Does AIMesh rely on router's DHCP?

I have DHCP turned off on my router and have a Windows 2008R2 server handling DNS and DHCP. I can NOT get my two RT-AC88U routers to connect to each other via AiMesh. The closest I've gotten is I've plugged the node into the main router, and it seemed to work, but the node IMMEDIATELY shows up as "Offline" under the AIMesh nodes.

You DO get a warning when turning off DHCP on the router that it could affect AIMesh (however, OpenVPN hands out addresses just fine with DHCP turned off under "LAN").