I’ve been playing anything but soulslikes recently. Climbing my way up the ranked ladder in League, played some Darkwood, and recently got obsessed with Pokerogue which has been a lot of fun.
Soulslikes can pose quite a challenge for players with their oftentimes quite brutal difficulty: insane boss patterns that leave no breathing room, high amounts of damage, status damage. Luckily, many bosses allow for strategies that exploit intended as well as unintended weaknesses to make the fights a little more bearable. So following up on @MissingInteger@lemmy.zip’s suggestion, I want to know what your favourite ways to cheese a boss in a Soulslike is.
Cheesing could be a glitch in this case, like glitching out the final boss of the Bloodborne DLC to stop them from attacking or having Gyoubu or a certain hateful spirit jump off a cliff in Sekiro, as well as “intended” cheeses, like chugging consumables and Fable Arts at bosses in Lies of P.
I haven’t done it myself, but I always found it incredibly funny to think about that the Capra Demon from DS1, a wall for many new players, can be killed from outside their fog of wall with stones and dung piles. Or a certain simian boss from Sekiro being very weak to the Mortal Draw to a point where he’s in a constant stagger animation and just dies without any counterplay.
What are your favourite cheeses?
The Night’s Cavalry in Dragonbarrow yearns for the abyss. There are so many different cheeses for that one. The most popular is the one where you position yourself on the side of the bridge. The cooler one in my opinion is where you throw Kukris and it looks like you mind controlled him to jump of the branch. This works because enemies follow sounds and Kukris make quite a loud sound. Kukris are generally great for distracting enemies (Greatbow arrows are louder but less convenient).
Dragonbarrow is overall a very cheesy place. 4 Bosses in Dragonbarrow are cheese-sable. The Night’s Cavalry, the bridge dragon, Greyoll and the Bellbearing Hunter. You can make the bridge dragon (Greyll) lose a fight against a tree; it’s pretty finicky to do. Greyoll can easily be cheesed with any bleed weapon, it’s just time consuming. The cheese for the Bellbearing Hunter looks easy, but is far more difficult than it seems. You need to get the Golem way below to shoot him and then use a crit to get him over the edge.
There are so many great cheeses in the cheese plater that is Elden Ring. You can almost skip Phase 2 Malenia completely if you kill her phase 1 with Howl of Shabriri or a Volcano Pot. Or you can abuse the way Boss agro is programmed: In Elden Ring, they didn’t do it like DS1 where the Boss always “smells” you in the arena, they simply gave the Bosses huge agro. So you can stack Assassin’s Gambit and Unseen Form together and the Boss doesn’t notice right away and then you can sneak behind them and
blow gas up their assuse Poison Mist to slowly kill them. That was to cheesy for me to try it, yet. Here is an example with Morgott.Now that I think about it, one of my favorite cheeses is
Goudathe intended cheese for Ceaseless Discharge. The way he falls of the cliff to his doom… very cinematic. If we ever get a proper remaster I want a satisfying thunk when he hit the ground and maybe even a corpse that stays there.It’s also interesting to think about what is a cheese? Does skipping a Boss count? Is it really a cheese if it’s harder than fighting the Boss? The skip past Godskin Duo with Hand of Malenia is way harder than throwing a couple of Sleep Pots. Also are Sleep Pots a cheese? It’s just an intended weakness, if a major one. Or are high damage builds cheese? One shooting Mohg with Comet Azur is super easy and fun and imo everyone should try it sometime, but feels very cheese. In the end everyone has to decide what is cheese and whether or not they like doing it in their playthroughs. We all want to have fun playing video games.
Some nice videos about cheese in Souls games:
Speaking about fun: with the many games I never played at my disposal I will obviously play through Elden Ring at RL1 again, for the third time. I actually started last weekend and got pretty far already. I’m already in Leyndell. I didn’t follow my careful plan of leveling up a Claymore to +20 and instead started by running naked into Stormveil with only a Broadsword. The Broadsword destroys Margit so hard. If been using the mostly the Broadsword since then. Pretty good weapon at RL1.
I also got a bit goofy since cheese was on my mind. I stacked enough anti undead buffs to one-shot Death Birds with a Holy Pot. Only I overdid it a bit. I did 34k to the Death Bird in Weeping Peninsula that is almost 10x the damage needed and mind you that’s at RL1. The crazy thing is that’s not even close to optimized. At endgame I would have access to even more buffs. I will experiment further in the snow when I get there. The one in the snowfield should be easy to hit in the head.
Very informative as always!
One day I might actually learn how to optimize a build in ER (or any other game for that matter) and do a SL1 run but it’s not today…
I did get out of my comfort zone recently-ish and started the “magic” run from scratch (but actually settled on spellblade)… Glint sorceries do some really decent stance damage I’ve come to find! I might go for an all out busted magic run later but I’m a bit afraid the game will lose a lot of the cool coreography elements with the bosses spamming ranged attacks. Right now I’m just before morgott so I haven’t even touched the busted spells. We’ll see how it goes :P
If you ever have question about SL1 just ask me ;) I have an unhealthy amount of knowledge. SL1 is really about how good of a player you are moment to moment in fights and how much you know about the game. One side balances the other. I’m not that good moment to moment, but I’m very good at planing due to game knowledge.
Have fun with your magic run :)
Ranged sorceries can sometimes lose the “choreography look”. It looks more like an anime moment. Spellblade fights can look like beautiful choreography. Here is a beautiful fight against Malenia. This fight is not optimized for damage but for style.
What’s your current favorite spell and what’s your “default” spell - the spell you spam the most?
For a spell blade I can’t recommend Carian Slicer enough. Fast melee spell. High DPS. Awesome gameplay feel. You can for example smoothly transition from hitting with your melee weapon to casting Slicer with your Staff. If you have questions about sorceries in ER feel free to ask me.
damn, I’m sorry I left you hanging, I’ve been very disconnected from lemmy and in gral lately u.u.
And thank you! I always appreciate you willingness to help out, I’ll 100% take you up on the offer! that Malenia fight is goals, precisely the kind of stuff I wanna do. as of right now I haven’t progressed at all but what I’m spamming most are the glintstone shards, and glintstone stars… I’m using them mostly close range so it kinda defeats the purpose … haha and i’ mixing it up with shatter earth but that one I don’t love as it’s kinda slow… those are the ones I’ve been using most I think. will definitely look at carian slicer, I don’t know why I haven’t equipped it yet since I have the stats XD and I’m using rogers rapier haha, super imaginative I know, but I love a rapier :P
Don’t worry. I’m now also commenting two days later.
The Glintstone Shard are nice FP efficient projectiles (they do get eventually simply outclassed by the Comet Spells). Also don’t use Glintstone Pebble, it’s a crap spell that does way to little damage at such a short range. Glintstone Stars and it’s upgrades have amazing tracking. Try using them on horse back :) You can actually hit stuff behind you as long as you are locked on. Shatter Earth is a bit low damage and the bigger Sword Spells like Carian Greatsword or Adula’s Moonblade might be better in those situations (and the DLC spell Gravitational Missile is even better, aim it at your feet!).
A tip I can give you is doing Sellen’s questline. You get many amazing spells like the final Glintstone Stars upgrade and at the end, as long as you side with her, the amazing Shard Spiral.
Rapier’s/Thrusting Swords are fun :) I used Cleanrot Knight’s Sword extensively at RL1. The weapon in the Malenia video is also a Thrusting Swords, the Carian Sorcery Sword. Instead of it’s heavy attack you instead cast spells! It’s a bit out classed as a catalyst at high level, but it’s so stylish. It’s a pretty hidden weapon in the DLC – you get it by jumping down into Castle Ensis from Scadu Altus.
I hope I haven’t give you too much advise. Have fun with your playthrough!
Furiously taking notes XD, yeah the tracking in that spell is really good! And I’m doing Sellen’s quest for real this time, did it back when I 100% the game but it must be done right . Carian sorcery sword sounds like a must as well, Thank you. I’ll report back !