What was left unsaid here is that I skipped the beasts, the rock throwers, the spiders, and even John Carmack. That one really hurt though. I really wanted to fight John Carmack. But I followed your instructions and ran past him.
I found not one, but two shortcuts to be able to skip all that next time!
And the next boss is really neat. Nothing like I’ve ever fought before in these games.
It’s always wild to me hearing what bosses people find easy/hard.
I’m not a good souls player so this isn’t a flex by any means, but once I figured out I had to stay in front of Midir 100% of the time, I didn’t find the fight easy, but it felt manageable. Enjoyable even. I did manage to knock him down solo after a dozen or so attempts. There is of course some RNG in there where he would kill me in 30 seconds flat if he started with back to back charge/flame combos. But staying in front, staying aggressive, and rolling backwards worked really well.
I helped a pal out with him and that was much harder because the aggro was difficult to manage. Not to mention the increased healthpool.
It’s easily my favorite fight in DS3.
Orphan on the other hand…I’d say I attempted him solo and with a friend maybe 50 times?
Victory was never so sweet.
So there is a rumor only 1 day old stating that a remastered Bloodborne will be available on PC soon. Damn I hope that is true.
I felt bad that we never downed him for you. :(
I guess if it’s true, I’d probably buy it again on PC. Just to be able to play it with player messages and a better frame rate.
I would buy it to play on PC just so I could play it online. With the PS4 I was never online.
boy, after killing bloodstarved beast, the newly opened cathedral district is huge. Also found the secret workshop area door, had to lookup how to jump down … found a door with a password. I got killed and have no idea where I was ;) Also some monster has eaten my insight? I remember I had 8… then I had trouble with this tentacle thing it grabbed me and sucked me … a couple of times. Later when I looked, my insight was down to 4. I bet this sucker did it!
Yes, those things are the worst. Two D&D references in one: an illithid that drains “levels” like undead used to.
Looks like the rumour mill for a PC port is in full swing.
Almost confirmed? Please let it be…
Yea, I never carried much Insight because of that, at least until I felt better fighting those things. I can imagine if you played online with friends those beasties were a real nuisance as you need insight to summon them.
A lot of times it comes down to some measurable factors: your build, the type of weapon you are using, and even how you are fighting the boss. It might be some or all of those things are hard-countered by the boss (or vice versa.) If you don’t change anything and keep trying…the boss will remain difficult.
This was most apparent when on a second playthough of Dark Souls I completely destroyed the Stray Demon first try effortlessly…I already knew how to fight him, but besides that I happened to be using a bleed weapon which turns out to be a hard-counter against him. He isn’t even a hard boss, but it was a complete 180 from the first time I beat him.
Midir is in his own special tier of difficulty. As a Dragon though lightning is the most damaging elemental type…also people reportedly cheese him using Pestilent Mist apparently.
But I would say even if you use a lightning weapon (I crafted one specifically to take him down) and attack his head for optimal damage, it is still an endurance fight (his massive health pool) replete with a high difficulty in execution. (learning, dodging, baiting, and exploiting all his attacks isn’t easy and takes practice)
I knew Midir had a reputation for being super hard from reading our sorta-joint-QT3 playthrough from last year…long after I had given up on The Ringed City, i was reading comments from Krok plugging away like a champ, instead of folding like me.
So, when I eventually returned to the Ringed City a couple weeks ago, I was expecting the worst, and after a few blind attempts, I watched a video about staying in front and attacking the head and eventually i put all the pieces together and was able to win the day.
That said, i think playing the DLC immediately after finishing the base game is a mistake. At least for me personally. I played all the souls games one after the other and each time, when I got to the DLC, I found the difficulty spike super punishing. I would immediately get discouraged, the fatigue would set in, and I would just give up.
It happened with DS1 (i never did beat kalameet and manus), DS2 (i attempted the first DLC and got discouraged by the puzzle mechanics immediately), with BB (i kept pressing on there because i was playing with a friend, but it took months for us to finish the old hunters), and DS3 (i gave up when i got nuked by an angle for the 1000x time).
I am in no way saying Midir is an easy fight. It’s just that when I finally came upon him in quarantine, i was fresh and ready for a challenge, eager for new souls content, and I think that helped me.
Now I want to go back to DS1’s DLC and finally polish off manus and kalameet. I think it’s good to have a white whale in these games.
I used the Wolf Knight’s Greatsword +5, 2 handed, with a qualityish build (more STR than DEX). I stayed glued to the head. I was around level 112.
Report back when you beat him in NG+. :)
The biggest thing is his health pool has grown to a depressing size. Summons are worthless because the last thing you want is giving him even more HP. The fight is very long start to finish. I’d routinely run out of etsus half-way through the fight from getting clipped too much. In this way it is a HP attrition race. Get hit too much and you’ll simply run out of etus and die before you can deal enough damage and kill him. IIRC I would switch to humanity healing if I got him critical and ran out of etus. Only boss I ever had to resort to this.
In DS3 you could only do that once, and then only if you went into the fight unembered. In the previous 2 games I think you could eat humanity like candy to heal if you wanted to.
This game is tricking you into thinking that when you get a hit and lose a lot of health, go back into the fight and get back the health. I tried this on several occasions, but it is a very risky approach, instead of just healing. Especially risky with bosses, big guys. Learned my lesson again with Vicar Amelia.
Rallying is totally viable, encouraged even, as blood vials can be a little hard to come by. Not as advisable on bosses tho, that’s true.
Not sure if you’ve noticed this yet, but if you keep attacking an enemy after they are dead, you can still get back a bit of health. So keep swinging away at dead bodies!
Staying right up in his face cuts down on the frequency of Midir’s most damaging attacks (the overhead AOE, the Laser, and IMO the worst of the bunch, the Charge), and tends to bait him into his swipe/bite combos. Once you get the hang of it, avoiding the AOE isn’t so bad. As soon as he takes off just book it to the edge of the area. When he lands close distance as soon as you can.
The thing that gave me the most trouble was the charge. I found it nearly impossible to dodge it completely. Just being clipped by it still hurts a lot.
For me, this was one of those fights where locking on was actually beneficial, since you want to be dodging backward, not side to side. Side to side is death because of the way the swipes work. If you dodge backward and have a feel for what combo is coming at you, you’ll never get hit.
The big damage opportunity is when he rears his head all the way back and slams his face at you. You can land 2-3 R1s, or a charged up R2.
The demon princes actually prep you for the Midir fight. A lot of their combos are the same. Swipe, swipe, swim move, head attack, with a brief moment of opportunity at the end.
Midir is waaaay more intimidating obviously, and if he knocks you off your game early, or RNGs into a bad starting string of attacks, it’s game over.
Hope no one minds all the Midir talk in the BB thread…if you want to give it a few attempts I’d happily tag along for moral support, I haven’t launched into my NG+ yet.
Yeah, you are right, which now reminds me. I at first would burn embers to go full health for the fight but later forgo to consume them for a final heal if I got close to beating him…or it might be, probably the other way around.
It works but yea, it can also lead to being over aggressive and getting smacked. It is an interesting idea though and I do like the way they implemented it.