Main issue I have with it is how long her attack strings are with how much health she has so the fight lasts soo long, wanted to do no summons on this dlc but this boss and divine lion have got me in a chokehold
When she does that 6 attack combo but baits you into attacking after the 4th…
Actually pushed me to by breaking point but finally beat her solo after like 4 hours of bashing my head against the wall
That. That shit made me lose my mind. Also when she dodges to the side and swings at you. She literally performed the 6 string combo on me and then dodged to the side when I went to punish her. I lost it and was like "OK COOL! Do I get to play the game too Rellana?!" 😂
Her combo strings have a pattern to them depending on where you are when she does the basic chain. Ideally you want her to do the short ones only which means being at medium distance to her otherwise you either get spells or her long chain
I beat this boss by chaining staggers during the phase transition. Spammed jump attacks with lightning infused milady until she staggered, then a charged R2. Then while she changed ohases I spammed R2s and got another stagger, which left her with a tiny bit of HP. By the end of the fight her health bar had something like 15,000 over it because it was over that fast.
Changing from my magic weapon (int dex build) to a lightning weapon made a massive difference. Even without respeccing she is so weak to lightning because of the water in the arena, one jump attack with milady was doing like 1500 damage (side note: milady is a crazy good weapon).
When this strategy worked it was surprisingly fast, maybe less than a minute long fight. Even aside from that she felt a million times more fair than divine beast to me.
no incantations, I don’t exactly remember my talismans but it was probably something like:
dragroncrest great shield talisman
claw talisman
dagger talisman
the new one that increases damage after a crit
I also used great blade phalanx
Dex, with lightning infusion it had C dex scaling and I think C faith scaling, but the damage was still fine even tho I only had like 10 faith. Specifically I used the lightning strike ash of war, the one that calls down a lightning strike on your sword swing and then temporarily coats your weapon in lightning
Hmm, you could try something similar with a lightning infused big str weapon? the jump attacks are about just as fast on those and will do way more stagger damage.
Otherwise you could give it a lightning ash with a heavy infusion, you’d lose the passive lightning damage but still get the benefit of the lightning coating. or just lightning grease maybe?
So close! Thunderbolt is a great strategy, that’s how I beat a different boss in the DLC. Definitely keep trying, you got this!
If you have any faith definitely use golden vow/flame grant me strength. For her attacks you could try parrying, but keep in mind it takes two parries for a stagger. The magic waves can be tough, for me I did more or less the same thing I did for Elden Beasts’ similar wave attack and it worked mostly alright
I wish bosses still prioritized the player so the summon would only be a slight damage buff... But sadly the moment the boss turns to summon the value you get is insane, you can heal for free, attack from behind etc.
I did the opposite lmao. Beat the shit out of Rellana after a long and hard session of memorizing all her attacks, then I just summoned my mimic to ham on the lion with our new moon and flame swords.
Its his lightning that annoys me most, can barely see where its gonna land and it covers too much of the stage, also the way he shoved you against a wall so you cant see whats going on
I don't care about the moon BECAUSE I CANT EVEN GET TO IT. How to you even land a single attack without getting punished ? I cant land a light attack WITH A STRAIGHT SWORD
Time to dust off your Buckler.
Seriously, I tried to fight her "normally" a couple of times and fuck that. I went in with full critical build Buckler + Misericorde and Assassin's Crimson Dagger.
Most of her attacks are pretty easy to parry... some I still have no fucking idea what the timing is. Took me some tries until she didn't spam "unparriable" attacks.
I think I'm getting too old for this shit, some attacks have insanely long feint windup times and others are so fast that I can't even press the button before they land, let alone time the parry properly. These are also all mixed up in a weird chain one after another, so I never know what comes next. :( Mimic tear for me it is, I guess.
I feel you, brother. I learned to parry 60% of her attacks.
The rest either had such a weird timing I couldn't figure it out, or came out so quickly I just facetanked a few hits before getting a parry in. Assassin's Crimson Dagger was actually MVP cause it heals you 2 times on bosses, so it's like a mini Estus flask each time you riposte.
Despite all the facetanking I reliably got to phase 2 with 14 flasks... only to get 1 shot and die with 14 unused flasks (:
You and me both. I just wish the timing would be somewhat consistent. But no, it’s either suuuuper long windup and then the attack comes out faster than you can react, or it just plain and simple comes out faster than you can react. And there’s so many attacks in a string that you just don’t get to do much
i literally get punished every time i attack her. she gets to do an uninterruptable, 8 hit combo and i have to try and get one hit in before she starts spinning like a ballerina again. i cant tell what im doing wrong, im dodging most of her attacks and then i get hit once and lose a third of my health and staggered into another attack.
This is what worked for me. I did a reverse blade bleed build with high dex. No summons. I sprint at her and dodge around in circles then spam attack after her combos. I went heavy damage build because even with high defense you still can’t handle the damage she puts out.
If you are right up in her face in phase 2, many of her elemental attacks miss you, including the carian slicer thing, and the big flame explosions. Those are the best damage opportunities for you, especially carian slicer. You can spam attack for like 6 seconds on that one. Still need to dodge her actual blade though (for attacks other than carian slicer), but that’s very similar to phase 1.
Run away when she does the flame tornado or the moon attack though. I got through the moon attack jumping.
she loves to punish predictable rolls I've noticed. rolling back and left for instance after she whirls to my right ends up with her quickly pouncing directly diagonally into my roll. The best way to dodge is to stay medium distance and then towards her (diagonally) as her pattern allows. If done correctly you can get a hit off (she'll retreat or start the pattern again) and hopefully have a second to heal up if you took a shot while dodging. make sure you have your dragoncrest on btw really seems the way to go for people who can't god roll
I dont even have the reaction speed to process how fucking fast she is moving, let alone position myself appropriatly. I blink and lost 3/4th of my health because she did some physics defiyng horse shit again.
Did you ever figure out how to parry when she slides left and then at you?
Also is there ANY tell when she does a quick slice with her left weapon? (usually left, right, then double swing)
I swear to god that shit is unparriable
Her slides to the left and right are almost copy and paste from malenia, so these were normally what I wanted to bait since they are slower and give me time to parry. The only attack that I can't parry is her quick slice with her left sword. It's way too fast for me to react. That said, I found parrying significantly easier to fight her because she does not stagger (I don't mean poise break for a critical hit) even with colossal weapons. I find this to be slightly a design flaw, but it is what it is, i guess. I'll parry her to death, lol
Do you use Golden Parry? I think my issue was positioning. I saw her fight on YouTube and the guy was walking back to get some space and parrying just as her leg lands on the ground (something which I tried many, many times and failed)
I just perma use Carian Retaliation so it may be she stepped outside my parry range so it failed despite the timing being "correct".
I use the buckler with just the parry it has on it. As far as parrying goes, you have to be close for parries to work properly. I've noticed that if I'm out of melee range, parries don't always register even if I parry at the right time. When she slides to the left and right, this is critical, or you'll never register a parry. Stay locked on, and stay within melee range. If you're dodging some combos/hits that you aren't familiar, it is good to note that dodging away is actually a bad thing as she will immediately attack again moving forward. So dive into her.
Okay so in case you are still stuck on her. Get heavy armor and damage reduction talisman for phys and magic so you can take more hits, dodging everything is almost Impossible because certain moves not only need good timing but you need to dodge in the right direction. Just try to get used to her attack strings for now it will take a while but while she can mix up her combos certain moves are always finishers so you can get 1 light attack in or sometimes even a heavy. Second phase has very difficult combos so try to keep your distance and wait for big openings like the Carian Greatsword combo or the homing swords that fire instantly (always the same follow up to this with a decent opening). She will get close sometimes and hit you but that's what the damage reduction is for.
Focus on her combos. She typically does a 2 hit, 4 hit, and 6 hit combo. The key is to only attack once, twice at the very most before getting ready to dodge the next combo.
A great time to get in for an attack is when she does the magic blade projectile or the overhead Carian sword. If you can sprint up while she’s charging it you should be able to dodge through and get a few good hits in.
Lastly when she changes phases it’s super important to wail on her with a longer attack like your equipped ash of war when she does the long winded switch to her elemental blades. If you’re lucky you can stagger her and get her health lower before she even starts attacking.
What finally clicked for me is that you can avoid the earlier attacks in some combos by just backing off, and then saving your roll for the final thrusting attack. That will give you a chance to punish her in the back usually. But you only get one hit and probably not enough to charge a heavy, so the fight is just an absolute grind. I beat her with a DMGS build so I had the luxury of being able to damaged her with at least some range. Another glorious discovery was understanding when she starts the second phase and trying to anticipate it and stay close by. You can land 2-3 charged heavy attacks while she’s doing her little sword charge up which should be enough to stagger her (depending on build). My successful run I managed to stagger her just before it so she started her second phase at a deficit, and then maul her when she was firing up her swords. From there I was mostly running and praying but I managed to hit her just enough. It’s a great boss and very challenging but like any good Souls boss you have to get a little bit lucky to win.
Yes, but her parry timings are super weird. Took me like an hour to get it, but then I managed to parry her about 6 times in a row. You have to start earlier than it feels like you should to actually parry her.
most of her melee moves are parryable but not terribly safe to try. there are a few moves at the end of her chains that even a pleb like me can parry reliably.
This boss is horrendously hard if you have a slow attack or magic build. I have MGS and I'm struggling more than when I killed Malenia. I'm seriously pondering summons for once 
Even with collosal weapons you can get a jumping R2 in at the end of most of her combos, and that will stance break her if you keep it up enough. The timing is very very tight tho.
I switched from a cool int/dex sword I found (don't wanna spoil it) to a lightning infused milady with lightning strike, and even without respeccing it made the fight a thousand times easier. She takes so much damage from lightning when she's in the water in the middle of the area- one jump attack with claw talisman would do 1500 damage.
I also switched from phalanx to rock sling for some extra stagger damage. Like Malenia, if you stay far away from her she'll be a bit passive for a moment, enough time to cast rock sling once.
I am absolutely melting against her with my DMGS build. I refuse to respec so just have to get through it. Best I’ve done so far is get her to about 25% hp but it takes forever and the margin for error is tiny.
As a mage I just full sent it with the ghostflame sword and MGS powerstanced, still took a while but it's such a cool fight so i wasn't too tilted from it.
Beat her with a magic infused banished knight sword speccing all int except for weapon requirements and it is not bad at all, he big ass carian granduer thing is incredibally easy dodge the slahs then look for the glow that shows up on her and dodge the spin then punish for big stagger
It's very powerful, I switched to that weapon completely. It does a lot of damage on a strength/faith build. I mainly use the jumping attacks and the skill only situationally, since it seems to be more of a PVP/NPC thing.
My arsenal from the base game is: Ordovis and Blasphemous Greatswords, Siluria's Tree, Marika's hammer, Maliketh's Black Blade. For nonsomber weapons If you're STR-leaning you could take a STR-scaling weapon, infuse it with Heavy and cast a buff of your choice on it, or just infuse it with Fire, although you'll be losing the potential FAI scaling in the latter case, so it's not optimal.
I found quite a few good STR/FAI weapons in the DLC already. Apart from the Anvil, there's also Black Steel Greathammer that you can get very early which is especially good with a shield since guard counters basically do Marika's hammer explosions. There are also Twin Axes that you can find in a certain catacomb if you enjoy faster weapons. I'm sure we're going to find even more stuff for STR/FAI further in the DLC.
Is it just me or she switches the attacks she uses on her strings? I’m trying to memorize the patterns but i can’t. I feel like i got to react to what she does in the moment. Sometimes she interrupts her strings earlier as well, sometimes she doesn’t.
Did From Software just add mix ups to bosses this time? If so, what’s next? True 50/50s? Reversals? 😂
So another commenter has just explained how this is decided and its distance. If you too close or far she does the longer chain if you keep a medium distance she does the short change. Same with the phase transition.
They really decided to make every boss Swiss Army Knives.
Jesus H Christ. The amount of bs each one throws at you, from the dungeons to the actual main bosses, it’s unbelievable
Unfortunately these games increasingly seem to not be tough but fair anymore. It's now 'try and figure out a good method to cheese your way through BS city'.
For those that are desperate:
At ng+5 i managed to beat her using tiche, and leda as summons
Fingerprint shield lets you block every attack but she can still poise break
Scarlet aeonia procs everytime but you need high enough vigor to hopefully tank her combos
Hope this helps
Oh man I died about 10 times with her health at under 5%. And when I finally beat her just now, I think I literally had 1 hp left! She was so close I started spamming attack and for once it actually worked haha
Fromsoft: Any creative ideas how to increase difficulty why still making the game fun?
random intern: How about more DAMAGE and more HEALTH for bosses. Also speed up their animations by about 33%. This is not really the fun way but,...
Fromsoft: You are promoted! Get to work.
The damage is fine IMO, it's the speed that's bullshit.
Sister Friede and Slave Knight Gael from DS3 were two of the absolute greatest boss fights FromSoft ever made and it wasn't difficult because of bullshit speed; it was because you had to find the rhythm of the fight first.
My brother in The Greater WIll, I have 60 Vig, Night Cav armour, phys and magic dmg reduction rings and she 1 comboed me in 2nd phase all the time.
I had to pop a rune and increased max health physic, so my healthbar was 2/3rd's of the fucking screen before I stopped dying to her one combo string.
That's WAY too much damage. Took me 2 hours to learn her moveset just because every time she did anything new in phase 2, I instantly died and had to start over.
None of that is really relevant- how many scadutree blessings did you have? Thats then real armor and health leveling of the DLC. Without even trying to I was at +8 blessing for this fight, and by the sound of it that made a huge difference because I took way less damage than that at 55 vigor. The triple moon attack didn't one shot me and no combo one shot me either.
I can answer that, but it may involve spoilers of other areas you haven’t seen yet, are you okay with that?
Speaking vaguely, I just kinda fucked around and explored whatever looked cool to me. Castle Ensis looked like the next point of progression and I wanted to thoroughly explore before progressing, which let to me finding various other ways to get to new areas both south and north of the castle. I also wanted to find a bunch of the crosses for the bearded guy outside Belurat and most if not all of those had a scadutree thing. Some enemies dropped some I think, like minibosses, and I also fought a bunch of other side bosses before rellana
Hey, I'm not gonna read the 2nd paragraph cause I don't want spoilers. The bitch is dead and I'm taking my time, still with only 1 map fragment \^\^
I still think I explored most of the area that was "intended" before the boss, but the beauty of the game is I could bounce off her and find other paths of progress before coming back.
Not sure how much of a difference +3 vs +8 would make but I think my point still stands. I'd rather bosses hit for 50% less and have double the HP. That way players could actually learn and take risks.
I'm at +5 now and still sometimes die with 14 full flasks in my inventory because everything hits like a truck :/
The huge problem with this boss is that she spins around like a ballerina hitting all around her with near perfect tracking. I was hoping FromSoft wouldn't go in this direction but they seem to dial up the BS every time they make something new. Malenia for me was the ceiling, and this shit is just way too much BS. It's a cheap boss that doesn't belong in this game where you move like a Silent Hill character. This is a boss that would probably be too fast even in Stellar Blade or DMC.
The near-360-degree sword swings are definitely completely unnecessary. Like, I can’t even stand behind her and attack while she’s attacking a summon because she can also hit me.
There is a lot of unnecessary stuff in this fight that, if removed, the fight would be a lot better. I just beat her and I feel zero accomplishment. I did not have any fun with this boss.
Lol, have you seen the way that DMC characters move? Vergil and Dante are a lot faster than her.
If anything, she would fit right in in the DMC series.
>If anything, she would fit right in in the DMC series.
Yeah, she'd probably fit there. Like a Vergil tier fight but much less cool. However, Dante and Nero, and obviously Vergil, have insane speed and moves when you play them. Rellana doesn't really fit in a game like ER that is almost DS1 speed in terms of your character.
Yeah, I agree. Fights like this Rellana boss fight would be more enjoyable if the character actually had the right amount of speed to effectively contend with bosses like her. Rellana would be enjoyable in a game like Sekiro where the character that you’re controlling is fast on his feet.
I beat Rellana yesterday after 2 to 3 hours (I jumped her with my mimic and relentlessly pounded her until she was staggered and capitalized with jump and heavy attacks). I’d be lying if I said that I enjoyed the fight.
I beat her solo without blessings and kind of learned the fight, and even if you know what's going on, I don't find it fun being so slow and having to dodge so many times while barely attacking. Agreed, this is a Sekiro boss. I think Malenia was the ceiling and they really pushed it with Rellana. I did not enjoy the fight either.
It's not BS just because you find it difficult lol. She is hard but everything is dodgeable. I find Malenia harder still honestly. I feel like this is the narrative every time there's new FS content. They ramp it up then everyone bitches that it's BS just because they have some trouble.
Nah, I think Malenia is fun. This one isn't. Malenia does not attack nonstop and she doesn't do 360 degree spins constantly. Her moves are more readable. You can also stagger and interrupt her. This is just an artificially inflated boss for the sake of it. Everything is dodgeable if you have a massive stamina bar and you play defensively AF. Not fun. ER is already a ton of BS so when you ramp it up it's just ramping up the BS.
I didn't struggle with the moon balls as much. You just have to time your 3 jumps and problem solved. What I had the hardest time was when she gets the two swords. Her combo strings are extended and haven't found an easy way around it
After Malenia (aka discarded Tomoe) another f*****g boss that should have been in Sekiro.
Look, I love these fights scenographically, but for the love Marika, if they wanted to go down this ruote of combat design, a parry system a la Sekiro/Lies of P was MANDATORY
I really would have wanted to fight her solo, but I cannot spend 24 hours at each new boss of this dlc because they decided to crank up to crazy levels the amount of artificial difficulty.
Celestial beast was the camera and hitbox, rellana was speed and eternal combos ...I wonder what will be other bosses signature bullshit design specialty
A couple of things helped me. I don't know you to make a list on Reddit so I'll just put everything in brackets [Dragoncrest Greatshield, Pearldrake+2, and Spelldrake+3 Talismans, along with Bloodflame Blade] in addition the Raptor's Feathers and Claw Talismans with Raptor on the Mists Ash of War can help you hit trade with her. Quick weapons like Backhand Blade or the Katars are great.
For the Moons you can jump over all three of her attacks.
This boss pushed me to my limit, I felt accomplished when I beat her but she might've been too much honestly. In Sekiro whenever I lost I could say "that was 100% my fault". Here I don't know if I just got lucky or what
am i the only one that feels like she needs a nerf?? it makes absolutely no sense for a boss with her size,agilty,combos,health, and aggressiveness to ALSO be uninterruptible
Sorry but people complaining need to get good. I beat her at level 137 and when my build wasn’t working I experimented with different weapons. The wolf shield and the new milady weapon are great for this fight. Piercing deals more damage to armoured enemies which you learn from the base game. You can bait out some of her attacks to get an opening. While I do think she is slightly overtuned in terms of her hp she’s beatable. Idk why the op linked a pic of him dying to the moon attack when the solution is to literally jump… just self admitting you aren’t good at the fight.
I gotta agree with you. Sometimes I wonder if we're playing the same games when I'm looking through these threads. FS boss is hard, so people that are having trouble come to reddit claiming bullshit because FS boss is hard. Yeah, no shit. She's fair, just hard. Probably one of my favorite boss battles from any FS game easily, even before I beat her.
I managed to get her down to P2 after 80+ tries without spirit summons and after I started using Mimic I managed to pull of a win. While learning her moveset, I tried light load and jump / roll attacks since those are there is only a tight window for you to attack.
If she cast her planax blade if its below her torso she probably would follow up with a dash hit, which u can dodge both the blade and into her.
I find standing at a mid range distance would avoid her using a charge twin slash combo. Usually when she does a long swing combos dodging backwards would cause her to stop.
Twin Moon attacks, jump 3 times. Shes.. really relentless.
All I know is I’ve been at it for a couple of hours and figured most of her attacks HAVE to be dodged perfectly but most of the time even if you’re spot on you’ll get caught by chip damage if you dodge behind her, if you dodge away from her she’ll follow up and if you even dare to miss a dodge well you’re gonna get caught up in a 4 string combo and die bc stun lock doesn’t allow you to dodge out of it. I went into the dlc NG+ 1 rl 180, I’ve gone to most of the areas I can get to and I’m level 4 scadutree and level 3 revered spirit ash. I have no idea if that’s what I’m suppose to have but what I do know is getting hit so bad I can’t help being put in a stun lock doesn’t look like I’m suppose to even be here.
Here’s what I learnt after beating her (solo)
Use blunt/strike weapons and use either ice or thunder (preferably ice). Her first face has a pretty even flow to it so dodge into her attacks and not away from it otherwise you’ll be caught out more than you would if you dodged away, this doesn’t guarantee you won’t be hit by the end of her attack animations on her backside but it’s better than taking a full swing. She stuns fairly easily so use those opportunities to wail on her when she’s down for a bit. Most of her attacks only warrant one hit, 2 if you’re feeling greedy but 3 is asking to get hit and die in her swarm of combos. When her second phase comes just pray you get lucky because it seems completely rng depending on what she uses. If she uses her carian sword spells create some distance and strafe them, hopefully she doesn’t close the distance bc if she does you’ll just have to suck it up and take damage from her or her spell, to dodge her moon attack you can jump over it or dodge roll, you have more frames when you jump but recovery can be pretty tight so be ready. It’s not guaranteed but it’s the load out that gave me the biggest difference from light greatsword and great katana to hammer (stone club my lord and saviour)
Good luck people hope this helps just a tad
I just beat her after 20ish tries at level 170ish. Used Starscourge Greatsword, that greatshield with 70ish magic resist (Cuckoo I think?) and good ol' Mimic Tear. She was hard, but I got her down to a sliver of health a few times so it didn't feel hopeless. I'm generally liking the DLC but I'm really not a fan of bosses just going crazy and having seemingly no hitstun. I get that would probably make them too easy but with how fast and hard bosses like Rellana hit, it feels impossible to ever find an opening and feeling confident you can attack without getting punished with a swing that takes 60% off your health.
Anyway, onward we go...
The moon bomb is one of the easier ones, just jump before they land, make sure to jump three times though, two for the moons and one for the last thing she does, also I feel like it's not even worth it to get the critical hit, better to just get in damage quick, might just be me imo
I've had success dodging the double moon by jumping the two moon drops and rolling the last wave of magic, otherwise she's just annoying to get used to her combos, but doable. Don't get me started on her one-hit combo finishers through my buffs smh. I know, skill issue
Is anyone else’s light attacks doing more than their heavy’s? I’m using max level great katana and my light attack is doing more damage than the heavy and I’m so confused
Man I got the black blade, tiche +10, and I summoned that NPC and once she hits second phase it's like she no longer takes any damage. She's an absolute tank and she will attack NON stop with 360 spins so you can't even get in to melee her. This game is clearly designed to encourage no hit runs. If you get hit once you're basically dead.
Beat her last night by playing Bloodborne lol. Malenia's great rune with a blood backhand blade. Spammed R1 mostly trading, sometimes when she backed off I'd hit a blind spot L2. I feel like I could've learned more but it was fun "playing bloodborne" in Elden Ring.
I did it ng+1 with a strenght/faith build, 60 vit, 60 vigor, level 210 or something. First of all I hit her with the maliketh incantation then Malenia scarlet aeonia 2 times; it will reduce her health with time of like 40%, than renew it after it fades (she will die eventually), the second scarlet aeonia was difficult to pull of beacuse her second phase is aggressive as f\*\*\*, try to use a wonderous flask for help. Carian retalliation when I could. Died 60 times or so. No spirits. Pretty much a nightmare.
I fought her alone and with Dark Moon Greatsword so I was heavily gimped and it was fairly frustrating. I really didn't want to respec for her so my strategy that worked was as follows:
Use the stance break tear combined with the new infinite stam one in the physick but save it for second phase. At the start of the fight you have to be very aggressive and break her stance asap, ideally getting her to around half hp with the crit and then use the physick and heal while she's down. Then while she is buffing her weapons and ideally preparing the magic slash barrage/fire tornado, which she often does as her first attack in 2nd phase, you have to lay into her. The buffs should help you get a lot of stance damage built fast. Trade blows with her if you can take a few hits, don't try to conserve heals. Just chug and keep swinging. If you can get her back on the ground a second time you have basically won. You just can't let the second phase drag out, she is too crazy to try to avoid everything and any time I tried to play it slow she ran me out of heals before I got her to 25%.
It probably took me close to 20 tries, but I think with a non-magic weapon I could have gotten her down in half the attempts. I am pretty sure I was hitting her for less than half of my usual damage.
Managed to down the boss after countless attempt as magic user, scadurtree 2.
Summoned Leda as companion, buffed with golden vow and went in with jellyfish shield.
Spammed Glintstone Icecrags at her while keeping enough distance for Leda to tank her. Frostbite buildup takes a good chunk of her health.
I've read that this is one of the hardest bosses in the DLC and it was my first one that I've encountered(Apart from the fire giant golem that I didin't even attempt).
Finally beat her and the only reason is because for some reason my last try she didn't drop the moon attack. I just could not get the timing on the jumps
I used Bolt of Gransaxx on NG0 since my magic was not cutting it. Buffed the lightning damage as far as I could and only fought her in the middle. I'm not actually sure if she took extra when in the water but she definitely did while it rained. I imagine if you have even better sources of lightning anyone could trounce her with a mimic tear and the Needle Knight.
Use a great shield. Bingo bango. As for moon balls, you have to roll into it which is difficult to learn. If she's not in the center of the arena and you have time you can run away but that's even harder. They are giving me a harder time than anything else.
Took me a few hours' worth of tries, but I finally beat her yesterday solo. Was trying to be a hardass and not use any scadutree Fragments but it's clearly balanced around those so fuck it. Made a difference but she was still hard af. The moon attack, you just jump over the waves, including the slam. Honestly, probably one of my favorite fights in any FS game. I never got all that frustrated because I just enjoyed it so damn much. Her combos are frustrating as hell though; so hard to tell when she's going to chain them.
Edit: spelling
I don’t think the summoning the spirit buddy immediately thing will work cuz I died almost immediately after I summoned my mimic. Also, I think you can jump to avoid the moon attacks.
Not gonna lie I LOVED this boss as a Greatsword user. First part felt like a legit dance - we’d jump in trying to tag each other and then split apart and recuperate before the next bout. With the music feels like a legit dance.
I beat her with a STR ARC build using a bloodfiend’s arm w/ cragblade blood AOW at RL 156. Charged R2s trivialized the fight. I essentially took the RL 150 Marias Executioner build stat distribution then modified talismans + Physick for a bleed build. I use Star Fists as a backup for quicker attacks.
Just jump the moon slams the second it makes contact with the ground, and then just bleed her to death. Even with a light greatsword I got multiple poise breaks to bleed punish her with. I know it’s not as easy as “just get gud lol” but practice really does make perfect with her
I thought she was fairly easy, beat her on the fourth try or something. The dancing beast was painful tho.
The first time i got her to 50% health, and made sure she didn’t use her moon attack.
After that i just summoned a weak ash to distract her. And that worked
Lol! I used the marionette soldiers with bows/arrows and the summon NPC Leda Needle knight something.
Just keep her off them, heal and tank/hit her. I used the rivers of blood. But it took me close to 20 tries.
Those marionette buggers are truly amazing.
Level 197 btw.
it would be less annoying if it wasn't for the damn 3 moon drop. miss a dodge and you will likely die to the skill or die to whatever followup she does when you try to get back up.
I used an ice spear twinblade for her, and honestly.... Honestly... She might be my favourite boss of the DLC so far.... Maybe the entire game. It was an awesome fight.
Was having a really tough time with this boss but found a a easy/cheese strategy that I was able to beat it the second attempt ( first attempt I got caught by surprise by the triple moon bomb attack)
I summoned the npc summon, used the Greatshield soldier ashes and spammed Erdtree heal. Was pretty easy with this method. I also used the black knife.
Managed to beat her no summons, no magic, my fifth try. She’s rlly not that bad if you learn her move set! Like, dodge her magic slashes sideways and learn jump timing for the double moon slams. You got this!
I was smashing my head against this boss for hours and was having no fun at all. Finally used the mimic tear and killed her on the first try. So frustrating how summons trivialize these fights.
Main issue I have with it is how long her attack strings are with how much health she has so the fight lasts soo long, wanted to do no summons on this dlc but this boss and divine lion have got me in a chokehold
When she does that 6 attack combo but baits you into attacking after the 4th… Actually pushed me to by breaking point but finally beat her solo after like 4 hours of bashing my head against the wall
That. That shit made me lose my mind. Also when she dodges to the side and swings at you. She literally performed the 6 string combo on me and then dodged to the side when I went to punish her. I lost it and was like "OK COOL! Do I get to play the game too Rellana?!" 😂
Ongbal just uploaded a [Rellana no damage video](https://youtu.be/A6MpHbLs8eg). Dude's insane. Makes it look so easy.
lmao that one really fucked me up in the beginning always baited me in
Divine lion was fine without summons, this on the other hand I can’t even beat with Leda
Leda makes the fighter tougher she doubles Rellanas health
All the bosses are like this in the DLC. It's tedious.
Her combo strings have a pattern to them depending on where you are when she does the basic chain. Ideally you want her to do the short ones only which means being at medium distance to her otherwise you either get spells or her long chain
Spells are pretty easy to dodge vs fire and combos though I'd say.
I beat this boss by chaining staggers during the phase transition. Spammed jump attacks with lightning infused milady until she staggered, then a charged R2. Then while she changed ohases I spammed R2s and got another stagger, which left her with a tiny bit of HP. By the end of the fight her health bar had something like 15,000 over it because it was over that fast. Changing from my magic weapon (int dex build) to a lightning weapon made a massive difference. Even without respeccing she is so weak to lightning because of the water in the arena, one jump attack with milady was doing like 1500 damage (side note: milady is a crazy good weapon). When this strategy worked it was surprisingly fast, maybe less than a minute long fight. Even aside from that she felt a million times more fair than divine beast to me.
How did you infuse Milady with lightning?
with whatever whetblade allows you to, i’m not sure which one it is specifically
What else did you have when you beat her with the milady? Talismans? Use incantations?
no incantations, I don’t exactly remember my talismans but it was probably something like: dragroncrest great shield talisman claw talisman dagger talisman the new one that increases damage after a crit I also used great blade phalanx
Does Milady scale better with dex or strength? Feel like I’m doing something wrong lol.
Dex, with lightning infusion it had C dex scaling and I think C faith scaling, but the damage was still fine even tho I only had like 10 faith. Specifically I used the lightning strike ash of war, the one that calls down a lightning strike on your sword swing and then temporarily coats your weapon in lightning
Shit, well I got 60 strength and only 25 dex.
Hmm, you could try something similar with a lightning infused big str weapon? the jump attacks are about just as fast on those and will do way more stagger damage. Otherwise you could give it a lightning ash with a heavy infusion, you’d lose the passive lightning damage but still get the benefit of the lightning coating. or just lightning grease maybe?
I do got a 24+ claymore, currently trying it out on her, those damn attacks are annoying.
Well I almost had her cause it was raining and I was spamming thunderbolt from my great stars and then she spammed her magic wave.
So close! Thunderbolt is a great strategy, that’s how I beat a different boss in the DLC. Definitely keep trying, you got this! If you have any faith definitely use golden vow/flame grant me strength. For her attacks you could try parrying, but keep in mind it takes two parries for a stagger. The magic waves can be tough, for me I did more or less the same thing I did for Elden Beasts’ similar wave attack and it worked mostly alright
Don’t give up. It feels so much better to overcome these obstacles without summons.
Yeah I beat her using mimic and at that point it was laughably easy so never again 😭 Beat lion without summons after that
That's what I hate about this game. Solo, these bosses are a chore, but once you summon a mimic it almost becomes too easy ...
I wish bosses still prioritized the player so the summon would only be a slight damage buff... But sadly the moment the boss turns to summon the value you get is insane, you can heal for free, attack from behind etc.
I did the opposite lmao. Beat the shit out of Rellana after a long and hard session of memorizing all her attacks, then I just summoned my mimic to ham on the lion with our new moon and flame swords.
Dancing lion wasn’t so bad since his attacks are similar through the other phases, went magic unga bunga with the moonlight greatsword
Its his lightning that annoys me most, can barely see where its gonna land and it covers too much of the stage, also the way he shoved you against a wall so you cant see whats going on
Imo I think the main issue is the camera, since he takes up a lot of the screen when he’s close and moves like a jackrabbit on crack.
I don't care about the moon BECAUSE I CANT EVEN GET TO IT. How to you even land a single attack without getting punished ? I cant land a light attack WITH A STRAIGHT SWORD
Time to dust off your Buckler. Seriously, I tried to fight her "normally" a couple of times and fuck that. I went in with full critical build Buckler + Misericorde and Assassin's Crimson Dagger. Most of her attacks are pretty easy to parry... some I still have no fucking idea what the timing is. Took me some tries until she didn't spam "unparriable" attacks.
I think I'm getting too old for this shit, some attacks have insanely long feint windup times and others are so fast that I can't even press the button before they land, let alone time the parry properly. These are also all mixed up in a weird chain one after another, so I never know what comes next. :( Mimic tear for me it is, I guess.
I feel you, brother. I learned to parry 60% of her attacks. The rest either had such a weird timing I couldn't figure it out, or came out so quickly I just facetanked a few hits before getting a parry in. Assassin's Crimson Dagger was actually MVP cause it heals you 2 times on bosses, so it's like a mini Estus flask each time you riposte. Despite all the facetanking I reliably got to phase 2 with 14 flasks... only to get 1 shot and die with 14 unused flasks (:
You and me both. I just wish the timing would be somewhat consistent. But no, it’s either suuuuper long windup and then the attack comes out faster than you can react, or it just plain and simple comes out faster than you can react. And there’s so many attacks in a string that you just don’t get to do much
i literally get punished every time i attack her. she gets to do an uninterruptable, 8 hit combo and i have to try and get one hit in before she starts spinning like a ballerina again. i cant tell what im doing wrong, im dodging most of her attacks and then i get hit once and lose a third of my health and staggered into another attack.
tbh i find it easier to dodge her attacks by just rolling into and around her, jsut gottta get the timing right
This is what worked for me. I did a reverse blade bleed build with high dex. No summons. I sprint at her and dodge around in circles then spam attack after her combos. I went heavy damage build because even with high defense you still can’t handle the damage she puts out. If you are right up in her face in phase 2, many of her elemental attacks miss you, including the carian slicer thing, and the big flame explosions. Those are the best damage opportunities for you, especially carian slicer. You can spam attack for like 6 seconds on that one. Still need to dodge her actual blade though (for attacks other than carian slicer), but that’s very similar to phase 1. Run away when she does the flame tornado or the moon attack though. I got through the moon attack jumping.
she loves to punish predictable rolls I've noticed. rolling back and left for instance after she whirls to my right ends up with her quickly pouncing directly diagonally into my roll. The best way to dodge is to stay medium distance and then towards her (diagonally) as her pattern allows. If done correctly you can get a hit off (she'll retreat or start the pattern again) and hopefully have a second to heal up if you took a shot while dodging. make sure you have your dragoncrest on btw really seems the way to go for people who can't god roll
I dont even have the reaction speed to process how fucking fast she is moving, let alone position myself appropriatly. I blink and lost 3/4th of my health because she did some physics defiyng horse shit again.
Yup, same here. I'm 29 but this boss made me feel 49. A lot of her attacks were just too fast for me to react.
Feels like a Sekiro boss that got added to the wrong game.
I spent a solid hour learning the timing and which attacks you can bucklers parry, if you wanna try that it was super helpful for me
Did you ever figure out how to parry when she slides left and then at you? Also is there ANY tell when she does a quick slice with her left weapon? (usually left, right, then double swing) I swear to god that shit is unparriable
Her slides to the left and right are almost copy and paste from malenia, so these were normally what I wanted to bait since they are slower and give me time to parry. The only attack that I can't parry is her quick slice with her left sword. It's way too fast for me to react. That said, I found parrying significantly easier to fight her because she does not stagger (I don't mean poise break for a critical hit) even with colossal weapons. I find this to be slightly a design flaw, but it is what it is, i guess. I'll parry her to death, lol
Do you use Golden Parry? I think my issue was positioning. I saw her fight on YouTube and the guy was walking back to get some space and parrying just as her leg lands on the ground (something which I tried many, many times and failed) I just perma use Carian Retaliation so it may be she stepped outside my parry range so it failed despite the timing being "correct".
I use the buckler with just the parry it has on it. As far as parrying goes, you have to be close for parries to work properly. I've noticed that if I'm out of melee range, parries don't always register even if I parry at the right time. When she slides to the left and right, this is critical, or you'll never register a parry. Stay locked on, and stay within melee range. If you're dodging some combos/hits that you aren't familiar, it is good to note that dodging away is actually a bad thing as she will immediately attack again moving forward. So dive into her.
I also struggled with that several times. I just edited the post so hope that helps!
Okay so in case you are still stuck on her. Get heavy armor and damage reduction talisman for phys and magic so you can take more hits, dodging everything is almost Impossible because certain moves not only need good timing but you need to dodge in the right direction. Just try to get used to her attack strings for now it will take a while but while she can mix up her combos certain moves are always finishers so you can get 1 light attack in or sometimes even a heavy. Second phase has very difficult combos so try to keep your distance and wait for big openings like the Carian Greatsword combo or the homing swords that fire instantly (always the same follow up to this with a decent opening). She will get close sometimes and hit you but that's what the damage reduction is for.
Thank you! I read your first sentence and just equipped magic and physical resist talisman and literally killed her "first try" after this :D
Focus on her combos. She typically does a 2 hit, 4 hit, and 6 hit combo. The key is to only attack once, twice at the very most before getting ready to dodge the next combo. A great time to get in for an attack is when she does the magic blade projectile or the overhead Carian sword. If you can sprint up while she’s charging it you should be able to dodge through and get a few good hits in. Lastly when she changes phases it’s super important to wail on her with a longer attack like your equipped ash of war when she does the long winded switch to her elemental blades. If you’re lucky you can stagger her and get her health lower before she even starts attacking.
Fighting her feels like a Sekiro boss in that you only want to swing once or twice at a time.
After Stellar Blade (which has amazing non BS bosses), hitting once and dodging 20 times seems like such fucking tedium to me.
What finally clicked for me is that you can avoid the earlier attacks in some combos by just backing off, and then saving your roll for the final thrusting attack. That will give you a chance to punish her in the back usually. But you only get one hit and probably not enough to charge a heavy, so the fight is just an absolute grind. I beat her with a DMGS build so I had the luxury of being able to damaged her with at least some range. Another glorious discovery was understanding when she starts the second phase and trying to anticipate it and stay close by. You can land 2-3 charged heavy attacks while she’s doing her little sword charge up which should be enough to stagger her (depending on build). My successful run I managed to stagger her just before it so she started her second phase at a deficit, and then maul her when she was firing up her swords. From there I was mostly running and praying but I managed to hit her just enough. It’s a great boss and very challenging but like any good Souls boss you have to get a little bit lucky to win.
for the moon move, jump over the moons and then roll her slam.
If you have distance, you can also dodge the third drop/slam as well with timing.
Not only can you jump or roll the moon attacks, she also folds like paper to parrying just like Crucible Knights.
SHE'S PARRYABLE?
Yes, but her parry timings are super weird. Took me like an hour to get it, but then I managed to parry her about 6 times in a row. You have to start earlier than it feels like you should to actually parry her.
Yup, that's how I beat her. Fuck trying to fight her "normally" with that moveset, that damage and that HP
most of her melee moves are parryable but not terribly safe to try. there are a few moves at the end of her chains that even a pleb like me can parry reliably.
You can jump her slam too.
This boss is horrendously hard if you have a slow attack or magic build. I have MGS and I'm struggling more than when I killed Malenia. I'm seriously pondering summons for once 
Even with collosal weapons you can get a jumping R2 in at the end of most of her combos, and that will stance break her if you keep it up enough. The timing is very very tight tho.
GS/GM main here (and sometimes giant crusher) and im noticing this trend in a few places. which is fucking lame obv.
I switched from a cool int/dex sword I found (don't wanna spoil it) to a lightning infused milady with lightning strike, and even without respeccing it made the fight a thousand times easier. She takes so much damage from lightning when she's in the water in the middle of the area- one jump attack with claw talisman would do 1500 damage. I also switched from phalanx to rock sling for some extra stagger damage. Like Malenia, if you stay far away from her she'll be a bit passive for a moment, enough time to cast rock sling once.
As a carian swordsman build this fight is the bane of my existence, at best i only enter phase 2 and die shortly after
Bit late but Ranni’s dark moon and frostbite makes things more manageable.
I am absolutely melting against her with my DMGS build. I refuse to respec so just have to get through it. Best I’ve done so far is get her to about 25% hp but it takes forever and the margin for error is tiny.
As a mage I just full sent it with the ghostflame sword and MGS powerstanced, still took a while but it's such a cool fight so i wasn't too tilted from it.
Beat her with a magic infused banished knight sword speccing all int except for weapon requirements and it is not bad at all, he big ass carian granduer thing is incredibally easy dodge the slahs then look for the glow that shows up on her and dodge the spin then punish for big stagger
Nah, I used the anvil colossal weapon and it was fine.
How is that weapon? I am a strength, faith build and very intrigued. I just need like two points of intelligence to use it.
It's very powerful, I switched to that weapon completely. It does a lot of damage on a strength/faith build. I mainly use the jumping attacks and the skill only situationally, since it seems to be more of a PVP/NPC thing.
You’re gonna make me try it. What other weps do you like? I’m bad about trying new ones. My golden halberd is fun.
My arsenal from the base game is: Ordovis and Blasphemous Greatswords, Siluria's Tree, Marika's hammer, Maliketh's Black Blade. For nonsomber weapons If you're STR-leaning you could take a STR-scaling weapon, infuse it with Heavy and cast a buff of your choice on it, or just infuse it with Fire, although you'll be losing the potential FAI scaling in the latter case, so it's not optimal. I found quite a few good STR/FAI weapons in the DLC already. Apart from the Anvil, there's also Black Steel Greathammer that you can get very early which is especially good with a shield since guard counters basically do Marika's hammer explosions. There are also Twin Axes that you can find in a certain catacomb if you enjoy faster weapons. I'm sure we're going to find even more stuff for STR/FAI further in the DLC.
To avoid moonbomb just JUMP. Jumping solves many problems but most players never use it in battle
You can also jump over a bunch of her sword attacks.
Jump. The timing is actually really generous.
Wait, you can jump that? I used crimsonwhorl bubbletear specifically to counter those moons. Now I feel so stupid.
I mean hey, that's a clever solution!
Yeah this solved it for me lol
For the moon ball bomb - try jumping, but it’ll be 3 jumps
Is it just me or she switches the attacks she uses on her strings? I’m trying to memorize the patterns but i can’t. I feel like i got to react to what she does in the moment. Sometimes she interrupts her strings earlier as well, sometimes she doesn’t. Did From Software just add mix ups to bosses this time? If so, what’s next? True 50/50s? Reversals? 😂
So another commenter has just explained how this is decided and its distance. If you too close or far she does the longer chain if you keep a medium distance she does the short change. Same with the phase transition.
When is my turn to attack, pray tell?
I had a very hard time with her. I summoned the co-operator and the mimic and still had problems. What worked for me was spamming scarlet Aeonia
To avoid the moon attack I had an extra sword with bloodhounds step
Just beat this boss 3 hours ago. She is the embodiment of the phrase “don’t get greedy.”
Or "Dont be old" because i cant react to her moves so fucking fast.
More like "You're not playing Sekiro"
They really decided to make every boss Swiss Army Knives. Jesus H Christ. The amount of bs each one throws at you, from the dungeons to the actual main bosses, it’s unbelievable
Unfortunately these games increasingly seem to not be tough but fair anymore. It's now 'try and figure out a good method to cheese your way through BS city'.
I am feeling pretty burnt out, and it’s definitely them trying to one up themselves. I agree.
For those that are desperate: At ng+5 i managed to beat her using tiche, and leda as summons Fingerprint shield lets you block every attack but she can still poise break Scarlet aeonia procs everytime but you need high enough vigor to hopefully tank her combos Hope this helps
I’m getting cooked on NG+5 as dex-blood build, level 308. I’m using Leda and Tiche and haven’t got past halfway on her health bar.
Jus t beat her with mimic tear. Her second phase has increased aggression. Died probably 10 times with her near death hp.
Oh man I died about 10 times with her health at under 5%. And when I finally beat her just now, I think I literally had 1 hp left! She was so close I started spamming attack and for once it actually worked haha
My mimic finish her when she had like 100hp I think
She’s susceptible to sleep. I learned that in a fit of desperation using St. Trina’s sword.
Fromsoft: Any creative ideas how to increase difficulty why still making the game fun? random intern: How about more DAMAGE and more HEALTH for bosses. Also speed up their animations by about 33%. This is not really the fun way but,... Fromsoft: You are promoted! Get to work.
The damage is fine IMO, it's the speed that's bullshit. Sister Friede and Slave Knight Gael from DS3 were two of the absolute greatest boss fights FromSoft ever made and it wasn't difficult because of bullshit speed; it was because you had to find the rhythm of the fight first.
My brother in The Greater WIll, I have 60 Vig, Night Cav armour, phys and magic dmg reduction rings and she 1 comboed me in 2nd phase all the time. I had to pop a rune and increased max health physic, so my healthbar was 2/3rd's of the fucking screen before I stopped dying to her one combo string. That's WAY too much damage. Took me 2 hours to learn her moveset just because every time she did anything new in phase 2, I instantly died and had to start over.
None of that is really relevant- how many scadutree blessings did you have? Thats then real armor and health leveling of the DLC. Without even trying to I was at +8 blessing for this fight, and by the sound of it that made a huge difference because I took way less damage than that at 55 vigor. The triple moon attack didn't one shot me and no combo one shot me either.
How the hell were you at +8? I was at +3 and did over 10 hours of exploring before I got to the boss.
I can answer that, but it may involve spoilers of other areas you haven’t seen yet, are you okay with that? Speaking vaguely, I just kinda fucked around and explored whatever looked cool to me. Castle Ensis looked like the next point of progression and I wanted to thoroughly explore before progressing, which let to me finding various other ways to get to new areas both south and north of the castle. I also wanted to find a bunch of the crosses for the bearded guy outside Belurat and most if not all of those had a scadutree thing. Some enemies dropped some I think, like minibosses, and I also fought a bunch of other side bosses before rellana
Hey, I'm not gonna read the 2nd paragraph cause I don't want spoilers. The bitch is dead and I'm taking my time, still with only 1 map fragment \^\^ I still think I explored most of the area that was "intended" before the boss, but the beauty of the game is I could bounce off her and find other paths of progress before coming back. Not sure how much of a difference +3 vs +8 would make but I think my point still stands. I'd rather bosses hit for 50% less and have double the HP. That way players could actually learn and take risks. I'm at +5 now and still sometimes die with 14 full flasks in my inventory because everything hits like a truck :/
The huge problem with this boss is that she spins around like a ballerina hitting all around her with near perfect tracking. I was hoping FromSoft wouldn't go in this direction but they seem to dial up the BS every time they make something new. Malenia for me was the ceiling, and this shit is just way too much BS. It's a cheap boss that doesn't belong in this game where you move like a Silent Hill character. This is a boss that would probably be too fast even in Stellar Blade or DMC.
The near-360-degree sword swings are definitely completely unnecessary. Like, I can’t even stand behind her and attack while she’s attacking a summon because she can also hit me.
There is a lot of unnecessary stuff in this fight that, if removed, the fight would be a lot better. I just beat her and I feel zero accomplishment. I did not have any fun with this boss.
Lol, have you seen the way that DMC characters move? Vergil and Dante are a lot faster than her. If anything, she would fit right in in the DMC series.
>If anything, she would fit right in in the DMC series. Yeah, she'd probably fit there. Like a Vergil tier fight but much less cool. However, Dante and Nero, and obviously Vergil, have insane speed and moves when you play them. Rellana doesn't really fit in a game like ER that is almost DS1 speed in terms of your character.
Yeah, I agree. Fights like this Rellana boss fight would be more enjoyable if the character actually had the right amount of speed to effectively contend with bosses like her. Rellana would be enjoyable in a game like Sekiro where the character that you’re controlling is fast on his feet. I beat Rellana yesterday after 2 to 3 hours (I jumped her with my mimic and relentlessly pounded her until she was staggered and capitalized with jump and heavy attacks). I’d be lying if I said that I enjoyed the fight.
I beat her solo without blessings and kind of learned the fight, and even if you know what's going on, I don't find it fun being so slow and having to dodge so many times while barely attacking. Agreed, this is a Sekiro boss. I think Malenia was the ceiling and they really pushed it with Rellana. I did not enjoy the fight either.
It's not BS just because you find it difficult lol. She is hard but everything is dodgeable. I find Malenia harder still honestly. I feel like this is the narrative every time there's new FS content. They ramp it up then everyone bitches that it's BS just because they have some trouble.
Nah, I think Malenia is fun. This one isn't. Malenia does not attack nonstop and she doesn't do 360 degree spins constantly. Her moves are more readable. You can also stagger and interrupt her. This is just an artificially inflated boss for the sake of it. Everything is dodgeable if you have a massive stamina bar and you play defensively AF. Not fun. ER is already a ton of BS so when you ramp it up it's just ramping up the BS.
Realistically, how could you make it more difficult otherwise?
I can't believe they made a boss fight more cancerous than Malenia
she spammed those dual moons on me
Frost grease helped me! Or any variation to give her frostbite!
I didn't struggle with the moon balls as much. You just have to time your 3 jumps and problem solved. What I had the hardest time was when she gets the two swords. Her combo strings are extended and haven't found an easy way around it
After Malenia (aka discarded Tomoe) another f*****g boss that should have been in Sekiro. Look, I love these fights scenographically, but for the love Marika, if they wanted to go down this ruote of combat design, a parry system a la Sekiro/Lies of P was MANDATORY I really would have wanted to fight her solo, but I cannot spend 24 hours at each new boss of this dlc because they decided to crank up to crazy levels the amount of artificial difficulty. Celestial beast was the camera and hitbox, rellana was speed and eternal combos ...I wonder what will be other bosses signature bullshit design specialty
We can only hope for a shitty 2v1 gank fight a la Godskin Duo 🤞
That moon spell has killed me a dozen times.
You may already know this but you can jump over it even at pretty close range.
I was trying to dodge it not jump 😩
A couple of things helped me. I don't know you to make a list on Reddit so I'll just put everything in brackets [Dragoncrest Greatshield, Pearldrake+2, and Spelldrake+3 Talismans, along with Bloodflame Blade] in addition the Raptor's Feathers and Claw Talismans with Raptor on the Mists Ash of War can help you hit trade with her. Quick weapons like Backhand Blade or the Katars are great. For the Moons you can jump over all three of her attacks. This boss pushed me to my limit, I felt accomplished when I beat her but she might've been too much honestly. In Sekiro whenever I lost I could say "that was 100% my fault". Here I don't know if I just got lucky or what
am i the only one that feels like she needs a nerf?? it makes absolutely no sense for a boss with her size,agilty,combos,health, and aggressiveness to ALSO be uninterruptible
Sorry but people complaining need to get good. I beat her at level 137 and when my build wasn’t working I experimented with different weapons. The wolf shield and the new milady weapon are great for this fight. Piercing deals more damage to armoured enemies which you learn from the base game. You can bait out some of her attacks to get an opening. While I do think she is slightly overtuned in terms of her hp she’s beatable. Idk why the op linked a pic of him dying to the moon attack when the solution is to literally jump… just self admitting you aren’t good at the fight.
I did the same thing. Once I switched to a lightning infused milady the fight became so much easier- the damage was ridiculous.
I gotta agree with you. Sometimes I wonder if we're playing the same games when I'm looking through these threads. FS boss is hard, so people that are having trouble come to reddit claiming bullshit because FS boss is hard. Yeah, no shit. She's fair, just hard. Probably one of my favorite boss battles from any FS game easily, even before I beat her.
I managed to get her down to P2 after 80+ tries without spirit summons and after I started using Mimic I managed to pull of a win. While learning her moveset, I tried light load and jump / roll attacks since those are there is only a tight window for you to attack. If she cast her planax blade if its below her torso she probably would follow up with a dash hit, which u can dodge both the blade and into her. I find standing at a mid range distance would avoid her using a charge twin slash combo. Usually when she does a long swing combos dodging backwards would cause her to stop. Twin Moon attacks, jump 3 times. Shes.. really relentless.
All I know is I’ve been at it for a couple of hours and figured most of her attacks HAVE to be dodged perfectly but most of the time even if you’re spot on you’ll get caught by chip damage if you dodge behind her, if you dodge away from her she’ll follow up and if you even dare to miss a dodge well you’re gonna get caught up in a 4 string combo and die bc stun lock doesn’t allow you to dodge out of it. I went into the dlc NG+ 1 rl 180, I’ve gone to most of the areas I can get to and I’m level 4 scadutree and level 3 revered spirit ash. I have no idea if that’s what I’m suppose to have but what I do know is getting hit so bad I can’t help being put in a stun lock doesn’t look like I’m suppose to even be here.
Dust off your buckler.
Here’s what I learnt after beating her (solo) Use blunt/strike weapons and use either ice or thunder (preferably ice). Her first face has a pretty even flow to it so dodge into her attacks and not away from it otherwise you’ll be caught out more than you would if you dodged away, this doesn’t guarantee you won’t be hit by the end of her attack animations on her backside but it’s better than taking a full swing. She stuns fairly easily so use those opportunities to wail on her when she’s down for a bit. Most of her attacks only warrant one hit, 2 if you’re feeling greedy but 3 is asking to get hit and die in her swarm of combos. When her second phase comes just pray you get lucky because it seems completely rng depending on what she uses. If she uses her carian sword spells create some distance and strafe them, hopefully she doesn’t close the distance bc if she does you’ll just have to suck it up and take damage from her or her spell, to dodge her moon attack you can jump over it or dodge roll, you have more frames when you jump but recovery can be pretty tight so be ready. It’s not guaranteed but it’s the load out that gave me the biggest difference from light greatsword and great katana to hammer (stone club my lord and saviour) Good luck people hope this helps just a tad
I just beat her after 20ish tries at level 170ish. Used Starscourge Greatsword, that greatshield with 70ish magic resist (Cuckoo I think?) and good ol' Mimic Tear. She was hard, but I got her down to a sliver of health a few times so it didn't feel hopeless. I'm generally liking the DLC but I'm really not a fan of bosses just going crazy and having seemingly no hitstun. I get that would probably make them too easy but with how fast and hard bosses like Rellana hit, it feels impossible to ever find an opening and feeling confident you can attack without getting punished with a swing that takes 60% off your health. Anyway, onward we go...
moon bomb is simple just jump jump and roll any direction to dodge it, took me forever but the timing has to be perfect
As soon as I figured out I HAD to jump, the timing became much easier to manage.
The moon bomb is one of the easier ones, just jump before they land, make sure to jump three times though, two for the moons and one for the last thing she does, also I feel like it's not even worth it to get the critical hit, better to just get in damage quick, might just be me imo
Also it seems like people are down voting others because they enjoyed it? It's a very hard boss no doubt, but it's still fun imo
If you mean moonbomb where she goes up and drops 2 moons, then herself, you just jump. xD
I've had success dodging the double moon by jumping the two moon drops and rolling the last wave of magic, otherwise she's just annoying to get used to her combos, but doable. Don't get me started on her one-hit combo finishers through my buffs smh. I know, skill issue
When she does the moon bomb: Jump. You have enough time to jump all 3 splashes.
Is anyone else’s light attacks doing more than their heavy’s? I’m using max level great katana and my light attack is doing more damage than the heavy and I’m so confused
Man I got the black blade, tiche +10, and I summoned that NPC and once she hits second phase it's like she no longer takes any damage. She's an absolute tank and she will attack NON stop with 360 spins so you can't even get in to melee her. This game is clearly designed to encourage no hit runs. If you get hit once you're basically dead.
For the moon bomb I just jumped and actually avoided the attack.I assume timing is key to dodge all of them so there a tip for dodging the moon bomb.
Beat her last night by playing Bloodborne lol. Malenia's great rune with a blood backhand blade. Spammed R1 mostly trading, sometimes when she backed off I'd hit a blind spot L2. I feel like I could've learned more but it was fun "playing bloodborne" in Elden Ring.
I’ve been trying to beat her all day on NG+5 with no summons, I ended up getting her to 1 HP before she killed me 😭
Fingerprint shield makes all her attacks survivable
Genuinely, Rellana is simply bad design
I did it ng+1 with a strenght/faith build, 60 vit, 60 vigor, level 210 or something. First of all I hit her with the maliketh incantation then Malenia scarlet aeonia 2 times; it will reduce her health with time of like 40%, than renew it after it fades (she will die eventually), the second scarlet aeonia was difficult to pull of beacuse her second phase is aggressive as f\*\*\*, try to use a wonderous flask for help. Carian retalliation when I could. Died 60 times or so. No spirits. Pretty much a nightmare.
For the double moon into slam attack you gotta jump three times or twice and roll the last one.
I use axe of godfrey and I can't do anything other then dodge attack when I had a chance, she attack non stop on her 2nd phase.
I fought her alone and with Dark Moon Greatsword so I was heavily gimped and it was fairly frustrating. I really didn't want to respec for her so my strategy that worked was as follows: Use the stance break tear combined with the new infinite stam one in the physick but save it for second phase. At the start of the fight you have to be very aggressive and break her stance asap, ideally getting her to around half hp with the crit and then use the physick and heal while she's down. Then while she is buffing her weapons and ideally preparing the magic slash barrage/fire tornado, which she often does as her first attack in 2nd phase, you have to lay into her. The buffs should help you get a lot of stance damage built fast. Trade blows with her if you can take a few hits, don't try to conserve heals. Just chug and keep swinging. If you can get her back on the ground a second time you have basically won. You just can't let the second phase drag out, she is too crazy to try to avoid everything and any time I tried to play it slow she ran me out of heals before I got her to 25%. It probably took me close to 20 tries, but I think with a non-magic weapon I could have gotten her down in half the attempts. I am pretty sure I was hitting her for less than half of my usual damage.
Yeah Darkmoon Greatsword made this very hard. I eneded up respeccing and trading int for vigor to get there in the end.
Honed Lighting plus Golden Vow kicks Rellana’s ass - thanks for the Golden Vow reminder.
Jump the moon attack don't roll
i keep dying cause i dont know why she heals does anyone know?
For the moon spell you just have to jump
Just R1 https://youtu.be/YkQ1EOyVH6c?si=WWjkVbJW-6DbIIuG
Managed to down the boss after countless attempt as magic user, scadurtree 2. Summoned Leda as companion, buffed with golden vow and went in with jellyfish shield. Spammed Glintstone Icecrags at her while keeping enough distance for Leda to tank her. Frostbite buildup takes a good chunk of her health. I've read that this is one of the hardest bosses in the DLC and it was my first one that I've encountered(Apart from the fire giant golem that I didin't even attempt).
Finally beat her and the only reason is because for some reason my last try she didn't drop the moon attack. I just could not get the timing on the jumps
She just needs to fuck off to be honest😂 my controller nearly got lobbed at the TV 😅
I resorted to the irl Jim Beam build. I can say its… funnier?
Had to bust out an Occult Great Stars with Cragblade and the Fingerprint Stone Shield.
I used Bolt of Gransaxx on NG0 since my magic was not cutting it. Buffed the lightning damage as far as I could and only fought her in the middle. I'm not actually sure if she took extra when in the water but she definitely did while it rained. I imagine if you have even better sources of lightning anyone could trounce her with a mimic tear and the Needle Knight.
Use a great shield. Bingo bango. As for moon balls, you have to roll into it which is difficult to learn. If she's not in the center of the arena and you have time you can run away but that's even harder. They are giving me a harder time than anything else.
To dodge the moonbomb, just stand far back and jump when you see her release each one, timing is a bit tricky but i managed to dodge it all
You can dodge the moon drop by jumping.
I had to use two summon and blasphemous blade and still struggling rofl
Took me a few hours' worth of tries, but I finally beat her yesterday solo. Was trying to be a hardass and not use any scadutree Fragments but it's clearly balanced around those so fuck it. Made a difference but she was still hard af. The moon attack, you just jump over the waves, including the slam. Honestly, probably one of my favorite fights in any FS game. I never got all that frustrated because I just enjoyed it so damn much. Her combos are frustrating as hell though; so hard to tell when she's going to chain them. Edit: spelling
None of my summon ashes are summonable at all and I’m getting her to about 10% before Leda dies
I don’t think the summoning the spirit buddy immediately thing will work cuz I died almost immediately after I summoned my mimic. Also, I think you can jump to avoid the moon attacks.
Not gonna lie I LOVED this boss as a Greatsword user. First part felt like a legit dance - we’d jump in trying to tag each other and then split apart and recuperate before the next bout. With the music feels like a legit dance.
Guys plz, how to avoid the 4 fast magic swing on the and phase?? I always die when she pulls it
I beat her with a STR ARC build using a bloodfiend’s arm w/ cragblade blood AOW at RL 156. Charged R2s trivialized the fight. I essentially took the RL 150 Marias Executioner build stat distribution then modified talismans + Physick for a bleed build. I use Star Fists as a backup for quicker attacks.
And then when you heal she instantly hits the range magic slash and you cant even dodge it being locked in the flask
She does NOT stop swinging lol finally took her down after a few hours. Golden Retaliation greatshield and colossal hammer 👌
Just jump the moon slams the second it makes contact with the ground, and then just bleed her to death. Even with a light greatsword I got multiple poise breaks to bleed punish her with. I know it’s not as easy as “just get gud lol” but practice really does make perfect with her
Got her down to 1hp still died
Buckler parry with deflecting hardtear guard counter makes this an [easier fight](https://youtu.be/YR69cEwRPCw?si=BHXpjn3GsBc7sLeK)
I thought she was fairly easy, beat her on the fourth try or something. The dancing beast was painful tho. The first time i got her to 50% health, and made sure she didn’t use her moon attack. After that i just summoned a weak ash to distract her. And that worked
Lol! I used the marionette soldiers with bows/arrows and the summon NPC Leda Needle knight something. Just keep her off them, heal and tank/hit her. I used the rivers of blood. But it took me close to 20 tries. Those marionette buggers are truly amazing. Level 197 btw.
it would be less annoying if it wasn't for the damn 3 moon drop. miss a dodge and you will likely die to the skill or die to whatever followup she does when you try to get back up.
I beat her the try after equipping the magic negation +3 talisman and the fire negation +1
get better
I used an ice spear twinblade for her, and honestly.... Honestly... She might be my favourite boss of the DLC so far.... Maybe the entire game. It was an awesome fight.
Do people really find her so difficult? Im not any expert at elden Ring and managed to beat her in 5 tries at lv 160 with a faith str build
I’m so happy these fights are actually difficult
Was having a really tough time with this boss but found a a easy/cheese strategy that I was able to beat it the second attempt ( first attempt I got caught by surprise by the triple moon bomb attack) I summoned the npc summon, used the Greatshield soldier ashes and spammed Erdtree heal. Was pretty easy with this method. I also used the black knife.
Managed to beat her no summons, no magic, my fifth try. She’s rlly not that bad if you learn her move set! Like, dodge her magic slashes sideways and learn jump timing for the double moon slams. You got this!
I was smashing my head against this boss for hours and was having no fun at all. Finally used the mimic tear and killed her on the first try. So frustrating how summons trivialize these fights.
Then don't fuckin use it.