Master Mode Guide – Hypixel Skyblock

I’ve been playing Hypixel Skyblock for a while and have enjoyed the Master Catacombs quite a lot! They’re difficult and also much more rewarding than the usual Catacombs.

Why Should You Even Bother With Master Catacombs?

The Catacombs Master Mode offers a lot more Catacombs xp per run. Completing M1 grants the same xp as a normal F7, which takes about 2-3x as long.

Master Mode also introduces new items (Master Stars and Master Skulls) you can get from the chests at the end of the dungeon, which are currently a lot of profit.

Yes, it’s not as much as a Necron’s Handle, but it’s a lot more likely. In 1500 M5 runs (most of them being S), I’ve dropped 8 Third Master Stars (6 from the Bedrock Chest, and 2 from the Obsidian Chest).

Since this article is quite lengthy, here are some places you may want to jump to:

Why Should You Even Bother With Master Catacombs?
S or S+?
Mods?
What Class To Run?
Which Floor Should You Run?
Strategy: Clearing the Dungeon
Strategy: Bosses

S or S+?

Well, this shouldn’t come as a shock but most of the time if you want XP, run S. This is because S+ runs will, on average, slow down the run by about 30-45 seconds, and even longer if your party is not good at secrets. S+ runs barely increase the XP gain. Additionally, on floors M1-M4, there is no bedrock chest, so there are no additional rewards gained from doing S+.

Let’s use M5 for the example.

Most teams can finish M5 S in under 3 minutes. The above is me completing it normally without Paul. Note that I get around 106k xp.

Most of the time, M5 S+ takes around 3.5 to 4 minutes, sometimes longer if the team is bad at secrets. As you can see, the xp gain is only 10k, but the run took much longer.

This bedrock chest is during Mayor Jerry/Paul. The bedrock chest for third master stars normally cost 7m. As you can see, the bedrock chest costs more than the obsidian chest for the exact same item.

Mods?

If you’re free-to-play, then I would recommend Skytils. It has all of the puzzle solvers you need, and the auto-reparty/auto-accept reparty.

Alternatively, if you’re willing to spend $5, then the Skyblock Extras (SBE) mod has a lot more features. In case you’re wondering, the estimator in the top-right of the “M5 S” image is from SBE, and the dungeon map in the top-left is also from SBE. The estimator is not very accurate, but it gives a good sense of when to go in. The Archer is really the only person that needs this, as they are the ones who will typically wait at the portal after they clear the Blood Room.

What Class To Run?

For regular floors 1-7, the meta class distributions are usually one of three options:

5 mages
4 mages, 1 archer
3 mages, 1 archer, 1 tank

However, for master mode, the meta class distribution is:

3 berserkers
1 archer
1 tank

The berserkers all play with an archer setup. That is, the golden or diamond head of the floor that they’re running, and 3/4 Necron. A lower-level tank will run around in a reaper mask and 3/4 Goldor, but a higher-level tank will switch to Necron or Storm and help clear the dungeon. Mages are quite more difficult to run in Master Mode, both due to a lack of damage and a huge drop in EHP.

Which Floor Should You Run?

Depending on your Catacombs level, you should be running:

M1 to level up
M2 to get the completion
M3 to level up
M4 for money
M5 for a combination of leveling up and money
M6 to level up

At the current meta, most M3 teams, and all M5 and M6 teams will probably require that you have a Terminator bow, and not a Juju Shortbow. Master stars only drop from M3 or higher. All floors drop the Master Skulls though.

Strategy: Clearing the Dungeon

Here, I’ll go into detail for clearing the main floor of the dungeon. Boss strategies will come later in this article.

Here are some tips for all classes:

You should almost never stand still. Master Mode mobs do ridiculous amounts of damage, and if you stand still, you can die very easily. Stand back, and you’ll be fine.
Watch out for the Crypt Dreadlords. They can attack very fast and shoot a barrage of wither skulls at you, and they hurt.
Watch out for snipers. You basically have to memorize where they spawn and if you don’t defeat them, they deal ridiculous amounts of damage.
M5 and up, watch out for Fels. Especially speedy ones.
Keep an eye behind you for any sneaky Skeletors/Skeletor Primes spawning behind you.

Archers

They should blood rush. That is, from when the dungeon starts, clear (that is, get a white checkbox to show up) from every room from the start to the blood room. Blood rushing is important because waiting for the Watcher to spawn all their mobs takes up the longest part of the run. The archer will also typically blood camp if the runs are S. Blood camping involves immediately killing the spawned Watcher mob as soon as possible. This is to make it so that the Watcher minimizes the wasted time by flying around and not spawning mobs. If you’re going for S+ runs instead, it may be advisable for them to clear at least the room adjacent to blood instead of camping. The archer should also be the one to enter the boss room via the portal once the S requirement (270) is reached.

Berserkers

Berserkers (playing an archer role) should go around clearing the dungeon. As a berserker, your damage is about 2-3x lower than the archer, meaning minibosses are harder to kill. Purchasing a wither cloak and ice spray wand may help. Typically, you are clearing a room by yourself (without a tank). Here’s a quick guide on how to deal with minibosses as a lower-catacombs player:

Lost Adventurer/Angry Archeologist

Understanding its attack pattern is quite important. When you first encounter it, they will shoot a barrage of 3 arrows. Use a wither cloak to absorb these, or just dodge them if you’re good at that. Then, ice spray the boss and use your arrows. After roughly 5 seconds, and it’s not dead yet, it will do 1 of 2 things: it will either shoot arrows again, or heal. If you deal enough damage to it, then it will heal. If it shoots arrows again, dodge or use the wither cloak. Remember to keep using the ice spray to reduce its defense by 10%.

Shadow Assassin

Shadow Assassins when you first encounter them in M3 is quite difficult. When you enter a miniboss room, and do not see a miniboss nametag, you want to use your wither cloak. In case you don’t know, the Shadow Assassin deals double damage when it hits you from behind, so you will want to make sure that you have the cloak enabled. Once it teleports behind you (you’ll know it because you’ll hear the enderman teleporting sound), uncloak, then ice spray, then barrage it with arrows. If you fail to kill it within 5 seconds, back up and use the wither cloak again, and wait for it to teleport behind you. Then, ice spray and barrage, and repeat every 5 seconds until defeated.

Tank

A tank’s job is to usually accompany the archer in blood rushing. It’s very bad if the archer dies during blood rush because that means one of the berserkers will have to fill in, at least until the fairy room is reached. Keep in mind that the archer does 2-3x the damage of a berserker, so this will significantly hamper the run. If the archer is decent, then all the tank has to do is just camp at the wither doors and open it once the archer picks up the key. If the archer is really good, then they are able to blood rush by themselves, leaving you free to clear the dungeon and get secrets. Keep in mind that you do need some secrets in order to get S, although not that many. Since your DPS is not very high, avoid the miniboss rooms. Communication is key, so ask the archer whether or not you should accompany them for blood rush. If you have a very low-level archer, then you will have to accompany them as they kill the blood miniboss.

Mage

If you for some reason are running the 2 bers, 1 arch, 1 tank, 1 mage formation, then the mage has the job of the archer (i.e. blood rush and camp), and the archer has the role of the berserkers (i.e. clearing the dungeon).

Strategy: Bosses

This is for when you are fighting the actual bosses at the end of the dungeon. The dungeon phase itself is exactly the same on each floor.

M1: Bonzo

The main difference with Bonzo, compared to normal Floor 1 is that Bonzo has more health and damage. The boss is exactly the same.

Bonzo has 2 phases. In the first phase, he will spawn a lot of minions while jumping around. Just treat him like a normal dungeon miniboss, occasionally using the ice spray to increase your damage.

During the second phase, he has an attack that can shoot balloons everywhere. Minions don’t spawn during this phase. If you’re on the lower-level of catacombs, you should hide behind the boxes until his attack finishes, as you will most likely get 1 or 2-shot by these. If your tank is on the lower-level, you also want to avoid “nuking the tank”, in other words, killing the tank by making the tank absorb the damage you take from Bonzo.

Keep in mind that multiple ice sprays stack. So, if 2 different people use ice spray, the boss will have 20% less defense. If everyone on your team uses an ice spray on Bonzo, then he will have 50% less defense, which will help a lot, especially if your team is on the lower-end of the catacombs. You want to use ranged weapons here, as standing next to Bonzo while he’s doing his balloon attack is a surefire way to end your run in a fail.

M2: Scarf

The main difference with Scarf is that he will spawn 2 of each minion instead of 1, and that they have a ton more health and damage. Other than that, the boss is exactly the same. In my opinion, M2 is the most difficult boss fight out of all of them.

Target the Priests first, as they will continuously heal. Target the warriors as well, as they do a ton of damage. Everything does a lot of damage, and the main strategy is to kill everything before your tank dies, as they can only absorb so much damage. Be careful, as the warriors can still one shot me, even as cata 47, using their lunge attack.

During the second phase, do the same as the first. However, scarf will occasionally start to float and then unleash an attack that shoots those wither skeleton skulls everywhere, pretty much insta-killing you. It’s very similar to Bonzo’s balloon attack. If he starts to float, immediately back off and hide behind a corner. If you’re standing next to the tank and you peek your head out around the corner to check if he’s done, and those skulls hit you, both you and the tank pretty much die. It’s advisable for the tank to place a bonzo mask and spirit mask in their hotbar, and then switch out the reaper mask helmet whenever they’re getting low in this fight. Don’t bother attacking scarf until all the minions are dead. Unlike in normal f2, scarf basically takes no damage until all of his minions are defeated.

Most players will only run M2 once, and only for the completion so they can run M3.

Tip! If you’re farming M2, wait until the minions fall down from their spawning locations. If you attack them before they touch the ground, then Scarf will mention all of their death dialogues one by one, which wastes a long time.

M3: Professor

The main difference between F3 and M3 is that the guardians and Scarf have more health and damage. The boss battle is exactly the same.

During this phase, the 4 DPS classes should choose one of the four guardians. Typically, if you finish early, go help someone else with their guardian. In case you’re unfamiliar, to finish this phase, all four guardians have to be defeated at the same time. They will automatically-revive if there is another guardian still standing. If someone on your team doesn’t do enough DPS, then revert to the typical strategy of coordinating the lowering of all the Guardian’s health until they’re all low and then finish them off at once.

After that phase is over, ice spray Scarf and knock him into the corner. It is advisable to enchant your ice spray with Knockback 2 just for this (and also for M5). You can either knock him under the stairs, or over by the portal (similar to M5). Once he’s there, it’s hard for him to escape the barrage of arrows.

After that phase, all you have to do is just DPS Scarf until he dies. This phase is either the easiest, or the hardest, depending on how many teammates you have alive.

You’ll be stick farming M3 until you get high enough cata level to consistently run M5 without dying too many times. I would recommend running M3s until you hit roughly Catacombs 38 before being able to consistently run M5s. This is highly dependent on your skill, so you may want to move to M5 earlier, or wait until you’re a bit higher Catacombs.

Be sure to bring at least 5m, since that’s how much First Master Stars cost from the chest.

M4: Thorn

The main difference between F4 and M4 is that in M4, Thorn has 6 health instead of 4, and his speed is much, much higher than before, and also 3 spirit bears spawn each time instead of 1, and the health and damage of all the mobs are increased.

Mob Phase

The strategy is largely the same as F4: spawn a decoy in the upper balcony area (forwards-left corner from where you spawn), and kill mobs until the spirit bears appear.

In case you’re not observant enough, the balcony has an indicator for how many more mobs you need to kill before the spirit bears spawn. It starts out as coal blocks and turns into sea lanterns as the indicator fills up.

In the traditional team (3 berserkers, 1 archer, and 1 tank), the archer and tank should stay on the main level, killing mobs until the sprit bears show up. The three berserkers should head up to the back-left balcony and prepare the decoys.

One of the berserkers should constantly stun Thorn. It is advisable to keep Thorn stunned at all times. This is because Thorn’s speed is unbelievably fast, you’re never going to hit thorn normally without the stun. Once you lose the stun, it’s hard to get it back. I would highly recommend a Tribal Spear. You can just hold right-click and afk basically. Alternatively, Bonemerangs or a Phantom rod will also work. I recommend buying a Tribal Spear over bonemerangs because if you just hold right-click with one bonemerang, you cannot infinitely stun Thorn. The “meta” spot to stun Thorn is in the corner, between where the decoys are placed and the center.

Another berserker should also kill the bats that gather near the decoy. From what teams I’ve played with have told me, you should only kill the bats during the mob phase (i.e. between the chat messages “The Spirit Bow has dropped” and “3 spirit bears have appeared”. This will help to achieve quicker M4 times.

The last berserker should just AFK or help out with the bats.

Stunning Thorn with Terminator

In case you don’t know, you can actually stun Thorn with the Terminator beam right-click ability. Remember that the Right-Click ability reads: “Can be casted after landing 3 hits.” So, you have to shoot something in between right-clicks. The easiest thing to do is shoot at the giant pile of bats that have built up around your decoy.

Spirit Bears Phase

For this phase, the archer should attack the spirit bears. The order that you choose to tackle them in does not matter.

Note! If you kill all three bears at the same time (within about a second of each other), the Spirit bow will not spawn, and your team becomes softlocked. This also happens if you kill the last two bears at the same time. This bug has been in the game since M4 was first introduced, and is still currently present.

The quickest strategy would be to kill the first two bears at the same time, and then kill the last one separately.

Until that bug is fixed, the berserkers that are currently AFK should not attack any bears (as tempting as it is), since it will increase the likelihood of a softlock.

After the last spirit bear dies, it will drop a spirit bow. To save time, the archer shouldn’t pick it up. Instead, the tank should. This is so that the archer can continue to kill mobs to get the next set of bears to spawn faster. Thorn should be stunned, so it will be an easy hit for the tank.

Note! There is currently a bug in how the game handles the “You didn’t shoot the Spirit Bow fast enough”. Essentially, how the boss is supposed to work is if you pick up a Spirit Bow, and then don’t shoot it within 20 seconds, the bow will disappear. However, what happens is that the game doesn’t reset this timer after you shoot the bow. Suppose you pick up the bow at 3:30, shoot it and hit thorn at 3:34, then pick up another bow at 3:48. At 3:50, the bow will disintegrate because the game sets up a future “bow check” to see if you’re holding it.

To avoid this bug, you want to alternate between who shoots, to avoid the bow disintegrating before you shoot. Thorn has 6 HP. The tank and the last berserker traditionally are the ones who alternate. The tank traditionally takes bows 1, 3, and 5, while the last berserker takes bows 2, 4, and 6.

Mage?

If you have a very strong left-click mage, you actually can get two spirit bows per bear phase instead of 1. Basically, kill the first spirit bear before the second one spawns. That bear will drop a bow, and once you kill the second and third bears, the third one will also drop a bow. This is quite difficult to do, as the mage has to one-shot the 180m health spirit bear. You used to be able to do this with Rend, but that no longer works.

Grind M4?

Rumors are that Second Master Stars have a higher drop chance, due to M4 taking much longer to complete than the other floors. The average time from the runs I’ve played in usually take between 4-5 minutes.

I got this Second Master Star on my 22nd M4. It costs 6m from the Obsidian chest.

M5: Livid

The main difference between F5 and M5 is that livid has more health and damage. Thus, you can’t just “kill all of the livids and hope you got the right one”. The boss fight ends once the real livid is killed.

The tank should run up to the area where you normally go for f5, in the balcony area. Then, when the livids spawn, use castle of stone, and head near the entrance portal. Make sure to continuously hit all of the Livids except for the correct one. This is because you want to keep the fake Livid’s attention, so that the rest of your teammates can deal with the real livid, so keep hitting them. You also want to do this for lifesteal. If your teammates don’t defeat Livid fast enough, Livid’s attention will go elsewhere, so using Jingle bells can help out.

Tip! The color of the ceiling indicates which Livid is the real Livid. This occasionally changes as the fight drags on.

If you’re one of the DPS classes, just stand back near the portal until the Livids spawn. Once they do, note the ceiling color and search for the real livid. Once you locate him, ice spray him, and use your KnockBack 2 ice spray wand to knock him into the portal. Once he’s there, barrage him with arrows. If you hit the wrong livid, the Livids may start teleporting and cause problems, so wait until they get into the portal.

The tank should have their jingle bells out, and when the livids spawn, make sure to use their castle of stone to draw their attention. The tank should also note the ceiling color and keep hitting the other incorrect livids to keep their agro. The tank should also keep a groomlock grimoire on them, and use it to heal themselves when the fight drags on.

If you’re in a more advanced team, if the real livid Spawns farther away, instead of waiting for him to walk over to get close enough to knock back, you can use a Gyrokinetic wand to stun Livid in place (so that your arrow’s KB won’t do anything).

Grinding M5?

On average, the M5 S run takes roughly 3 minutes, while S+ usually takes around 4 minutes. This is highly dependent on your team, however.

Since you WILL be stuck farming M5s until you can move onto running M6, I would highly recommend purchasing the Diamond Livid Head. It greatly improves your EHP. Before the time you’re able to run M6 consistently, you will probably surpass at least 1k M5 completions before leveling up enough. You’re pretty much stuck here until roughly you hit Catacombs Level 45, which is going to take a while. You CAN transition earlier, however, if you’re dying a lot or clearing very slowly due to playing more cautiously, it may be more efficient xp-wise to grind out M5s.

You earn roughly 105k xp for S, and 115k xp for S+. You earn a huge amount of money on this floor, due to the amount of Legion and Overload books. Additionally, since you’re opening not wood chests, you’re also getting a lot more essence than usual, which you can sell.

For some reason, this floor has a different price for master stars for the Obsidian and Bedrock chests. From the Obsidian chest, it costs 1m. From the Bedrock chest, it costs 7m.

M6: Sadan

Terracotta Phase

The main difference between F6 and M6 is that the Terracottas, Golems, Giants, and Sadan have more health and damage. In the last phase (where Sadan gets into his Giant), the 4 giants that you previously killed respawn.

For the first phase, you want to make sure that everyone on your team has a Gyrokinetic wand. You may to call out the ordering that you will use the wand (1, 2, 3, 4, 5). This is because the wands have a cooldown of 30s, and you want to keep the Terracottas bunched up so that your right-click terminator beam can hit them all.

Traditionally, the tank takes 1, archer takes 2, and the three berserkers take 3, 4, and 5. 2 and 4 will usually also place their gyro closer to the golems than the others, who traditionally put theirs where the hallway meets the giant room. The tank should use their groomlock grimoire whenever they need it, as they will likely die otherwise.

Most teams will end up killing the Terracottas twice. The best time for the archer to deal with the golems is just after the first wave of Terracottas is defeated, and before they respawn, obviously. This usually occurs between gyros 2 and 3.

Note! If you’re playing in a team composed of 1 of each class, the ordering traditionally is: Mage: 1, 3, 5, Archer: 2, Berserker: 4

For the fastest terracotta phases, the archer should be using Nansorb Arrows, along with having a Golden Dragon pet.

Giants Phase

Next up, the Giants phase. This phase is exactly the same as in F6. Defeat all 4 giants. Each giant has 600m health. All the DPS classes choose a giant (1, 2, 3, 3), where the order is the giant’s spawning order, while the tank sits in the middle. After you finish your Giant, work on the last Giant. The Giants spawn in a counter-clockwise pattern starting from the closest-right Giant when facing the big open room from the corridor. The Giant’s abilities (e.g. Bigfoot’s stomp, Jolly Pink’s boulder, etc) do huge damage (one-shotting even me at cata 47), so you want to kill them as fast as possible, before they have a chance to use their abilities to damage you. Otherwise, you’ll want to pay attention to when they use their abilities and make sure to either dodge them or use a wither cloak.

Note! Unlike the rest of the dungeon mobs, the Giant’s ability projectiles don’t immediately disappear when the Giants are killed (most notably, the L.A.S.R giant’s laser beams). Make sure to look up and dodge any remaining attacks.

Traditionally, the Archer takes the 1st giant, then works on the 4th giant after they finish the 1st giant. The strongest Berserker takes the 2nd giant, and the other two berserkers take the 3rd giant. The Tank just sits in the middle with wither cloak as the giants use their abilities. The giant’s ability will kill both you and the tank if you get hit and the tank doesn’t have the wither cloak up, so make sure to avoid getting hit at all costs.

Note! If you’re playing in a team composed of 1 of each class, the split traditionally is: Archer: 1 and 4, Mage: 2, Berserker and Healer: 3

Sadan Phase

For the last phase, immediately after Sadan gets into his Giant, the 4 Giants that you killed in the previous phase will respawn. Have someone (traditionally, the tank) use their Gyrokinetic wand to hold Sadan in place and then barrage him with arrows. If you do not use a Gyrokinetic wand, it’s likely that one of the normal Giants will use their ability and insta-kill the entire team before you’re able to finish Sadan. For this phase, you only need to defeat Sadan, killing the other 4 giants doesn’t do anything (other than grant combat xp). It’s traditionally good practice to stand near the middle, and face towards where Sadan spawns. That way, in case the tank misses their gyro, Sadan doesn’t go flying across the room (since Terminator deals big knockback). If Sadan ends up flying across the entire room, then the run is lost, as the remaining giants will use an ability that KOs the entire team.

Fun fact, it took me 234 M6’s before I got my first Fourth Master Star.

For M6, it costs 8m from either the Obsidian or Bedrock chest.

Tips For Faster Runs

Fill your inventory with Superboom TNT to save time between runs. This way, you won’t pick up all those dungeon armors and weapons. Yes, you will lose out on essence, but reducing the downtime between runs is very important. Additionally, this also makes it so that when you collect your loot chest, the items will go straight into your stash, and thus, none of them will be accidentally deleted.
- Understanding how item deletion works: in Hypixel Skyblock, all legendary items are assigned a UUID (a unique identifier). The game can detect “duping” if two items have the same UUID. However, when dungeons chests give you an item, they give you an item without a UUID. Whenever you change lobbies (e.g. warping from the dungeon to the hub), the game will automatically update all the items in your inventory. It sees two legendary items without a UUID so it assigns one. If the two legendary items stacked (because they both don’t have a UUID), then when the game goes to assign a UUID, it assigns both of them the same UUID and then detects that you have two of the same UUID item and then removes one of them. That’s when you get the message “You had blacklisted items in your inventory, we had to delete them! Sorry!”. Sending items to your stash will fix this issue of when you drop 2 recombobulators and one of them gets deleted.
- At the end of the run, you can just warp to the dungeon hub once you see the chest rewards popup. It looks like this. Doing this will save you the time it takes to run around and pick up the items on the ground. You should warp to the dungeon hub (out of the dungeon) until the God Pot randomly getting wiped gets fixed.
- Additionally, when running around with a full inventory, have a dungeons sack to pick up the secrets. Recently, the Admins have patched a glitch called “secret deletion” where if you picked up a secret when your inventory is full through a sack, the secret would get “deleted” and not count. Now, you can finally run around with a full inventory!
Clear before secrets: You have no idea how many times everyone’s just waiting around for the ice fill puzzle to be completed, since that was the last room to be completed. If whoever was closest to the room discovered the room earlier, then the dungeon could have finished sooner.
In the Blaze Room, you don’t have to collect the chest for it to be “complete”. That is, you can leave once you defeat all the blazes. Similarly, with the creeper beam room, you also don’t have to wait for the pillar to disappear and collect the chest. You can save time by leaving the room immediately to work on another part of the dungeon.
Learning mob locations: You don’t have to kill all the mobs in a room. Only the starred ones, or the minibosses. Learning which ones you have to defeat will save you time, so you don’t waste it by killing unnecessary mobs.
Use /joindungeon master_catacombs # for faster re-entry (e.g. /joindungeon master_catacombs 5). And also use mods that auto reparty and auto accept reparty for convenience.