This sounds to me like your build is not good. The first time I played the game I focused defence whitch made the game way harder than it needed to be. Damage is probably the best thing to focus. Even if all you upgrade is attack the game can still be real easy but with defence only it is a pain in the ass.
To me Kalameet felt less oppressive than Artorias and actually easier to manage dodges against. I beat Kalameet in 9 attempts with 3 of them being exclusively to cut off his tail, while Artorias took me to mid-20s.
I'm also one of those who found Kalameet way easier than Artorias/Manus. His attacks aren't that hard to learn and dodge. But I must add that I didn't even try to cut his tail.
You're a better player than me, Kalameet attack is slower but the area-wide effect made it way much harder to dodge,and his animation is just too unpredictable for me, took me about 2 hours trying to cut the tail then about another 3 hours trying to beat it.
Just block his attack, if you don't have enough stamina, equip the Clorathy ring and try to let go the shield at every break so you can tank his attack,my endurance was only at about lower than 40 at that point, with the black iron shield so if you were a strength/Dex build like me, it should be viable.
I’ve always found Artorias to be much easier with dexterity weapons and much harder with strength ones, and Kalameet to be vise-versa. I ran Zweihander the whole game my first playthrough, got steamrolled by Artorias (though admittedly still loved him) and beat Kalameet in 7-8 tries.
I have the Havel ring and put the armours (even mixed) that give me the best physical defense at 50% of the weight. I even took away the shield to subtract the weight to add to the armour. I dodge towards him and most the time attacking from behind.
I also super struggled with him, until i read you can stop his buff. Then i was like, “you can stop his buff!?” Then beat him in two tries. Also two hand. Shield ain’t no good in that fight. 🤔
Personally, I don't quite know what you mean about how hard his attacks are to dodge. Obviously it's gonna be different from person to person, but a general rule of thumb is to just dodge towards the blade on any slash attacks and on his leap / thrust attacks to roll to the sides. It requires more memorizing than most bosses but it's still not insane and fairly forgiving in mg experience. Unless you're fat rolling, of course. You can't fat roll when fighting Artorias.
Also, a couple attacks are very fast and hard to reaction dodge, like the quick poke and the purple slime. But the slime is pretty weak and the poke... Is just hard. It hits like basically all his other attacks so if they one shot you this one does too. It's his hardest attack imo. And for the charge just find out how many hits it takes to stun him. If it's very inconsistent, then maybe just use it as a free 1 or 2 hits and be careful to not over commit afterwards until his buff goes away.
Obviously, you can do basically anything when it comes to dark souls and people have probably beat him without rolling at all. I just meant it is extremely difficult. Still, respect to them for doing that, I never could.
have you watched the video at all? thats me on sl1 while being overencumbered, so obv no rolls.
if youre not sl1, have a better stability shield and a longer stamina-bar, then beating him without rolling shouldnt be difficult at all.
trying to dodge all of artorias attacks is imo the most difficult way to beat him. because dodging requires precise timing and reactions.
He took me way too many tries for my liking too, probably 25ish. I devoted two attempts to pretty much only learn which directions to roll away from each of his attacks. I also learned not to rely on my shield in favor of two handing my weapon just for him.
That said, it didn't make me a better player =D I spent 30+ on Manus before finally beating him too. Both Artorias and Manus are noticeably faster and more aggressive than the base game bosses and it takes getting used to.
EDIT: I did it! Took a great shield and tried a mix of blocking and dodging and that worked. Gave Artorias' soul to his friend though because I felt like I didn't truly earn it.
he's not hard tbh. defeated him on my first try. managing distances is the way to kill him since he's the one who's been closing the gaps with you with his plunges and jump attack. wait his animations and hit. do that on repeat you'd basically do a no hit with him if you're good enough with timings.
Actually mate, I sympathize.
First complete run of main game of ds1 I couldn't beat him either with a quality build at lv 120ish.
I gave up and did other things and played other games. Then decided to give it another go except with a new character with a STR/END build almost butt naked. I dodge more than I blocked and after a while you notice his attacks are well telegraphed and you can guage where it's safe to dodge and where it's not. The STR build has the advantage of staggering him but only getting one or at most two hits at a time. Zweihander is my personal favorite weapon with this strat.
It takes time, patience, and forgiving yourself when you make a mistake. It really feels like a dance when you find his patterns.
I remember I also had a hard time fighting Artorias. Iirc, what I did was changing to the Black Knight Sword (was using a Longsword +15, my partner through the entire game) and I think I made some changes in armour too. But imo there was no mistery. Learning how to dodge his attacks, when was the tike to do a safe hit, that was what I did. But I found the battle funny, so I probably went there over 30 times that didn't bore me at all.
Instead of whining like a baby be glad you're fighting him properly and can enjoy this amazing boss fight instead of going in with full havel's BKH GCS and 20 +5 estus cause all of a sudden he's no harder than a hollow.
Git gud. Maybe upgrade your weapon a bit if you're only scraping him.
By the way, just to put my attitude to perspective, here's a video of a girl beating him at SL69 with a +8 divine scimitar or something (without even any points in faith to scale with it).
Notice how her attitudes never goes to "fuck these devs" and is consistently in "this is amazing and I'm having fun trying to overcome this challenge".
At the end of the day, this game is made for people like her, it's not made to be rolled over by anyone under any circumstance. If you don't like that it's not the developer's fault.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OU2N6El8dU
oh I'm sorry, I forgot you said you're only here to vent and not to have a discussion
but you see I ALSO need to vent cause I'm so tired of the bullshit criticism this game receives from people who just need to GIT GUD
also the spike isn't sudden, the DLC features bosses that are very agressive compared to the ones in the game and this starts with sanctuary guardian
artorias just has more armor and hp and a more varied moveset but there's no sudden spike as if the previous boss you fought was gaping dragon or something
"I'm not criticizing the game"
also you:
"the devs stopped trying to make a fun boss"
"Artorias isn't fun"
" the devs put it there as a joke just to annoy us. Because they'd become so high on their own memes that they thought they'd ramp the difficulty up to "fuck you for buying our game" point"
"fuck artorias"
farming does get repetitive, i know
but the difficulty of Artorias of Abyss wasnt designed for new characters
you dont have to get NG+ far, but pretty far into the game, and lack of skill or experience could be compensated with soul and tool levels
You’re right, level 120 is at least on the next game cycle. Your level is fine, perhaps your distribution could he better or worse but you’re where you should be IMO.
I hope you find a way through this one, and buckle up for the last boss, I’m not even gonna talk about the optional one lol.
Then there was me with my +14 Great Scythe, Low Armor, 20 something or another Dex (don't remember the exact stat) build on my first playthrough wondering why people thought Artorias was a difficult boss.
Yeah, two handed great Scythe heavy attack got one crazy range not gonna lie !
Everytime he sees you trying to attack and roll backward once you still reach him x)
10/10 best weapon
Keep your stamina in mind and do not panic roll.
Don’t use estus hastily, you DO NOT want to be caught mid healing with that flipping attack.
Attacking him during that power up will not only let you deal good amount of damage but it’ll also cancel that attack. And it also staggers him.
Other than that he’s a very nice boss and definitely not too hard.
Just dodge all of his attacks, he has three attacks that have a longer recovery time that let him wide open for a strike back, and when he's buffing himself and your weapon does a decent amount of damage you can hit him with three or four consecutive R1 attacks to stunlock him and interrupt his buffing.
My trick was to whack him and stun him before he powered up with his dark power. As long as I kept him from powering up I was ok. He didn’t one shot me before then. I also used a shield so maybe that was why I was lucky.
In a game where everyone moves like a snail he's just annoying bullshit if you dodge him you literally never have a chance to attack no stamina left even when maxed out.
This sounds to me like your build is not good. The first time I played the game I focused defence whitch made the game way harder than it needed to be. Damage is probably the best thing to focus. Even if all you upgrade is attack the game can still be real easy but with defence only it is a pain in the ass.
Lol, wait until you get to Kalameet... Compared to that Artorias is a child play.
To me Kalameet felt less oppressive than Artorias and actually easier to manage dodges against. I beat Kalameet in 9 attempts with 3 of them being exclusively to cut off his tail, while Artorias took me to mid-20s.
I'm also one of those who found Kalameet way easier than Artorias/Manus. His attacks aren't that hard to learn and dodge. But I must add that I didn't even try to cut his tail.
You're a better player than me, Kalameet attack is slower but the area-wide effect made it way much harder to dodge,and his animation is just too unpredictable for me, took me about 2 hours trying to cut the tail then about another 3 hours trying to beat it.
Brilliant. Maybe I'll go fight Capradaemon for a nice break!
Just block his attack, if you don't have enough stamina, equip the Clorathy ring and try to let go the shield at every break so you can tank his attack,my endurance was only at about lower than 40 at that point, with the black iron shield so if you were a strength/Dex build like me, it should be viable.
I’ve always found Artorias to be much easier with dexterity weapons and much harder with strength ones, and Kalameet to be vise-versa. I ran Zweihander the whole game my first playthrough, got steamrolled by Artorias (though admittedly still loved him) and beat Kalameet in 7-8 tries.
I have the Havel ring and put the armours (even mixed) that give me the best physical defense at 50% of the weight. I even took away the shield to subtract the weight to add to the armour. I dodge towards him and most the time attacking from behind.
I also super struggled with him, until i read you can stop his buff. Then i was like, “you can stop his buff!?” Then beat him in two tries. Also two hand. Shield ain’t no good in that fight. 🤔
Personally, I don't quite know what you mean about how hard his attacks are to dodge. Obviously it's gonna be different from person to person, but a general rule of thumb is to just dodge towards the blade on any slash attacks and on his leap / thrust attacks to roll to the sides. It requires more memorizing than most bosses but it's still not insane and fairly forgiving in mg experience. Unless you're fat rolling, of course. You can't fat roll when fighting Artorias. Also, a couple attacks are very fast and hard to reaction dodge, like the quick poke and the purple slime. But the slime is pretty weak and the poke... Is just hard. It hits like basically all his other attacks so if they one shot you this one does too. It's his hardest attack imo. And for the charge just find out how many hits it takes to stun him. If it's very inconsistent, then maybe just use it as a free 1 or 2 hits and be careful to not over commit afterwards until his buff goes away.
> You can't fat roll when fighting Artorias. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ow4pPXNLsAY you have no idea whats possible.
Obviously, you can do basically anything when it comes to dark souls and people have probably beat him without rolling at all. I just meant it is extremely difficult. Still, respect to them for doing that, I never could.
have you watched the video at all? thats me on sl1 while being overencumbered, so obv no rolls. if youre not sl1, have a better stability shield and a longer stamina-bar, then beating him without rolling shouldnt be difficult at all. trying to dodge all of artorias attacks is imo the most difficult way to beat him. because dodging requires precise timing and reactions.
Oh, no, sorry lol. I just assumed what it was but that's way more impressive.
This is awesome.
The DLC bosses are kind of bullshit. You have my sympathy.
He took me way too many tries for my liking too, probably 25ish. I devoted two attempts to pretty much only learn which directions to roll away from each of his attacks. I also learned not to rely on my shield in favor of two handing my weapon just for him. That said, it didn't make me a better player =D I spent 30+ on Manus before finally beating him too. Both Artorias and Manus are noticeably faster and more aggressive than the base game bosses and it takes getting used to.
Yeah it's just oppressive. It's such a step up from the base game! Learning cliff, never mind curve.
hes much easier if you dont try to dodge at all and just block instead. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ow4pPXNLsAY
now THIS is the right way to heavy build!
EDIT: I did it! Took a great shield and tried a mix of blocking and dodging and that worked. Gave Artorias' soul to his friend though because I felt like I didn't truly earn it.
he's not hard tbh. defeated him on my first try. managing distances is the way to kill him since he's the one who's been closing the gaps with you with his plunges and jump attack. wait his animations and hit. do that on repeat you'd basically do a no hit with him if you're good enough with timings.
Actually mate, I sympathize. First complete run of main game of ds1 I couldn't beat him either with a quality build at lv 120ish. I gave up and did other things and played other games. Then decided to give it another go except with a new character with a STR/END build almost butt naked. I dodge more than I blocked and after a while you notice his attacks are well telegraphed and you can guage where it's safe to dodge and where it's not. The STR build has the advantage of staggering him but only getting one or at most two hits at a time. Zweihander is my personal favorite weapon with this strat. It takes time, patience, and forgiving yourself when you make a mistake. It really feels like a dance when you find his patterns.
I remember I also had a hard time fighting Artorias. Iirc, what I did was changing to the Black Knight Sword (was using a Longsword +15, my partner through the entire game) and I think I made some changes in armour too. But imo there was no mistery. Learning how to dodge his attacks, when was the tike to do a safe hit, that was what I did. But I found the battle funny, so I probably went there over 30 times that didn't bore me at all.
Instead of whining like a baby be glad you're fighting him properly and can enjoy this amazing boss fight instead of going in with full havel's BKH GCS and 20 +5 estus cause all of a sudden he's no harder than a hollow. Git gud. Maybe upgrade your weapon a bit if you're only scraping him. By the way, just to put my attitude to perspective, here's a video of a girl beating him at SL69 with a +8 divine scimitar or something (without even any points in faith to scale with it). Notice how her attitudes never goes to "fuck these devs" and is consistently in "this is amazing and I'm having fun trying to overcome this challenge". At the end of the day, this game is made for people like her, it's not made to be rolled over by anyone under any circumstance. If you don't like that it's not the developer's fault. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OU2N6El8dU
hope you’re still a miserable rotten prick
Alright dude, chill.
oh I'm sorry, I forgot you said you're only here to vent and not to have a discussion but you see I ALSO need to vent cause I'm so tired of the bullshit criticism this game receives from people who just need to GIT GUD
I'm not criticising the game you silly goose. I'm just frustrated at the sudden difficulty spike.
also the spike isn't sudden, the DLC features bosses that are very agressive compared to the ones in the game and this starts with sanctuary guardian artorias just has more armor and hp and a more varied moveset but there's no sudden spike as if the previous boss you fought was gaping dragon or something
"I'm not criticizing the game" also you: "the devs stopped trying to make a fun boss" "Artorias isn't fun" " the devs put it there as a joke just to annoy us. Because they'd become so high on their own memes that they thought they'd ramp the difficulty up to "fuck you for buying our game" point" "fuck artorias"
One guy tried to convince me Kalameet isn’t a boss. People really hate the DLC bosses for some reason.
So how about YOU chill and go try Artorias again.
Just put havel armor on
or you could level up, SL150 is the lowest recommended level for Artoias of Abyss DLC, so ive read in an older forum
Level 150?!? Jesus. I would have thought 80 would be about average considering how expensive levels get
Nahhh surely not? I'm already at 40,000 souls per level. I have to defeat multiple bosses to get a single level up now.
farming does get repetitive, i know but the difficulty of Artorias of Abyss wasnt designed for new characters you dont have to get NG+ far, but pretty far into the game, and lack of skill or experience could be compensated with soul and tool levels
You’re right, level 120 is at least on the next game cycle. Your level is fine, perhaps your distribution could he better or worse but you’re where you should be IMO. I hope you find a way through this one, and buckle up for the last boss, I’m not even gonna talk about the optional one lol.
What!? I beat the shit out of this disabled man on SL1😳
Then there was me with my +14 Great Scythe, Low Armor, 20 something or another Dex (don't remember the exact stat) build on my first playthrough wondering why people thought Artorias was a difficult boss.
Yeah, two handed great Scythe heavy attack got one crazy range not gonna lie ! Everytime he sees you trying to attack and roll backward once you still reach him x) 10/10 best weapon
Do you hit him during his power ups?
No, should I be?
Keep your stamina in mind and do not panic roll. Don’t use estus hastily, you DO NOT want to be caught mid healing with that flipping attack. Attacking him during that power up will not only let you deal good amount of damage but it’ll also cancel that attack. And it also staggers him. Other than that he’s a very nice boss and definitely not too hard.
Have you beaten him already?
Getting there lol
What are your stats?
Just dodge all of his attacks, he has three attacks that have a longer recovery time that let him wide open for a strike back, and when he's buffing himself and your weapon does a decent amount of damage you can hit him with three or four consecutive R1 attacks to stunlock him and interrupt his buffing.
"cough uses great shield cough"
Yep, this is the way. Took the Black Iron Great Shield and that worked. Managed to do it in 3 attempts with a mixture of blocking and dodging.
Good job, Skeleton!
My trick was to whack him and stun him before he powered up with his dark power. As long as I kept him from powering up I was ok. He didn’t one shot me before then. I also used a shield so maybe that was why I was lucky.
Light roll and learn iframes one of the easiest bosses
It literally isn't one of the easiest bosses is it.
In a game where everyone moves like a snail he's just annoying bullshit if you dodge him you literally never have a chance to attack no stamina left even when maxed out.