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Dark Souls II: Boss Breakdown, Part 6 [Thoughts (Games), #6F]

Time to start talking about the bosses in the Shaded Woods/Brightstone Cove Tseldora branch of the early game.

SCORPIONESS NAJKA Also referred to as “Quelaag Lite,” Najka is the obligatory half-woman, half-arthropod boss.

Najka’s not a particularly complicated lass. She can attack with her staff, her claws, her two stingers, and she can burrow underground to try and emerge from under your feet and knock you down. She hits pretty hard, but her blind spot if typically her sides, where her legs are, specifically the front-most two legs. Press up against those and most attacks will miss. Of course, it’s pretty easy for her to track you or jump away, so repositioning will be constant.

When she burrows underground, the fight becomes tedious for a moment. Just move over to the concrete slab jutting out of the ground near the back of the arena, and play the waiting game. She’ll pop back out eventually. She also has the ever-annoying Homing Crystal Soulmass, which launches five or six (I forget) crystal soul arrows at you. If you have low enough magic defense and/or a shield with very low magic defense, you WILL die if all six hit you. Luckily, they whiz by if you simply strafe to the right, assuming you’re somewhat far away from her. Otherwise, use rolls.

Najka seemingly has most of her bases covered, but she has one major, major flaw: attacks involving her tails/stingers have insanely long, drawn-out animations that leave her open for several straight seconds without any sort of temporary defense increases that some bosses have. Two stand out in particular: a sweep, and a thrash attack, which has her wildly smash her tails on the ground. Both are baited out by standing behind her (stand close for the sweep, stand a bit farther away for the thrash), and both take FOREVER to end, especially the thrash. This makes summons particularly useful for this fight, because of you can bait out tail attacks all day while the other whales on her. If you have high enough AR, you can drain her HP by a third, or maybe even half, by the time she finishes her tail smashes. This is a massive weakness, but if you don’t know this, you might have tough time.

There are two NPC summons available for this fight: Manscorpion Tark, who must be spoken to with the Ring of Whispers equipped, and Bradley of the Old Guard, whose sign only shows up after you kill ALL forest guardians (the invisible assholes) in the area (not the foggy area, though) for the first time. He only appears in Scholar of the First Sin, though. Bradley is particularly useful thanks to his wide variety of miracles, including Great Heal, all of which have infinite uses. He’s one of the few NPC summon capable of staying alive for his respective boss fights for every variation of NG and NG+. He’s a true bro.

Design-wise, Najka is just Quelaag, but with a scorpion body instead of the spider body. That’s it. That’s not to say she doesn’t look interesting, but it’s not a terribly unique design. Her arena is huge and allows for a lot of wiggle room, thank goodness, but aesthetically isn’t much to look at. Just lots of sand.

Again, another boss fight I don’t feel strongly about one way or another. Once in a blue moon, I still manage to die to her, because of how hard she hits, coupled with how fast her claw attacks come out, but she usually turns into a complete joke with just one summon to help out.

ROYAL RAT AUTHORITY Also known as “Budget Sif”, Royal Rat Authority isn’t a very popular boss fight, for a few reasons.

When you first enter the arena, you’ll notice you have four normal rats to deal with. This is the first reason people hate this fight: unnecessary adds. They’re not even that hard to get rid of, but if you don’t do it fast, you’re fucked. The big, rabid rat-mutt himself has an exceptionally tiny moveset. A two-hit paw swipe, a lunge, and a vomit attack. Yes, a vomit attack. I’ll get to that in a second. The second reason why the fight is unpopular is: Royal Rat Authority hits INSANELY hard, and his attacks do a TON of stamina damage, making shields not terribly viable for this fight, unless it’s a greatshield with very high (75+) stability. His attacks also cover a massive area, so even rolling isn’t guaranteed to help, especially for the lunge. Touching him at all during that animation does a ton of damage and knocks you down.

The worst place you can be in this fight is right in front of him. That’s why, like the Sif fight in Dark Souls 1, you take refuge UNDERNEATH him and whack away at his legs from under his belly. If he jumps away to put distance between of two of you, sprint back under him, hit his legs more, repeat. A third reason why the fight is annoying is because sometimes his hitboxes are unreliable and he moves just enough for you to whiff your attacks while you’re under him, possibly struggling with the camera.

The vomit attack is the only thing you really need to watch out for. He only does it at low health, but it’s a long, drawn-out animation of him barfing out poisonous acid. This is a fourth reason why people hate this fight. This vomit attack creates a massive pool of liquid that not only poisons you, but destroys your equipment. So if you’re not fast enough, you’ll be forced out from under him just to avoid the vomit.

For all intents and purposes, Authority really is just a rabid Sif with a dumb poison/acid gimmick, annoying adds, and no emotional lore behind him. I don’t hate fighting him as much as others do, but he’s a chore. The worst part is the fact that his soul can only make a pyromancy called Acid Surge, which is ONLY viable in PvP, because PvE enemies can’t have their equipment destroyed. So if you’re PvE-centric, there’s absolutely no reason to bother with this fight unless you’re a completionist or want to farm for rat tails. Like the Belfry Gargoyles, I’ve only ever bothered with this fight a handful of times in the dozens of playthroughs I’ve had.

PROWLING MAGUS & SCIENTOLOGISTS FromSoft Employee A: “Hey, I finished up the first half of Brightstone Cove Tseldora.” FromSoft Employee B: “Good job, I just- wait, where’s the boss?” A: “What boss? We only designed Freja for the end.” B: “But we need a boss to put in this room.” A: “Well, we didn’t design any bosses for this area.” B: “Shit. You know that mage guy with the skull head? Put him in there with some priests and undeads.” A: “But what about a soul?” B: “Just give a Titanite Slab, I guess. We give slabs out like candy in this game anyway.” A: “Alright.”

Not a real boss. Fuck off with this shit.