Dark Souls 2 Boss Guide – Tips, Battle Strategy and How To Kill

Tips and strategies to win Dark Souls 2 Boss battles and kill these dark creatures to progress through the story.


Dark Souls 2 is an unforgiving game, and that’s what makes it so great. But it also teaches you one thing: there is always a way out.

This means that no matter how tough or seemingly impossible an enemy is, there is always a method to take him/her down. Of course, that also means that you’re likely to die several times (if not a dozen) before you can both figure out and execute the right method.

For more help on Dark Souls 2, read our Covenants Locations, Gestures Unlock and Merchants Locations Guide.

Dark Souls 2 Boss Tips and Battle Strategy

If the enemies weren’t bad enough, the bosses of the game up the scale a bit too, demanding the best out of you.

If you’re sick of the number of deaths you have had to face and the frequent revisits to the bonfire, then here’s a guide that covers all the bosses of the game with tactics that could ease your pain and even allow you to better these unforgiving foes.

The Last Giant
This is the first boss you’ll face in the game. Sure, he’s the first one and admittedly the easiest boss of the game, but if you’re not careful about fighting him, he can stomp on your and thrash you in no time. Again, it comes down to focusing and waiting for the right moments to attack.

In the start, the only thing this giant faceless creature will do is stomp on you. Avoid his stomps with properly timed dodges, and then slash at his legs.

You can move between his legs as well, but be careful as he tends to shift his balance from one foot to another. He will also try to sweep with his arms; try to stay behind him to remain clear of the swings and allow yourself room to hit his legs.

Repeat this until you’re done with half his health. Make sure you avoid his heavy-stomp, as that will take away half of your health!

After half his health is down, he will rip off his own arm and start to swing it at you violently. He will have much more range, but you’ll notice that he will reduce his stomping attacks once he’s ripped off his arm.

This gives you an advantage because you can simply try to flank him repeatedly and periodically attack his legs. Stay behind him and avoid the effective radius of his stomps and the arc of his sweeps and you should have no trouble taking this guy down.

Dragon Rider
Before you fight this boss, be sure to activate the lever in the area before the boss, just after the third giant Stone Knight, pretty close to the bonfire. If you do that, the battle will become much easier as the platform where you fight the Dragon rider will increase in area.

The Dragon rider himself isn’t riding any real dragon – he’s just a big fellow with a shield and halberd. He’s quick with his halberd sweeps, but those are easy to dodge especially if you are good at circle strafing.

His range and speed of attacks is pretty impressive, but the guy is quite bulky, meaning he can’t move around that easily. Use this to your advantage and just stay behind him at all times, slashing at his back whenever he makes a miss-hit. Apart from this, this guy doesn’t have too much. Just make sure you don’t get pushed off the edge.

The Rotten
This guy (if you want to call it that) is a lot tougher than the previous two bosses. The design of this boss is grotesque yet admirable, as he’s made up of nothing but body parts. He’ll pull out a cleaver from within himself which will serve as the weapon.

You’ll really need to master your roll dodging techniques, and ensure you stay right next to him. The problem with this boss is he’s really quick to turn around, so it’s a bit tough to flank him even after his massive weaves with the cleaver. Try to instead stay under his arms and slash at him whenever you can.

The boss’s most powerful and unforgiving attack is a grab – he’ll grasp you with his hand and then squeeze and twist your body, which can take around 60% of your health. Ouch. Avoid this mean grab at all costs, or you’ll be a goner in no time at all.

If you can’t block his powerful cleaver attacks (which take out around half of your health), make sure you block them to greatly reduce the damage. This guy also has a nasty habit of throwing up, and the acidic vomit will do a crazy amount of damage.

Don’t get hit by that.

To avoid most of his moves you just have to stay underneath his arm that holds the cleaver, but make sure you do manage to dodge and violent sweeps. Sometimes he can also chain his cleaver hits to make it 2 or 3, so when he gets a bit aggressive and fast with his hitting, just back off and let him complete his frenzy.

If you can learn the timing of his attacks and master roll dodging, this battle can be manageable. Make sure you avoid stepping or being knocked into the fire pits, as they take your health very quickly and you’ll die in no time.

He also gives you one of the four great souls, making this battle a worthwhile activity.

Flexile Sentry
This odd looking bosses is a tall two-torsoed lizard of some sort, with one side of him holding two swords while the other holds two maces. The mace side is considerably easier to fight, and if you can keep up with his pace and stay on that side, you’ll have a much easier time with him than otherwise.

The sword-wielding side of the boss is quick and speedy, and very accurate with its attacks. Avoid this side as much as possible and just concentrate on his clumsy mace-wielding side and just hack away at him after he completes a slash.

Be careful of the mace thrust that he does; it’s slow and avoidable but it has reach, and you can take a lot of damage from it. Apart from that, there isn’t much to this boss.

Circle strafing doesn’t work with him, and you just need to dodge his sword attacks and try to remain on his flimsy mace side. Just watch out for one crazy whirlwind kind of attack where he goes spinning around across the room; keep your distance when he’s doing it till he calms down, and then get back to routine work.

Now here’s a familiar boss design! This guy looks a lot like the notorious Ornstein from the original Dark Souls, but it seems this version is toned down a bit.

Ranged characters won’t enjoy facing this guy, as he closes in really quickly and has some devastating moves.

Instead, you should rely on melee weapons. If you managed to defeat Ornstein, you shouldn’t have problems at all, as you just have to master your circle-strafing and attack him with as much stamina as you have.

Flanking this boss is quite hard as he’s fairly quick to turn around and focus on you.

You should just avoid his impaling attack (deals insane damage) and the god-awful aerial stomp he does. He’ll glow purple for a split second and then leap into the air and fall with menacing force for large area of effect damage – keep a large distance when you see his change in color to avoid the hit.

Apart from this and some high-speed leap attacks, this boss is a bit too aggressive to be difficult to take down for any experienced player. He’ll be constantly busy with his attacks, which if you can avoid can easily be countered with a few slashes. This should remain your main method, and you’ll see that in no time he’ll be down and out.

Ruin Sentinels
The Sentinels are harsh and symbolic in-game depictions of the philosophy behind the game: no mercy for you. But, there is also a hidden philosophy in the game that all Dark Soul players know about: success is there to be found, even in the most difficult situations.

Three against one is not a fair fight, but with a few tricks you can actually make this boss battle a bit easier. There is one Sentinel that you can fight one on one on this narrow kind of platform just above the main boss battle arena. Though it’s a very small area, you can manage to circle strafe and dodge his attacks to get behind him and slice and dice.

These guys individually don’t have much health (as compared to single bosses), but when they combine they can be very, very difficult to handle. Keep on fighting this first one till he’s dead. After this don’t jump down just yet. Instead, wait around on the same platform.

Eventually on other Sentinel will jump up to you.

Make sure you have your shield up when he does so, as the tall skinny fellow does a giant sweep with his axe while coming up. Hit him as many times as you can until the second Sentinel will also jump up to the platform. Now it’s time to bail out.

Make sure you have enough health to make the jump down, as it will take away some HP.

Once you’re down there, both of the Sentinels will follow you down and start attacking. It’s 2 on 1 instead of what could been 3 on 1, so pat yourself on the back for that bit, but keep yourself focused, since the harder part of the battle just began.

Make sure you keep both of them right in front of you, and watch their attacks closely. These guys have very fast attack moves and insane range with their long axes, so make sure you dodge them.

The best thing that could (and will occasionally) happen is that both of them will attack at the same time. This is an excellent chance for you to hack away at the one that you already damaged on the platform.

These guys will also do an insane whirlwind attack that can kill you off if you’re not careful, so your first and foremost priority should always be to maintain distance and only close in after they’ve carried out their deadliest moves.

This fight is all about patience and intense focus. The safest way to beat them is to wait till they both attack at the same time, allowing you to close in and put in some damage to one of them.

This will take a long time to finish off the battle, but it is the best way.

Royal Rat Vanguard
This boss would’ve been cake-walk if it hadn’t been for his awfully familiar looking minions. You’ll enter the room not knowing that this is even a boss fight, with half-a-dozen rats ambushing you. These guys aren’t forgiving, as their attacks can make you bleed easily, so make sure you have your shield up at all times.

Once you’ve killed off three or four rats, the Rat Vanguard himself will join; the only problem is he looks exactly like the other rats, so there’s no easy way to determine which one is him until you actually hit him.

Since the main boss can get lost in the crowd very easily, your best bet is to actually defeat the entire horde.

The Vanguard rat itself can actually poison you, so be very careful and try to move about as much as possible to avoid being corned. Keep your shield up whenever the rats approach you or you run low on stamina to avoid bleeding or getting poisoned.

This battle is basically about staying alive and hitting any rat you can find till all of them are dead. If you manage to kill the boss first, the remaining rats will all run away, so it’s not a bad idea to actually keep an eye out for which one is the boss and focus attacks on it.

Skeleton Lords
Yup, it’s plural.

These are three big skeletons alongside smaller minion skeletons, all of which share one boss health pool. This means that even if you’re attacking the minions, you’re chipping away a small part of the boss’s health.

The area here is quite useful to dodge some of the attacks. The three burning bone pillars provide excellent cover against one of the mage skeleton lords that will try to shoot AoE fireballs at you.

After less than a minute or so into the battle the lords will summon minions to fight alongside them.

The lords themselves go down pretty easily, so try to take out one of the two melee ones; although the mage lord has a powerful attack, he will keep his distance, allowing you more space to move, as compared to his melee companions who will close in on you and try to attack with their axes.

Stick close to the bone pillars at all times, and wait for the minions and bosses to come to you. It’s actually very easy to dictate terms and control the flow of battle by yourself if you do this, and it should allow you to chip away from the main health pool without taking too much risk.

Just keep shifting from one pillar to the other and attacking any lord and/or minion that comes close to you, and then shifting again.

As you take out another of the lords, they will begin spawning more skeletons. These ones seem to take some time to spawn, so keep an eye out from where these minions are erupting out, and just kill them while they are assembling themselves.

Once you take out all three of the lords, the retarded bone-wheel skeletons will come out. Make sure you take out at least two of them while are assembling together, or you’ll have to face four rapidly spinning and uncontrollable enemies that do tons of damage.

The Pursuer
This is one of the tougher bosses you’ll fight in the first half of the game. This guy looks cool, he floats, and boy is he intelligent. It’s time you gave up on circle strafing and relied on keeping your distance.

The Pursuer is fast in his movement and merciless in his strikes, using a chain of attacks and cursing stabs that will deal tons of damage. He also has the habit of bashing and slicing with his shield.

Your best bet is to keep a fair distance and just roll backwards every time he attacks. Don’t stay near him at all and keep an eye out for the ledge while rolling. Once he has complete his attack combinations, move in and strike a couple of times, and then move out again.

Be very careful from his cursing/impaling strike. His sword will glow blue and he will do a powerful thrust. Avoid this or you’ll be dead in seconds!

Another risky but effective technique against The Pursuer is to parry his attack. This will cause him to be stunned for a bit. Use this time to shoot the baliste present here. This will do an insane amount of damage to the boss and can even one-shot him if you’ve chipped off a decent amount of health.

Belfry Gargoyles
You’ll have to fight 6 or 7 of these large gargoyles in this fight, and sadly you’ll be facing two or three at a time. If you’ve managed to acquire the Great Club, you’ll have an easier time as you can deal massive damage with single swipes, and get rid of a gargoyle with two or three hits.

These guys occupy a lot of space of the rooftop, and they will often start to fly. Try to keep at least one of them on the ground during that stage so you can dish out damage. The gargoyles can easily overcrowd you, so try to take out one before the third joins the fight. Keep yourself mobile at all times and just try to avoid their attacks with roll dodges (no circle strafing!) and attacking every once in a while.

Watch out for their fire-breath attack and also their lightning attacks. These guys are weak to lightning, so if you have some kind of lightning weapon or attacks, use them against these beasts to ease your way out of the mess.

Executioner’s Chariot
This is literally a chariot of fire. The interesting battle arena and boss make up for a pretty exciting experience. But hey, that’s what Dark Souls is all about: exciting new ways to kill you shamelessly.

The arena itself is a large circular hall with lots of alcoves. The chariot is gone crazy and running in this hallway and stampeding over anything that is not inside the alcoves. This means that you’ll need to periodically station yourself in them to avoid getting crushed.

Unfortunately, the thrill of the excessively excited chariot and the interesting arena is kind of spoiled by the annoying skeletons that keep on spawning. These fellows will turn into ashes once the chariot makes a swoop over them, but they’ll keep respawning until you take out the necromancers responsible for conjuring them.

These wimpy necromancers are also hiding in alcoves, so make sure you take them out while you’re on your way to the northern part to pull the lever. This will make a gate close down, and the next time the chariot comes strolling it’ll crash into the gate.

This is when the boss fight actually starts.

The boss is an enraged multi-headed stallion of some sort. It’ll charge at you, it’ll cast these weird looking spews at you, and it will also try to head-butt you. Keep a distance between him and yourself as the hallways are pretty narrow and the horsie is quite big.

Be very careful of his charge attack because it’s difficult to dodge – taking shelter in the alcove while he charges at you seems to be the best option.

Another move that you really need to watch out for is his stomp. He’ll get on his hind legs and then crash his fore-limbs down, down a heavily damaging AoE stomp that can be fatal to most melee players.

The boss overall has limited amount of moves, but you’ll really have to be careful and time your dodges perfectly in this narrow hallway to stand a chance. He can chip of large portions of your health without you noticing thanks to his charge and ground-stomp attacks – it all comes down to how well you avoid these two moves.

The Lost Sinner
This boss is either impossible or fairly manageable, depending on what kind of preparations you make. If you enter inside directly, it’s going to be almost impossible as the area is pitch-black, and the speedy assassin-like boss is too quick to see in this darkness.

But if you manage to acquire the Bastille Key after the Belfry Gargoyle boss battles, you can go to the rooms to the left and right of the entrance to the battle arena, and light up the oil lamps with the torch.

This will illuminate the battle arena and give you a realistic chance against the guy.

As for the boss himself, he’s wielding a single large sword and seems to have the stance of a marital artists. This guy is very fast, attacks very fast, and can close in distance very easily. He also has this large leap attack that does insane damage, along with some quick slashes.

Because of his agility, he’s tough to circle-strafe, so you should rely more on roll dodging instead. You shouldn’t even think of using a slow weapon like the Great Club, as this boss has speedy recovery time and very small intervals between his attacks.

This guy also has the ability to dodge, so you should only try to attack him once he’s finished his slashes. The best technique is to roll towards him during his sweeps to get behind him and dish in a couple of hits.

Rolling sideways is almost useless because his large sword does a 180 degree swoop in front of him. With this boss, it’s all about the lighting and which one of you is better at dodging.

Prowling Magus and the Congregation
This is actually a very easy boss battle, provided you don’t get overwhelmed early on.

Right when you enter the arena you’ll be welcomed by half a dozen zombies on the ground that can really get onto you fast. Behind them will be a white-robed zombie mage shooting rapid bolts at you, along with a dark and cool looking sorcerer (the Magus itself) shooting slow moving dark balls.

The mage in white is responsible for conjuring zombies, so it’s important that you take him out first. If you’re using a weapon that can hit multiple enemies at once due to large swoop (like the Great Club), you could easily one-hit the zombies and take down the white robed white quickly.

Get to the back side of the room where the benches are to ease up things a bit. You can use the benches as a means to block the zombies, and also later destroy them to free up some space.

Once you have the white mage down, the Magus itself is very easy. He only has one AoE clearance attack that you should watch out for, but apart from that the fellow is very easy to take down.

Scorpioness Najka
When you first enter the arena, all you’ll find is a naked lady in the center half-buried in the sand shooting flimsy magic balls at you. Hit her on the head once and that’ll piss her off enough for her to reveal her true self.

Najka is by no means a difficult boss – all you have to do is just learn he melee and ranged moves, and you should be good to go. Her melee moves are very easy to dodge. Stay in front of her at all times and simply roll-dodge the thrusts with her weapon.

You shouldn’t try to attack her after her thrusts and slashes with the weapon because she has fast recovery time after these attacks.

However, once she attempts attacks with her two tail-fangs, you’ll notice she has an insane recovery time that can allow you to chip in two to three hits at once. One of the tail-fangs attack actually impales you and does a hell lot of damage, so avoid these attacks at all cost.

Also, make sure you go to her side after the tail-fang attacks to hit her, because these fangs sort of act as a shield up front.

Every once in a while she’ll go into the sand and start chasing you underground. This move gain be a devastating attack if she erupts right underneath you, so your best exploit here is to roam around the concrete slab in the northern part of the room, as she can’t erupt from there. She’ll eventually give up and just come out, and you can resume the normal play.

Be careful of her ranged magic spells; there’s one in which she shoots missile shards from her tails, which can be dodged easily, and another where she creates these magic balls which shoot you from closer range after she completes thrust moves with her weapon.

The latter is very difficult to dodge and does a lot of damage, so make sure you’re at full health when she casts this spell. Aside from the magic spell and the impaling, Najka is fairly easy to take down if you have good dodging skills.

The Duke’s Dear Freja
Those with arachnophobia won’t enjoy this battle. This boss is a huge two headed spider who has the habit of spawning smaller spiders in the arena.

The boss itself has attacks that are very easy to dodge, but it’s the spiders that can overwhelm you quite easily.

Dear Freja will be spawning these spiderlings regularly, and it’s very important that you take them out as quickly as possible as they leap on you can do a lot of damage. If a lot of them collect, it can become very difficult to take them out in the later stages of the battle.

As for Freja herself, she can only be hit on her faces. Now this can be quite tricky as you have to make your attacks dead straight on the face, because her impenetrable limbs and antlers protect her face quite well.

The boss has a few moves, and as stated earlier they’re all very easy to dodge. Her most common move is a beam that she shoots from her mouth. While she’s doing this you should concentrate on killing off the spinderlings.

Another move is where she shoots a web, but it’s very easy to dodge. She also has a huge leap move she’ll do if you’ve been hugging her body a bit too much, and a stomp of the legs if you’re right in front of her.

It all comes down to how well you manage the spiders. It’s nearly impossible to keep a clean arena with just you and her there, but make sure you don’t let more than a couple or three spiders lurk around at once, or you can be finished off in an instant with their merciless leap attacks and also with Freja chipping in.

Covetous Demon
They might as well just have named him Jabba the Hutt. This is basically just an angrier version of the famous Star Wars alien character, and he’s got the same traits of being lazy and arrogant.

This boss shouldn’t pose much of a threat to ranged players at all, since he’s slow and pretty under-determined to do much at all. Most of his moves are easy-to-dodge body slams that are fairly predictable and have lots of recovery time. You can just hang about behind his arm and chip away at his health.

Just be careful of his rolling move, as it can be easy to get cocky with this guy and stay close to him all the time. He’ll also just move around for a while after the roll as if he’s having an epilepsy attack.

Apart from that, there’s the odd lick kind of attack that barely ever manages to touch anyone. This boss is both easy and ugly, and you should have no troubles dealing with him at all.

Dragonriders
Yup, this is two of the Dragonrider boss you fought very early in the game. They have substantially low health this time around. You’ll start off with just one Dragonrider, who is almost exactly the same as the one you fought before. Refer to that part of the guide for general tactics against this enemy model.

While you’re fighting one Dragonrider only, the second one will be standing on a platform shooting arrows at you. Just keep this in the back of your mind and focus on taking out as much of the first Dragonrider’s health as you can.

The second black one is even weaker in-terms of health than the original. Just make sure you take out the weakened one as quickly as possible and this battle should be a cake-walk, and is certainly easier than the Ruin Sentinels you faced earlier in the game.

The Looking Glass Knight
This is the mighty boss that everyone praised when they played the beta of the game (at that time he was known as the Mirror Knight). This guy fights like a classical medieval knight, and holds a large mirror shield that guards his left half.

The shield gives the Glass Knight amazing defense, as he doesn’t even need to raise it up to block any of your attacks that are focused on the left part of his body. The melee attacks are much like those of any other sword-wielding boss, with a bit more finesse and technique that can hit you more frequently than others.

However, the toughest moves of the Glass Knight are his ranged attacks and his summoning ability.

When you move away from him, he’ll charge his sword with a lightning bold and do one of two things: either he’ll do a large 180 degree swoop, or he will cast lightning balls that do a lot of damage, and can only be avoided with perfectly timed dodges.

But the worst move is when he places his mirror and starts summoning a character. Now, if you’re playing online, this will be another real player, which means absolute hell for you. If you’re playing offline, he’s summon a powerful AI with low health that you could take down with a few hits.

The time he takes to summon is perfect for dishing in a few hits on his back, but his defenses go sky-high when he does so, so it’s unlikely you would do too much damage. You should then quickly move away and try to get rid of the summoned character and then resume assaulting him.

The boss also has a leap move and a powerful thrust, both of which are pretty easy to dodge.

Because the boss is based more on technique and finesse, you shouldn’t have a difficult time getting away from his standard melee attacks. Just make sure you hit him where it hurts, and avoid the lightning moves at all costs.

Mytha the Baneful Queen
Like the Lost Sinner, this boss fight is almost impossible with a bit of preparation. Her arena will be filled with poison which will not only constantly take away your health, it will also heal her all the time.

You need to get rid of this poison to stand a chance against this lady.

Go to the central bonfire closest to the arena. If you remember, an undead ran by a gate and locked it. There is a way to access it by going to the outer corridor and unlocking it for a shortcut.

This will also lead you to a windmill. You can follow a small ledge to reach the windmill’s shaft, where you can use a torch to ignite it. Once you do that, the poison in Mytha’s arena will be completely gone.

The boss herself is extremely easy, as the main trick up her sleeve was the poison itself, which made the fight impossible. She has weak and easily dodgeable attacks, and her health is low enough that you won’t have any troubles with her whatsoever.

Smelter Demon
The Smelter Demon is an option boss that you can fight in the Iron Keep. This guy is quite tough, mainly because he’s extremely aggressive, and because of his huge stature has fantastic range with his sword.

As the battle progresses, the Smelter Demon will get more and more tough.

At the beginning he’ll just do some very aggressive hits with his sword which can be troublesome to dodge. Because of the merciless and aggressive nature of this boss, it’s best to summon a phantom to fight by your side to tank this battle.

If you can manage to do that, you’ll just need to stay away from his swings and hit him constantly. When he reaches about half his health, his torso will light up on fire, dealing a small amount of AoE damage every time you come close to him or hit him with melee weapons.

Towards the later stages of the fight, he’ll become even more aggressive, and will perform seppuku to ignite his sword. This is where things get really tough. Each thrash of his sword on the ground will send out a column of flames across the arena, and a single hit can take out as much as 75% of your health (or one-hit you if you depending on your Vitality points).

Stay away from his hits as he won’t give you much time during this duration to heal yourself, and keep chipping away at his health with regular strikes. This encounter is all about evading and dealing risk-free damage to this fiery demon.

Old Iron King
If you have managed to reach this boss, you should give yourself a pat on the back. The boss himself is stationary, since he comes out of a lava lake. Basically, all this guy is going to do is just beat his fists on the ground and breathe fire. He’ll occasionally shoot out a beam of fire from his palms as well, but that’s a move that is fairly easy to dodge.

What makes this boss not-so-difficult is the ridiculous recovery time he has for his fist attacks. He’ll keep his arms on the ground for a good three or four seconds and let you attack them as much as you want in this duration.

His most dangerous attack is the fire breather, because it’s quite difficult to tell which direction he will do the sweep of his fire breath. If you can manage to pick out his movement early, you can just move to the corner of the region, where his fire won’t reach you.

The fire-shooting ability is strange and can actually be a surprise since it’s easy to forget. He’ll thrust his hand forward and shot out a beam of flames for a short while, which you can dodge and just continue hitting his beefy arms.

More or less, it seems the boy’s been working out under the lava, and the battle is just an excuse for him to show off his biceps, abs, and chest muscles.

Demon of Song
What…the…hell? It’s basically a giant frog with a very creepy face. His entire body is covered with impenetrable armor, meaning you can only attack his creepy face and his anorexic arms. He’ll cover his face whenever he wishes to move about, and uncover it whenever he wants to attack you.

Most of this frog’s attacks are very easy to dodge, but there are a couple that you should really watch out for.

Perhaps his most dangerous and hardest to avoid attack is the leap slam he’ll do. Usually leap attacks are quite easy to dodge, but this thing is bulky and doesn’t jump that high for his attack.

Another ranged attack you should look at for is when he throws water balls at you. This is actually quite easy to dodge if you know the pattern: he’ll throw them to your left first, then center, then right. So you can just move right, right, and then left to avoid them without even rolling.

Apart from that, this boss has limited moves and slow recovery time from his bash attacks with his arms. Use the opportunity and smack him in his face when he tries to retreat his arms. Don’t go behind him because he’ll do a little leg attack that will damage a lot.

Giant Lord
But, but, but I thought the Last Giant was the last giant!

Apparently not. This guy is quite huge, and quite similar to The Last Giant, one of the first bosses you encounter, except he’s less clumsy and has a giant sword in his hand that does insane damage with every hit.

The problem with the Giant Lord is that if you stay away from him, he has so much reach that you can’t avoid his swoops. Sticking to his feet and moving between them is the best approach, but that also has a downside: you can’t tell what move he’s going to do next.

He’ll also try to stomp on you with his feet as well when you run about, and he’ll also to this close-body sweep with his sword that will do a lot of damage. Because of the lethality of this attack, you should try to stay to the left side of his feet.

The best thing you could do with this boss is just completely limit his insane reach and sweeps of the swords. You’ll also notice that there are fire explosions happening around the arena – try to avoid them at all costs and stay near the corners of the arena. Just stick to his legs, try to avoid his stomps and his strong sweeps, and you should be able to take him down.

Guardian Dragon
It’s very easy to get intimidated from this mighty dragon, and that is what really will be your downfall. Don’t let this napalm-breathing lizard have the better of you – you may be smaller, but you’re just as badass, and far more intelligent.

The dragon has an arsenal of different fire-breathing attacks. A couple of them are carried out while it’s airborne, while one is on the ground and one while he hangs from the arena cage walls. The ones from the air are the hardest to avoid, though the fireball is fairly easy.

When he hangs on the cage, just move to the opposite direction of where he is hanging, as he will aim straight down and breathe fire for a long while, which does a lot of AoE damage.

While on ground, try to remain on his sides, and never right in front of him or near his tail, as he has means to counter such positions. He can swoop his tail or stomp it on the ground for a lot of damage, while he tends to breathe fire on the ground as well.

In fact, the fire attack on the ground is actually the best time for you to attack him. The dragon will channel the attack for a good 4-5 seconds, so if you can dodge it and get to his side, you can throw in three or more hits (depending on your stamina) and take a chunk out of his health.

Just be careful of his tail and melee attacks, and avoid the fire breath at all costs, and you should be able to deal with this majestic creature and take him out in his own cage in no time.

Velstadt
Meet Velstadt, the mighty armored boss with a mighty heavy mace. This guy has excellent reach and quick recovery time, and that heavy mace does a lot of damage. You might mistakenly treat him like the Dragonrider bosses, but he’s not so easy to deal with like those fellows.

Circle strafing against this boss is very difficult because of his powerful mace attacks, and he can turn around really quickly to avoid getting flanked, and will rapidly move into his next attack after a short recovery.

The best strategy thus with this boss is to perfect your roll dodges and avoid his mace attacks. Each one will take round about one-third of your health, so it’s a good idea to just stay back a bit and avoid him.

When you do attack him, do it immediately after he has completed a chain of attacks or single attack, and only hit him once – there is simply no time between his attacks to hit him multiple times.

You might also want to consider opening up some space for yourself by baiting him into destroying the pillars that can come in your way. This will allow you to roll dodge more easily and close in distance when you need to get close and attack.

When half of his health is gone, he’ll get into this meditative mode where he will imbue his weapon with magical power, making it even stronger and more damaging before. Hits from here onwards will take away about half of your health, and the boss himself will also start taking slightly less damage.

However, the boss’s attacks and technique won’t change much, so you can continue to dodge his moves and dish out damage and he should be down if you don’t take many hits.

Throne Watcher and Throne Defender
Yes, it’s 2 vs. 1 again, and this time it’s two elite bosses with very different styles, but with a nasty kind of bond that will have you worried.

What makes this fight really difficult is the contrasting attacking style. The female Throne Watcher is very agile, and will hop around and do fast slashes with her sword, while the Defender is brute with great defense and slow, heavy damage.

With both of them on your tail, this fight becomes extremely difficult, which is why we recommend the assistance of a companion to keep at least one of them busy. The Throne Watcher will be very direct with her attacks, and will try to chase you about the arena.

It’s easy to lose awareness of how dangerous the region is while you’re being bullied by two powerful bosses – there are plenty of pits here which you can fall or be pushed into, which will obviously result in instant death.

Another major problem with this duo is that once one is down, you have to kill of the other very quickly or he/she will revive his/her companion, and you’ll be back to where you started. Not good!

While one of them is downed, the one that is alive will become more powerful – in each case their weapons will become imbued with lightning to deal extra damage, and the Defender’s defense will usually go up a bit.

To counter this strong bond between the two, you should attack one till his/her health is very low (but don’t kill off!), and then focus on the other and make his/her health lower.

It’s actually best if you can initiate the Throne Watcher and let any companion deal with the Defender, as she’s quite aggressive but has very low health, once she has about one-third of her health, switch to the Defender and attack him till he is down.

This fight is extremely difficult if you decide to have a go at it solo, as the mix of aggressive agility and strong defense really makes things a living hell, and demands two very different kinds of approaches. Thus, it is highly recommended that you bring a phantom companion who can do decent damage and has good health to survive most of the battle.

Final Boss – Nashandra
Yes, this is the final boss of the game. You should be proud of your achievements so far, especially if you’re playing New Game+. Sadly, Nashandra isn’t the toughest boss you’ll face, provided you know the tricks up her sleeve.

The tall lady wields a scythe which she swings at you when you’re close to her. These attacks are fairly easy to dodge, but if you do manage to get hit they will take 50% of your maximum HP out. Ouch.

This fight will take place in the same area as that of Throne Watcher and Throne Defender, and that means the risk of falling into the pits still exists. At the start of the fight Nashandra will summon these misty orbs that form a kind of semicircle. This is actually an area of effect where any hit from Nasandra will result in you being cursed, and that can have an extremely negative impact on your health.

Stay out of this area at all costs – keep your distance and keep her right in front of you. You’ll notice she’s quite stubborn and tends to stick within the vicinity of the misty orbs she summons.

If you’re a caster you should be able to deal a huge amount of damage from this distance, making the battle very easy.

If you’re a melee however, try to use a secondary weapon to chip in some damage. However, don’t expect Nashandra to stay idle while she waits next to her orbs. She has some very powerful beam attacks that will deal a hell lot of damage to you. There is one that will go straight, and then another one where she will sweep her beam all across the arena.

The latter is extremely hard to dodge, as it requires you to roll close to her (side rolls are ineffective as she sweeps the entire arena). If you do roll close to her there are chances she will follow up with a powerful scythe attack that would be unavoidable, resulting in you getting cursed and also take a lot of damage.

Instead, if you can manage to maintain more than 75% of your health at most times and chip away at her health with some ranged arrow attacks or casting spells, you can actually survive that sweeping beam and heal up, which would be a fairer trade then running into her curse trap.

Overall, if you’ve been able to defeat the likes of The Pursuer, Velstadt, and the Thorne Watcher & Defender, Nashandra herself should pose no troubles for you as long as you are aware of her abilities and their potentials.

Haider is a freelance contributor, who loves video games, playing guitar, and aviation. He is a competitive FPS player and also enjoys exotic RPG games like Diablo and Xenogears (his favorite game of all time) ...