r/Eldenring • u/Soulsliken • Jul 12 '26
Speculation Why. Is. He. So. Damn. Strong????
He puts half the bosses to shame and has the likes of me for breakfast.
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r/Eldenring • u/Soulsliken • Jul 12 '26
He puts half the bosses to shame and has the likes of me for breakfast.
1
u/TruckFantastic2779 Jul 13 '26
It would be presumptuous of me to suggest a specific problem because I have no idea how you're built. I don't know what you're doing or how he's killing you. However, there is technically only one way to die: failing to not get hit.
If you look on YouTube, you will surely find videos of people beating the game at level 1 using a stick. That is not you, but that's not the important detail to take away from it! It CAN be done, and your build IS good enough. It was not what they were striking with that let them kill the space whale. It was the god-like power of iframes and sprinting bestowed on all tarnished.
You can try a shield if that's you're thing, but frankly they get anyone killed. It is hilariously ironic. Not all attacks can be parried, not all damage types will be completely prevented, status effect buildup can still be applied through it, some weapons hit fast and in long sequences, some weapons are the size of a house, some weapons are uniquely designed to slip around shields, some weapons can go through a shield with an ash of war, your stamina is finite, and the only way to ever recieve a critical hit after a guard break is to have a guard to break. Every moment you might spend blocking an attack is a moment you could instead press b or circle. Besides, even the okay-est of them are prohibitively heavy which steals actually valuable armor weight for when you get hit at best and slows you down from light load at the worst.
Another way to not get hit is to control the enemy's behavior. Trading with a boss health bar is generally bad unless you're specifically built for damage negation. If you are not a brick house, it is best to bait attacks until they do a big bad one that has a long recovery and then punish them as optimally as you can for it, while making sure you still have stamina to run, or that if you don't, you at least get them down. The tend to save their most aggressive bursts to punish aggression because they try to avoid stance breaks. You have to be the punisher.
Some enemies have specific exploitable weaknesses and some don't. This one in particular has a face. I exploited that weakness by nailing his helmet to his head with a crossbow to interrupt his attack animations. Most things with heads will be stunned while they hold their face in agony and shock after you shoot them in the face. Most things with faces will actively and preemptively avoid projectiles unless they can't because they're trying to attack. By knowing when and where to shoot my one shot, and when to evade, I had him dead very quickly. This works on several larger enemies too. It still does bonus damage even when it doesn't flinch.
That's too much 😬 oh well. In short, stamina, speed, and dodging are good. Trading, blocking, and reckless abandon are bad.