Wadjet the Flaming Serpent

Wadjet the Flaming Serpent (ワジェト・ザ・フレイミング・サーペント) is a fire snake-type Boss monster on the 8th Floor of New Aincrad and has 7 HP bars. The snake summons a large number of fire elemental minions to aid it in battle.

Appearance
Wadjet is a large snake with an appearance like the hood portion of a cobra fused with a four-armed goddess. It has a face of a human, a black-themed gigantic body enveloped in flames (which cause Damage over Time (DoT) to players approaching it without special protection) and carries wide swords in its four arms. When the boss raises its head, it nearly reaches the ceiling of the boss room.

Background
The boss was based on Wadjet, an ancient local goddess of the city of Dep (Buto). Wadjet was depicted as a snake-headed woman, a snake (usually an Egyptian cobra), a woman with two snake heads or a snake with a woman's head. Wadjet was the protector of Lower Egypt and revered as the goddess of childbirth and protector of children, and later the protector of Pharaohs.

Attack Patterns
When the boss raises one of its swords, purple lighting runs through the space around the boss, materializing multiple humongous, half-transparent swords that strike the players as soon as the boss swings down its sword.

When Wadjet brandishes the crosier in its lower-left arm, circular pillars standing in a row in the outer part of the hall spin, revealing 8 large mirrors hidden on their opposite sides. After a few moments, the snake's crosier shoots out a green ray of light that posses enough power to instantly kill any player caught within it. The ray is reflected in complex patterns by the mirrors, making it impossible to predict the trajectory of the rays. The mirrors can be broken after they are hit countless times with weapons, but they do have an excessively high durability, making it impossible to deal with all the mirrors before the ray is shot out.

If Wadjet suffers a significant amount of damage, it begins to coil its long snake body round and round like a spring. Once it finishes this initial motion, the snake's eyes gleam crimson as it coils its tail three times a hair's breath from the ground, resulting in people being hit by one of the attacks to fall down and be hit by the subsequent hits as well, all of which deal a significant amount of physical damage.

When the snake boss lets outs an angry cry while swinging up the bronze torch in its lower-right arm, fire elementals are spawned into the battle field.

Wadjet becomes the most dangerous once it reaches its final HP bar, as it changes its attack patterns completely, like the other bosses from the lower floors. One of the known changes is a very high increase in fire elemental spawn rate.

Weak Points
As the snake is a fire-type monster, ice-attribute offensive spells deal the most damage to it. Additionally, the mirrors within the room can be used to deflect its instant kill ray of light back at it, causing major damage and temporarily disabling its fire aura.

Preparations
Due to the boss's difficulty, multiple raid parties were formed and forced to retreat from the boss room for a week after the boss was reached, with each of these battles revealing the boss's attack patterns and allowing the players to test new methods of countering the boss's attacks.

One such party was formed on June 22. Due to New ALfheim Online allowing players to die without dying in real life, unlike in Sword Art Online, no strategy meeting was held for the boss battle and the boss raiding party was formed promptly by inviting players at the gate plaza of Frieven. 35 players were assembled for the boss raid.

Strategy
Two parties of the raid party concentrate on fighting the boss, while the other participants fend off the fire elemental minions by using «Purified Surface» to severely weaken the elementals that normally negate half of the physical damage done to them.

When Wadjet uses a major skill, the flames enveloping the boss fade, creating an opening that can be used for either dealing damage or for party switching. When a party prepares to retreat to allow another party to take its place, casters use movement impeding spells to grant the parties time to switch, thus allowing the retreating party to recover from the battle, while a party that finishes handling elementals switch with boss fighting parties to continue pressuring the boss.

The most effective way of dealing with the boss's deadly ray attacks is to change the angle of the mirrors, causing the rays to be reflected perpendicularly, i.e. right back at Wadjet, reducing much of its HP.

When Wadjet begins coiling itself for a tail attack, the players must prepare to jump up just as the snake begins its attack to avoid the attack.

Trivia

 * Wadjet was not the boss of the 8th Floor in the original Aincrad. It was only introduced in New ALO and due to the change of the boss, the 8th Floor was changed from an abundant green forest to a largely burnt one to accommodate the new setting for the boss.

Wadjet la Serpiente Llameante