Fracture

Fracture =

Focus Point =

Unfinished =

Finished =

"The star-spawned horror rattles its crystalline cage!"

- The Ancestor upon encountering Fracture

Fracture is a boss found within the Farmstead in The Color of Madness DLC, and the first phase of the fight against The Sleeper.

It will always appear as the second boss in an Endless run, after the Miller. Then, it can be randomly encountered again at the end of wave groups.

Behaviour
The Fracture does not usually attack the heroes directly outside of the low-damage Slow the Sands; instead, it focuses on summoning and empowering other enemies to fight for it. At the beginning of the fight, it automatically uses Seeds of Despair once to spawn 3 Focus Points; during the battle, it will use Vile Focusing every turn to recreate one Focus Point at a time. If Focus Points are active on the field when its turn comes, it can use Befouling Tint to change a Focus Point into a randomly colored Unfinished Aberration, and then use Ceaseless Expansion to complete the development into a Finished Aberration.

While Focus Points and Unfinished Aberrations do nothing except get in your heroes' way, most Finished Aberrations will self-destruct, dealing damage to the whole party while also inflicting a status effect depending on its color:


 * Black ( Traumatic ): ,
 * Purple ( Temporal ):
 * Red ( Unstable ):
 * Green ( Pestilential ):
 * Blue ( Adamantite ): No attack (Poptext_guard.png Guard Fracture)

After its HP is lowered to below 20%, the Fracture will use Blooming Chaos to transform into The Sleeper, becoming much larger and more aggressive in exchange for losing its ability to summon and enhance Focus Points.

Strategy
The Fracture has three actions per round, and will typically use all of them to create a Focus Point or upgrade an existing Focus Point or Aberration. Both Focus Points and Unfinished Aberrations are healed to full health upon upgrading, so do not attack them if you don't believe you can destroy it during your turn. (They are not cured of blight and bleed, however.) The fully upgraded Finished Aberrations have 30 health each with 20% PROT (with the exception of the Adamantite Aberration which has 5% PROT), making them relatively easy to destroy provided you focus fire, using area of effect attacks to damage Fracture as well.

The most dangerous summon is the (purple) Temporal Aberration, which deals higher damage and stuns the entire party, putting you at a severe disadvantage in keeping up with the Fracture. It should be focused over any other summon to avoid losing momentum. Also important are the (red) Unstable Aberrations, which will heal the Fracture for the total damage it deals when it explodes, setting progress back significantly.

Fracture summons Focus Points in position 1, putting them in easy range of frontline damage dealers. High-damage moves like the Hellion's Bleed Out or Leper's Chop can possibly take out any Focus Points or Aberrations in a single attack, particularly with a crit. Ideally, try to take out two Aberrations; Fracture can only summon one Focus Point every round, and consistently dealing with them will mean you have many openings to damage Fracture.

While frontliners use damage to take out the Focus Points and Aberrations, backliners should focus the Fracture. Because of its 3 actions, blight is very effective at dealing a lot of damage quickly, especially when buffed enough to land consistently. (Fracture is immune to bleed, so focus more on direct damage for heroes with mostly bleed-based attacks.) The Plague Doctor is the most effective in this regard, able to target Fracture both in the front or back with powerful blight; alternatively, the Shieldbreaker can also function very well, as she can ignore the Fracture's PROT with Pierce if it is in the backline, or deliver both good damage and blights with Adder's Kiss or Captivate in the front. The Shieldbreaker can also use the camping skill Snake Eyes to help other heroes deal with the Focus Points' PROT.

On the other hand, it is perfectly viable to ignore Focus Points and Aberrations altogether and focus down the Fracture with strong damage dealers with reach to rank 4. Debuffs and marks are not very useful due to 3 actions of the Fracture, so Arbalest/Musketeer or Houndmaster are not ideal, but Shieldbreaker with Pierce works perfectly since Pierce also pierces Fracture's innate PROT. A well-established Farmstead party of Vestal, Jester, Shieldbreaker, Shieldbreaker (with damage trinkets) can consistently transition to the Sleeper phase without a single Aberration exploding: both Shieldbreakers spam Pierce, Jester spams Battle Ballad for extra CRIT and outspeeding Aberrations, and Vestal chips in on the Fracture with the Judgement or heals the rest of the party as needed. The same team has no problem transitioning to the Sleeper either, when Shieldbreakers can use Pierce or Adder's Kiss, Vestal heals and Jester buffs the team or drops the Finale to end the fight quickly.

It is also possible to pull the Fracture to the front ranks. Its 140% Move Resist makes it difficult, but not impossible with right trinkets. Then (unless the Aberrations in the backline are killed) the Fracture has no way of moving back and can be focused down with dedicated frontline damage dealers.

Fracture will rarely use the skill Slow the Sands if at least two summons are present. Because of how unlikely it is to stun, its low damage, and the relatively negligible SPD debuff, using this skill is more like a free turn where Fracture doesn't upgrade any Focus Points or Aberrations.

Once Fracture's HP is dropped to below 20%, it will transform into The Sleeper. There is no rest in between, so make sure the party can survive both battles in one go.

Finished Aberrations
The Adamantite Aberration has no attack, and instead will always Guard Fracture as long as it's alive.

The Adamantite Aberration also has different resistances than all the other Finished Aberrations - Stun (85%), Blight (85%), Bleed (100%), Debuff (40%), Move (75%), Prot (5%), and Speed (5). Noticably, all of the Adamantite Aberration's resistances are markedly lower with the exception of Move, which makes eliminating it with Blight and even Bleed (if your Bleed skill is strong enough) a viable option.