Panda, The Mutated Core

Panda, The Mutated Core, is the ink raid boss of the Culling Games. He is a positioning fight, not a stat check. He carries a touch less health than Seimei, but he resists knockback entirely and he would rather not be hit, so a party that out-DPSes him while standing in the wrong place will still lose. You win by reading him: bait his dodge, strike the right core while it is open, and keep moving off his hazards.

For lobby, party, difficulty and mutator basics, see Raid Basics. For the lore behind the three souls, read the codex entry, Panda, The Mutated Core.

Phases

He shifts at 100, 80, 60, 40 and 20 percent health. Each shift is a brief invulnerable “ink reformation” cinematic of about four to five seconds, and each one ends in a guaranteed free-burst window. Save your hardest commitment for the moment he reforms.

HP	Phase	What changes
100%	I - Awakening	Opening kit: Slash, Uppercut, Sword Beam. Learn his spacing.
80%	II - Panda Core	Core weak point begins cycling. Kick and Roundhouse added. Ink Ponds start.
60%	III - Gorilla Core	Ink Dragon Sweep fires on entry. Ink Dragon Strike begins. A party slow pulses every 8s.
40%	IV - The Third Stirs	Ink Tiger adds spawn, up to three alive at once.
20%	V - The Third Core	The failsafe surfaces. Everything at once. Finish him.

The Dodge Counter

On a melee hit, Panda may sidestep with an ink-raven counter that pulls the attacker in and slows them, dealing a small capped amount of damage. It is not a wall. It is baitable.

• It has roughly a 1.25 second internal cooldown, so it can never trigger on back-to-back hits.
• It is never a 100 percent chance. Base dodge is 50 percent.
• He does not dodge during the post-reformation stun window, and he does not dodge against domain or sure-hit techniques.

Difficulty	Dodge chance
Normal	50%
Hardcore	65%
Nightmare	80%
Nightmare+	80%

The Three Cores

From Phase II onward, the active core cycles between two states, and only one of them is worth hitting.

State	Damage taken	Note
Exposed	Full, plus a 15% bonus	About six seconds. This is your window.
Guarded	Only 40%	And he knits back 20% of the damage that lands. Hitting it heals him.

A core is exposed about 63 percent of the time, so there is almost always a target if you wait for it. The state is always telegraphed: bright particles and action-bar text when a core is exposed, ink particles when it is guarded. The exposed core rotates in order, Panda then Gorilla then The Third.

Guarding never makes him unkillable. It only punishes blind DPS. Watch the action bar, hit the open core, and ease off the moment it shutters.

Hazards

All of these are telegraphed, and all of them leave a window to heal once they pass.

Hazard	From	Effect
Ink Ponds	Phase II	Telegraphed black rings, slow plus Darkness plus capped damage, about 2s on and 2s off.
Ink Dragon Sweep	Phase III entry	A modeled ink dragon sweeps the arena once.
Ink Dragon Strike	Phase III+	Marks a raider’s ground, then erupts after about 1.75s. Move off the mark.
Ink Tiger adds	Phase IV+	Up to three alive at once. Clear them or kite them.
Party slow pulse	Phase III+	A pulsed slow hits the whole party every 8s.

Difficulties

The party leader picks the difficulty in the lobby. Mutators are drawn from the shared raid pool (Swarm, Impatient, Warded, Vengeful) and are described in Raid Basics. Base solo-Normal health is about 100,000, and he gains 60 percent more health per extra raider.

Difficulty	Health	Damage	Notes
Normal	x1.0	x1.0	The baseline fight.
Hardcore	x1.7	x1.3	+15% dodge.
Nightmare	x2.6	x1.6	+30% dodge. Rolls mutators.
Nightmare+	x3.4	x1.85	+30% dodge. Rolls extra mutators, with its own loot table. Unlocked per player after enough Nightmare clears.

Rewards

A clear grants a raid crate for the team, plus a once-per-day Daily First Clear bonus crate. There is a rare chance at a Sukuna Finger drop, which feeds the Sukuna path. Per-difficulty loot improves on Nightmare and Nightmare+. Exact odds are tuned by the team.

Leaderboard

Panda keeps a separate fastest-clear board, tracked per difficulty. Each entry records the party names, the party size, the clear time, and the top three damage dealers. Speed and a clean read of the cores both pay off here.