Vendrick

He's in the doghouse (permanently. Also, he's hollowed, and he just wanders mindlessly around)!

    Chances are, if you tried to engage Vendrick in battle after Killing Velstadt way back in the Undead Crypt, he whooped your ass. As I'm sure everyone knows by now, Vendrick's defense is astronomically high, and your normal attacks do almost nothing. You can only weaken him by holding Giant Souls, which you obtain through those Giant Memories (plus two other places). This makes the battle possible, but it's still pretty tough. 

Just wanderin' all around

    I had four Giant Souls, and I know there are five you can get (three from the Memories, one from the Giants in Black Gulch, and one from killing the Ancient Dragon), and my two-handed attacks (still trusty longsword +10, if anyone is wondering) were only doing 162 damage. I buffed this up to 202 with aromatic ooze, though. So, even though I had four of the Souls, I was still doing miminal damage. Just made the battle longer.
    When you run through that Bullshit Hallway, I believe I called it (back in the Velstadt post), you get into the lair where Vendrick is mindlessly wandering around in, dragging his sword behind him. He doesn't aggro you until you attack him three or four times, wherein his name/health bar will appear on the screen. The first thing you'll notice is that his sword is STRONG! He was one- and two-shotting me regularly (in fact, I don't think I could ever take more than two hits from him). My first five-or-so attempts ended within five seconds. I would run in, try to attack him, and get sliced up by his sword. It wasn't fun. In fact, I thought it was gonna be impossible to even hurt him, until I realized his ridiculous vulnerability: his back. 

He's tall!

    If you run up to him, and stay at his back, you're basically invincible. He swings his sword from side to side, or does an overhand attack. I still rolled when he did these, but I'm not sure it's necessary. You can't get hit if you're behind him (or to his left side a bit). However, if you are directly behind him, he'll hop backwards, thus putting you in the direct path of his next attack. If he hops back, make sure you get your ass back to the safe spot! The only real problem with this strategy is just making sure you both don't get backed into the walls. It can be tough to get around him again when this happens. As I said, his attacks are devastating, and I couldn't withstand many. It'd be much more advantageous to just not get hit at all (which is probably true of EVERY boss, really). Overall, this battle can be very tough, and even if you know what you're doing, it's fairly time consuming. Vendrick himself is nothing too special to look at (he's a huge, hollowed human, with just tattered rags and a crown), but he's interesting to fight at least. Just two left to go now... 

Another shot of me getting killed. How nice!

Times I died: 9
Difficulty: 7.5/10
Rating: 7/10

I'm not sure which boss will fall next. My guess is Darklurker, so expect (hopefully) that post to be up in a day or two. After that, I honestly don't know how long it's gonna take me to kill the Ancient Dragon, but he'll be the last thing holding me up from starting NG+, which I'm greatly looking forward to. 

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"SOUL OF THE KING" DESCRIPTION: "...King of Drangleic; The King was wasted away, a shadow of his former self, but still held something dear; Use the soul of he who would link the flame..."**

 

**NOTE: I always omit the beginning of each Soul description, because it's always just the name of the boss. I do it for repetition's sake. Also, I always leave off the final line, which says something like, "Use it to gain many souls, or make something great...". That's not verbatim, but it's close enough. It says the same thing on every boss Soul, but I noticed on Vendrick's it specifically mentioned him linking the flame, so I included it here. Final note, you don't get his Soul from killing him. You find it in the Shrine of Amana, after you've killed him. It's in an empty room, sitting on a human-sized throne. Obviously the Vendrick you fight here is not human-sized. Hmmmm...