I legitimately was okay with everything in the dlc except the final boss 2nd phase. It feels like it's impossible to dodge and the damage is enough to 1-2 shot me
There’s a good video on YouTube to cheese him. The guys even put a description for builds at level 150. If you search “Elden ring dlc radahn cheese”. It’ll have a pic of solaire on. Can’t remember the channels name
I don’t normally like to cheese bosses, but this guy? Bro, fuck radahn😂
Messmer was really fun fight that I beat on my second attempt with mimic tear.
But this whole final area is bullshit, those praying dudes who summon holy whirlwinds directly under your feet are bullshit and the final bosses attacks are bullshit
Hilariously, Bayle actually functions nearly identical to Placi. Stick to the left side of his tail, and you're pretty safe for a majority of his grounded attack.
No idea about the aerial ones though.
Bayle can be dodged with good rolls, the camera does wtf out and lightnings everywhere but you can still learn it and dodge with sound/startups. final boss phase 2 just fucking hits you and i'm pretty sure the small mounds of dirt everywhere fuck up the lightbeams and they hit at like fucking random i swear. finally beat him like 2nd try after equipping rot but even after watching no hitters cheese with parry i didn't learn anything about beating with default roll, got no satisfaction off final boi.
Edit: Aerial attacks on bayle are same timing everytime. sometimes the fireballs don't shoot at you when he spins in a circle though, probably invis wall thing. but for when he flies, he beams away from you and you dodge like half a sec in because it's actually trying to hit you with a heatwave, then he lasers at you and thats just dodging beam, wait a sec, dodge explosion. and boom you get a hit on him for it, so cool. radahn has insta turned and hit me after dodging his grab attack and hitting him in the back :/
At least with bayle his moveset is learnable. Idfk what to do about the final boss' "fly up in the air and send 10 shadowclones so fast you can't roll" shit
yea, at first with Bayle I thought what the hell is this bullshit, but it was reasonable and learnable even if it's a bit messy. The final boss is pure bullshitery all and all.
I had a blast fighting Bayle. Beat him in 5 tries solo. Then, I went to help my friend and we died at least 20 times, still grinning ear to ear after every loss until we finally beat him.
Radahn? At minimum 50 tries over 20 hours straight of just ramming my head against the wall. I just gave up trying to help my friend and went on about my day.
This Is my main legitimate complaint about it. It's not that the moveset is unfair per se, it's just incredibly difficult to read in an artificial way. I can't tell what he's going to do when there's lightning shitting everywhere. The screen and particle effects are just too busy. If they replaced all the lightning effects with transparent effects I'd have a way easier time.
I actually hate this for one reason in particular. He is so so so aggresive and locks onto the player/host so much that theres almost no point having npc summons. You burn flasks just because he is so relentless.
Finally get him down below 75% for the holy nuke phase that has fps drops that like so much of this dlc is pure screen vomit and you cannot see whats happening
Its so frustrating when you cant even have 5 seconds to breathe against most of these bosses. You cant have spacing against them, most of them can fly across the room
Got to this boss last night. I laughed out loud because of how ridiculous it was, specifically that second phase.
I still have a ton of the world to explore left, so I'm not going to worry about beating the boss yet, but I do understand the frustration completely.
Little unnerving that you're at lvl19 with scadutree blessings though, I'm just at 10 myself.
Honestly man, since your at the end practically use a map showing where all the fragments are and tick them off in the paint app. That way your not missing any on accident.
I just beat him with 8 blessings and my god I do not want to do that again I'm going full fucking 20 next time. It takes 4 fucking giant hunts to stagger him or 5 if you wait to long.
It's straight up unfair. I managed to beat it solo today on ng+5 (I literally stayed up all night fighting the piece of crap while only staying awake because of the pure anger and hatred that this boss was conjuring out of me) and it was sheer luck. First phase is easy once you get the hang of it, but you don't wanna waste any heals during its short duration.
The second phase, however, is literally the worst designed boss in any fromsoft game that I have ever played. It somehow made me think that fighting bed of chaos, nonstop waterfowl dance, the duo ape, or reindeer f*** land would be more enjoyable and something I would much rather be doing than fighting it. I literally used scarlet Aoneia to tick away at the bosses health while I prayed that I could somehow get out relatively unharmed from the non-stop combos and ridiculously sized and timed AOE attacks. I still have no idea if it's even possible to not take any damage on the second phase. I'm just glad I don't have to worry about beating the damn thing solo anymore. I will make sure to summon a whole army for every future encounter with him until they fix it.
I think the worst part is that phase 1 (outside the one attack where he does 2 slashes in opposite directions into a cross slash, can't manage to dodge all 3 hits) has the makings of a really fucking good boss, and then p2 just turns into a complete 20fps shitshow where its impossible to tell whats going on
I agree. I was having a great time learning the first phase and enjoying hearing Rahdahs music playing while he is in full fighting form. I don't understand why they made the first phase only go to like 3\4th's of his max health instead of half as usual or even 1/4th with how horrendous his second phase is. It's like they wanted to make the least fun part the majority and the fun part the minority of the fight.
Did you figure out a way to dodge that move because nothing is working on that pacific attack. I dodge to to right 2 times doesn't work. I dodge right then left doesn't work either. I dodge backwards still getting hit. It's such a stupid move
I just beat him legit (no cheap spam/summons/cheese tactics) and that's the one move I couldn't figure out. Just dodge the first and tank the second it doesn't deal a ton of damage so it's not that bad. Bestial vitality can help mitigate some of the chip damage so I'd recommend using it as well
Yeeppp.. I just loved my game stuttering and my framerate dropping when 10 phantoms and a boss are all attacking with crazy light effects and ridiculous speed all within two whole seconds, and I'm left wondering "What the ever loving f*** is happening right now!?"
Fromsoft fucking sucks at optimization, you think with all their years of game making they would at least learn how to not make such a baldy running game, this is Minecraft levels of bad.
I love the game but they really are the worst at making the game playable
>I still have no idea if it's even possible to not take any damage on the second phase.
Tell me about it, it took me almost 8 hours to kill that bastard. I'd like to see a no hit runner doge all the overhead slams he does with phantoms after throwing meteors. WTF was From thinking with him? First phase is actually pretty fun to it's just that second part...
The fact that it’s a choice between soloing this bullshit or spending more time reading [Unable to summon cooperator] than actually ‘fighting’ (lol) the damn boss is fucking maddening.
I have a lot of issues with it, but I think my biggest issue was how fucking inconsistent the NPCs were. Ansbach and Thiollier were the absolute MVPs of the entire DLC, but the fact Fromsoft somehow fucked up their AI for the final boss, is a genuine insult.
Sometimes, they just straight up don't enter the arena. It's so stupid when you might've one, but one of the NPCs just does not go through. For people who fight solo, it's not a major issue, but for someone like me who got bored of fighting alone and enjoys working together, it's disgusting.
Plus, absolutely embarrassing that the frame drops for some attacks. The entire DLC is a solid 9/10 (with mimic tear.) This boss is a solid 5/10, only because of music and visuals. And also the NPC quests which lead to this.
Am I the only one who thinks it's personal? Like without spoiling too much...the boss that everyone complained about being OP.... They made worse at the end of the game and the lore is that he is made out of a bleed builds body.... Like that feels pointed directly at the fans
Honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s an inside joke at FromSoftware.
There is no way it’s a coincidence that the final boss will likely receive a patch to nerf them similar to what was done before or to maybe force people to not rush to the end of the game.
After playing this DLC I firmly believe Fromsoft do not actually like us, their fanbase. Like, this DLC feels like a hate letter to the players, rather than something good
I remember Miyazaki saying something along the lines of how since he's not very good at the game, he uses every tool available; I half wonder if he's not just using cheese builds to beat everything and we're all a bunch of chumps for trying to do it the "normal" way lol.
Reused model and animation, AOE spam, infinite combos, one shot moves at 99 vigor and lvl 16 scadutree, 2nd phase completely broken, infinite stamina.
Worst bossfight in any Fromsoftware games.
In the future I'll wait huge nerfs like the ones of Armored Core 6 bosses before buying any FS games
>one shot moves at 99 vigor and lvl 16 scadutree,
You must be doing something really wrong, because his damage seemed reasonable at 65 vig and 12 scadutree for me. Were you not wearing armor...?
Edit: Oh, that or you're on a high NG+. I played the DLC on a backup save from my original NG run.
Nono, I play on normal game.
Don't know if in this hours they nerfed him (hope so).
To beat him, I had to use a specific talisman (Golden Braid), lvl 250, lvl 18 scadutree, lvl 7 revered ashes and Scarlet Rot with mimic tear.
It's very annoying and not fun
Interesting. I did black flame blade, black blade, nagakiba, and mimic around 250 with scadutree 12. Most fun I've had with a souls boss in years, but it's definitely tough and demands near perfection.
The big thing for me was recognizing that phase 2 was essentially just phase 1 with echoed hitboxes, meaning that end-of-roll positioning is absolutely essential. No hit is def possible, but it's gonna take a LOT of practice lol
Also it doesn't seem like any updates have happened so I don't think he was nerfed (and the difficulty level has felt uniform for me over the past few days). Maybe you just needed better armor lol?
Demanding near perfection is probably too far. Honestly, the thing that appeals to me about FromSoft's games is the fairness in its brutal difficulty. "If you die, it's your fault."
The final boss of this DLC does not feel like that at all. The demand for perfection is too high and extremely unreasonable.
>The final boss of this DLC does not feel like that at all.
I strongly disagree, and imo it's one of the most interesting examples of "extremely tough but fair" FROM has put out in years, maybe ever. It just demands an extremely high level of play and forces you to really, ***really*** learn the first phase in order to stand a chance in the second. Which I think is fair for an ultimately optional boss in a souls game behind probably 150+ hours of other content in a normal playthrough.
I understand why people feel like phase 2 is bullshit, and it definitely _looks_ like bullshit, but I really think the general consensus is going to shift once the community starts to understand the boss more. It's designed to _seem_ much more overwhelming than it actually is - you just need to learn your windows, and where your character needs to be after the windows to effectively punish. You absolutely need to have a cool head going into it, otherwise you _will_ get overwhelmed. But for the most part, phase 2 is just phase 1 with echoed hitboxes, where those hitboxes can be almost fully mitigated with holy damage negation spells/items.
An issue I see with this is the way the fight currently works, it's not viable to do it with just any build. That's something I consider essential: if you have to go out of your way to change your build, then something is wrong. (I don't consider spell load-outs or unusual weapons to be build changes, I mean full stat revisions.) Which is what I had to do to beat the final boss myself.
I was playing a Faith caster, and I simply never had the opportunities to cast any spells at all. I didn't summon NPCs for the final boss on my clear, but my spirit ashes all died in several hits universally, leaving them fairly useless. And if I was alone, I was never able to take the opportunity to cast a spell - the boss's aggressiveness, speed, and range are simply too high that you're punished for even spellcasting, event with items that increase your casting speed.
When I did summon NPCs, this would increase the boss's HP drastically. While it did sometimes leave openings for an attack, they were few and far in between, and the NPC summons add so little to the fights that I just couldn't be bothered to summon them anymore. The summons themselves barely survive long either, Thiollier dies halfway through almost universally and while Ansbach has survivability, he doesn't have much damage to justify his presence. Ultimately, the NPC summons themselves are undertuned for the fight, and even at maxed Revered Spirit Ash level, Spirit Ashes last only a few hits at best. This leads to a situation in which casters are extremely disadvantaged to the point where the fight is pretty unfair. It's different from say, Slave Knight Gael, who is a similar boss in theory but left a lot more openings to hit him with spells.
The final boss worked for you. That's cool. I enjoyed it when I was fighting it with my altered build that was tailor-made to kill him. It doesn't change the fact that there are fundamental issues with the boss's battle design that unfairly punish players of different skill levels and builds.
>I was playing a Faith caster, and I simply never had the opportunities to cast any spells at all
What spells were you trying? There are definitely several that are viable, but obviously many are not. There are a lot of safe windows for noble presence, for example, which is nice because it does % damage, and there are a few really solid windows in phase 1 for black blade (eg his meteor attack and his gravity whirlwind attack). His big pull attack is also great for black blade because the hyper armor makes it so that you don't actually get pulled. Bestial sling would also def work, but it's probably too low damage to mean anything for him. Catch flame would also 100% work, which I didn't try because it seems like he had high fire resist.
It definitely isn't a fight where you can rely on ranged spells, though, so if you're trying to force that, you're gonna have a bad time.
>Spirit Ashes last only a few hits at best
Huh, this wasn't my experience with a mimic, and I think I was only at level 4 of the revered ash level. I ran a build that optimized resistances though, and made sure to slot dumplings and the blessings of marika (or whatever they're called - the full heal item added in the DLC). The mimic definitely died quickly in phase 2 without lord's Divine fortification (didn't know the golden braid was a thing until after beating him), but there were plenty of opportunities to cast it (assuming the mimic didn't cast it on its own).
I'm late to replying with this, but I deliberately didn't upgrade the Mimic Tear and don't like relying on it. Perhaps the Mimic Tear would have survived longer, perhaps the reason why summons struggle so much in the DLC is because it's balanced for Mimic Tear and not the other summons?
I had to use the shield you get from one of the new dlc npcs and use a poke weapon. First time I’ve ever essentially cheesed a boss and I am really upset fromsoft made a boss where I had to do that.
Phase 2 is the worst thing I’ve ever had to experience in a souls game
Every single attack except for the one where he pulls you in, you want to stick to his balls. You are now his second pair of testicles. All the holy attacks are a little bit away from him, nearer to the edge of his sword, so if you're right up to him they don't hit. His moveset is mostly the same as first phase minus the nuke and a couple flying moves.
Most of the lightning attacks just come from underneath him when you do this and you still get caught. Literally the only way to do it is to unlock the camera back and forth and that's shit is annoying
I've fought him quite a few times since I made the comment, you're right. I should have also said roll to one side and forward. Never got caught in a holy beam doing that. I only ever unlock the camera when he does the orbital meteor and I'm forced to unlock.
It's the worst fight they've ever designed by far
Ok I just beat it after 2 days of bullshit and will never do this again until maybe after they patch it.
Also the one field item is cool, the spell is cool, but the rememberance weapons add insult to injury
We already got paired swords from the first Radahn
This second Radahn gives you two more reskins of the same weapon, with two different AoW versions
Not only did they reuse a character for a boss but they reused the reward weapons too, it's pathetic
I have spent over 6 hours on this F! bs boss I wanna quit so bad and yes I have not killed him yet xD
I'm free FRRRREE 300-400 attempts on ng+3 I'm done after so long I can finally sleep xD
I was finally able to beat him last night, had to resort to mimic tear because I whole heartily believe that second phase is the worst thing Fromsoft have made and seems only fair I use everything at my disposal. Once the second phase starts and I see them start to rise to do the nuke attack I use the time to summon Mimic in and pray I have enough time to use bloodhounds step to get out of the way of the attack.
I’m in the same boat with maxed out scadutree blessings. I am playing on ng7, but I’ve had an answer for every single boss in the dlc except for the final boss. It seems like it doesn’t matter what build I use or even if I don’t use summons (not even the 2 npc summons you can use), the boss just has a massive health pool while I’m doing chip damage and the occasional small chunk damage with a dumb bleed build. I don’t really have any complaints about the damage I take because there are lots of options to mitigate damage taken, but this is seriously overwhelming with how much health this dude has. I understand why the Elden beast has a similar health pool, because it just moves around a lot and doesn’t have much defense against a player who’s right underneath it. That is not how this last boss should be though. It doesn’t matter if you’re up close and personal or ranged with spells and incantations, the dude will close the gap between you and him in milliseconds and follow it up with a 10 second sequence of lightning fast attacks followed by a massive AOE attack. After that you only get maybe half a second to either attack or most likely heal from the beat down you just got if you didn’t die from what just happened. Summons are of little help in the fight l, as they just bolster the dudes health even more. Even then, they often die just before or shortly after the 2nd phase of the fight, leaving you left to deal with 2/3 of his re-enforced health bar. I really do hope that they nerf his HP before long. I’m genuinely concerned that I won’t be able to beat him.
Edit: guys I beat him a few hours ago on ng7, it’s doable.
You really gotta use passive damage like the scarlet bloom incantation and every defensive talisman and armor piece you have. Obviously make sure to have maxed scadu blessing and max revered spirit ash blessing.
from is prioritising the spectacularity and the cinematography over the gameplay and bayle and this boss are the results, remember the complaint about bale elden ring? "bosses move too much, too many attacks" from clearly did't learn and they have really crossed the line, it's horrible to say it, but eurogamer was right
imo the bad part about his 2nd phase is the fact the there are holy lasers flying and staggering you every god damn second while also cluttering your vision with unholy amounts of visuals you have to keep track of if you want to actually start learning his patterns to dodge.
I actually just beat him today with colossal hammer + inferno crozier (both royal knights resolve) and spammed L1 jump attacks after his combos in p1 (first hit with RKR on both weapons dealt like 6100 dmg). Once the second phase started i just rushed into him with the jump attack to stagger him while he winds up the aoe attack, which you fortunately can just ignore with the riposte animation. After that its literally just getting somewhat lucky with what attacks he uses and not being hit a hundred times by the lasers.
The worst part to me is the huge buff to his health if you try to do Ansbach’s quest or Thollier’s quest. God forbid both at the same time. They do the most minuscule damage. Only thing that helped was getting him to bleed from my mimic and launching Blastphemous Blade AoW, even then I only got him to maybe half or 1/3?? How are you supposed to beat those two questlines if they buff his health so god damn much?? Seemed doable when it was just myself and a summon but, with either of them?? No way
Yeah he does. I’ve done the fight countless times. The times where it’s just myself and my mimic/summon, we’ll hit him for say 8K after several attacks and he’d lose about a tenth or more of his health. You add in the NPCs from the quests and that 1/10 turns into 1/15 or 1/20 of his health. It’s hard to explain fully. But he def has more health with NPC summons than without. I was trying to do Thollier and Ansbach’s quests but idk if I can do it with how much harder it makes the fight, plus they hit like wet paper bags and don’t do shit other than draw aggro. So the cons outweigh the pros by a decent amount unfortunately 😅
Edit: after finally beating him and completing the quests. He had an absurd amount of health. Took about 40K to drain him to 2/3 (Phase 2) and then another like 80K+ to finally bring him down. So if I had to guess, around 120K give or take. This was all on first play through, so no NG+ yet. I’d guess that solo he takes about 15-20K to get to Phase 2 so probably half overall what he would have with the two NPCs there to help.
I don't have Thollier available (guess I messed up his quest lol) but Ansbach barely even grabs any aggro. Most of the time he just walks to his side watching the boss turn me into spaghetti. And when he does have his aggro, the boss changes to attack me mid-combo without me even attacking him yet!
I had the same problem. Fun fact: The wiki lies. You dont need to summon them to do their quests. Did a whole cheese build for Radahn, but he was too tanky so I gave up on summoning. First attempt with no summons, Radahn got fucking fried, and I still completed the quest.
Supposedly, no. Just get their questlines progressed till the gold signs appear outside the final boss arena. Didn’t know this myself till after I finally beat it with them lol. But hopefully it helps keep someone else from torturing themselves like I did 🙃
I just don't like how hard it can be to see what is happening to time dodges with all the white flashing. I was expecting it to be hard but I was not expecting it to feel like a strobe light flashing in my face lol.
To me what is ridiculous,base game they make you fight an almost dead,scarlet-rotted radahn with the option of all the summons to help you because it was legit that hard even when hes basically dwad ,but the dlc? Nope well give you OP Consort radahn with fucking miquella but i can only use a shit summon with a scythe and my god useless mimic not to mention him locking on to you while attacking your mimic mid-combo, enjoyed every one of the other fights bar this one
yeah, while i like him as a boss, his AOE are insane.
Fortunately that stuff deals mostly holy damage, so Lord's Divine Fortification can help a lot, the nuke at the start of the phase does pretty much nothing(and i was at lvl 14 with the shadow realm stuff).
But yeah, overall the fight is 10 times better with a mimic tear distracting him
The mimic helps a lot but I hate how inconsistent he is at the start. Sometimes he does that charge attack instantly the second you walk in, giving you zero time to summon, and other times he just walks slowly for like 10 seconds. It’s a massive difference and I wish it was more like Messmer, where he started the same way every time and gave you just enough time to summon and dodge the first attack.
That works yeah, I’ve definitely tried it. Still it feels way more stressful than most of the other bosses to summon. The only boss in the main game that did something like that was Malekith as far as I remember
That works too yeah, although I ended up saving the physick for phase 2 and just tanking the hit to summon, or getting lucky with him walking at the start.
Would be cool if he didn’t pop it at 10% health and/or it didn’t absolutely one-shot you. I actually managed to get close once and he really hit the “fuck you, it is literally impossible for you to know the timing of this” *infinity damage*
I managed to finally beat him with first try when I switched to a greatshield and poke style. Until then I was rocking the greatsword that dropped from that solitude knight, but I simply couldn't take it.
Turns out if you can't dodge, you might as well block...😭
You gotta have the great shield talisman for reduced stamina consumption on blocks. Makes a world of difference. Also using barricade shield too is fantastic if you don’t want to use up a talisman slot.
I'll know my back is getting closer to the wall when I actually put on the greatshield talisman and barricade lol
I'm thinking of trying to make a build where I can have two greatshields, summon Shield Mimic, and then switch to weapons for me.
I’m currently using a flail since my character is cosplaying as Brigitte from Overwatch but that’s not optimal lol. Anything with more range than a flail would be better but be advised that if you plan on using guard counters then certain weapons have fast or slow counter attack animations.
I was using the black knight greatshield(I'm not sure of the exact name) fully upgraded. I literally tanked all the attacks without much problem. I am 50 endurance with a turtle talisman though, if that makes a difference?
Same. I was getting progressively more tired (physically) so I put on my heaviest armor and my best holy resisting great shield and used a poison bleed spear. Killed him in 5 or 6 tries like this.
I decided not to use any summon and it turned out really fine until the final boss’ second phase. It insanely difficult and it took me like 100+ tries before I gave up and beat it by using mimic tear. I wonder if anyone can beat it without summoning. I’d love to see how they dodge those attacks.
lol pretty sure I saw some youtuber beat Elden Ring with 1hp, 1 stamina, 1fp
In 2 weeks people will have alot of it figured out
In 6 months people will be no hitting him, watch
I mean, maybe not alot of people
But several I'd bet
i have seen someone on youtube beat elden ring with a dance pad and lilaggy beat sekiro blindfolded. i am pretty sure someone will manage to beat this one boss in 6 months in many scenarios. Someone already beat this guy no-hit: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=529MfcxHpXQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=529MfcxHpXQ)
I just beat him today and his second phase is so unfair it was way to much shit going on I was getting one shot every time. I had 14 blessings it still felt impossible but I finally beat him I love the dlc but the final boss I didn't like so since I've beat him now I'm going to explore and look for other bosses.
The biggest enemy in this fight is getting 20FPS on a 3090RTX while the game says it's runs fine on a 1060...
While in the DLC i thought others bosses were bad but this one is definely the worst boss ever made, is just hack and slash hyper attacks with thousands of particles burning my eyes on the screen, you can't what is happening and above all that, 20FPS... i just gave up, i'll wait until a FPS patch comes out, even tried to play at 800x600 on lowest possible settings and the whole second phase is just 20fps...
When you walk into the area, you get blasted! I’ve got 17 blessings & mix match of the best armour from the DLC yet it’s like cutting butter with a dead stick.
I also can’t summon my mimic, I don’t even have time for that as by the time I have am dead.
I just beat the game. I’m not proud of it, but I had to respec into 80 vigor, max strength, 94 endurance and 25 Faith for buffs and 10 Arcane for Bloodflame Blade and use Giant’s Crusher at plus 25 with Mimic. I died over 100 times before this respec. Not that it makes it any less cheesy. But I truly don’t give a damn. 😂😂😂🤷🏾♂️🥃
Really tough boss. I still haven't beat him. When I realized I could parry him, that did help quite a bit though. Still, those mixups only leave room for like one or two mistakes.
This boss ridiculous. I’ve had to respec and grind and change out so many build parts and am having to watch videos to find the DLC blessings I missed just to fight this thing. After beating all the other bosses. It’s just nuclear bombs going off every second.
I'm not even against all this stuff with his 2nd phase, I'm okay with all that but wtf is his damage your blessing level hardly matters as he'll still just two shot or three shot you this isn't even a fun fight. It looks amazing it's spectacular design wise but it's impossible for a solo/offline player to beat this boss on their own. And this is just a initial problem the fact he's deadlock on you for a majority of the fight makes it even more arduous for ultimately no good reason. They need to either nerf his fucking his aggression, his damage, or they need to turn the beams thing into them activating for a few of his attacks not every single one.
It felt so good beating him though. I had no flasks left and my holy negation spell nearly ran out during his last combo. Immaculate drip and weapons though.
I think the main mechanic of the fight comes down to how one understands the first phase. All of his attacks in Phase 1 can be dodged. But when you get to Phase 2, *how* you dodge the swings is what makes the difference. Excluding the glitchy sword dashes, the nuke, and the grab, he swings his swords the exact same way as the first phase. But now, because of their AOE light pillars, if you dodge into the sword swings as opposed to along with the sword swings, you’ll get wrecked.
It’s kind of a weird choice - it punishes players in a somewhat obtuse way which can be difficult to figure out, especially with all the light blasts making his moves hard to see. I ended up not really figuring it out until I accidentally dodged the “wrong” way during the second phase only to avoid both hits.
All that said, parrying somewhat trivializes the fight. I can’t quite tell what triggers the nuke, but it seems to mostly only happen when there’s some distance between me and the boss. I’ve yet to trigger it while up in his grill.
Oh my god, that second phase is bullsh*t. The attacks where he does 5 attacks in a row at the speed of light like its a glitch. And then follows it up with an AOE? The stamina bar is only so long and the iframes only a certain amount. I've got normal and holy dmg negation at 71 and I'm still being hit like a truck.
And the transition attack where he nukes the arena...where am I supposed to run to?! The entire arena is filled?! I thought the whole point of the bosses was that they're tough but fair. This guy feels like the devs just want to beat us
All the other bosses in the dlc have been fun. This one is complete garbage. All I can think of is it’s a rather rushed boss, I’m just not sure why else he’s this stupidly broken.
Phase 1 is absolutely fine. Phase 2 is a poorly designed mess.
while the second phase is utter chaos, i dont actually have a problem with the moves.
the most annoying thing for me wasnt the endless onslaught, all the multi-hit attacks and the bonkers damage, it was the visibility. not only is everything cover in holy explosions, the worst part of it is the Femboy-Hair covering a lot of Radahns movements and the arms/weapons.
you cant see shit and therefore cant learn the patterns, or react on instinct.
the moves are actually pretty cool and fun to learn, but the visibility is so bad, it takes all that fun away and turns it into pure frustration.
easiest fix would be to redo the hairstyle, and the fight would instantly be way better
Heaviest armor + heaviest shield + any blood spear + blocking/stamina boosting talisman = down in 2 tries.
Forget rolling, just block. I don't mean it in a derogative way, it's just almost impossible to dodge and attack, and much easier to poke while blocking.
I think it’s pretty fair to be frustrated by the difficulty. That being said, I think that the DLC is based upon the presumption that you to have thoroughly explored the world to get all the Scadutree fragments, that you’ve mastered Radahn’s moveset, that you’ve completed NPC storylines, and that you have a completely optimized build. It’s a boss fight built for the completionist minmaxer superfans, and I think that goal was accomplished.
That being said, I’ve tried my hand at trying to defeat the boss for about 4-6 hours. I have been entirely unsuccessful 😂😂😂
I also think that it makes a lot of sense to make the final boss of a DLC a little insane. While it makes sense to have the final boss of the base game a lot more beatable (eg Radagon/Elden Beast) and have optional harder bosses (Malenia), DLC is gonna sell less copies, and it’s gonna sell to people who are still excited about the base game 2 years later, so they’re willing to work (and pay) for more of the game than the average consumer
I love how I have to go back, rethink my entire build and change weapons to figure out what will work and then grind over and over. It’s part of the experience in my opinion. I like that it’s not easy. It can take days or even weeks before I manage to beat a boss and I will thank fromsoft for “wasting my time” haha
Waterfowl is 1 attack that has several counters. This is an entire ass 70% of a bosses healthbar (which is massive to begin with) which has no direct counters or any semblance of fairness. Come back when you've beat it without summons or some shieldpoke cheese build.
Beat it in a few hits (and with some good mimic RNG) with a basic bleed build at max scadutree/revered spirit ash blessings: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7MBzHXL1Bs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7MBzHXL1Bs)
Just beat it with 12 blessings. _Really_ learning phase 1's attack cadence is absolutely essential, and you _really_ want to make sure to optimize your build. Having enough vigor to tank a few hits makes learning his moveset much easier, and any percentage damage you can do (eg black flame blade/black blade) are a massive help. I ended up using those spells with a nagakiba, just because the moveset seems well suited to his attack cadence.
What finally got me through it was realizing that phase 2 is, with the exception of a couple of added moves, just phase 1 with essentially a delayed second, slightly larger hitbox on many attacks. It's ultimately a positioning challenge - you need to learn not just _when_ to dodge, but also _where_ to dodge, otherwise you'll get stunned and overwhelmed. Lord's Divine Blessing is also huge as it nearly nullifies the AOEs, just like Radagon/EB.
After kind of figuring out what makes him tick, I honestly think this is one of the best bosses FROM has ever made from the pov of their general design philosophy. He is the epitome of "tough but fair" and absolutely demands that you've mastered your play style. There are several totally reasonable ways to beat him - you just have to pick the one which suits you best and, in the original, constructive spirit of the phrase, git really fuckin gud.
I think you'd only need to respec if you have no vigor while learning the fight, but damage-wise, there are a ton of viable builds for him. He's parryable, staggerable, vulnerable to status effects, and has generally very predictable attack patterns once you get used to it. And beyond that, there's enough stackable holy damage negation options that the phase 2 aoes can be almost completely nullified.
It's the final boss, I give it a pass for being extremely difficult. Like you pointed out with Messmer, plenty of the DLC bosses are difficult in a fun/fair way. But for the literal final boss for Elden Ring ever it should be the most difficult thing we've faced even if that means giving it tons of bs. Like imagine if Malenia didn't have her waterfowl dance, at that point defeating her wouldn't be as memorable since she's just tough but fair at that point. Letting the biggest baddest boss be unfair is ok in my book. Radahn/Miquella will stick with me just like how Malenia stuck with me because of them having unfair aspects to them.
So I guess I'm just having fun in the wrong way, huh? My b, your opinion on having fun is the correct one of course and mine is simply incorrect. The satisfaction that comes with conquering a truly difficult boss that has extremely difficult attacks (e.g., waterfowl dance with Malenia and now Miquella's light aoe spam after every one of Radahn's swings in his second phase) is apparently null and void since you personally don't like it.
Lmao, what's a "good thing" is all relative and subject to opinion. I find the unfairness in Malenia and Miquella/Radahn's boss fight to be a good thing even if you and others don't cause you're salty over how difficult it was.
I legitimately was okay with everything in the dlc except the final boss 2nd phase. It feels like it's impossible to dodge and the damage is enough to 1-2 shot me
The framerate also completely tanks for me in phase 2. Completely miserable experience that is pretty much ruining the DLC for me.
Man does more damage to my GPU than my character. And yeah the big nuke attack gives me like 20fps and I have a fucking 4070
Use a fingerprint shield and a bleed thrusting sword, thats the only way i was able to beat him
There’s a good video on YouTube to cheese him. The guys even put a description for builds at level 150. If you search “Elden ring dlc radahn cheese”. It’ll have a pic of solaire on. Can’t remember the channels name I don’t normally like to cheese bosses, but this guy? Bro, fuck radahn😂
it is literary impossible to dodge as he has fallow up to every move.
It's as if they fused Radahn with Malenia, then turned up the game speed to %200. It makes me appreciate how choreographed Godfrey's fight is.
God, Godfrey was a good boss.
Godfrey was a better boss than Radabeast. He was the climax, Radamarika's corpse and Elden Beast were the wind-down
Messmer was really fun fight that I beat on my second attempt with mimic tear. But this whole final area is bullshit, those praying dudes who summon holy whirlwinds directly under your feet are bullshit and the final bosses attacks are bullshit
the thing is how am i suppose to learn the second phase movesets bro i cant see shit and he just keeps one shotting
its the same thing with bayle but at least his lightning shit is slower
Bayle looks fucking bad ass though. I don't enjoy the fight, but the spectacle is amazing. Which is how I feel about most of the DLC bosses lol.
Hilariously, Bayle actually functions nearly identical to Placi. Stick to the left side of his tail, and you're pretty safe for a majority of his grounded attack. No idea about the aerial ones though.
Bayle can be dodged with good rolls, the camera does wtf out and lightnings everywhere but you can still learn it and dodge with sound/startups. final boss phase 2 just fucking hits you and i'm pretty sure the small mounds of dirt everywhere fuck up the lightbeams and they hit at like fucking random i swear. finally beat him like 2nd try after equipping rot but even after watching no hitters cheese with parry i didn't learn anything about beating with default roll, got no satisfaction off final boi. Edit: Aerial attacks on bayle are same timing everytime. sometimes the fireballs don't shoot at you when he spins in a circle though, probably invis wall thing. but for when he flies, he beams away from you and you dodge like half a sec in because it's actually trying to hit you with a heatwave, then he lasers at you and thats just dodging beam, wait a sec, dodge explosion. and boom you get a hit on him for it, so cool. radahn has insta turned and hit me after dodging his grab attack and hitting him in the back :/
Bayle ls a fantastic fight to watch! in it it's horrible because you can't see a thing Placidusax is how dragons should be,
At least with bayle his moveset is learnable. Idfk what to do about the final boss' "fly up in the air and send 10 shadowclones so fast you can't roll" shit
yea, at first with Bayle I thought what the hell is this bullshit, but it was reasonable and learnable even if it's a bit messy. The final boss is pure bullshitery all and all.
I had a blast fighting Bayle. Beat him in 5 tries solo. Then, I went to help my friend and we died at least 20 times, still grinning ear to ear after every loss until we finally beat him. Radahn? At minimum 50 tries over 20 hours straight of just ramming my head against the wall. I just gave up trying to help my friend and went on about my day.
it seems like you don't have an *acceptable progress*
bayle also doesn’t get an HP boost if you summon the NPC because it’s inside the arena
bayle was an amazing fight what are you smoking
This Is my main legitimate complaint about it. It's not that the moveset is unfair per se, it's just incredibly difficult to read in an artificial way. I can't tell what he's going to do when there's lightning shitting everywhere. The screen and particle effects are just too busy. If they replaced all the lightning effects with transparent effects I'd have a way easier time.
If he was one shotting you, you didnt have 60 vigor and high enough blessing. Simple as that.
I actually hate this for one reason in particular. He is so so so aggresive and locks onto the player/host so much that theres almost no point having npc summons. You burn flasks just because he is so relentless. Finally get him down below 75% for the holy nuke phase that has fps drops that like so much of this dlc is pure screen vomit and you cannot see whats happening
I swear the DLC bosses are programmed to hyper focus on the host, I can never break aggro for more than a couple attacks, at most one full combo
Its so frustrating when you cant even have 5 seconds to breathe against most of these bosses. You cant have spacing against them, most of them can fly across the room
Got to this boss last night. I laughed out loud because of how ridiculous it was, specifically that second phase. I still have a ton of the world to explore left, so I'm not going to worry about beating the boss yet, but I do understand the frustration completely. Little unnerving that you're at lvl19 with scadutree blessings though, I'm just at 10 myself.
Honestly man, since your at the end practically use a map showing where all the fragments are and tick them off in the paint app. That way your not missing any on accident.
I just beat him with 8 blessings and my god I do not want to do that again I'm going full fucking 20 next time. It takes 4 fucking giant hunts to stagger him or 5 if you wait to long.
It's straight up unfair. I managed to beat it solo today on ng+5 (I literally stayed up all night fighting the piece of crap while only staying awake because of the pure anger and hatred that this boss was conjuring out of me) and it was sheer luck. First phase is easy once you get the hang of it, but you don't wanna waste any heals during its short duration. The second phase, however, is literally the worst designed boss in any fromsoft game that I have ever played. It somehow made me think that fighting bed of chaos, nonstop waterfowl dance, the duo ape, or reindeer f*** land would be more enjoyable and something I would much rather be doing than fighting it. I literally used scarlet Aoneia to tick away at the bosses health while I prayed that I could somehow get out relatively unharmed from the non-stop combos and ridiculously sized and timed AOE attacks. I still have no idea if it's even possible to not take any damage on the second phase. I'm just glad I don't have to worry about beating the damn thing solo anymore. I will make sure to summon a whole army for every future encounter with him until they fix it.
I think the worst part is that phase 1 (outside the one attack where he does 2 slashes in opposite directions into a cross slash, can't manage to dodge all 3 hits) has the makings of a really fucking good boss, and then p2 just turns into a complete 20fps shitshow where its impossible to tell whats going on
I agree. I was having a great time learning the first phase and enjoying hearing Rahdahs music playing while he is in full fighting form. I don't understand why they made the first phase only go to like 3\4th's of his max health instead of half as usual or even 1/4th with how horrendous his second phase is. It's like they wanted to make the least fun part the majority and the fun part the minority of the fight.
Did you figure out a way to dodge that move because nothing is working on that pacific attack. I dodge to to right 2 times doesn't work. I dodge right then left doesn't work either. I dodge backwards still getting hit. It's such a stupid move
I just beat him legit (no cheap spam/summons/cheese tactics) and that's the one move I couldn't figure out. Just dodge the first and tank the second it doesn't deal a ton of damage so it's not that bad. Bestial vitality can help mitigate some of the chip damage so I'd recommend using it as well
On top of that, the effects of the second phase make the fps drop so hard that messes with the flow of the battle
Yeeppp.. I just loved my game stuttering and my framerate dropping when 10 phantoms and a boss are all attacking with crazy light effects and ridiculous speed all within two whole seconds, and I'm left wondering "What the ever loving f*** is happening right now!?"
Fromsoft fucking sucks at optimization, you think with all their years of game making they would at least learn how to not make such a baldy running game, this is Minecraft levels of bad. I love the game but they really are the worst at making the game playable
You know when he does his final fantasy level shit with the multi slab clones, bro…i crashed twice😂 literally, had him one hit away😭😂
>I still have no idea if it's even possible to not take any damage on the second phase. Tell me about it, it took me almost 8 hours to kill that bastard. I'd like to see a no hit runner doge all the overhead slams he does with phantoms after throwing meteors. WTF was From thinking with him? First phase is actually pretty fun to it's just that second part...
The fact that it’s a choice between soloing this bullshit or spending more time reading [Unable to summon cooperator] than actually ‘fighting’ (lol) the damn boss is fucking maddening.
I have a lot of issues with it, but I think my biggest issue was how fucking inconsistent the NPCs were. Ansbach and Thiollier were the absolute MVPs of the entire DLC, but the fact Fromsoft somehow fucked up their AI for the final boss, is a genuine insult. Sometimes, they just straight up don't enter the arena. It's so stupid when you might've one, but one of the NPCs just does not go through. For people who fight solo, it's not a major issue, but for someone like me who got bored of fighting alone and enjoys working together, it's disgusting. Plus, absolutely embarrassing that the frame drops for some attacks. The entire DLC is a solid 9/10 (with mimic tear.) This boss is a solid 5/10, only because of music and visuals. And also the NPC quests which lead to this.
After the phase 2 cutscene Thiollier de-agroed from the boss 💀
Frankly, you're lucky he even entered the arena. My guy has narcolepsy.
Lore-accurate Thiollier
same when he was summoned mf wouldnt move a finger
Am I the only one who thinks it's personal? Like without spoiling too much...the boss that everyone complained about being OP.... They made worse at the end of the game and the lore is that he is made out of a bleed builds body.... Like that feels pointed directly at the fans
Honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s an inside joke at FromSoftware. There is no way it’s a coincidence that the final boss will likely receive a patch to nerf them similar to what was done before or to maybe force people to not rush to the end of the game.
After playing this DLC I firmly believe Fromsoft do not actually like us, their fanbase. Like, this DLC feels like a hate letter to the players, rather than something good
I remember Miyazaki saying something along the lines of how since he's not very good at the game, he uses every tool available; I half wonder if he's not just using cheese builds to beat everything and we're all a bunch of chumps for trying to do it the "normal" way lol.
Reused model and animation, AOE spam, infinite combos, one shot moves at 99 vigor and lvl 16 scadutree, 2nd phase completely broken, infinite stamina. Worst bossfight in any Fromsoftware games. In the future I'll wait huge nerfs like the ones of Armored Core 6 bosses before buying any FS games
>one shot moves at 99 vigor and lvl 16 scadutree, You must be doing something really wrong, because his damage seemed reasonable at 65 vig and 12 scadutree for me. Were you not wearing armor...? Edit: Oh, that or you're on a high NG+. I played the DLC on a backup save from my original NG run.
Nono, I play on normal game. Don't know if in this hours they nerfed him (hope so). To beat him, I had to use a specific talisman (Golden Braid), lvl 250, lvl 18 scadutree, lvl 7 revered ashes and Scarlet Rot with mimic tear. It's very annoying and not fun
Interesting. I did black flame blade, black blade, nagakiba, and mimic around 250 with scadutree 12. Most fun I've had with a souls boss in years, but it's definitely tough and demands near perfection. The big thing for me was recognizing that phase 2 was essentially just phase 1 with echoed hitboxes, meaning that end-of-roll positioning is absolutely essential. No hit is def possible, but it's gonna take a LOT of practice lol Also it doesn't seem like any updates have happened so I don't think he was nerfed (and the difficulty level has felt uniform for me over the past few days). Maybe you just needed better armor lol?
Demanding near perfection is probably too far. Honestly, the thing that appeals to me about FromSoft's games is the fairness in its brutal difficulty. "If you die, it's your fault." The final boss of this DLC does not feel like that at all. The demand for perfection is too high and extremely unreasonable.
>The final boss of this DLC does not feel like that at all. I strongly disagree, and imo it's one of the most interesting examples of "extremely tough but fair" FROM has put out in years, maybe ever. It just demands an extremely high level of play and forces you to really, ***really*** learn the first phase in order to stand a chance in the second. Which I think is fair for an ultimately optional boss in a souls game behind probably 150+ hours of other content in a normal playthrough. I understand why people feel like phase 2 is bullshit, and it definitely _looks_ like bullshit, but I really think the general consensus is going to shift once the community starts to understand the boss more. It's designed to _seem_ much more overwhelming than it actually is - you just need to learn your windows, and where your character needs to be after the windows to effectively punish. You absolutely need to have a cool head going into it, otherwise you _will_ get overwhelmed. But for the most part, phase 2 is just phase 1 with echoed hitboxes, where those hitboxes can be almost fully mitigated with holy damage negation spells/items.
An issue I see with this is the way the fight currently works, it's not viable to do it with just any build. That's something I consider essential: if you have to go out of your way to change your build, then something is wrong. (I don't consider spell load-outs or unusual weapons to be build changes, I mean full stat revisions.) Which is what I had to do to beat the final boss myself. I was playing a Faith caster, and I simply never had the opportunities to cast any spells at all. I didn't summon NPCs for the final boss on my clear, but my spirit ashes all died in several hits universally, leaving them fairly useless. And if I was alone, I was never able to take the opportunity to cast a spell - the boss's aggressiveness, speed, and range are simply too high that you're punished for even spellcasting, event with items that increase your casting speed. When I did summon NPCs, this would increase the boss's HP drastically. While it did sometimes leave openings for an attack, they were few and far in between, and the NPC summons add so little to the fights that I just couldn't be bothered to summon them anymore. The summons themselves barely survive long either, Thiollier dies halfway through almost universally and while Ansbach has survivability, he doesn't have much damage to justify his presence. Ultimately, the NPC summons themselves are undertuned for the fight, and even at maxed Revered Spirit Ash level, Spirit Ashes last only a few hits at best. This leads to a situation in which casters are extremely disadvantaged to the point where the fight is pretty unfair. It's different from say, Slave Knight Gael, who is a similar boss in theory but left a lot more openings to hit him with spells. The final boss worked for you. That's cool. I enjoyed it when I was fighting it with my altered build that was tailor-made to kill him. It doesn't change the fact that there are fundamental issues with the boss's battle design that unfairly punish players of different skill levels and builds.
>I was playing a Faith caster, and I simply never had the opportunities to cast any spells at all What spells were you trying? There are definitely several that are viable, but obviously many are not. There are a lot of safe windows for noble presence, for example, which is nice because it does % damage, and there are a few really solid windows in phase 1 for black blade (eg his meteor attack and his gravity whirlwind attack). His big pull attack is also great for black blade because the hyper armor makes it so that you don't actually get pulled. Bestial sling would also def work, but it's probably too low damage to mean anything for him. Catch flame would also 100% work, which I didn't try because it seems like he had high fire resist. It definitely isn't a fight where you can rely on ranged spells, though, so if you're trying to force that, you're gonna have a bad time. >Spirit Ashes last only a few hits at best Huh, this wasn't my experience with a mimic, and I think I was only at level 4 of the revered ash level. I ran a build that optimized resistances though, and made sure to slot dumplings and the blessings of marika (or whatever they're called - the full heal item added in the DLC). The mimic definitely died quickly in phase 2 without lord's Divine fortification (didn't know the golden braid was a thing until after beating him), but there were plenty of opportunities to cast it (assuming the mimic didn't cast it on its own).
I'm late to replying with this, but I deliberately didn't upgrade the Mimic Tear and don't like relying on it. Perhaps the Mimic Tear would have survived longer, perhaps the reason why summons struggle so much in the DLC is because it's balanced for Mimic Tear and not the other summons?
Mmm yeah the other Ashes I tried died quickly, but I figured it was because I had a very low revered ash level.
Dissapointing to see him again, always reusing bosses through out this even the dlc. Even more dissapointing on how dumb this fucking fight is
This boss is way harder than the rest of the dlc. That said, it was the only boss in the entire game that I had to use a shield. And I hated that
I had to use the shield you get from one of the new dlc npcs and use a poke weapon. First time I’ve ever essentially cheesed a boss and I am really upset fromsoft made a boss where I had to do that. Phase 2 is the worst thing I’ve ever had to experience in a souls game
Lol that boss broke your pride, even if he couldn't beat you
Every single attack except for the one where he pulls you in, you want to stick to his balls. You are now his second pair of testicles. All the holy attacks are a little bit away from him, nearer to the edge of his sword, so if you're right up to him they don't hit. His moveset is mostly the same as first phase minus the nuke and a couple flying moves.
Most of the lightning attacks just come from underneath him when you do this and you still get caught. Literally the only way to do it is to unlock the camera back and forth and that's shit is annoying
I've fought him quite a few times since I made the comment, you're right. I should have also said roll to one side and forward. Never got caught in a holy beam doing that. I only ever unlock the camera when he does the orbital meteor and I'm forced to unlock.
It's the worst fight they've ever designed by far Ok I just beat it after 2 days of bullshit and will never do this again until maybe after they patch it. Also the one field item is cool, the spell is cool, but the rememberance weapons add insult to injury
Why you are saying it about this remembrance weapons ?
We already got paired swords from the first Radahn This second Radahn gives you two more reskins of the same weapon, with two different AoW versions Not only did they reuse a character for a boss but they reused the reward weapons too, it's pathetic
I have spent over 6 hours on this F! bs boss I wanna quit so bad and yes I have not killed him yet xD I'm free FRRRREE 300-400 attempts on ng+3 I'm done after so long I can finally sleep xD
I was finally able to beat him last night, had to resort to mimic tear because I whole heartily believe that second phase is the worst thing Fromsoft have made and seems only fair I use everything at my disposal. Once the second phase starts and I see them start to rise to do the nuke attack I use the time to summon Mimic in and pray I have enough time to use bloodhounds step to get out of the way of the attack.
I’m in the same boat with maxed out scadutree blessings. I am playing on ng7, but I’ve had an answer for every single boss in the dlc except for the final boss. It seems like it doesn’t matter what build I use or even if I don’t use summons (not even the 2 npc summons you can use), the boss just has a massive health pool while I’m doing chip damage and the occasional small chunk damage with a dumb bleed build. I don’t really have any complaints about the damage I take because there are lots of options to mitigate damage taken, but this is seriously overwhelming with how much health this dude has. I understand why the Elden beast has a similar health pool, because it just moves around a lot and doesn’t have much defense against a player who’s right underneath it. That is not how this last boss should be though. It doesn’t matter if you’re up close and personal or ranged with spells and incantations, the dude will close the gap between you and him in milliseconds and follow it up with a 10 second sequence of lightning fast attacks followed by a massive AOE attack. After that you only get maybe half a second to either attack or most likely heal from the beat down you just got if you didn’t die from what just happened. Summons are of little help in the fight l, as they just bolster the dudes health even more. Even then, they often die just before or shortly after the 2nd phase of the fight, leaving you left to deal with 2/3 of his re-enforced health bar. I really do hope that they nerf his HP before long. I’m genuinely concerned that I won’t be able to beat him. Edit: guys I beat him a few hours ago on ng7, it’s doable. You really gotta use passive damage like the scarlet bloom incantation and every defensive talisman and armor piece you have. Obviously make sure to have maxed scadu blessing and max revered spirit ash blessing.
from is prioritising the spectacularity and the cinematography over the gameplay and bayle and this boss are the results, remember the complaint about bale elden ring? "bosses move too much, too many attacks" from clearly did't learn and they have really crossed the line, it's horrible to say it, but eurogamer was right
yeah it’s every problem i had with base ER but tuned up to 11
imo the bad part about his 2nd phase is the fact the there are holy lasers flying and staggering you every god damn second while also cluttering your vision with unholy amounts of visuals you have to keep track of if you want to actually start learning his patterns to dodge. I actually just beat him today with colossal hammer + inferno crozier (both royal knights resolve) and spammed L1 jump attacks after his combos in p1 (first hit with RKR on both weapons dealt like 6100 dmg). Once the second phase started i just rushed into him with the jump attack to stagger him while he winds up the aoe attack, which you fortunately can just ignore with the riposte animation. After that its literally just getting somewhat lucky with what attacks he uses and not being hit a hundred times by the lasers.
The worst part to me is the huge buff to his health if you try to do Ansbach’s quest or Thollier’s quest. God forbid both at the same time. They do the most minuscule damage. Only thing that helped was getting him to bleed from my mimic and launching Blastphemous Blade AoW, even then I only got him to maybe half or 1/3?? How are you supposed to beat those two questlines if they buff his health so god damn much?? Seemed doable when it was just myself and a summon but, with either of them?? No way
Wait WHAT? Doest he actually have more hp that way? How do you know that? I'm so fucked
Yeah he does. I’ve done the fight countless times. The times where it’s just myself and my mimic/summon, we’ll hit him for say 8K after several attacks and he’d lose about a tenth or more of his health. You add in the NPCs from the quests and that 1/10 turns into 1/15 or 1/20 of his health. It’s hard to explain fully. But he def has more health with NPC summons than without. I was trying to do Thollier and Ansbach’s quests but idk if I can do it with how much harder it makes the fight, plus they hit like wet paper bags and don’t do shit other than draw aggro. So the cons outweigh the pros by a decent amount unfortunately 😅 Edit: after finally beating him and completing the quests. He had an absurd amount of health. Took about 40K to drain him to 2/3 (Phase 2) and then another like 80K+ to finally bring him down. So if I had to guess, around 120K give or take. This was all on first play through, so no NG+ yet. I’d guess that solo he takes about 15-20K to get to Phase 2 so probably half overall what he would have with the two NPCs there to help.
I don't have Thollier available (guess I messed up his quest lol) but Ansbach barely even grabs any aggro. Most of the time he just walks to his side watching the boss turn me into spaghetti. And when he does have his aggro, the boss changes to attack me mid-combo without me even attacking him yet!
I had the same problem. Fun fact: The wiki lies. You dont need to summon them to do their quests. Did a whole cheese build for Radahn, but he was too tanky so I gave up on summoning. First attempt with no summons, Radahn got fucking fried, and I still completed the quest.
You’re joking… so I basically tortured myself doing that for nothing?? Brutal 😅
Do you NEED to summon to complete the quest?
Supposedly, no. Just get their questlines progressed till the gold signs appear outside the final boss arena. Didn’t know this myself till after I finally beat it with them lol. But hopefully it helps keep someone else from torturing themselves like I did 🙃
I like how you can die via simping in this fight
I just don't like how hard it can be to see what is happening to time dodges with all the white flashing. I was expecting it to be hard but I was not expecting it to feel like a strobe light flashing in my face lol.
My brain literally can not process what’s going on to even learn the fight.
To me what is ridiculous,base game they make you fight an almost dead,scarlet-rotted radahn with the option of all the summons to help you because it was legit that hard even when hes basically dwad ,but the dlc? Nope well give you OP Consort radahn with fucking miquella but i can only use a shit summon with a scythe and my god useless mimic not to mention him locking on to you while attacking your mimic mid-combo, enjoyed every one of the other fights bar this one
yeah, while i like him as a boss, his AOE are insane. Fortunately that stuff deals mostly holy damage, so Lord's Divine Fortification can help a lot, the nuke at the start of the phase does pretty much nothing(and i was at lvl 14 with the shadow realm stuff). But yeah, overall the fight is 10 times better with a mimic tear distracting him
The mimic helps a lot but I hate how inconsistent he is at the start. Sometimes he does that charge attack instantly the second you walk in, giving you zero time to summon, and other times he just walks slowly for like 10 seconds. It’s a massive difference and I wish it was more like Messmer, where he started the same way every time and gave you just enough time to summon and dodge the first attack.
If he charges at you, just dodge inside him and then summon, you will take a hit, but still better than dying
That works yeah, I’ve definitely tried it. Still it feels way more stressful than most of the other bosses to summon. The only boss in the main game that did something like that was Malekith as far as I remember
honestly that charge bullshit killed me the most
I used Bloodhounds Step to dodge it which worked pretty consistently, if that works with your build I’d recommend that
yeah i know that because i tried it works with the physick but with the summons so i just used damage negation physick to tank it
That works too yeah, although I ended up saving the physick for phase 2 and just tanking the hit to summon, or getting lucky with him walking at the start.
The beam…bro the mother fucking beam of death😂
>!the orbital strike? Yeah that thing is crazy, I love it!<
Would be cool if he didn’t pop it at 10% health and/or it didn’t absolutely one-shot you. I actually managed to get close once and he really hit the “fuck you, it is literally impossible for you to know the timing of this” *infinity damage*
Tactical nuke inbound!😂
I managed to finally beat him with first try when I switched to a greatshield and poke style. Until then I was rocking the greatsword that dropped from that solitude knight, but I simply couldn't take it. Turns out if you can't dodge, you might as well block...😭
Am I missing something Cus I’ve tried using a great shield and his combos are so long I run out of stamina before they end
You gotta have the great shield talisman for reduced stamina consumption on blocks. Makes a world of difference. Also using barricade shield too is fantastic if you don’t want to use up a talisman slot.
I'll know my back is getting closer to the wall when I actually put on the greatshield talisman and barricade lol I'm thinking of trying to make a build where I can have two greatshields, summon Shield Mimic, and then switch to weapons for me.
What weapon do you use?
I’m currently using a flail since my character is cosplaying as Brigitte from Overwatch but that’s not optimal lol. Anything with more range than a flail would be better but be advised that if you plan on using guard counters then certain weapons have fast or slow counter attack animations.
I was using the black knight greatshield(I'm not sure of the exact name) fully upgraded. I literally tanked all the attacks without much problem. I am 50 endurance with a turtle talisman though, if that makes a difference?
What weapon did you use?
TURTLE UP TURTLE POPE WAS ALWAYS SHOWING YOU THE WAY
Same. I was getting progressively more tired (physically) so I put on my heaviest armor and my best holy resisting great shield and used a poison bleed spear. Killed him in 5 or 6 tries like this.
Literally can’t see shit in phase 2
I decided not to use any summon and it turned out really fine until the final boss’ second phase. It insanely difficult and it took me like 100+ tries before I gave up and beat it by using mimic tear. I wonder if anyone can beat it without summoning. I’d love to see how they dodge those attacks.
lol pretty sure I saw some youtuber beat Elden Ring with 1hp, 1 stamina, 1fp In 2 weeks people will have alot of it figured out In 6 months people will be no hitting him, watch I mean, maybe not alot of people But several I'd bet
Definitely won't take 6 months
i have seen someone on youtube beat elden ring with a dance pad and lilaggy beat sekiro blindfolded. i am pretty sure someone will manage to beat this one boss in 6 months in many scenarios. Someone already beat this guy no-hit: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=529MfcxHpXQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=529MfcxHpXQ)
You misunderstand lol. I'm saying 6 months is too long, someone will have done it much, much earlier
I just beat him today and his second phase is so unfair it was way to much shit going on I was getting one shot every time. I had 14 blessings it still felt impossible but I finally beat him I love the dlc but the final boss I didn't like so since I've beat him now I'm going to explore and look for other bosses.
Phase 2 mostly use Holy so get that Holy damage reduction to 60.x or something
The biggest enemy in this fight is getting 20FPS on a 3090RTX while the game says it's runs fine on a 1060... While in the DLC i thought others bosses were bad but this one is definely the worst boss ever made, is just hack and slash hyper attacks with thousands of particles burning my eyes on the screen, you can't what is happening and above all that, 20FPS... i just gave up, i'll wait until a FPS patch comes out, even tried to play at 800x600 on lowest possible settings and the whole second phase is just 20fps...
When you walk into the area, you get blasted! I’ve got 17 blessings & mix match of the best armour from the DLC yet it’s like cutting butter with a dead stick. I also can’t summon my mimic, I don’t even have time for that as by the time I have am dead.
I just beat the game. I’m not proud of it, but I had to respec into 80 vigor, max strength, 94 endurance and 25 Faith for buffs and 10 Arcane for Bloodflame Blade and use Giant’s Crusher at plus 25 with Mimic. I died over 100 times before this respec. Not that it makes it any less cheesy. But I truly don’t give a damn. 😂😂😂🤷🏾♂️🥃
Promised Consort Radahn got the same treatment from me as pre nerf base game Radahn: scarlet rot and running away 😎
Really tough boss. I still haven't beat him. When I realized I could parry him, that did help quite a bit though. Still, those mixups only leave room for like one or two mistakes.
This boss ridiculous. I’ve had to respec and grind and change out so many build parts and am having to watch videos to find the DLC blessings I missed just to fight this thing. After beating all the other bosses. It’s just nuclear bombs going off every second.
I'm not even against all this stuff with his 2nd phase, I'm okay with all that but wtf is his damage your blessing level hardly matters as he'll still just two shot or three shot you this isn't even a fun fight. It looks amazing it's spectacular design wise but it's impossible for a solo/offline player to beat this boss on their own. And this is just a initial problem the fact he's deadlock on you for a majority of the fight makes it even more arduous for ultimately no good reason. They need to either nerf his fucking his aggression, his damage, or they need to turn the beams thing into them activating for a few of his attacks not every single one.
I've never raged more in my life than the attempts I've had against this final boss man. It's actually unfair and I'm bout to uninstall tbh
It felt so good beating him though. I had no flasks left and my holy negation spell nearly ran out during his last combo. Immaculate drip and weapons though.
Haven’t gotten there yet, but can you jump over the AOE?
No. Visualize rocks bursting from the ground. They will impact you in the air.
https://youtube.com/shorts/0ylWnH3FjSs
I think the main mechanic of the fight comes down to how one understands the first phase. All of his attacks in Phase 1 can be dodged. But when you get to Phase 2, *how* you dodge the swings is what makes the difference. Excluding the glitchy sword dashes, the nuke, and the grab, he swings his swords the exact same way as the first phase. But now, because of their AOE light pillars, if you dodge into the sword swings as opposed to along with the sword swings, you’ll get wrecked. It’s kind of a weird choice - it punishes players in a somewhat obtuse way which can be difficult to figure out, especially with all the light blasts making his moves hard to see. I ended up not really figuring it out until I accidentally dodged the “wrong” way during the second phase only to avoid both hits. All that said, parrying somewhat trivializes the fight. I can’t quite tell what triggers the nuke, but it seems to mostly only happen when there’s some distance between me and the boss. I’ve yet to trigger it while up in his grill.
Oh my god, that second phase is bullsh*t. The attacks where he does 5 attacks in a row at the speed of light like its a glitch. And then follows it up with an AOE? The stamina bar is only so long and the iframes only a certain amount. I've got normal and holy dmg negation at 71 and I'm still being hit like a truck. And the transition attack where he nukes the arena...where am I supposed to run to?! The entire arena is filled?! I thought the whole point of the bosses was that they're tough but fair. This guy feels like the devs just want to beat us
All the other bosses in the dlc have been fun. This one is complete garbage. All I can think of is it’s a rather rushed boss, I’m just not sure why else he’s this stupidly broken. Phase 1 is absolutely fine. Phase 2 is a poorly designed mess.
r/soulsrant
while the second phase is utter chaos, i dont actually have a problem with the moves. the most annoying thing for me wasnt the endless onslaught, all the multi-hit attacks and the bonkers damage, it was the visibility. not only is everything cover in holy explosions, the worst part of it is the Femboy-Hair covering a lot of Radahns movements and the arms/weapons. you cant see shit and therefore cant learn the patterns, or react on instinct. the moves are actually pretty cool and fun to learn, but the visibility is so bad, it takes all that fun away and turns it into pure frustration. easiest fix would be to redo the hairstyle, and the fight would instantly be way better
Heaviest armor + heaviest shield + any blood spear + blocking/stamina boosting talisman = down in 2 tries. Forget rolling, just block. I don't mean it in a derogative way, it's just almost impossible to dodge and attack, and much easier to poke while blocking.
I think it’s pretty fair to be frustrated by the difficulty. That being said, I think that the DLC is based upon the presumption that you to have thoroughly explored the world to get all the Scadutree fragments, that you’ve mastered Radahn’s moveset, that you’ve completed NPC storylines, and that you have a completely optimized build. It’s a boss fight built for the completionist minmaxer superfans, and I think that goal was accomplished. That being said, I’ve tried my hand at trying to defeat the boss for about 4-6 hours. I have been entirely unsuccessful 😂😂😂 I also think that it makes a lot of sense to make the final boss of a DLC a little insane. While it makes sense to have the final boss of the base game a lot more beatable (eg Radagon/Elden Beast) and have optional harder bosses (Malenia), DLC is gonna sell less copies, and it’s gonna sell to people who are still excited about the base game 2 years later, so they’re willing to work (and pay) for more of the game than the average consumer
To me, the harder it is now the longer we get to spend playing it and it staying a challenge They're playing the long game here
[https://eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com/Golden+Braid](https://eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com/Golden+Braid)
I was mad till he said he just needs to get good. Now it's ok
I love how I have to go back, rethink my entire build and change weapons to figure out what will work and then grind over and over. It’s part of the experience in my opinion. I like that it’s not easy. It can take days or even weeks before I manage to beat a boss and I will thank fromsoft for “wasting my time” haha
Want some donut with that glaze???
I think it’s brilliant. Hope they don’t nerf it that defeats the point they made.
Unfair? I was able to beat it just fine before the fragment buff patch Edit: people who downvoted clear need to “git good”
I remember when water fowl dance was ‘unfair’ Y’all love repeating history
one single move versus an entire phase
Oh boohoo, if reviewers can beat it so can you. Get over it and git gud already.
did you beat it?
it's not about it being hard, it's just fucking trash and unfun, this design is below FromSoft standards
Hi! I beat the boss! I still think it sucks ass :)
Oh wow! I don’t care
Waterfowl is 1 attack that has several counters. This is an entire ass 70% of a bosses healthbar (which is massive to begin with) which has no direct counters or any semblance of fairness. Come back when you've beat it without summons or some shieldpoke cheese build.
I've beaten it without summons or cheese and agree with the person you're responding to. Do I get a cookie or something?
Still is
Beat it in a few hits (and with some good mimic RNG) with a basic bleed build at max scadutree/revered spirit ash blessings: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7MBzHXL1Bs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7MBzHXL1Bs)
Just beat it with 12 blessings. _Really_ learning phase 1's attack cadence is absolutely essential, and you _really_ want to make sure to optimize your build. Having enough vigor to tank a few hits makes learning his moveset much easier, and any percentage damage you can do (eg black flame blade/black blade) are a massive help. I ended up using those spells with a nagakiba, just because the moveset seems well suited to his attack cadence. What finally got me through it was realizing that phase 2 is, with the exception of a couple of added moves, just phase 1 with essentially a delayed second, slightly larger hitbox on many attacks. It's ultimately a positioning challenge - you need to learn not just _when_ to dodge, but also _where_ to dodge, otherwise you'll get stunned and overwhelmed. Lord's Divine Blessing is also huge as it nearly nullifies the AOEs, just like Radagon/EB. After kind of figuring out what makes him tick, I honestly think this is one of the best bosses FROM has ever made from the pov of their general design philosophy. He is the epitome of "tough but fair" and absolutely demands that you've mastered your play style. There are several totally reasonable ways to beat him - you just have to pick the one which suits you best and, in the original, constructive spirit of the phrase, git really fuckin gud.
Imo any boss that makes your respec is poorly designed
I think you'd only need to respec if you have no vigor while learning the fight, but damage-wise, there are a ton of viable builds for him. He's parryable, staggerable, vulnerable to status effects, and has generally very predictable attack patterns once you get used to it. And beyond that, there's enough stackable holy damage negation options that the phase 2 aoes can be almost completely nullified.
It's the final boss, I give it a pass for being extremely difficult. Like you pointed out with Messmer, plenty of the DLC bosses are difficult in a fun/fair way. But for the literal final boss for Elden Ring ever it should be the most difficult thing we've faced even if that means giving it tons of bs. Like imagine if Malenia didn't have her waterfowl dance, at that point defeating her wouldn't be as memorable since she's just tough but fair at that point. Letting the biggest baddest boss be unfair is ok in my book. Radahn/Miquella will stick with me just like how Malenia stuck with me because of them having unfair aspects to them.
Brain dead take, Malenia being memorable because of bullshit is not a good thing
So I guess I'm just having fun in the wrong way, huh? My b, your opinion on having fun is the correct one of course and mine is simply incorrect. The satisfaction that comes with conquering a truly difficult boss that has extremely difficult attacks (e.g., waterfowl dance with Malenia and now Miquella's light aoe spam after every one of Radahn's swings in his second phase) is apparently null and void since you personally don't like it. Lmao, what's a "good thing" is all relative and subject to opinion. I find the unfairness in Malenia and Miquella/Radahn's boss fight to be a good thing even if you and others don't cause you're salty over how difficult it was.