SegmentNextBosses
Two encounters have a page of their own here, and they sit at opposite ends of one question: what does Hard difficulty do to them? Our Killer Croc page says the harder setting alters exactly one thing, how often he surfaces, and that this makes the sequence easier rather than harder. Our Poison Ivy page says Hard changes her health, her patterns, her damage, her openings and your healing, and turns a fight that is comfortable on Normal into one of the toughest in the game. That is the order to read them in.
| Encounter | Where it happens | What you actually do | What Hard changes | How it ends |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Killer Croc | His sewer lair beneath the asylum, through the crashed elevator in Intensive Treatment, after Poison Ivy sends Batman for plant spores | Crouch through a maze of wooden platforms, collect every spore the scanner marks, and knock him back into the water with a Batarang to his collar whenever he climbs out | Only how often he jumps out of the water, which the page says makes it easier | Follow the beacon's signal back to the gate and detonate the Explosive Gel Batman left there |
| Poison Ivy | The Botanical Gardens, past the Abandoned Tunnels, a sniper tower, a hidden window and the electrified Flooded Corridor | Throw Batarangs without pause, dodge vine rows and spore beams, and land double damage while her plant shield is open | More health, randomised attacks that hit harder, a shorter opening, reduced healing, and crowds of henchmen in the second phase | Two phases, the second with henchmen; dying in the second restarts it with a full health bar |
Killer Croc: the encounter Hard makes easier
Do not expect a fight. Our page is blunt that this is the only meeting with Croc in the game and that Batman never lands a punch on him; the whole sequence is a search with a monster in it. It begins after Poison Ivy tells Batman the anti-venom for the Titan formula needs spores from the sewers. The way down is the crashed elevator in Intensive Treatment, where Detective Vision finds the control panel that opens the path, a group of thugs guards the gateway, and Scarecrow gets dragged under the water by Croc on the way through. From there Batman's scanner locks onto the cure and leads him to the lair, reached with the Line Launcher through an open iron gate. As he walks in he plants a radio beacon and Explosive Gel on the floor, and the page tells you to remember both.
The lair is an old sewer laid out like a maze, but you never navigate it yourself: the tuned scanner on the left of the screen points to each spore. The rules are about noise. Stay crouched on the wooden platforms and he leaves you alone; sprint and he comes for you. At random he starts smashing platforms from below, and the answer is to run until he stops, because keeping on running afterwards brings him up onto a platform in pursuit. When he does chase, a Batarang to his electric collar drops him back into the water and resets the sequence, and you repeat that until every spore is collected. Hard difficulty changes only how frequently he leaps out, and the page argues that is a gift: you can jog through the maze hitting the collar on every surfacing instead of creeping. Collecting the last spore triggers the beacon, and the run back is the real chase. Jump the gates, use the Line Launcher where the platforms are gone, quick-fire a Batarang each time he appears, and when you reach the closed iron gate turn round and detonate the gel to drop him.
Poison Ivy: the fight Hard rewrites
Ivy's page opens with why she is dangerous: the Joker injected Titan into her roots, which let her command plant life, flood the island with toxic spores and threaten Batman on her way to the Joker. Getting to her is a route in its own right. From the central area of Arkham West, a tunnel east of the Penitentiary, marked by square arches, leads into the Abandoned Tunnels and on to Arkham East, with her mutated pods to destroy along the trail and a sniper on the tower to the left, best handled from Detective Mode by waiting for him to move, grappling up to take him, and ziplining to the next tower for the second guard. Clear the pods until she speaks again, then take the stairs with the great tree in the middle up to the Botanical Gardens. The Glasshouse Entrance is choked with vines, and the way through is a window on the left that the foliage hides, then vents, then stairs and a door into the Botanical Glasshouse, the upper level, the door at its left end, and a Batclaw zipline over the electrified water of the Flooded Corridor. A tendril bursting through a door marks the arena. The page also records a bug at that hidden window where the path stays blocked; reloading, restarting or reinstalling usually clears it, and if nothing does, a fresh save is the only fix.
On Normal she has less health, fewer vines and no henchmen. On Hard the fight is longer, her health is higher, her attack patterns are randomised and hit far harder, the window to damage her shrinks so a missed shot means repeating the loop, and your healing is cut, which rules out tanking her. Phase one has two attacks: rows of vines that trap and hurt, and, once she is at half health, a spore beam alternating with homing orbs. The page's advice is steady chip damage over big bursts, meaning Batarangs thrown constantly while dodging, with the Triple Batarang best and the Twin an acceptable stand-in; L2 or LT quick-throws and auto-targets her. Green grass shows where the next vines will rise, and rolling, running or a double jump gets you clear. During the spore attacks she lowers her plant shield, and any hit landed then does double damage, but the page says to keep throwing even when the shield is closed because the opening is so short on Hard. Its own trick is to sidestep the beam, then the orb that follows, and only then throw, which lined up double-damage hits again and again.
Phase two repeats phase one with henchmen who spawn during the vine attack and die on their own the moment the spore phase begins, so fighting them is time you could spend on her. Stun them with Batarangs, shove them off the platform for an instant kill, let her vines trap them, or use instant takedowns when they crowd you. And if your health is gone, the page notes a deliberate cheese: die in phase two and you restart at the start of phase two with a full health bar. Both buildings hold more than a boss. Croc's lair has a Line Launcher platform with three sets of the Joker's teeth and a second route to the Secure Transit secrets map, and the Gardens hold ten trophies and Ivy's five tapes, all of which are in our collectibles guide; the wider layout of the island is on our Batman: Arkham Asylum guide.