Elana, the Squalid Queen

 FUUUUUUCK THIS BATTLE

    I was originally going to condense this post, and my post about the Shulva/Dragon Sanctum area into one, but there is no way I wanna smoosh that all into one post. So here is a dedicated post to maybe the hardest (so far?) boss in the entirety of Dark Souls II (judging strictly by times died, at least)
   
    When you make your way down to Dragon's Rest (explore the high areas to either side. You have to jump to them, and there's those caped-knights to fight, but there are some goodies there), you're met with a huge fog gate. Could the size of the fog gate be a direct correlation to how incredibly hard and annoying a boss battle will be? Probably not. Well, take a deep breath, and come through the gate with me.
    When you go through the fog gate, you are inside a giant room with a beautiful dragon mosaic on the back wall. There's also some white candles laid out on the floor, perhaps in some sort of ritualistic manner. And what's in front of that mosaic, you might ask?

This is more to show off the room and that awesome-looking wall

    In case you can't see the minuscule figure in the above picture, that's Elana, the Squalid Queen. And boy, squalid she certainly is. She looks a little like Nashandra, and some of her attacks are similar. Except she's 100 times more difficult than Nashandra. Firstly, she's a tall decrepit woman wearing an ornate dress that I'm guessing is made of skin (or it at least looks like skin). When you first walk into the room, she babbles on about how you're going to rot, then she produces a mean axe out of thin air. This is by far her only method of attack.

Here she is, moments after crushing my skull with that axe

    She reminds me of the Darklurker fight a bit, because she has a zillion attacks. Firstly, if you get close, she can swing that axe like nobody's business. She will swing it once, twice, or thrice, so be careful of that. If you stand too close for too long, she'll unleash a flurry of dark magic that flies around her, like an AoE attack. It's easy to run away from, because she telegraphs it. The radius isn't very big either. If you are far from her, she'll shoot two variations of dark orbs: one is a straight line of three of them, and the other is a spread shot of five or six. Both these are fairly easy to dodge, but if you aren't paying attention, they can hurt like hell (especially the straight line. That can almost kill you by itself. The spread out one is really easy to dodge). Also, if you are far, she'll summon glowing red orbs that appear near you. They explode after a second or two. Again though, this is pretty easy to dodge. When you see them, just run. One attack she seems to do rarely (she might only use it if her health gets low, which would explain why I haven't seen it much) is a homing dark orb attack. Like the homing soul spells, she'll conjure three orbs over her head, and shoot them at you. Also, she likes to teleport around the room, disappearing in a puff of red smoke, which can get quite annoying. Here's what it looks like, in action:

Pictured: Annoyance

     You might be asking yourself why I can't beat her, when I describe all of her attacks as easy to dodge? Well, I've withheld one other thing she likes to do. She'll summon some minions to help her out. Oh fun! More gang-style fights. The first time I fought her, she summoned three golden skeletons. Other than the color, they are just normal skeletons. Two hits kills them. This isn't a huge deal, really. Just quickly dispatch the skeletons, and remember to pay attention to the shit she also throws at you.
    I died on my first attempt. On my second attempt, I saw her start to summon, and I was ready to smack those skeletons around some more. You should have seen my face when, instead of skeletons spawning, it was a nice gold version of Velstadt! What in the actual fuck? I'm not done with this DLC yet (obvi, guys), so I have no idea if there is any lore behind Velstadt being summoned here, or if it's just because he's a big, tough, enemy. It's not the full Velstadt experience, as he only swings his huge hammer. He doesn't get charged up or shoot his own dark magic. Still, with Elana firing all manner of dark bullshit at you, while you're trying to avoid the golden boy chasing after you with a huge hammer, it gets very hectic. I was still actually really enjoying the battle the first 8-10 times: as I said, it's hectic, but it's fun trying to run around, avoiding Velstadt, and getting hits in on the Queen. I'm now at 19 (failed) attempts, and it's not quite as fun anymore. I'm really holding out summoning help, because I'd love to do this by myself. The fact I'm on NG++ doesn't help, because my sword might as well be a little stick. It does between 450-550 damage (depending if I used Flame Weapon), and it barely scratches her. She must have like 30,000 HP or something crazy. I've gotten her down to about a quarter health once, otherwise most other attempts barely get to half health. One final note: she doesn't always summon Velstadt. I believe it's random between that and the skeletons (I'm trying not to read and spoil anything online for myself generally, but I did read she also summons golden pigs, or something? I've fought her 19 times and haven't seen that yet. I've even read she summons human players? Again, have not seen it).

    All that up there was from my original post from a few days ago. What you are about to read is all pure new goodness. There are no more pictures unfortunately, but there was no way I was wasting any time trying to capture pictures as I fought this boss for my thirtieth time (!!)

    Firstly, yes, I did beat Elana last night. Secondly, it was super fucking hard. Thirdly, I had to summon help. And fourthly, no, summoning help does not make this battle an incredibly easy cakewalk, like basically every other battle. If anything, it might be harder. But after trying I think 23 times on my own, to no avail, I needed help, otherwise I'd be stuck on her forever, and never get to check out the rest of the DLC. My strategy for meleeing her solo was to run at her as soon as I went through the fog gate, and and get as many attacks off as possible while she talked and produced her axe. I could usually get three or four. After that, I would stay close to her, dodge her axe smashes, and run when she did the dark AoE attack. Otherwise, I'd just take pot shots when I had an opening. This would have been perfectly acceptable if not for one thing: Velstadt.
     Every time she summoned Velstadt, that might as well have been the end of the battle. I just could. Not. Deal. With. Both of them at the same time. Maybe I just really suck, but meleeing her solo is an incredibly great challenge, and if any of you have done it, my hat is off to you. Again, I'm on NG++. I wonder how much different a normal NG battle is. Perhaps I'll have to try that some time. Because I'm dumb, I didn't take any notes. I meant to add this originally, but totally forgot. I tried five or six times with the Puzzling Stone Sword +4, and, meh, it was okay. It attacks quickly, and the two-hand attack is a thrust, which is nice, but it just didn't do enough damage on this boss to really justify using it. Oh well, still a really cool sword.
    Well, after getting crushed time and time again, I decided I would summon help. I didn't want to, but I was past the point of caring. First, I summoned NPC Steelheart Ellie and a player. We died. I then tried all sorts of combos of summoning: just Steelheart Ellie, her and a human player, two human players, one human player. I know you can summon Benhart here also, but I have no idea where his summon sign is. Thank god I had plenty of Human Effigies with me. I know, I could have been summoned and killed the boss to get my humanity back, but I wasn't in the mood to help. Plus, it seemed every time I did help someone, the world master got killed with Elana having like 10% of her health left.
    Hey, speaking of getting killed when the boss has 10% of her health left, that happened to me two times last night. There's nothing quite as rage inducing as having a boss almost dead, where literally three or four hits will kill them, but then you get killed instead. The worse was one such case, where I had two Sunbros helping me, and we were wrecking ass. We were all doing well, smashing Elana, smashing Velstadt, just doing some general smashing, and Elana was almost dead. I mean, a sliver of health. Five hits max, and she was dead. And then, out of nowhere, BAM! That fucking line of dark orbs killed me. How come I didn't dodge it? Oh, well, Velstadt was standing in the way, and I didn't see them until it was too late. That made me want to crush my controller into thousands of pieces.
    Eventually, late into the night, we were victorious. I summoned two humans players, and we went in. One of the guys got killed about halfway through the battle, but me and the other guy (I don't remember his name, maybe I'll write it down when I get home and include it here) persevered, and with excellent skill, and some luck, we took down Elana. I wish I could go more in depth with a specific strategy, but I don't really have one. If you're going melee, I'd suggest summoning. If you are one of those hardcore, "pssh, summoning is for n00bs, I'm too hardcore, and a REAL Souls player" kind of people, well, fuck off. I generally don't resort to summoning unless I have to, but I would never look down on someone that did it consistently. It's part of the game, and it levels the playing field. I mean, the fucking boss can summon people, why can't you?
    Sorry for that little tangent. I sent a thank you message to the guy that helped me kill her, and I added him as a friend on PSN (I'm nosferat3. Add me!). I'd like to add that this fight felt very fluid, and it barely lagged at all with summons, or playing as a summon. Most boss battles have some sort of lag when playing with human phantoms, this one seemed almost lag-free. At any rate, it felt great to get past that battle. Now, finally, I can explore more of this great DLC. Once Elana died, the giant dragon wall opened, revealing a path to a cave with a bonfire.
    What lies beyond the bonfire? Remember I mentioned that we wouldn't be seeing the last of that dragon, from the beginning? Yeah, well, let's jump from the frying pan to the fire here. Check back (hopefully) soon for the next installment of my boss posts.

    One final thing I forgot! Elana did in fact summon three golden pigs during one of our fights. They seemed identical to those little bastards that run around Majula. So random.

    The difficulty rating might seem extreme, and maybe I'm being emotional with it, but this boss (even with summons, which almost always brings the difficulty down to a 2 or 3) was harder than Darklurker, harder than the Throne Defenders (because they are SUPER easy with help), harder than Smelter Demon. Oi vey.

Times I died: 30 (yup, shattered my record of 21)
Difficulty: 9.5/10
Rating: 8/10