Astel, Stars of Darkness | Elden Ring Wiki

This boss is just pure bullshit

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I found a more manageable way to fight it for melee builds. Equip a bow, any bow, doesnt matter if its at base level, buy 99 arrows. Equip your bow before summoning +10 mimic ash at the beginning of the fight. The mimic will proceed to spam the boss with arrows. What this does is it forces mid range engagement with the boss and divert its attention, during mid range combat it performs MORE punishable moves (example: tail attacks and gravity orb push). Hug its face all the time and swing away while it hopefully locks itself in mid range moveset.

Also, sprint a lot. Much better than rolling away at aoe attacks. If it starts doing the meteor rain, sprint to the edge of the arena, preferably by its side. Everytime it teleports, sprint away. If it starts the clone grab attack, sprint to the edge or the center of the arena.

I hate this boss, it feels like everything comes down to luck and I hate that feeling.

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Along with Vyke, one of the two bosses that died as it killed me. I'll take it.

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How in the freaking god this creature got in the mineshaft.

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I love how they took that BS grab attack.. and MULTIPLIED IT

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Latennasweep

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Seeing a lotta skill issues for one of the easiest bosses in the game? Seriously this and naturalborn have like… 2 difficult moves, and only because messing up the timing results in… death? Usually, maybe I need more vigor, that grab is brutal, but it’s otherwise quite easy

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While I highly enjoyed fighting Astel its genuinenly confusing to me why the stronger, beefed up version isn´t the one used for Ranni´s quest and is instead stuck in a random mine somewhere in who knows here

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I liked fighting the first Astel so much that I wanted to do it a second time. Said no one ever

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cheesed it with a bow with enchanted shot AOW so I don't miss. shooting rot and poison arrows at max range.

panic rolling whenever it does the meteor shower or the clone grab thing. other than those, the only thing it does at long range seems to be the double tail whip thingy which is easy enough to dodge.

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For those who are meleeing and struggling to dodge his ground slam that releases three progressively larger shockwaves; don't greed, don't stand under the boss, just take it slow.

I tried for about an hour wondering how you're supposed to dodge that one particular attack so I started playing safe (always in front of him, dodging out instead of in, etc) and beat him second try, using only a dose of my flask.

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Use your gravity weapons people. FallingStar, Radahn, Alabaster and Onyx Lord. they'll do the trick. this guy is also weak to status even if he's space rocks

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Rock sling, walk up during stagger, channel meteorite, dead. RL 88

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Hey are you having fun? Horsing around the snowfield, chopping giants' ankles off, parrying wolves and dodging arrows? Did you get your hopes up when you found this cool frozen mine full of gravity guys? Expecting a satisfying boss, huh?

Too bad, it's a mardi gras scorpion. It teleports behind you.

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For anybody struggling in ng+2 like I was, well placed attacks from a spear with giants hunt does pretty good damage. I found that the best windows to attack were after his long range tail attacks and after his lunge swipe attack

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probably the worst design boss in the game.

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tiche +black blade
easy win

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one of the worst bosses in the game in gameplay and design

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Latenna +10 makes this fight insanely easy

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how can they have remained completely stagnant when it comes to giant boss design?
you can't even focus to limbs to break them like in bloodborne, or cut off tails like in Dark Souls 1.

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This (and Godefroy) are the worst bosses in the game just because they are reused story/quest bosses.

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I sure hope you guys like stupid camera angles, boring mechanical movements, and chasing a teleporting enemy.

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I found godskin peeler and Lhutel particularly effective. Bait Astel to melee with chompers, dodge, charged L2. Jumping Headshots when time doesn’t allow the full charge. Dodge forward through circular AoE waves of magic. Don’t get eaten when Stelly teleports. Don’t waste time trying to apply status effects in my humble opinion.

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I really love that when you fight this boss sometimes, RNG keeps telling you to run at least 2km away every single time you get close.

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Less than ten attempts, whooped that ass. Mimic tear, rivers of blood! RHEEEE

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why did this guy make my game lag so much, the normal astel didn't but this guy made me lag like crazy

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This is the only time in this game I said "you know what, I don't need to fight this guy" and quit. Would I eventually be able to kill him if I kept trying? Yes. Would I be having fun? Not a bit

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This POS needs an RNG guard waves of darkness spam

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Of all the bosses they could've reused, they chose the most broken piece of crap unfun boss in the game.

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My summon killed the boss after I died. Got no rewards. Boss didn't respawn. Thankyou fromsoft

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45 vig and die in two Hits, awesome

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Took 20ish min on 120 STR ARC build using Greatsword. Died every single time to that clone grab as I didn’t know how to avoid it and didn’t wanna look. I basically stayed super close to his head and stunned him with lion claw while procing bleed and finished with crit hit. Greatsword is just so damn satisfying to use.

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This is one of the worse bosses imo. Losing lock on just to have the boss appear from offscreen with an instant-kill grab? Yea, I'll be having none of that. Really annoying hitbox when underneath him. Meteor shower is such a particle spam I just roll frantically hoping nothing hits me (which it almost never does for some reason) because god forbid I can actually see what is happening.

Not a fan.

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Miyazaki might have mental issue. The camera can't keep up eventhough I locked on. The white reticle went off-bound so many times, it's glitchy. How tf do I beat it summonless if I can't see where it is going?

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It's like your fighting the damn camera more than the actual boss

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Use falling star beast jaw L2 and stay under it it will be dead in 10 uses of skill

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Just use uplifting aromatic, if you think you'll get one-shot LMAO

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Why does he look like oops all berries

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genuinely one of the easiest bosses in the game on my first playthru (battlemage build, had a twinblade with loretta's ash of war on it and magic affinity with Godrick Soldier spirits). dont know how people are getting hit by that super telegraphed attack and more over how they're so underleveled in the Consecrated Snowfield. i was like 150 when i got there and theres multiple ppl saying they were only lvl 70??? Snowfield is a post-endgame area how are people THAT underleveled lmao

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Astel is terrified of Spirit Jellyfish.
Summon a +10 and hack-a-way all day while Astel is distracted.

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I powerstanced Blasphemous Blade on NG1 and it took me like 20 tries. I think this one is more difficult than the Naturalborn

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Was struggling. Saw the new guardian build. First try beat it. Difficulty became equal to Limgrave Goat

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>Read the comments
>Upgrade my Death Ritual Spear
>Summon someone
>They have the same weapon
>Spawn Astel v2
>We spam Spearcall Ritual
>Mission success!

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Cool boss fight, but screw all grab attacks of any boss. They are just unfair one shots where if you fail one dodge you die and have to start over again.

Can you survive the strongest grab attack at Ng+7 without using buffs? Because I don't feel like you should be forced to use buffs to be able to survive an attack.

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For a faith build doing primarily Holy damage (lol), Stone of Gurranq worked best. Flies did track, but it was too slippery and the spell would fizzle half of the time. Stone would keep going until it hit the massive hitbox and not keep going for the head. Stone combos underneath the beast work great. High magic negate helps with the meteors but not necessary.

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I hate this boss with every fiber of my being

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Wings of Astel Art of War spam on his head to victory.

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Hey everyone. It's me that guy who usually wields gigabungus weapons.

I actually killed Astel yesterday and forgot to write about the experience because it was pretty bad. I just got under the stupid slimey limey and started blasting.

The Moonveil katana interestingly enough has like 50% magic block so I popped on magic defense talismans to fearlessly charge through the sniper shots and get under the stupid alien space snake. By rolling just slightly behind his head, you can avoid like 90% of his moves.

I also summoned a summon for the fight and of course its me the +10 Mimic so Astel was pastel when I was done salami-ing him into bite size runes with me, the best sous chef. Didn't get to phase 2 and I felt like the boss might of possibly gone down surprisingly faster than my first run with Gigabungus Larry and his two big gigabungus swords...

Guess it goes to show having range just technically means you kill things faster but STR weapons rule int weapons drool Astel is bad and if you cant kill him I recommend opaline flask tear and the pearlescent talisman and the magic defense talisman in tandem to reach high enough magic defense to use less supplies although the fight ends pretty quickly at 120RL.

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Honestly seeing all the posts below made me want to post my experience with this guy.

My first experience was with a STR heavy RaGS character. I jump attacked everything and that usually did the trick. I hardly remember this fight nor did I know he had a clone grab attack but honestly I feel like release Elden Ring and current Elden Ring are completely different animals. In fact, I plan on writing on my second experience shortly because I just made a 2nd character after a few months to play in the colosseum update which isn't a STR character.

That being said why spend 3 seconds on a spell to potentially miss and waste mana leaving you defenseless when you can just spend 1 jump attacking? Less frames to punish because you don't waste time taking a deep breath and compose yourself after lifting your arm up from not leveling strength.

If you guys are here reading about this wiki to beat the guy this late into the game, just do yourselves a favor and level strength and vigor and learn how to ooga booga because that is literally the precursor to any build; hell you can even oonga boonga with certain mage weapons with certain poise damage thresh holds but STR builds just have all the best gigabungus weapons and use less talismans to achieve damage which means they can do bazongas more damage in the long run if you really wanted to sweat it so if you are really the gigabrain, why even fight it?

STR builds have always been the supreme build of all FromSoft games. STR players have this weird stigma of being stupid braindead players but like do you guys know how much calculus and trigonometry an average STR player needs to know in order to pull off a max range perfect frame jump attack to hit someone who took a second too late to consider their choices because they decided to get within hitting distance of a player wielding a gigabungus weapon? Did you know every strength player may not keep track of faces slain but they know the exact number of people killed because of their simple tried but true method of running in to hit something really really hard? The amount of tactic and skill a STR player must exhibit to get to his target despite whether the target can make the stars themselves rain down, hurl lightning bolts of pure power constructed from the vestigial remnants of power left within ancient ashes of olden warriors of mythological ilk, throw the god damn SUN at them?

Stay tuned for my experience with this guy on my not good character because I decided I wanted to use magic. God magic just sucks every time ever since Dark Souls 1 and 2.

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Lol. 40% damage block on anything other than physical. Talk about lazy artificial difficulty. Used to be a time we had to figure out a bosses specific weaknesses and plan a build using specific infusions to get best results. Now it's just a simple matter of hitting them on the head till they die and if your char isn't a melee build with high Phys damage then too bad.

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finally killed this bastard, thanks to them not doing the clone attack at all. Thank you RNG gods

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The thing that does me in with him isn't that he has the grab attack, it's that by the time I've adjusted the camera, it's normally too late. Otherwise, I really enjoy the rest of the fight and can manage him

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20 str, 22 dex, +23 normal club
charge attack, jump attack
EZ

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Confessor, paladin build. Believe it or not I used the Stone of Guranq most effectively on this one. Astel cannot handle physical dmg. Currently 50 str, 50 faith, 31 Int, 49 Vigor. Godricks great rune active. Had trouble staying on the head for sword or dagger dmg. Tiche did her job well as soon as I started running in toward the boss. Remember to dodge to the side for long range attacks.

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was rather easy for me:
60str,heavy greatsword +25 with Lions Claw AoW. , bullhorn chest and pants,rest crucible knight. mixed physiq: str + guard break.

Flame GMS + Golden Vow buffed, run up to its head and just go apeshit with Lions Claw until guard break, riposte and he is already almost dead.

Lions Claw has hyper armor plus that frontflip which will always hit the head

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Only after Tiche FINALLY STARTED ATTACKING did the boss actually start melting, 7 attempts, and no Spirit Ashes felt like taking aggro from the boss, not even Greatshield guys. But the moment Tiche finally decided "oh yeah, I'm in a boss fight" the last 40% of Astel's Health plummeted.

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Spend your runes before fighting this boss, if your spirit summons does what mine did here you'll be fighting Astel solo while they slowly walk the perimeter of the boss arena.

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Enter the arena, see Astel, remember how I hated the fight with the first Astel (killed him on 5th try), **** this guy, **** this place. Didn't bother and left him.

Might come back totally over-leveled just to spank him easily and laugh, because **** him

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After half a dozen ulcerated tree spirits, nine erdtree avatars some of them putrid, two Mohgs, two Astels, two Margits and one Morgott, a golden shade and then the real deal and f**k knows how many burial watchdogs, I think the unique in "bosses are unique and challenging enemies" is redundant at this point.

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I had an issue with this boss earlier on. I summoned the mimic but all it did was walk around the perimeter of the boss area while astel was fully focused on me, that turned out exactly the way you'd expect. I thought the issue was the mimic so I tried dung, he was very good for this fight in my first playthrough but this time he did exactly the same thing as the mimic just walking slowly around the boss room and doing sweet f**k all else. Radahn's rain was doing good damage to its head but I think I got to double figures with how many times it killed me.

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How i cheesed this guy, use latenna, put her near entrance door. use greatshield and consumables (kukri and poison dart or pots if you want), rotten breath, shabiri woe and magic defense talisman, armor heavy on magic defense. shield with high magic defense. Seriously, his attacks are easy to dodge as long as you keep proper distance. Lock on his head for poison dart and kukri. I poison him first, then rot him, and finish it up with kukris, the blood loss damage on him is insane. I didn't even need to use any flask to restor HP, only to restore FP after rotten breath. Only use rotten breath when he's using the 3-tier gravity slam since his recovery time is long on that. Don't get greedy attacking and you're fine.

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This boss is a shining example of how shitty the late game design becomes in this game. It's mostly a carbon copy of the earlier Astel because I guess From wanted to go ahead and get the game over with, and their idea of making it unique was to include one of the single most bullshit attacks in the entire game: the clone teleport grab.
The boss can use this attack at any point once you've knocked down about 50% damage (and uses the regular grab once you've hit 20%), and you'll only know the attack is coming once you see multiple portals above you. The first time the boss uses this attack, you can run to the center of the area and likely avoid it, however the second time you literally cannot get away from it. Run to the middle? All of the clones converge to that spot. Roll through? Nope, can't roll through grab attacks. Run through and get behind? The ridiculous hitbox will cause you to still get sucked in. Maybe jump? Maybe jump off a bridge instead. The only way to avoid the second clone grab is to kill the bastard if you have the chance. I've gotten the health down to a smidge, then boom the Naruto crap kills me.
I've played this game for entirely too many hours, and when I first bought the game I wanted to go through and defeat every single boss. This one is NOT worth it.

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He may be resistant to hemorrhage but standing under him and using Reduvia still wrecks him.

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Beat this guy at lvl 70. Never again. Was one of the most painful fights ever. Thumbs up to those people who be beating the game at lvl 15-30

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That grab attack where he clones himself is really making me hate this boss

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The AoW Black Flame Tornado is super effective when done right under him. It took me three tries and on the second I saw that black flame really takes chunks out of him while regular fire doesn't.

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What level are y'all when you beat this guy? I'm trying to figure out if I'm severely underleveled for this guy or if he just sucks that bad. I'm level 124 and I haven't had any major issues with bosses or enemies up to this point, but I just can't beat this guy. He always teleports directly above my head and grabs me, or he spawns a clone on my head that grabs me. It seems really unfair because I have no way of knowing where he is going to port to or what he will follow up with after... halp halp

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A good thing to know about this boss is that a lot of his seemingly unavoidable attacks can be rolled through with the right timing. You can easily roll through the grab, the reverse gravity and the gravity wave. Once you learn this, he's honestly a pretty fun boss. However, I can see why the grab can be obnoxious the first time through, and I thought it was BS too until I learned to roll under him and not away from him. Still don't know why two different otherworldly godlike aliens would look exactly the same, but I guess I shouldn't expect that much from this game.

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Be careful; I used Ekzyke's Decay on this boss, he used the 1 shot grab attack at me at the end and killed me, but burned out as I was dying. I did get the item, but didn't get any runes for killing them.

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Uncanny resemblance to Dark beast Paarl from bloodborne

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THis guys 260 grab that always one shot you makes waterfowl dance look soft

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This is a boss that, at any given point in the fight, can do an grab attack that is practically unavoidable and most certainly will kill the player.

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Hit boxes are wonky on this guy...

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I summoned Tiche +9 and managed to get scarlet rot dragon after 2 tries and then held on for dear life, was trying Shard Spiral but I don't think any actually even hit lol. Tiche did most of the damage honestly didn't know her bleed proc was so good, I was working so hard just to heal up most of the itme, next thing I knew he was dead.

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This thing...I killed it before it done it's clone encircle teleport grab BS. But it's death animation didn't play until it'd crushed and killed me, we died at the same time..But of course, it didn't die! I was quite unhappy. This play through I'm a mage so I'll kick it's ass.

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As someone who managed to fight this guy before the weaker version i can say in confidence that i hate them both equally and this is probably my least favorite boss in the game

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and they say ds2 has bad hitboxes hahaha

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Royal pain to beat; 20+? attempts; ended up ROB OH + Fire Uchi [Flame of red manes]] w/ Ekzyke Decay + my man Dung Eater. Still a close fight

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super hard boss!! for a mage.. my mimic and I woudl slowly whittle astel down with rock sling but he owuld always grab me and kill me before we could do his last 10%!!! until finally i got pissed off and use spearcall ritual on him once he had been poise broken with soem rockslings.. he never recovered form that.. it casts quciker than rock sling and once hes down the spears blanket him and its curtains then..

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Hmmm, either they all develop into Astel or there were 2 astels, 1 taking the sky of a city and 1 taking a city underground. The fallingstar beasts develop into Astels and the graven schools could be eggs that hatch a fallingstar beast, since these things appear to have a deep history with the moons.

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This took me a good 10 attempts before I got it. Black Knife Tiche and Rotten Breathe eventually got me it.
Although he's resistant to it, it still does damage over time which allows you to back off a bit. But other than that, it was Bloodhounds Fang to the head repeatedly.
Thanks whoever said to use Black Knight Tiche. He has an attack that does DoT as well.

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*** amygdala

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A few too many reskins of bosses methinks.

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Marionette soldier ashes +9 and rock sling made this a much easier fight for me. They aggro her and take all the attention off. Few hits of rock sling to the head staggers her.

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This one was hard for me. Most other boss fights - major boss fights - didn't trip me up like this one. Homie had my number with that grab (and eat you like an ear of corn) attack. And then the one time he and all his boys did me at he same time from every angle - funny as Hell, in a fairly demoralizing way.

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I had spelldrake talisman+2 and dragoncrest greatshield talisman. Used flame of redmanes with a katana and black knife tiche. She kept distracting the boss while i spammed flame of redmanes. It breaks posture and staggers so easily.

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Why is the video on astel naturalborn of the void instead of stars of darkness? Stars of darkness has different attacks in phase 2 that you never see from naturalborn

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I really struggled with this boss, especially because my first fight with him was on NG+4, but I found out that using the mimic with some bulky armor, and the Fallingstar Beast Jaw weapon really helps. Just spam L2 with the weapon and after about 4 hits you’ll poise break astel

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Sooooo... people know this boss is optional, right?

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Just use a tanky mimic tear to distract it while pelting it with rock sling. Works great, you just have to be careful to back off when it agros on you, to get it back on the mimic. Even better if the mimic has a bleed weapon.

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Bring a weapon with vertical reach and don't bother with a shield

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90% of the fight is running away from its fast AOE and it sucks ass

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More like *******,Stars of Darkness

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I love sitting on the ground for 5 seconds so he can hit me with a wake up 1 shot every time he sneezes on me. I never got the impression that From outsourced their boss mechanics to another company until now.

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Black knife +9
Carian filigreed crest
Shard of alexander
Pearldrake and spelldrake talismans +2

Keep your distance and use blade of death from the knife

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This boss is a coding bug, why else would they do this.

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As a noob, I'll do my best give some tips that might help with your struggles.

1. For its charged blast, it's pretty difficult to dodge it. So I recommend a light shield with high magic and physical defence (I used Silver Mirrorshield) to counter it. You could also seek cover behind fragile stalagmites(So only at the start of fight) which somehow shields you.

2. For its tail whips, I recommend sprinting diagonally to close distance while Astel misses its hits. Shields are viable too.

3. For its AOE "grab attack" where you get launched into air then insta-killed by Newton's 3rd Law(Basically death by being slammed into ground), you can actually "dodge" it with i-frames. I *think* the timing is right after it does its chomp.

4. For its teleport then suprise grab attack, I recommend walking towards it then aim to dodge behind its claws.

5. I'm certain you can survive the grab attacks, but you will need at least 1600hp (Might be inaccurate) without taking buffs/debuffs and talismans into consideration.

6. For meteorites attack, just use shields. It will probably break your poise but will increase your chances of survival.

7. No clue how to dodge its final phase change attack(10× Astel clones), think I accidentally skipped them by killing it quickly.

8. Can't give much tips on attacks, but for melee(Uchi for reference), I spammed Unsheathe on its head next to its claw(Not directly inside its claws) to maximise dmg and poise breaks.
For dragon communion build, I spammed Ezykes Decay while maximising my distance from it(Preferably not in front due to its chained pincer attacks).

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I died multiple times with a STR/FTH build, and then I used rebirth for an optimized Wing of Astel+9 build. Used Golden Greatshield and the typical damage increasing talisman / flask mix. This boss melted surprisingly fast with the ash of war in combination with the damage increase to gravity type enemies. It was extremely easy then and I beat him on my first try.

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I used maxed Lion Bow, mimic and spammed Radahn's Rain with Radahn's Spear arrows about 10-15 times. Got my damage resistance pretty high with talismans, crab, potions and Bull Goat, so the grab took like 60% hp. 40 vig 60 end and just enough str/dex for most weapons and ate an arc. This way the fight was easy, but before putting all this on I died quite a few times.

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I know it gets a lot of hates, but weirdly enough this guy is not immune to hemorrhage, so if you want to melt him and get over it you can use dual seppuku, it works wonder. Oh and he's "strong" against it but 252 is not that high at this part of the game. I beat him in NG+3, level 150, dual seppuku, spelldrake talisman +2, oppaline hardtear for his magic damage and dragoncrest greatshield for his physical damage. And no summons, if that matters.

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