Malachai, The Nightmare

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Malachai, The Nightmare
Malachai, The Nightmare
Malachai, The Nightmare
Level(s) 40
Location(s) The Harvest
Quest(s) The Eternal Nightmare
Resistance(s) Resists Elemental Damage
Resists Chaos Damage
Skill(s) Slam
Summon Blood Worms
Teleport (with Slam)
Tentacle Portal
Monster Mortar
Fire Trap
TriBomb
Ring of Fire

Malachai, The Nightmare is the final boss of Act 4, located in the Harvest's Black Core's final area: The Black Heart. Defeating him allows the player access to Act 5.

Lore

Malachai was Chitus's thaumaturgist in Wraeclast and the creator of Gemlings, humans augmented with powerful virtue gems. He courted Lady Dialla and turned her into the Gemling Queen. After the Purity Rebellion Malachai's life was spared, and he built the Rapture Device to "purge Wraeclast of its otherworldly vices".

Abilities

Malachai has two stages with small changes in the spells he uses.

Stage 1

In this stage, Malachai is initially protected by a red shield that prevents all damage. Piety helps the player by disabling Malachai's shield with the Piety Beam. Standing in the lightning beam shocks the player.

When Malachai's health first drops to 75% and 50%, he transforms Piety into an abomination and regains his shield (and invulnerability). Piety will become an enemy that uses Vaal Ball Lightning and Melee Attacks. You must attack Piety in order to transform her back into an ally. Doing so will let her disable Malachai's shield again. When you "save" Piety the second time, Malachai will permanently kill Piety and moves to his second phase.

  • Autoattack: If you stand adjacent to Malachai, he attacks you with moderately strong melee strikes.
  • Summon Blood Worms: Small blood worms pour into the arena at regular intervals. They deal moderate damage, but have low life. Their corpses explode after a short delay, dealing moderate damage. They grant flask charges on death.
  • Spawn TriBomb: Malachai conjures three red energy orbs in a triangle in the arena. After a short delay, each orb explode into three smaller orbs move slowly.
  • Teleport: Malachai teleports to another location. Does not deal damage.
  • Teleport Slam: Malachai sinks into a bloody portal and re-appears in another location, rippling with red energy. After a short delay, the energy explodes in a large runic circle around Malachai's location.
  • Slam: Malachai lifts his weapon and smashes in front of him dealing moderate damage.
  • Tentacle Portal: Malachai channels for a duration, dealing many small hits that can chill in a large cone in front of him. This skill can be easily dodged by moving behind Malachai or moving away from the cone.
  • Mortar: Malachai throws balls of blood that create Rune Traps on the ground.
    • Rune Trap: Malachai throws 1-3 bloody traps. Traps are triggered when players and allies step on it or are summoned onto it, exploding for moderate damage. Traps last 9 seconds before expiring.

Stage 2

In this stage, the arena contains three Hearts of the Beast. At approximately 70%, 40% and 20% life, Malachai teleports to one of these Hearts and opens it, recovering about 30% of his Life and becomes invulnerable due to his shield. The opened Heart can then be killed to get rid of the shield.

Malachai retains most of his attacks from the first stage, with a few exceptions noted below:

  • Malachai no longer uses Slam or Summon Blood Worms.
  • Malachai will use more AoEs and teleports more often as his health gets lower.
  • Rune Traps are larger and deal more damage. Rune Traps are now summoned directly instead of being left by Mortar.
  • Degen Mortar: Malachai can throw 1 or 5 balls of blood that explode and deal persistent physical damage over time for 5 seconds in an area.
  • Summon Primordial Creations: Summons humanoid monsters that act similar to zombies.
  • Ring of Fire: Upon opening the third Heart, Malachai creates a persistent red ring that slowly tracks the player around the arena, dealing moderate fire damage over time to anyone inside it.

Strategy

Malachai's Tentacle Portal skill.

Most of Malachai's attacks are well-telegraphed. Watch him and learn what the animations for each attack look like, and you should be able to avoid most of his damage. Learning what the attacks look like and how to avoid them is the key to victory in this fight.

In general, fight cautiously - avoid his attacks and only damage him when you can do so relatively safely. Malachai has no energy shield or health regen, so all of your damage will add up.

Malachai's tentacle portal provides the best opportunity to damage him, assuming you can avoid the other AoEs he throws out. He is stationary for the entire time he channels, and maneuvering just to one side of the portal will let you attack him without taking any damage.

For the entire fight, but especially the end of the second phase, pay very close attention to the ground in the arena. Malachai's rune traps, blood pools, and the ring of fire are all very dangerous in the chaos of the fight.

The explosive teleport is easily recognized and gives you plenty of time to react, but don't mess around with it. The explosion can easily one-shot you. Get far away from Malachai and go back in after the explosion has gone off.

His Smash in stage 1 is quite quick, so if you are melee and are using slow melee attacks like two handed ice crash or any skill with multistrike, you might not have time to dodge. This attack deals a large amount of damage, so melee characters should play especially defensively during the first phase.

Transformed Piety is extraordinarily dangerous, and will require lots of dodging. She does not have the chaos beam attack from her boss version, but the chaos spheres she throws deal very high damage. An Amethyst Flask or some other source of chaos resistance will help immensely.

Related items

Map variants

Stronger versions of Malachai, The Nightmare serve as map bosses:

Map Level Name Notes
Core MapCore MapMap Level: 69
Map Tier: 2
Guild Character: ûBlack monstrous bridges cross oily rivers,
leading nowhere. Nothing as it should be.Travel to this Map by using it in a personal Map Device. Maps can only be used once.		 Eater of Souls
Primordial Pool MapPrimordial Pool MapMap Level: 71
Map Tier: 4
Guild Character: ÂA dough of bad blood.
A yeast of ill will.Travel to this Map by using it in a personal Map Device. Maps can only be used once.		 Nightmare's Omen Phase 1 only but without Piety
The Shaper's RealmThe Shaper's RealmMap Level: 84
Map Tier: 17
Guild Character: ¥Travel to this Map by using it in a personal Map Device. Maps can only be used once.		 84 As one of the outcome of the random mini-bosses phase

Dialogue

Malachai is voiced by New Zealand actor John Leigh.[1]

Achievements

Name Description
End of the Nightmare
Kill Malachai, The Nightmare.

Concept Art[2]

  • Concept art

    Concept art

Version history

Version Changes
3.9.2f
  • Fixed a rare bug where Malachai in The Harvest and Core MapCore MapMap Level: 69
    Map Tier: 2
    Guild Character: û    Black monstrous bridges cross oily rivers,
    leading nowhere. Nothing as it should be.    Travel to this Map by using it in a personal Map Device. Maps can only be used once.     could sometimes fail to transition to his second arena.
3.8.2
  • Fixed a rare bug that prevented various bosses from using skills or transitioning correctly after being Frozen or Stunned.
2.0.0
  • Introduced to the game.

References

  1. ↑ Bex_GGG (August 24, 2016). "TIL that Izaro was voiced by Micheal Hurst, who also played the role Iolaus, Hercules' sidekick in Hercules: The Legendary Journeys.". Official Path of Exile subreddit. Retrieved August 24, 2016.
  2. ↑ https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1424748
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