Burnt Ivory King

Closing the DLC out with another human with a sword!

    Once you make your way through the DLC, beat Aava, find  some Loyce Knights, and jump down into the Old Chaos, you're ready to fight the final boss of this Ivory King chapter. And let me say, it's a doozy. First, I'd like to discuss the interesting new mechanic that is introduced with this DLC (I think all the DLCs bring something cool to the table, whether it was the environmental puzzles of the "Sunken Crown" DLC, or the ashen idols of the "Iron King" DLC, or the Loyce Knights of this one. I'm glad From tried to do different things with each chapter). To make the final battle quite a bit easier (but don't worry, it's still aggravating and tedious), you can recruit three Loyce Knights hidden around Frozen Eleum Loyce. These three are all tough to find and the areas where they are locked away can be difficult to get through, but they really make the final battle much more manageable. 

    So, let's say you have your four Loyce Knights (you get one by default, and the other three need to be found) and you're ready to go. Well, where DO you go, exactly? Only probably one of the coolest looking places in the entire game! Once your find the Grand Cathedral and talk to the mysterious queen there (I don't recall her name, but she's the one controlling all the ice and snow (I assume), and the one that tells you to turn back right at the beginning), she'll melt some ice all throughout the DLC, and this will grant you access to new areas. One such area is directly behind the "throne room" of the Grand Cathedral. It's a round room, and the four Loyce Knights stand there, waiting for you. There's a fog gate too. Could you guess that the fog gate leads to the final boss? I mean, it looks ominous enough, right? Let's "jump on in" and find out! 

    I gave you a little hint right there! When you walk through the fog gate at the back of the Grand Cathedral, you jump down a long hole. Except "jump" is the wrong word. Immediately after you step through, you fall. And you fall for quite some time too, I might add. Sort of like the fall into the Abyss to fight the Four Kings in the first Dark Souls. Obviously when you land you don't take damage. After you and your loyal Knights fall down this long hole, you'll end up in Old Chaos. And talk about stunning! It's a large circular arena. You'll notice that there are three large doors (or portals) on the outside of the arena. You'll also notice the whole arena is surrounded by flowing lava and fire. It's quite a contrast to the blue and white snowy bullshit you've dealt with thus far. Finally, you'll notice huge, branch-like things hanging above you. They sort of look like parts of the Bed Of Chaos. Hmm. Bed Of Chaos? Old Chaos? I'm fairly sure there are some connections between the two, but I'm honestly not sure exactly what they are. It's pretty great anyway. And this whole area really looks spectacular, and it's one of my favorite areas of all the DLCs (maybe even the whole game). 

    Once you land, and after you're done marvelling at the scenery, it's time to begin this long, arduous battle. At first, three Charred Loyce Knights (they are charred black, compared to the normal silver ones that are your allies) come out of each of the large portals. You need to fight these Knights. Well, that's pretty obvious right? What DON'T you need to fight in this damn game? Vendors and NPC's I suppose. But that's beside the point. You fight these Knights, and now they keep spawning from the portals. You'll only fight six at time. I don't know if it's possible to fight more, but I only saw six. Each Knight isn't too difficult, but they are great at ganging up on you. And they will, too. They almost seem to ignore your knight allies. Which can get very frustrating, especially if you need to heal. I found healing to be difficult as well, because if you try to stop for a second, one or two of the enemy knights will smash you good. I died SEVERAL times just trying to heal.

You can see a few knights coming out of their portals.

    My basic strategy was to just run around the arena like a maniac, and try to draw one or two away from the huge gang-style fight that takes place in the middle of the arena. If you can fight one-on-one, they only take 5-6 hits to kill. Again, it can be tough to separate just one from the pack. However, as this large battle goes on, your Loyce Knight compatriots will sacrifice themselves to freeze those portals closed, so these charred knights don't infinitely spawn. As you fight, up to three of your knights will end up freezing the portals closed. Once you either freeze all three portals, or kill enough of the charred knights (in case you don't have three Loyce Knights with you to freeze the portals), a gigantic portal rises from the ground, at the end of the arena. After close to a full minute (well, maybe 30 seconds at least) of the gigantic portal rising up, the boss steps through it. 

    And guess what?? He's a human boss who wields a sword! Besides his boring appearance and similar design to several of the other DLC bosses, he's not bad. Just... uninspired. He's like a slower version of Sir Alonne. And as you guys know, I need to fight Sir Alonne again like I need a fucking flea infestation. This battle, however, ends in the strangest way I've ever seen a battle end in 4+ years playing Souls games. But probably not in a way you might expect.

Through the fire and flames

 
    Okay, so beside the fact that the Burnt King is boring to look out, he's a decent boss. The fact that you have to fight through the charred Knights first adds a new depth to the battle. I will say, it gets awfully tedious after a few times though, having to kill all those damn knights over and over again before even getting to the boss. I only died fourteen times to the boss, but I died at least ten (hell, probably more than that) more times than that just fighting all the Charred Knights. I've seen people online say that this fight is really like a giant battle, what with you, and your knights (and any summons) fighting a large group of other knights. I can agree with this partially. While it's great to see all the knights clashing and battling each other, again, it gets old after awhile. I appreciate From doing something different, and dare I say "epic" (not the frat guy, super-overused, devoid-of-all-meaning "epic". More like, "two warring bands of knights are fighting each other to the death" kind of "epic"), it just gets to be too much. 

    Boy, that paragraph didn't exactly go where I wanted to. Let's ACTUALLY talk about the fight with the Burnt Ivory King now. When he comes through the portal, he is invincible for a few seconds. After that, he's ready to attack. He has a few attacks, and they mainly consist of sword slices and thrusts. He'll come at you with various sword slashes, and he likes to jump up to slash too. He's slow anyway, but his jumping attacks seem to be especially sluggish. They are the easiest of his attacks to dodge. The name of this game is just getting the dodging timing down. At some point, he'll buff his sword (how original!!), and it'll become engulfed in a light blue light. I assume it's probably magic, but I'm not 100% sure. But his sword becomes much larger and longer. And just like with Fume Knight, Smelter Demon, and Alonne, this buffed, big sword breaks my brain. I had a much tougher time dodging this buffed sword, as opposed to his regular one. With his buffed sword, he can impale and throw you, which causes huge damage, as you can well imagine. He will also plunge his sword into the ground and cause huge icy spikes to come up in the area immediately around him. Similar to Aava's AoE attack. Now, I  believe he only does those two attacks when his sword is buffed. Good news though, at least the buff doesn't last through the whole fight. It'll run out eventually. 

    I tried this battle with three Loyce Knights, four Loyce Knights, an NPC summon, and both one and two human summons (again, along with the Knights). How did I finally best the Burnt Ivory King? Well, on my successful run, I summoned two human players. So there was a total of seven of us, and by the time we got to the Ivory King, it would be a four-on-one. We all made very quick work of the charred knights, then waited patiently for the king to come. He came, and the battle went on as normal for probably ten to fifteen seconds. I'm not sure what happened next, but the king froze (how ironic really!). As in, he just stood still and didn't move. At first I was dumbfounded. I hadn't experienced any kind of glitch like this before in a Souls game. He was being attacked by four guys, and he just stood and took it all. Didn't budge once, until his health got down to about a quarter, and he fell back slightly. But after that, he continued to remain motionless, like he was one of those guards in front of Buckingham Palace in the UK. All I could do was laugh as the four of us whaled on this still asshole. Sure, it felt cheap. Was I supposed to just quit and restart because it "wasn't a fair fight"? No, fuck that. This was probably the most fitting end I could have hoped for, in regards to this DLC. It's like the game knew how sick and tired I was of playing it, so it offered a punching bag as a branch of peace. So," Crown Of The Ivory King", thank you very much for glitching the final boss.

Blurry disco-dancing Burnt Ivory King

    I would have beaten him eventually anyway. But there is such a thing as burnout, and I've mentioned it a few times already. It's a really shitty feeling to attach to your favorite series of all time, let me tell you what. But sometimes, we just gotta stop, stand back, and just play something else for awhile. I'm gonna come back to DSII at some point. I'd really like to go through these DLCs again with a character on NG, instead of NG++, and see how much easier the bosses are. We'll see when that ever happens. 

    So, children, that's the tale I have to spin about the Burnt Ivory King. Sorry if it's not up to snuff completely, but I beat him probably two weeks ago. I haven't had a chance to write about it until right now. I've been very behind on this blog, and have spent the better part of two weeks trying to catch up. Also, sorry for the lack of pictures, and of their general qaulity. This was one of those situations where I really didn't want to waste valuable times/attempts just trying to get good pictures. So deal with it, ya clowns! At any rate, I am just about caught up with this blog. Once I do the write up for the overview of this DLC, I'll be all set. Look for that hopefully very soon (this week), and keep your eyes peeled for some retro B-LOG SLAYINGS!


Times I died: 14
Difficulty: 8/10
Rating: 6/10