Jiequan
Navigation
Preparation
Recommended Skills
- Qi Boost (x3)
- Swift Rise
- Water Flow
- Breathing Exercise
- Backlash
- Leverage
- Incisive Drain
- Unbounded Drain
- Enhanced Talisman (x2)
Okay – I know that’s a lot of skills, especially compared to my recommendations for Yanlao. However, you probably already unlocked the majority of these skills prior to fighting Jiequan. There are Tao Fruits, which provide 1 skill point, all over New Kunlun, and, prior to this fight, you can explore the majority of the station. Ensure that you’ve combed through every inch of the available map for all of the chests if you’re struggling with Jiequan. Sometimes a new skill, or an upgrade to your Healing Pipe can be all the difference you need to win.
As for the explanation of each skill’s importance:
Qi Boost: provides Yi with 4 total Qi Charges. This synergizes nicely with Water Flow, which takes 2 Qi Charges to perform a Qi Blast.
Swift Rise: arguably the best defensive skill in the game. This allows Yi to recover from a knockdown more quickly, which will prevent you from being combo attacked to death. You should have unlocked it already, but, if you haven’t, now would be the time to spend the skill points on Swift Rise.
Water Flow: one of 3 different Qi Blast styles. This one always uses 2 charges of Qi, but doesn’t require Yi to charge the attack afterwards. This means that you can continue attacking, or parrying immediately after applying a talisman to Jiequan, which is useful since Jiequan has many short counterattack windows.
Breathing Exercise: this will allow you to recover internal damage after performing a successful perfect parry. It’s not strictly required, but it does make more intense boss fights a lot less spooky by reducing the amount of internal damage you’ll be sitting on throughout a fight provided you score a couple perfect parries.
Backlash & Leverage: dramatically increases the amount of internal damage that a foe takes after you perform a successful Tai Chi Kick, and Unbounded Counter respectively. This will allow Water Flow to do far more damage to Jiequan as you cash-out on the massive chunks of internal damage he takes after you successfully perform either of these defensive techniques.
Incisive Drain & Unbounded Drain: gain 2 Qi Charges upon successfully performing a Tai Chi Kick, and Unbounded Counter respectively. This synergizes extremely well with Backlash/Leverage and Water Flow since it’ll give you the 2 Qi needed to place a talisman on Jiequan, so you can immediately cash-out all of the accumulated internal damage.
Enhanced Talisman: A (roughly) 25% damage increases to Qi Blast for each skill. Probably the least essential skill on the list, but is very nice to have.
Recommended Jades
- Quick Dose Jade
- Hedgehog Jade
Quick Dose: Still the MVP, and my goto Jade of choice. This speeds up the use of your Healing Pipe by roughly 40%, which allows you to use it more liberally throughout a fight. If you’re struggling with Jiequan, this is a must-have Jade as it’ll give you the opportunity to back off, and heal in-between the majority of Jiequan’s attacks.
Hedgehog: One of the best damage boosting Jades against bosses, provided you can reliably perfect parry. Hedgehog applies internal damage onto anything after you perfect parry a melee attack. This can really add up as Jiequan’s barrage of melee attacks is nearly endless.
If you haven’t unlocked Hedgehog yet, you get it by giving Shuanshuan the Unknown Seed (found in the Agricultural Zone) and GM Fertilizer (found in the Transmutation Zone). The Hedgehog Jade can then be obtained by climbing the giant plant in the Four Season Pavilion.
Recommended Equipment
- Cloud Piercer S/X
- Level 6 Healing Pipe
- 4 Max Health Upgrades
- 4 Pipe Vials
- 2 Computing Unit
- 2 Azure Sand Magazines
Again, not a whole lot has changed from the previous list of recommendations. I was able to secure a level 6 Healing Pipe, 4 Max Health Upgrades, and 4 Pipe Vials before I finally arrived at the top of the Factory to fight Jiequan. I probably could have gotten more, but I’ve been deliberately not grinding Jin while writing this guide.
It’s also worth noting that you can fully explore the Transmutation Zone, and Abandoned Mines before fighting Jiequan. Combing through both areas should prove fruitful for upgrading Yi’s current capabilities.
You’ll also need to buy a second Computing Unit from Chiyou if you haven’t already so that you can equip the Hedgehog Jade. Chiyou should now have permenently taken up residence in the Four Season Pavilion, so finding them is easy enough. Plus the 3D Printer is right beside them, so you can get additional Jin from recycling spare parts that you’ve found around New Kunlun.
I also highly recommend that you purchase an upgrade for your Cloud Piercer arrows from Kuafu. This increases the damage of the arrow, and allows Cloud Piercer to function as a ranged Charged Strike. This means that it can break Jiequan’s Barrier Shield, which is extremely useful to limit the amount of healing that this bastard can accumulate throughout the fight.
How to Fight Jiequan
I have good news, and bad news.
The good news is that if you can beat Jiequan, then you can finish the rest of Nine Sols.
The bad news is that Jiequan is the single largest difficulty spike in the entire game, aside from the final boss.
As a result, if you can muster the patience to make it through Jiequan then nothing else that Nine Sols throws at you should be outside of your capabilities. Just keep that in mind while you’re fighting Jiequan – the fight is unreasonably hard your first time through Nine Sols, and everyone (including me) has suffered through the same frustration that you’re likely experiencing right now.
Phase 1
Similar to Yanlao, Jiequan is a very front-loaded encounter. He has several different attacks that you’re going to need to learn to defend against, and he moves quickly. This can make Jiequan feel especially unfair, but his attacks become a lot easier to defend against once you’ve studied them in isolation.
Overview of Phase 1 Attacks
| Attack Name | Short Description |
|---|---|
| Sword Thrust | Jiequan summons a sword, and thrusts it toward Yi. |
| Spear Lunge | Jiequan summons a spear, jumps back, and lunges forward at Yi. |
| Crimson Glaive Strike | Jiequan summons a glaive, and charges a crimson strike for 3 seconds before unleashing the attack. It will summon Crimson Flame Pillars at the location of the attack, which slowly move outwards to cover the whole boss arena when you fail to Unbounded Counter the attack. |
| Spear Combo | Jiequan attacks three consecutive times with a spear. The third attack can either be a standard strike, or a crimson strike that needs to be countered with a Tai-Chi Kick. |
| Throw Mines | Jiequan leaps backwards while throwing 6 barded mines that explode shortly after impact. |
| Homing Darts | Jiequan summons 3 throwing knives, and hurls them at Yi. These darts have a small amount of tracking so they can follow Yi’s movement. As such, it’s best to parry them. |
| Barrier Shield | Jiequan encloses himself in a shield, and begins to heal. The barrier can only be broken with a Charged Strike, or Cloud Piercer S/X arrow. He can only perform this move following Homing Darts, or Throw Mines. |
| Plunging Attack | Jiequan summons a glaive, leaps into the air, and performs a plunging attack. Looks similar to the crimson glaive attack, but Jiequan leaps into the air almost immediately, which helps to visually differentiate the 2 techniques. |
As always, here is a video demonstration of what each attack looks like, as well as an example for when you need to parry:
Tips for Phase 1
First things first: you need to learn how to Unbounded Counter Jiequan’s Crimson Glaive Strike. Yes, you can simply dodge out of the way of this attack, but trying to defend against Jiequan’s following attacks will be significantly harder when the entire boss arena is covered in fire. Trust me – it’s way easier to beat this guy if you take the time to Unbounded Counter this attack.
Keep in mind, you’ve got a whole 3 seconds before Jiequan unleashes his crimson attack, and the Unbounded Counter only takes about half a second (~30 frames) to charge. This gives you plenty of time to respond, especially because the Unbounded Counter is so much faster than the attack that you’ll be using it against.
It’s also worth noting that Unbounded Counters work regardless of which direction you’re facing.
Speaking of parrying regardless of which direction you’re facing: aerial parries are also omni-directional. That means that if you parry while airborne, it doesn’t matter which direction you’re being attacked from – the parry will still work. That’s something I wish I knew sooner in my first playthrough of Nine Sols because it makes a lot of bosses, like Jiequan, significantly easier since you don’t have to constantly face them before pressing the parry button.
Third tip: use Cloud Piercer S/X to break Jiequan’s shield. He’ll typically try to create distance between himself, and the player before trying to heal while shielded, so using an arrow charge can let you immediately cut him off from healing. You don’t get as big of a follow-up attack when this happens, but I think preventing him from healing a tenth of his health back more than makes up for this.
My fourth tip relates to Jiequan’s Spear Combo: always jump before defending the third attack.
I’m too old to actually react to what he’s doing, but if I’m already airborne then I find it far easier to properly defend against whichever finisher he chooses for the combo. It’s one less thing to think about since I’ve already jumped so if I need to do a Tai-Chi Kick, I’m under less mental load.
For what it’s worth, I do something similar while playing fighting games, and find it makes things that I otherwise can’t react to a lot easier to deal with. Hopefully this helps you too.
Number 5: if you’re using Quick Dose then you should always be able to use your Healing Pipe after these attacks: Barrier Shield, Crimson Glaive Strike, Homing Darts, Throw Mines, or parrying Spear Lunge.
Final tip: have patience. Jiequan (and the rest of Nine Sols’ bosses honestly) all tend to snowball players into a loss if they become too impatient while fighting. Take things slow, heal only when you’ve got a safe opportunity to do so, and use Water Flow to slowly chip down Jiequan. Rushing will only get you killed faster as mistakes compound into one another.
Phase 2
Not much has changed during this phase as Jiequan still has all of his attacks from phase 1. However, Jiequan will now teleport around the boss arena before attacking. Don’t let this newly added visual noise fool you: if you decisively beat phase 1, then you can decisively beat phase 2 too.
Overview of Phase 2 Attacks
| Attack Name | Short Description |
|---|---|
| Teleport | Jiequan has unlocked his full power, and will now teleport around the boss arena. He’ll usually try to teleport behind Yi before he begins attacking. |
| Crimson Thrust Attack | Jiequan can now perform a Crimson Thrust Attack outside of the Spear Combo. |
| Spear Combo | Spear Combo no longer always performs three attacks. Can be 2 regular attacks, 3 regular attacks, or 2 attacks + Crimson Thrust Attack. |
Here’s what that all looks like as well as parry timing where applicable:
Tips for Phase 2
As I already stated, the newly added teleport adds a lot of visual noise to phase 2, but it doesn’t change that Jiequan has almost no new tricks up his sleeves. Phase 2 is very similar to phase 1, so if you can beat phase 1 then you should be golden for phase 2.
It is worth noting that Jiequan will typically teleport behind Yi before he starts to attack. This makes aerial parries especially useful for this section of the fight. Don’t forget that Unbounded Counters, and Tai-Chi Kicks work regardless of which direction you’re facing, so it won’t actually matter if Jiequan tries to use any of his crimson attacks after teleporting behind you.
I still recommend jumping for the potential third strike of the Spear Combo even though Jiequan doesn’t have to perform a finisher during this combo anymore. It’s better to be prepared to deal with the follow-up attack than to accidentally get hit while trying to react to the third strike.
As with before, it’s still very important to stay patient. Jiequan can end your run with a single combo string of attacks when you get impatient. It’s better to stay calm, and take opportunities that you’re confident in than to try winning a DPS race against Jiequan.
Example Fight
As always, here’s an example of the full fight against Jiequan. Hopefully it demonstrates the usefulness of Water Flow, and the importance of using your Unbounded Counter.
Was this guide helpful? Consider supporting it, and similar work like it by buying me a coffee over on Ko-fi.
Previous
Yanlao
Next
Lady Ethereal
Frostilyte Writes 