Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Skeleton Lords

More like Skeleton bitches

    This is an interesting little battle here. It's located deep within Huntsman's Copse. After going through this fairly large and confusing area (which is sort of reminiscent of Shrine Of Storms 4-1 and 4-2 from Demon's, and a bit of the outside part of the Catacombs from Dark Souls. Well, a LITTLE bit at any rate), you'll get to a waterfall. Behind this is a large fog gate. Don't let the size of the fog gate scare you, or let you think you're gonna fight some HUGE monster. These guys are EASILY the simplest, most pathetic bosses up to this point, despite their badass name that sounds like it's a reject song title from Metallica's Kill 'Em All album.
    You enter the gate and are inside a gigantic room with bones (and some fire) covering the floors (perhaps the floors are nothing but bones?), with mounds of bones and tall, bone thrones (I guess?), that the Lords came down from. Notice a theme here? This is one of the BIGGEST boss rooms in any of the Souls game, which helps in making this fight so easy grandma can probably do it. Despite that, this room is actually really cool looking, and a great set piece. Thinking back on some of the other boss rooms/arenas/lairs/whatever-you-wanna-call-them, not many up to this point have been great. Last Giant is in an old, cave-looking room, which is visually appealing; ol' Flexy (that's what I call Flexile Sentry) is in a ghost ship which I personally think is great, because that's kind of unexplored territory for these games; and now these guys have a great-looking room. Otherwise, you fight the other bosses on rooftops, in small castle-like rooms, ON castles, and in big, empty rooms. Kinda boring. The point of this long-winded aside is this: the Lords are easy as sin, but at least you fight them in a cool place.
    Wow, that section was two sentences long in my notes. Humor me here a moment. This is what I had in my notes (note on notes, I purposely just keep them short, and I don't bother trying to make them sound good. I just need to write stuff down so I don't forget anything. I'll leave the grammatical error in as a fun gift): "Your enter the gate, and you're in a huge really cool looking room. It's covered in bones and fire, with some big mounds of bones strewn about".
    Okay, finally back on topic here. Once you enter the gate, the three Lords descend down, briefly on fire. There are three, but they share one health bar. They move slowly, their attacks are easy to dodge, and they don't have great defense. Probably because they are wearing semi-tattered royal-looking robes. I thought at first that they looked like grim reapers, but they really don't, despite the fact that two of the three Lords have huge scythes. The other has a huge staff with a large skull on it. For whatever reason, these three aren't even unique enough to have their own names, but the Ruin Sentinels do? If anything, I would have expected these guys to have names, and the Sentinels just be the Ruin Sentinels. Probably some lore behind that that I'm missing. The two Lords with scythes just attack with them, and again, very easy to dodge or block. The third shoots fireballs of varying size and speed. He shoots a large one which, I can't imagine, has ever hit any player. It's SO DAMN SLOW. Each of the three only took me 6-7 hits to kill, and they honestly don't put up much of a fight, like they could care less about trying and kill you. When you kill one, he explodes and spawns a handful of normal enemy skeletons. One Lord spawns normal ones, one Lord spawns slightly tougher ones with armor, and the Lord with the staff spawns those, horrible, awful, rage-inducing wheel skeletons from Dark Souls. Probably the single most irritating regular enemy in that game. I actually did die the first time I fought these guys, because I killed two Lords at the same time, and then saw all the skeletons spawn. I didn't really bother with them, and I went after and killed the final Lord. I didn't realize that these normal skeletons also shared in that one health bar, so I kinda waited around for another Lord to spawn (because they had a quarter of their health bar left), and I got ganged up on and killed.
    There was no real strategy for me. Just go up, block or dodge an attack, then whale on them. That's all there really is to the whole battle. In the end, they're just SLIGHTLY tougher versions of skeletons. Just try not to get overwhelmed by the skeleton spawns, keep your cool, and fuck those wheel skeletons! They are the only reason this boss could be remotely hard. Just keep your eye on them, and keep moving to avoid their attack. Even getting overwhelmed is tough because the room is huge (makes healing super easy), unless maybe you were in a corner. Also, after I killed them, I proceeded to put my summon sign down and help people fight them for a bit. Why anyone would need to summon help, I'm not sure. But it was fun wrecking these clowns, and it's a pretty easy spot to farm Tokens of Fidelity (and souls). Just put a summon sign down, fight, and repeat. That whole process takes maybe five minutes. One final note, I was fully prepared to give these guys the dreaded "1/10" difficulty rating I refused to give to ol' Flexy (see? It sounds good), but I just couldn't seeing as I died. Boo

Times I died: 1
Difficulty: 1.5/10
Overall rating: 5/10

My next post will be Lost Sinner. I still don't have him beat (despite three or four attempts last night), but I'll split it up into 2 posts, like the Gargoyles. I think I have a lot to write about this one.

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BOSS SOUL DESCRIPTION: "...who reigned from deep within the Huntsman's Copse; The Old Iron King commanded the capture of all Undead, but those charged with the task were overcome by the curse."  

 

Roaring Halberd

Roaring Halberd: "The unsettling skull carved into this halberd recalls the final moments of the Skeleton Lord from whom it was created."

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