How to Activate Hard Mode for the Headless Horseman Encounter During Hallow's End
New to this year's Hallow's End event, the Headless Horseman fight has been changed, with the addition of hard mode mechanics! These mechanics can be activated to make the fight harder in exchange for more rewards. Learn how to activate the new hard modes for the Headless Horseman and the rewards for doing so in this post.
Headless Horseman Hard Mode Basics
To enable the hard mode for the Headless Horseman encounter, you must talk to the Wicker Men located just to the left when you zone into Scarlet Monastery. You can talk with each smaller Wicker Men to get one of the curses, or the big ominous Wicker Man in the middle to get all 4 curses at once!
Each curse adds an additional ability to the encounter that requires you to either dodge new obstacles or execute mechanics. Activating hard mode applies a PERSONAL debuff to you only, so you can take on the challenge by yourself and not affect any other party members.
Once you curse yourself, you will have a debuff showing what curses you have active.
- Ember Curse — Cursed enemies emit Shadowflame around their location periodically. Each blast inflicts a stack of Wicker Man's Shadow.
- Cursed Hot Head — Cursed enemies suffer dark hallucinations manifesting in front of their location. Moving to the hallucination dispels it. Ignoring the hallucination inflicts two stacks of Wicker Man's Shadow to the enemy.
- Shadow Curse — Insidious Cackle shackles the souls of cursed enemies in fear. The shackled soul slowly moves towards consuming flames. Souls that reach the flames before their shackles are destroyed inflict two stacks of Wicker Man's Shadow to the afflicted enemy.
- Thorny Surprise — Piercing thorns erupt under cursed enemies periodically. Enemies hit by the thorns suffer
