Shattering Stars/Dark Knight

=Dark Knight =

Obtain
A Dark Knight's Testimony from one of the following:
 * Adaman Quadav (Level: 74) (Qulun Dome)
 * Antican Legatus (Level: 72 - 74) (Quicksand Caves) ^!^ This is a Paladin monster, and does not drop a Dark Knight Test.
 * Doom Guard (Level: 75 - 77) (Gustav Tunnel)
 * Doom Soldier (Level: 65 - 70) (Cape Teriggan, Gustav Tunnel, Toraimarai Canal, ...)
 * Orcish Warlord (Level: 72 - 74) (Monastic Cavern) (considered the best way to get a DRK testimony as it drops 50% of the time. You will need 3 people or maybe 2 Skilled people to get him though as he is in a dangerous place.)

=Guides=

A Maat Fight Strategy
This is a pretty straightforward fight actually, but it's very important to carry lots of hi-potions and macro them. You'll be using them a lot. Like the other melees, use an Opo-opo necklace, sleep yourself to 100% TP, use ws, icarus wing, ws right away. Use def or atk food, your choice. Most of your spells won't be very effective against Maat so don't bother. Just focus on hacking Maat up good. (but always hope he wastes turns using stupid spells like Absorb-CHR) Drain might come in handy but I wouldn't bank on it. Use your hi-potions to keep up your HP as you fight and your attack up skills should be done at your own discretion. The biggest threat is Blood Weapon. When Maat activates it, push L3 to break target lock and run around the room to reduce the number of times he attacks you. You DON'T want him regaining lost HP. once his blood weapon runs out, activate your own take back some of the punishment he's dealt you. (if your HP are still in good shape, this wouldn’t' be a bad time to use Souleater too) Use WS when they're ready and you should be okay as long as you are ready for anything Maat throws at you. Just beware not to use Guillotine when soul eater is activated or you could very well end up digging your own grave.

An Alternate Maat Fight Strategy
A lot of Dark Knights have had much luck using a seperate strategy against Maat where like normal you sleep yourself to 100 TP. Use a Blink Band walk up to Maat, the next part requires some quick timing but is fairly easy. Use Last Resort & Souleater. Carbonara is an excellent food choice here, the HP bonus is great for Souleater while still getting a hefty attack bonus. Face away from Maat and pull out your weapon. Turn Guillotine, Icarus Wing, Guillotine. If you have good equipment he should go down on the second Guillotine and you should still be alive. However it is still advisable to carry a great many hi-potions. Maat will usually use Blood Weapon between your first and second weapon skill. If he doesn't go down with the second weapon skill, you could very well be sunk at low health and him with blood weapon active you have to down potions before you can run away which will allow him time to regain some health. Most Dark Knights I know that have beaten Maat did so with this strategy, however most of them are Elvaan or Galka. This strategy can be seen here: Oropher vs. Maat

'' PS: Get a Blink Band and you will win for sure. I went 1/10 on him, and 1st and 10th try I went in with bands, last one won. 1st Weapon Skill 1.4K with buffs>>+ wing 2nd ws 400ish WON and still had 2 shadows left after over all took me 45-60 sec to beat him. :)

Alternate Maat Fight Strategy
Here you have another strategy to fight Maat. At start use Opo-opo necklace and raise TP to 100. Use Blink Band and take your food ( Tavzanian Taco in my fight ).Enter the battlefield and use Last Resort + Souleater, pull Maat with Bio II and throw a Guillotine. Now here is the difference, don't use your Icarus wing now, if you use it and you haven't a strong guillotine you will die, (that happened my first run ) so now use your Blood Weapon ( your Souleater should be up still ) now you should be recovering HP and taking some TP, you have to survive now, use potions or drain as needed, and feel free to Stun Maat because he should have used Blood Weapon too. If everything is ok as soon as you get 100 TP use a Guillotine ( Souleater still up ) yeah it could seem a suicide but you should have recovered enough HP, and after this Guillotine use your Icarus Wing and make him eat your 3rd Guillotine. The third Guillotine will defeat him. I don't recommend you to unlock target and run because if you do that you won't hit him and he will hit you if not 100% of the time, almost 90% of time. I like this strategy because you start "slow" but perform a "strong" finish and by the time he uses his Blood Weapon (he can recover a lot of hp per hit ) you should be ready to hit him with two Guillotine's so the time he will be drainning your HP shouldn't be too much.

Ultimate Maat Fight Strategy
I'm calling this one the Ultimate one because no matter what job you are or how experienced you are this is the one I used and it made the Maat fight so easy that a drunk monkey could copy this and take him down with ease. Start off with the normal sleep to 100 TP, use a blink band, and get ready to take on Maat. For food use a tavnazian taco for the huge defensive boost, it will make a huge difference. Then start the fight with Absorb-VIT, this will lower his defense and increase yours more. Now walk up to him, pull out your weapon and guillotine then use your Icarus wing and guillotine again. As soon as the second guillotine is finished use Souleater and Blood Weapon. Maat will usually do a Blood Weapon at this point as well, just ignore it and melee him head on. With all the increased defense from the taco and from Absorb-VIT Maat should hit for around 100 while you should be hitting for over 250 and with Blood Weapon you will regain everything Maat hits you for and what you lose with Souleater. Just pound away at him till 100 TP is gained and guillotine one final time. When I used this strategy I didn't have to use a single hi-potion and Maat never got me below 900 HP. The fight should take about 5 minutes total, not record breaking but a nice easy safe win.

Easy Maat Fight Win
This is one of the more expensive strategies, but fastest and safest. When you enter Maat fight sleep to 100% like always, use a Blink Band and then equip your gear, the food i used was a Bison steak                                       for extra STR+ and atk, i also switched to swordbelt instead of life belt because accuracy isn't that important in the fight, now you should have atk450+ equip as much STR+ gear as possible and then, Drain II Maat, he should start casting a random spell, at this point stun him and absorb-STR, then engage, use Souleater Last Resort and now your attack will be over 500 and STR over 100, Guillotine, vile elixir+1, Icarus wing, Guillotine and if he hits you once during this fight he's lucky, but even if he does it wont be enough to kill you. I strongly recommend this strategy if you have about 80k Gil to burn and want an easy win.

Very Easy Maat Fight Win
To win this with very little effort you must have a Kraken Club, if you don't have one borrow one from a friend. Have the Kraken Club equipped, enter the fight use any kind of sushi. Use Souleater and Blood Weapon then engage Maat. He will go down very quickly. But make sure you have skill in Club first. Otherwise, this strategy is pointless.

One Weapon Skill Maat fight(instant win)
I made the mistake of using a Vitality potion before the fight and could not use a icarus wing, so i used my arrabbiata and slept to 100% tp with Opo necklace.Charged in and used Last resort with Souleater and used Guillotine for 1781 damage.he then said "Ungh... That'll hurt in the morning..." "That was a mighty fine display of skill there XXXXX.You've come a long way..." That was the end.So it seems you can win in one shot if ya make it count.He was at around 40% HP,but i'm not sure how much damage you need to do but it is possible,have fun.

Key tips
As you notice there are alot of strategy on here but I believe that making your own is the best cause you'll know what to do better anyhow what I found out from these guides and my experience (tryed 3 times won the 3rd) are these key tips for DRK fight there are more tips for all jobs which you may want to look into (Icarus wings, leveling up in fight for 100% hp...).
 * If you use go all out Attack e.g Souleater Guilliotine Icarus Guillotine it is a luck based strategy as you HAVE to land some good weaponskills
 * In a Attack strategy where you go Souleater Guillotine twice drinking a vile elixir +1 between Weapon Skills increases your chances massively using a EXP item and leveling will be cheaper but using the item takes time so it will have some risk.
 * A defensive Strategy seems to be a more safe / skilled approach to the fight where you will be using your magic and items at the right time.
 * If you have enfeebling magic skilled around 180ish you can Sleep II Absorb-STR DEX VIT and AGI giving you a stronger start; When I fought Maat, I attempted a Sleep II with 212+5 Enfeebling Magic skill and it failed. Always have a contingency plan in the event that it doesn't stick, which even capped (and amplified) Enfeebling Magic skill cannot guarantee.
 * If you are fighting a drawn out battle use Absorb-TP to stop that Weapon Skill hitting you.
 * Fighting on Dark or Light day will reduce the potency of you Dark magic ( I know Dark day should enhance it but it doesn't)
 * Keep your Hp high cause Maat bash followed by a stun will give him enough time to do 800 odd damage inculding the Maat bash damage.
 * He Hits for 100 of a pure Def strategy (Taco) and 200 for a pure attack strategy (+ about 50 for when he blood weapons and when you Last Resort)
 * His attack speed is higher than yours.
 * If you have +-0 evasion he'll hit around 5/6 times so you may want to consider more +evasion and not wear a -evasion gear.
 * Slayer Earring could save you as when your in red HP with <100% TP you'll only take 80% damage.
 * Use Weapon bash with a Slayers Ring (Latent effect activated by having less than 75% HP and less than 100% TP.)
 * Getting a Tactical Ring will allow you to get 100% TP before you engage Maat it take 2mins to get 100% TP. (the ring is obtained from the pulling strings 60ENM which is very similar to Maat fight)
 * Finally do not think a "drunk monkey could do this" because it is a hard fight and he can beat you reguardless of preperation for example if your just unlucky either by being Stunned or Maat bashed between guillotines on the attack strat or by him using Stun, maat bash, weapon skill close together in any order (Stun locking you) espeacially if he does a A.Fists on you (in combination those can do up to 1000-1500DMG depending on your equips so take care)
 * Keep in mind that Maat can always change a fight around. The first time I fought him I used the STR+ Strat, and I ended up getting hit with Absorb-STR, DEX, and VIT. Then he Drained me and Stunned me before I could even use a elixer. But the second time I fought him I beat the record and he only got a Absorb-CHR off. It all depends.

the Idea of this is that you use these key tips(as many or as little as you want) to form your own strategy so that you can say you did it yourself not by following a step by step guide and if you find out another factor that effects DRK vs Maat fight slap it on here

That's pretty much it from what I can remember. Hopefully people will add to the key tips (especially offensive strategy tips) rather than add "how I did it" then call it a strategy cause really there are only 2 strategies in my mind offensive and defensive.

=Personal Experiences= I thought this section would allow people to explain Briefly how they fared against Maat (wins and losses especially and where you went wrong) being helpful to other readers also no names please as this is a Wikipedia not a forum also if this passes 10 entries please delete the upper most the guide is big enough as it is.


 * I used this basic strategy (An Alternate Maat Fight Strategy), but carried a vile elixir +1 to use between the WS's to get back to full health. Each Guillotine did upwards of 1300 damage on Earthsday, and Maat gave up after the second WS. Vile Elixir +1's return 50% of hp and MP if I remember correctly.


 * I used a mainly defensive strategy and i didn't get 100% TP before fight or use a Icarus wing and with Absorb TP I got off 3 Guillotines to his one Weapon Skill only used 8 hi Pots +3.


 * I lost the other day I used mainly attack equips and a taco I was close but I didn't spam Hi Potions fast enough and he Maat Bashed me for 100 and then hit me twice and I was gone.


 * I used Blink Band, Icarus wing, Vile Elixir +1, and 8 Hi-Potions +3. Used Tavnazian Taco for food. Beat Maat in 5 minutes 45 seconds!  Used Drain II & Absorb-TP once each.  Didn't bother using Blood Weapon, Souleater, or Last Resort.  Just kept my HP high and slowly wore him down.


 * Slept to 100% TP, then I slept (II) him, absorbed STR, VIT, AGI, and DEX, then woke him up with a (no SE) Guillotine. Popped my ic wing and did another Guillotine, then popped Souleater and Blood Weapon.  Almost died.  Beat him with drain (1, this was before 2) at 12 hp.


 * The last time I fought Maat I didn't even use Guillotine, I just took my time with elixers. I used bind that luckly stuck during blood weapon for a few moments to allow me to down a bunch of elixers. Fight took about 5-6 min. total.


 * Used blink band, opo-opo necklace sleep to 100 (4 sleep potions will do the job), and calbonaro for food. I created a series of macros.  1.  Drain II/Stun/Absorb-Str (stun and abs str failed cause i engaged mid macro), 2. souleater / last resort / guillo (hit for 1328), 3. Icarus wing, 4. Guillotine (for 900+).  By that time a hit slipped in before my next macro and he folded.  My other macros would have been 5.  Blood weapon, 6. weapon bash/drain 7. stun/absorb tp and 8. Hi potion.  Note about macros, you may want to practice them first.  Drain II had 6 seconds before a stun would go off, and stun had 4 seconds before absorb tp would, though that macro failed to work properly anyhow.  I didn't use any hi potions, and set the new time, 4 min 52 seconds on Gilgamesh.  This was round 2, first i tried defensive strategy without macros, he stun once, maat bashed twice, and and before i know it i was seeing stars.