile that works and can just stay there. The corner tile takes the outermost tower position, and the remaining player fills in. If any tower is missed, the entire 24 players will be hit with a raid-wide. This inflicts some damage and gives a stacking vulnerability. If just one goes off, it's not that big of a deal. But if there is any more than that, it'll start to get rougher and rougher. If it looks like towers will be missed, consider using tank LB before the hit.
Ghastly Gloom
Then, you'll get a bunch of auto attacks before Cloud of Darkness does Ghastly Gloom. This will either do a donut AoE or a cross AoE that hits everywhere. The donut just has the tile players step into her hitbox, and the platform players get close to the center edge of the platform. This is designated by the clouds around her, making sort of a ring around her hitbox.
For the cross AoE, it looks like a bunch of clouds surrounding her, and the tile players will have three safe spaces per corner. It's safest to have one player claim an outside square before the mechanic begins and then have a movement priority for the other two. The quicker you can get those two players into the corners, the more time it gives for the third player. For the outer platforms, run next to the Atomos circles along the outer ring, which is now freed up from Dark Dominion.
Curse of Darkness
The Atomos will respawn, and the Stygian will cast Curse of Darkness. This places several different timed debuffs on the outer platform players. When these expire, that player fires a conal AoE in the direction they are looking, damaging and placing a DOT on any player in its path. Keep track of your timers and look towards the outer ring when it's about to expire. In fact, one of them will expire almost immediately after you get these debuffs, so be sure to check right away.
Evil Seed
Evil Seed places eight seed markers over players around the room. Two players on each of the outer platforms will get one, and four of the tile players will get them, but no more than two in each corner. The diagram we showed before shows the end position of each seed placement. The inner players need to be careful about letting seed players get through to the east and west inner positions. If you get two seeds in one corner, it's best to let the east or westmost player go first and get to the further position, and the second player follows behind them and gets to the closer one.
Once the AoEs appear, the two players should sprint back to their platforms in the same corner. Make sure if you're the furtherer player, don't run too fast and kill the person in front of you, and if you're the person who's doing less movement, then get out of the way. Keep in mind any platform where a seed is placed counts as having a player on that platform. It's very important that the seeds are not on any platform except for the four that are designated in the diagram, or it eliminates movement options and almost ensures that you're going to have problems later. This will immediately be followed by Ghastly Gloom, whichever one you didn't do first. So, if you did donut first, then it'll be cross second and vice versa. Right after this goes off, another set of curses will expire, so check your timer and aim outward.
Thorny Vine
When the Stigan Shadows begin casting Thorny Vine, you'll want eight designated players standing as close as possible to the vine AoEs, which will mark them as the tether target for that respective vine. Once they receive the vine debuff itself and are tethered to it, they can sprint and run away from it to break it. We have all eight of the vines handled by outer platform players, as seen in this diagram. Run opposite and along the outer ring for a break.
For the inner tile players, there will be two sets of two players tethered to each other, one on the north side of the tiles and the other on the south. They'll need to start as close as possible and then run across the tiles until the vine breaks. As Thorny Vine is casting, have all three players in a corner huddle close together. If two of you get targeted, stay close until the tether forms, then have the player in the farther tile begin running across. There's a chance that a player needs to shift over to let another player pass by here, so be ready to move over the tile that's half covered in a bramble to make room. If there are no brambles in your corner, have a player shift over to the half-covered bramble tile to leave the center tile open.
Magical Energies
Once it is done, reset to your default positions. Cloud of Darkness will begin gathering magical energies to prepare for her next attack, which doesn't have a cast bar to mind you. The attack itself is determined by what color she glows. If she glows purple, she will fire two sets of 12 spread AoEs. If she glows red, she will do a split damage line AoE on six different players. The spreads will always hit 12 times twice in a row, so if you have even a single dead player, then it's going to double up on somebody. For Tanks, if you see people are dead, consider popping your invul here. If all six tanks pop their invul, then one of them will get doubled up, and the other players will have no additional deaths.
For the beams, ensure that all six tanks are closest to the boss, as these are also wild charges, and any other players part of the stack are nearby behind them. This will target one player on each of the outer platforms and one player in each of the four corners. Ensure that you are all close enough to be hit and throw out mitigation. With three or more people, it doesn't hit so hard, but it's survivable with two players so long as they have mitigation. For the players on the tiles, if you need to get together for the wild charge, you should have two people in the back corner ones in the cubbies, and the tank should try to get close to them next to that exact same spot.
Phasers + Active Pivot Particle Beam
Right after either spread or beams, Cloud of Darkness will begin casting Active Pivot Particle Beam, which will do a line AoE in front and behind her that rotates with each blast, totaling a 90° turn. The players on the outside will have to dodge an AoE from the Stygian before they begin dodging the rotation. The Stygian will either do Core Lateral Phaser or Lateral Core Phaser. Core Lateral means standing in front of her first, then getting to her sides, and Lateral Core Phaser would be side-safe first and center second.
After this, the outside party can get behind the laser rotation. Bear in mind the final Curse of Darkness timers will go off right after the rotation finishes, and Atomos will also respawn at this time. It is essential that these Atomos die before the next mechanic, or players will start getting fried. There's also a tank buster from each Stygian on their main aggro target. Inside players will have to navigate the tiles without killing each other. It is recommended that two players in the cubbies and the corners reset their timers once the beams or spreads go off. Once the rotation finishes, the back of the line should return to their initial corner. Have the corner tiles reset their timers and simply wait.
Looming Chaos
Looming Chaos does damage to the raid and swaps everyone's position with another player's. The three farthest players on the outside will be swapped with three players on the opposite side of the room within the tile section. All of the remaining players are swapped with the other players doing the same platform.
It's worth noting that Looming Chaos also resets aggro, so every tank should immediately provoke The Cloud of Darkness in the middle to ensure they are in the top six, like at the start of the phase. Then, the fight is kind of repeated with a few new things. The first is Cursive Darkness, which will apply debuffs to the outer players again. These ones are much more spread out timer-wise, as the first detonation doesn't happen for almost 30 seconds.
Next is Towers, and this is largely the same as before, except that the Stygian will do Core Lateral or Lateral Core Phasers instead of Third Art of Darkness, which makes it easier. Then, remember to aim the curses away. After this, it is recommended to have a tank close to the center of the room and be ready to tank LB3 these towers to survive. One concern is that the tank LB3 range is 50 Ys, and the arena is much bigger than that, so get as many players close to the middle of the room as possible and the tanks that are doing it to be in a position that's closest to the rest of their alliance.
Next is Dark Dominion again, so make sure you heal because you just took all the damage from the potentially failed towers, and then reposition the Stygian so it's centered in the outer platform. It's a good idea to visually get into your pair for the upcoming Third Art of Darkness in case anyone is confused or forgot.
Feint Particle Beam
Players on the inside will instead contend with Feint Particle Beam, targeting one player in each inside corner with an AoE that will rapidly chase them when it finishes casting. This follows fast, so the player in the corner needs to immediately start rotating around the arena clockwise as soon as they're marked. Any players not targeted by a chaser need to quickly get into the corner cubbies to allow the rotating players to pass through without any collisions.
As for how much you rotate, do an entire lap around the arena and end up back at the corner that you started with. The rotating AoE will end long before this, but keep your positioning consistent, especially if you happen to get a wild charge beam coming up later.
Remaining Fight
Atomos will then respawn, and a Curse of Darkness will expire, so check those timers. There will also be a cross or donut AoE again, so ensure the inside players have three to a corner in case it's a cross. Then it's another Lateral Core or Core Lateral before magical energies. This is the spreader wild charge beam from earlier, and Cloud of Darkness will do whichever one she didn't do the first time. After this, each Stygian needs to be interrupted to prevent Flood of Darkness again, and at this point, the phase is basically over.
There will be one more timer that goes off before this phase ends, so one last time, check your curses. Then Cloud of Darkness will cast Flood of Darkness and reset the arena to normal, doing raid-wide damage, and the Stygian's missing health will be deducted from the boss's health bar as they disappear. Cloud of Darkness immediately goes to the wall and repeats Deluge of Darkness, returning the fight to phase one. The only difference is that the repeat of the phase will be the opposite pattern to the one you had first. Finish her off, and you'll be all set for loot.
