Decaying Ekzykes | Elden Ring Wiki

The Mohgwyn Sacred Spear ash of war just totally melted his power bar for an easy win

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Okay so I'm not tripping this guy is way bigger than any other wyvern type dragon in this game except Greyoll, which is interesting considering they're both rotting. Makes you wonder if Ekzykes could have eventually grew to Greyoll's size given time, and if her size is a mutation due in part to the rot.

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Surprised that there's no mention of black flame since it's fire dmg & given his high hp 23k, he'll take 470 just on sap alone

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Holy shlt, I had no idea he had such low defenses! No wonder I kill him regularly, with a measly +5 weapon! That's hilarious

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I'm a slacker and this isn't early-game, but I just destroyed him with Rain of Arrows and Bloodbone Arrows. Just southeast of the Caelid Highway South grace, there's a pile of rot with a tree and some red fungus shelves right by the road; it's close enough to sneak within range of where he usually stands. I'd just rain arrows on him, with bleed taking chunks of his health, and he'd often just let me fire numerous shots before reacting. Then I'd just hop on Torrent and run north along the road just far enough for him to forget me, then I'd go back and do it again.

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His name "Ekzykes" sounds similar to the Greek word for vengeance, "ekdikisi". This fits with his title "Dragon Communion Revenger". It might seem like a coincidence but the game uses Greek for some other names: the mimic in their cut quest was named Asimi, the Greek word for silver (because they are a silver tear) and Chelona's Rise is named after the Greek word for turtle.

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The only attack of his i have a problem with is when he just breaths at the ground and floods the entire zone with a high damage scarlet rot cloud.... why. The only way to avoid it is to hop on torrent and run as fast as you can, if torrent doesnt just spawn in standing still for some reason. I just wish it didnt spread as far, or at least not do so much damage when you are at t he edge of it. Everything else about him? fine. None of the wyvern-style dragons are hard in this game, at least not if you are prepared for them via equipment or general skill, but ekzykes is the only one i find difficult to kill when you are underleveled for him, or not using a cheese setup.

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On my very first playthrough, I basically walked up to this guy and killed him on the first try.
I was running a str / faith build and rocking a great sword with fire (I think), and I must have gotten very, very lucky.
Because for every subsequent playthrough this guy has knocked me on my ass more than most other bosses.
I thought I was hit ****, what a schmuck I was

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This guy looks like he’s in so much pain every second of his life. All the visibly scarlet rot infected enemies look so miserable. I feel like we’re doing them a favor by ending them.

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I swear officer I just wanted to give this stinky dragon some nice bubble bath with my brand new longhorn but then he just... Dissapeared?

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Vaal Hazak but ten times worse.

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Hello!

I actually been able to cheese it from the rocks above directly in front of the church. I summoned latenna to keep him aggro'd and pulled him from afar, got him stucked in the rocks after he made several jumps. Fire'd the fudge and doesnt move much after he finally reaches the top, he is too big and gets in a weird position, cant do much with the legs and the rot is in front. Poke poke roll back and gg wp bb.

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Let's be real here : none of the dragon bosses you encounter in the world are actually fun to fight because they're stupidly huge while also being skinny enough where they're hard to hit and their flying attacks are BS, but this one in particular is proof of why you shouldn't act like Miyazaki is some kind of god who has never designed unfair nonsense. Yeah let's make a status effect that you can only slow down the buildup of but not actually diminish the effects of, and then let's give this stupid dragon's gigantic breath attack that status effect in an area where the predominant color is already the same tone of sickly pink.

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Nail him in the head with fire for some big numbers, have Torrent on speed dial because his breath is death

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This guy could have stayed asleep and i wouldn't have ****ed with him. What an *******.

That area of effect he does has got to be one of the most bullshit attacks in the game.

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What the **** were they smoking when they came up with this shitty area to fight him in

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The fact my character can be impaled by zweihanders and halberds 16 times and just chug some fruit punch to feel better but sniffing one particle of this guy's bad breath makes him keel over and **** his pants to death instantly is just excruciatingly ridiculous.

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Currently on my tank build with nothing but caestus with nearly every point dumped in vigor and endurance, going up against this big boi in coop feels like the greatest flex

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You never have to worry about actually getting scarlet rot in this fight because the base damage of his breath attacks is up there with ****ing Placidusax, basically just had to no hit him on my faith run because his forward breath killed in literally 1 tick of damage from grazing against one of the little cloud particles. My vigor was kinda low, but not THAT low

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trash boss

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Ironically, the best place to be is between his feet. Trying to be cautious and keeping distance only ended in failure. His attacks are very predictable, just like other dragon's, with the only exception being the rot mist. Just stay away from the leg that is covered in mist and go for the other leg or the head. Be agressive. If you're a strenght build, switch affinity to fire. Use torrent just to dip out and back in when he does the breath attacks.

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On horseback wielding black flame worked well. My faithful archer girl was quickly killed once she drew aggro without doing much dps, but maybe she can be placed better. The main thing is to run/ride away like hell when he spreads scarlet rot everywhere, especially if you are melee, that is likely to be the move that gets you.

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Idc what hate i get for this. Ekzykes is my favorite dragon boss by a long shot. Borealis is also cool and I'd like Borealis more if he wasnt the only dragon who actually screwed me over but yeah. Anybody else a sucker for the scarlet rot aesthetic and stuff? I love rot in fiction idk why its always so cool

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If Elden ring had taco bell:

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By far the strongest flying dragon variant but drops only 38k runes

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To all people complaining about the fart AoE: ride behind him and hitbox will surely not catch you. Running/rolling behind the boss is a certified way to dodge most of AoE attacks in the game, like Borealis' roar. Anyways, it's possible to avoid being hit by the cloud by rushing backwards if you do it really quick. And please, stop complaining about everything. It seems like not "bad design" for some people on the wiki is that you are able to 1st try any boss by mashing rolls and attacks, and bosses don't have attacks that you can't figure out how to dodge without putting a single brain cell into it. The arena is kinda bad though, I agree

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I don't remember my first fight with this dragon being so terrible, but with a katana, his hit box might as well be non-existent. Likes to step *JUST* out of range when you swing. I swear I must gotten lucky the time he finally went down. Again, think this is weapon/situational dependence.

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As others have said, this is just a badly designed fight.
1) arena is too small, he's constantly getting stuck. Sometimes he despawns and recenters, sometimes he doesn't.
2) Graphics are garbage, sometimes I've got the red cloud all over me and don't get Rot, sometimes I see none around and get Rot and die.
3) Summons range is also garbage, you should be able to run all over and not lose your summons but you can't. If I plop Latenna up on a cliff (assuming I can get her to place correctly, which is another badly designed story) I have to stay nearby or she despawns.

I've killed this boss over half a dozen times and it's just another RNG fight. There's so much good about this game, but stuff like this that they never fix really takes a lot away.

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never stops ****ing shifting its hit boxes and moving all over the place plus massive nuke aoe that inflicts rot

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I absolutely shredded him with adula's lmao

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Anyone else think this most bosses are to big for their arena? Like this dude jumps backwards in the air and just gets stuck on the cliff and spams his rot breath. Its such bullshit

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Anyone else think this most bosses are to big for their arena? Like this dude jumps backwards in the air and just gets stuck on the cliff and spams his rot breath. Its such bullshit

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Coolest nuke in game.

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The deadliest fart

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For my fellow mages:
meteorite staff + rock sling

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Worst hit boxes, boss design, Boss fighting arena, literally just the worst boss in the game. I enjoy fighting Malenia more.

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this guy is basically the Tree Sentinel of the area where even if you can take on the normal enemies in the area no problem he can still be a bit of a b*tch to handle. Just sneak around him and come back a bit later

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beat this man with a level two golden halberd and 20 vigor, proudest achievement i have in this game.

Also why does this thing drop far less runes than borealis yet has almost double the amount of health that it has and is overall far harder.

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Flame of Redmane/Spectral Lance, Frenzied Flame or Rock Sling spam to Perma-Stagger his Head -> Also back off with 5s Torrent-Sprints during every Cry or Flying Animarion to avoid getting insta-gibbed. GL. Shitboss !

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Weird...none of my firebolt arrows did jackshit

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Posted Latenna on the ledge by the church and went to town on him with the Antspur rapier. Even got a rot proc on him near the end.

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This has to be one of the worst-designed bosses that FromSoft has ever put together. It's not even that it's difficult. All of this moves are telegraphed and can be avoided. And yet despite that, it's one of the most egregious, abysmal encounters in the game.

1. His Scarlet Rot cloud is stupidly large. Instead of having a cool fight where you are ducking, dodging and weaving through attacks, the counter is just "run away". In fact, you have to run so far that most of the time he de-aggros. Completely kills the pacing and atmosphere of the fight.

2. The arena is god-awful. Uneven terrain, obstacles that get in your away. Constantly robbed of punishes because his head ends up hovering out of reach or is buried in the ground. When he flies up to do his aerial Scarlet Rot attack, there's a good chance he lands on some elevated rocks out of melee range, which in turn prompts him to just use his rot breath, over and over again.

3. If you try to bait him away from the absolute trash that is his arena, he just de-spawns and teleports back to his starting position. The zone you can fight him in is absolutely tiny for a thing of that size. In fact, this happens frequently whether you're trying to lead him away or not, just because getting away from some of his attacks requires you to run some distance away. Again, completely kills the atmosphere of the fight when the boss just vanishes in front you 3+ times.

Absolutely zero thought went into this fight. Utter garbage.

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It's not even that his moves are hard to avoid (just fight a single non story related dragon and you know what to expect). It's just the one move where he spreads rot everywhere that made him hard to fight.

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Insane health pool, but incredibly weak to fire. It's obvious that black flame incantations will cheese it.

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Almost have to jump out of my computer and throw myself out of the window in order to avoid the scarlet rot breath, jesus

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Over a year and they still haven't fixed the god awful AI for the dragons getting stuck on the cliffs and only occasionally respawning. This boss wouldn't be that hard if the devs spent more than 3 seconds designing the arena for it.

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Arrow reach, faithful canvas talisman.
Dragon communion seal.
Frenzied Burst and flame of frenzy.
Bleed weapon.
Flame-Shrouding Cracked tear.
Atop the hill behind him; Attack from afar with FB, when he gets close use FFlame to break stance, use bloody slash once to activate bleed and critical hit. If he gets atop the hill, leave to deactivate agro and redo.

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People who say to use torrent, have yet to gain the achievement “Be enjoyable to be around.”

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I created like 14 small fire pots and 4 big fire pots, he lost more than 50% of his HP, just looking at me riding around him throwing fire pickle jars at him.

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One of the toughest opponents I've come across. I had to use a combination of Agheel's flame, Lionbow with Radhan Spears and finally (when I'd run out of FP flasks) ran in for a feet attack with double curved great swords. Phew

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Has anyone checked the Rotting Miasman hitbox?

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I've given thee courtesy enough *whips out spirit calling bell*

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This guy may have a lot of weaknesses, but then you realise he has about four times as much HP as Smarag and almost SEVEN times as much HP as Agheel. Seriously, even with the damage amplification and vulnerability to Bleed and Frostbite, he takes a LOT of damage to bring down. Which is a real pain when he casually decides to one-hit kill you by flying right above you so the camera spazzes out trying to track him, then dives down right on top of you.

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I feel bad about the poor dude he’s dying

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"Why don't we try adding in a unique, varied moveset for this dragon?"

"Nah, let's put it in a stupid area and make it harder to hit the head."

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Eckzykes' model is noticeably larger than other lesser dragons and has more hp than Borealis and Greyll combined. I would use this logic to say that he is the eldest child of Greyoll, even though there is no physical evidence of this stated in item descriptions.

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If anyone is wondering how to dodge the miasma without using the horse, you'll just have to try to guess to start running, right after you land the hit you think puts him at 70% to do it.
Try to use a hammer, or something good to rush a stance break before he gets to 70%, which will give you even more time to run away from the miasma after landing the critical hit

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Charged night comet + maxed cristallian staff main hand + staff of loss offhand + Godfrey icon + 60 int = 3k damage per hit at the head. If your main staff is at +6 or +7 damage falls a bit but still very good. Use torrent to avoid scarlet rot breath.

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I used agheels flame, and sword of night and flame.easy peasy

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High ground patched. Rot goes through rock

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Everyones complaining about the massive AOE like they don't have the ability to summon a damn horse on demand. Swallow your pride and run away for a couple of seconds

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Horse + Frenzied Burst worked well enough for me. Just have to be careful not to get stuck in an AoE or a beam attack.

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dragon halberd + kukris + horse when escape is needed EZ LOL

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**** boss. Glitched and fell under the map twice while fighting him.

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They really made this boss take 2x as much damage to fire and weak to everything else but people still want to complain

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Not only does the arena for this fight suck, with the boss constantly getting stuck on cliffs and making it extremely hard to hit him while he spews breath attacks at you, but he also has an extremely wide one-hit AOE attack that you can't escape on foot, so it forces you to use the worst and most horribly designed carpal tunnel-inducing part of this game: horseback combat.

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if you're really struggling with this boss, just throw on any of the dragon flame spells and the flame-shrouding cracked tear and you'll melt straight through it. did around 2k-3k damage per cast of dragonfire. free aim so you can hit its body and boom, boss gone and free rot breath when you get to the church.

any fire attacks work well too. frenzied burst can be good for long range and black flame spells are good for DOT.

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Putting Letenna on a high ledge near church did wonders. Continuous damage and distractions. She didn't take a single hit while I worked dragon and dodged rot on horseback

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you know it's a good boss when all the wiki comments are salt posting

glintblade phalax weapon art hitting his head makes for very easy knock downs, just hit his legs until he gives you an opportunity for head shots (fly back>breath attacks, him landing on weird elevation, etc)

if you get blasted by the AOE just chug through it and pop an anti scarlet rot afterwards, dragon moveset is pretty telegraphed so you should have plenty of estus

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I can live with the giant rot AOE. What I can't live with however is the fact that they just had to make this dragon bigger. Big enough that it's a major pain in the ass to reliably poke it's stupid face

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This is THE most bullshit AOE in the game, I used to think ulcerated tree spirit was bs too but learned to deal with it, now this sh!t bypasses rocks and its direction is not always obvious or logical (fu*k3r spits forward but breath goes backwards to his ass). Its health is nothing big but unless you successfully cheese it from afar it's always a binary fight, not fun in the least.

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Somehow the rot breath always kills me if I get in touch with it in one hit. I'm a bit satisfied with all those dam one shot attacks from all does bosses...

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After many times of trial and error I can confirm that to avoid his ability Ocean of Rot, running to Liurnia is sufficient.

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I managed to get him stuck/broken climbing the rocks above his area and then just cheesed him w like 150 arrows/bolts

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I found Latenna a useful summon for this fight. Her arrows have fantastic accuracy and range so you can park her on a cliff and let her rain DoT while you ride Torent around in circles dodging the rot and keeping aggro away from her with an occasional ankle swipe (ideally with a bleed weapon.)

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flame of the redmanes absolutely bullies this guy

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kill greyoll or agheel and purchase freeze breath. get flame sling from roundtable
use breath on horse and run away
goto the hill area at his side and use flame sling
repeat
did it on a lv 5 wretch with two finger heirloom, +5 in arcane and dragon communion seal +5
(somber 1 from the chair guy right past the bridge,2 from blaidd, 3 from the chair guy near the mausoleum in liurnia, 4 from aenoia swamp, 5 from the area with the graven mass near street sage ruins.)
5 flasks all allocated for cerulean tears


OR

get rain of arrows from redmane paainting (sellia) at the area below the tree avatar in dragonbarrow
get a longbow from roundtable
get arrows reach talisman
get bleed/poison and fire arrows
hit him once and run towards the area with the graves.
climb up the small branch and go to the end
use poison arrows with rain of arrows. 3/4 rains should do the trick
than use bleed arrows and if bleed procs rain fire arrows and alternate
6 cerulean flasks needed
tested on a level 5 wretch with 5 points in dex.
(ps: bleed and fire arrows work the best because it cant absorb fire that much and bleed procs quite frequently with it. Also because of the placement ezykeyes will have his head towards you so all arrows from the rain will hit his head.)

beware of the rot cloud attack tho. if it happens run away using horse.
good luck gives about 45k+ runes with fowl feet only

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I beat this game couple months ago and just seeing this name on the wiki triggers me. FromSoft if you ever come here to read "THIS IS A TERRIBLE BOSS FIGHT".
Shamefully its not the only terrible one.

This game was filled with shitty bossfights. The main ones and some other were dope but so much rehashing and uncreative ideas.

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The tip to use Flame of Frenzy was a huge help. Cast that when under his belly a few times and he collapses for like 6 seconds. Then I used a bleed weapon to do big damage and hack away until he gets up. Target lock is not your friend until you're about to cast. Aim for belly or head w/ target lock. Also use any tank ash to help. On his second "collapse" he was done.

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**** this boss

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This page is extremely wrong. I dont know how much he has, but he definitely doesnt have 20,000+hp. I’d be surprised if he has more than 10,000hp.

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Love it when he does a giant scarlet rot aoe fart that covers the entirety of Caelid.

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Wild. I just stood by his tail and whaled on him for ~3 minutes. ez cheezy

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NG+5 136800 runes

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completely missed this thing on my first playthrough, not sure how

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I decided to break down and do an Arcane hyper-bleed build with dragon incantations, and rotting + frost breath on this guy before chunking him with dual bleed twinblade jumping attacks was very cathartic after dying to him so many times before on other runs.

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The more I play elden ring the more I get disappointed by it. Hard to believe it's supposedly Miyazaki's ultimate work. Well then I guess even the best directors can mess up sometimes. But idk man this is not the only boss fight that is exceptionally dog tier, some many others are, it's like fromsoft didn't even care. Maybe trying to attract masses they were not thinking for a sec how poor the impression will be on their souls-borne fans, like do they even care for us anymore?

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Other tarnished are talking about cheese strategies or just how BS this boss is, and I'm just wondering how you pronounce "Ekzykes". Eckzeekeys? Eckzeeks? Eczema?

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This is the ultimate proof that FS runs out of ideas with Boss fights. ''Let's just give to a dragon a 100mt massive Rot aoe, massive air stomp, massive whip attack, and let's call it a great Boss/fight!". Hands down, DS3 had the best Boss fights ever. Challenging and hard, but fair & unique Boss fights, without cheap tactics/attacks.

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After trying to down this guy forever I finally discovered an easy way to snipe him. With your back to the Church of Dragon Communion, face his arena and crouch so he doesn’t see you (you should be facing northwest). Hit him with something ranged to wake him up, and then duck back down behind the rocks so he doesn’t see you. Wait until his aggro is off you - he’ll pace around in various directions looking to and fro for the idiot who dared to attack him. One his butt is facing you (his head is facing northwest) hit him with Lion Greatbow+Radahn’s Rain+Radahn’s Spears. There seems to be some kind of glitch when he’s oriented this way where you can hit him two or three times before he reacts. Duck back down as soon as he realizes he’s getting an unpleasant shower, then rinse and repeat until he croaks. Theoretically you could do this with any ranged weapon but I haven’t tried it.

Important note: Make sure to equip your Arrow’s Reach talisman when doing this lest you waste arrows by raining on yourself.

With this method you shouldn’t need to run from his rot breath until he does his really big cast, but I did just to be safe because my timing sucks. If you run to the back edge of the cathedral you should be safe - just make sure you take out that soldier in the cathedral first so you don’t get an ugly surprise.

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Huge boss: ✓
Bad camera: ✓
Skinny legs: ✓
Invisible AOE hitbox: ✓
The new boss formula. I do enjoy the notion of fighting a huge dragon though (but I need good music like Midir's theme).

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Flame of frenzy deals very high damage to this boss and breaks his poise in 2 fully charged casts. So rush in, cast power within\whatever-its-called-in-this-game following up with fully charged flame of frenzy. Pretty easy to pull of while he is waking up. Dodge his stop attack (that's what he will do most of the time) then cast another fully charged frenzy. If done correctly it will open him up for a riposte but personally i don't bother & just use normal combos with bleed weapons or 2 fully charged collossal r2 instead. Get on you horse as he's getting up & get ready to ride the hell way as he most likely will use one of his huge aoe breath attacks. Wait for whatever bs he used to end but stay at mid-distance to bait his dragon breath. The moment it starts ride to his side and use frenzy flame again. Plenty of time to use it twice fully charged which will break his poise again. Unless you're heavily underleveled he should not survive any longer. Bleed & fire are your best friends here. If you cant \don't wont to use frenzy flame, jumping attacks with something heavy twohanded plus claw talisman break his poise just fine as well. Just dont stay too long under him if on foot as his aoe breathing attacks are next to impossible to dodge unless you are already on you horse.

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This guy on no healing/no horse standard long sword only is quite tough.

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Another BS Elden Ring boss that’s only challenging because its BS and ignores all the rules. Breath weapon goes through trees, ground, rocks. Stomp attacks damage doesn’t line up with animation.

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His breath weapon hits you even if you are behind him and he’s aiming it in front of him. Its stupid as hell.

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any level
Rain of Arrows + Bloodbone arrows
eats any dragon's hp so easy it's unfair

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Level 36
7 FP pots
30 Kukri knives
The cheez way I found for killing this dragon.

Since your most likely spawning at the church, Head to the ridge above the dragon. Target the body (Head moves to much) Spam Frenzied Burst - the side sweep scarlet rot will not hit you. BE WARY of the front scarlet spew as that will destroy you. At a certain point the dragon will fly up to the ridge. Soon as he does this, mount and ride to the bottom. Dragon tends to get stuck on the cliff. Also if you some how burn him down to 50% while still topside - he has an aoe nuke that will Kill you.

So if you have the dragon topside snagged on the cliff (target body from down below), spam as much frenzied burst till he is under 50% health or near. I used 7 fp pots and then quickly started spamming Kukri knives. Just a little health left, dragon will stance break...just keep spamming. Easiest way I found so far for being way under leveled. Enjoy!

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Weird question I have about Elden Ring bosses; If they're going to have negative resistances across the board, why not just give them lower health proportional to their highest resistance? Opposite goes for bosses with 40% resistance in everything, why not just give them more health instead?

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I made a comment on 19th june about dying over and over, I have since beaten it. latenna at +4 summoned at the highest point possible overlooking the dragon was doing a surprising amount of damage to it, much more than I was expecting to see from her. I've tried lhutel and the wolves for this, lhutel lasts less than five minutes, I think the wolves die faster, neither summons did any worthwhile damage to the dragon at higher upgrade levels than latenna. I don't know if it had something to do with where I summoned her, maybe some of its attacks weren't hitting her but she lasted a lot longer than any other summon I've tried. I wouldn't have been able to do it without her.

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Here's a tip: use your horse

I do agree that the arena is small but with a bit of practice, a well timed getaway on your horse allows you to comfortably dodge all of the breath attacks

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