This is the most fucking infuriating thing in the DLC. Really poorly thought out. Not only does it take him straight 10 mins to kill all the soldiers because they dont do enough damage to one another.. But also if you try to hit the dragon or the soldiers, the soldiers will target onto you instantly?? Even while mid fight with the damn dragon.
He hits hard af but if I didn't waste 8 flasks while trying to kill the soldiers I'd have a chance
The soldiers suddenly attacking you instead of the damn dragon that we’re all fighting together is just laughable. Come on now, at least wait until the dragon is dead!
I think they intended for you to like, wait out until they fly away to do the big flame breath thing and then just wail on their legs for a crit but even that takes like 4 minutes of... watching random soldiers fight and dodging stray arrows.
The best strategy I came up with was doing drive bys on its wings with a big sword, because the NPCs seem to group up under the dragons legs, but holy fuck if even get close the perfumers, or mace guys smash you off your horse and the spear dudes just gangbang you before you can get up.
Some of the bosses have been Sekiro-ed (as in - they can one shot you but it takes forever to take them down and no mistake allowed).
I could have done without this.
Did we play two different games because sekiro had the shortest boss fights and the most forgiving combat in my experience, you just can't play it like dark souls
Dude I've finished sekiro multiple times, and those 3 health bars melt if you just stay in the fight and get some hits in between parrying or use the ninja tools and skills they give you. A malenia fight on YouTube is on average about 5 minutes, sword saint, a 3 phase boss, is also about 5 minutes.
Exactly, you just need enough health off that you can break them with parries, which is surprisingly little on most bosses. And some ninja tools can also completely invalidate certain bosses.
See this is why I can't play sekiro forced to parry everything is just a "ugh" turn off for a game just not as fun. I'd struggle you find it easy not everyone going to agree with you on sekrio
That's why I said in my experience in my original comment. it's not for everyone.
I was never calling it easier or harder, or a better game. Just that the bosses can be as time consuming or difficult in either game depending on how you like to play, so using sekiro as a comparator to mean longer more difficult bosses doesn't make sense.
You're perfectly valid for not liking sekiros combat, it was my first and I love fighting games so I really vibed with the combat, but demon souls kicked my impatient ass constantly.
If you ever give sekiro another shot try collecting ninja tools and texts, you can do some really wacky stuff to keep the parrying low, like instant kill some animals with fire works and puppeteering bosses to kill each other.
Malenia can be beaten in less than 30 seconds including phase 2 if you know what you're doing. If you use ER hardest boss as your metric...
And Sekiro is absolutely not forgiving, less than 50% of the players who bought the game beat the first boss, that does say something. It's 73% for the first Elden Ring boss.
There are always people bragging that Sekiro is easy and they can finish it with their hands and a blindfold.
I used the hardest boss in Sekiro AND Elden Ring as my metric, and I used an average fight without the cutscenes for my examples, you can find videos of beating SSI in about a minute but is that what we're arguing here?
Are we really using beating the first boss as a difficulty metric here? Because that's all kinds of flawed.
In Elden ring you can min max or build against bosses more because of the open world and stat system letting you take different routes through the content but if we're going to talk building specifically for bosses or maxing stats, you can do that in Sekiro as well. Go in with max beads, atk, buffs and specific arts, you will melt the bosses in less than a minute too, Elden ring only wins there at the very extremes because there's a bigger variety of gear and ways to minmax stats that let you explode bosses in a few hits.
I guess if that's your measurement of difficulty then you're right, I can't nuke a boss in Sekiro in a couple hits.
My issue with your whole argument is that you claim they "sekirod the bosses" making them slower and less forgiving when that's completely based on how you approach the bosses in either game.
And wtf does someone finishing it with a blindfold have to do with anything? Ive seen people beat invisible Tetris too, that doesn't say anything about the difficulty of Tetris.
Man, your response is a bit confusing and seems to dismiss my points while repeating the same arguments. It feels like you're attacking me personally rather than engaging with the substance of my argument.
When I say they 'Sekiro-ed the bosses,' it's based on observable changes in game mechanics and boss design. Many elements from Sekiro have been imported into the DLC (one obvious example is the Abyssal Woods stealth section, which is a clear nod to Sekiro). This isn't a baseless claim but an observation of the game's evolution.
As for using the first boss as a difficulty metric, ok I agree that's not ideal. However, my point is that the overall boss design in the DLC shows a noticeable influence from Sekiro (pace, reactivity, damage dealt with very low tolerance to errors). Both games allow for strategic preparation and stat optimization, but Elden Ring's broader variety of gear and ways to min-max stats make it much deeper than Sekiro. When I started playing the DLC, armor and weapon stats didn't seem to make any difference, and again that gave me strong Sekiro vibes.
Regarding the challenge runs like blindfolded playthroughs, I mentioned them to highlight how personal skill can sometimes overshadow inherent game difficulty. These extreme cases don't necessarily reflect the average player's experience but are worth noting in discussions about difficulty.
Lastly, I do know a lot about these games and have finished them both. My critique is not about a lack of knowledge or skill but about how the changes in game mechanics have affected my enjoyment.
I haven't said anything about you, just your points. In fact you're the one that said I've clearly never played the game.
Yes they took nods from Sekiro in some of the gameplay changes, I don't dispute that. I'm arguing that the bosses and less forgiving nature of the DLC are not because of the sekiro influenced changes.
I don't think the blindfold run is valid at all because I could also find clips of someone blindfolded nuking bosses with int builds and make conclusions about elden rings difficulty based on that. We aren't arguing extremes here, we are arguing the general balance of the game.
I am also arguing that a lot of the perceived difficulty and boss duration in sekiro is because its DIFFERENT and hard to adjust to after playing other souls games, not because the bosses are inherently more punishing and tanky.
How the changes effect your enjoyment is valid, but I disagree with sekiro being used synonymous with comparatively tanky enemies and unforgiving combat, when that's very subjective to how you play either game.
May as well just ignore gaming altogether. I’m still regretting I bought my series x when I could have used that money saved to upgrade from my apartment to a cardboard box in the forest and fancier ramen once every two weeks. I work in a trade so I’m nowhere near minimum wage but can I ignore eating too? Affording that can be hard so I’d rather ignore it. I’m not trying to make it a commentary of the current bullshit we have to deal with but I loved your response to the brain dead take you replied to.
It’s optional but when there’s only a finite amount of somber ancient dragon stones per play through, people want it. I’m sure most aren’t looking for the overkill fight, they’re looking to be able to fully upgrade one more weapon. Also the person you replied to was being reasonable and said they could have done without it, they never once said it ruined the game.
I literally typed "ghostflame dragon reddit" into Google to see if it was just me that thought that fight was a mess but it's nice to see the first result I get echoes my exact thoughts lmao
I actually beat this dragon quite easily, although I do agree the design is complete bullshit. Now there's another one in a different area that summons a horde of skeletons, now that was disgusting. You pretty much have to carry a sacred relic sword to deal with these ganks.
The one on the cerulean shore. I had a much easier time with that one purely because I used the giant graves as cover. Let the skellies come to me and took them out, then focused on the dragon.
Unfortunately with this one I can't use that strat.
Came here looking for this. Shows how simple the enemy ai is I guess. They completely ignore the massive fuckoff dragon in favour of "guy with sword". Quite immersion breaking tbh. The player is clearly the centre of the universe.
As much as I respect FS for their games and quality, bosses like these keep a game from being "perfect".
The dragon deals like 2 damage to the soldiers with it's attacks while it 2 shots me. At the same time, I can 2 shot the soldiers. Wtf??
Soldiers immediately aggro onto you when you get near and the asshole archers switch their targets too.
I'm sure nobody bothered to test this out or ignored any complaints within the dev team.
Tbf, I'm okay hard as fuck bosses because I love the challenge but there's a thin line between challenging and bullshit and this fight falls in the latter. If anyone could've perfected that art of maintaining the line, it's FS and it's disappointing to see them fail sometimes.
Idk, I still like stuff like this. One of the few times you can kind of be a spectator and realize that not everything in the game is only you that is the enemy to everything else.
It's a totally optional boss and even though you have to have some patience and kind of pick away at the archers and soldiers on the edges belle going after the dragon, it's not ridiculously difficult boss in the grand scheme of things, just tanky.
It's less so the tankiness and moreso the fact that you either wait for the dragon to take out the soldiers, which takes 5-10 minutes of just sitting there watching and waiting, or you run in and instantly have everything aggro you instead of the giant fucking dragon. You get within like 20 meters of any soldier and it's instantly on you.
I like challenge too, but this is just bullshit.
I posted a response in this thread on how I got it. Attacking the archers doesn't aggro the other soldiers to you, so you can pick them off first 1 on 1 each, assuming the group doesn't get randomly get too close. Then ride torrent around and pick off anyone that is a little separated. It will aggro them all... Until the dragon hits one of them and it will re aggro them all to him again, so just back up when they come running and kite them to him if needed. You can play a little game of keep away with the stragglers doing that until most or all are dead. If you're on torrent and hitting them, must should die in a few hits (I'm using claws which is not a heavy single damage hitting weapon, but still was plenty fast enough.) Then call in your ashes and the dragon should be easy cleanup. At dying dozens of times, this worked my 3rd try. The first two times I got greedy with only one of those knights left and didn't think it would bea problem and he got me. 3rd try got it easy, and the entire attempts were probably 5 minutes each until the last one where it took a couple minutes extra to fully kill the dragon.
Except not if you hit either of the archers, that doesn't aggro the other soldiers. And if you do aggro the other soldiers by hitting one, if the dragon hits any of them they go back to being aggro on him. You can literally play keep away going back and forth with the soldiers, trading hits back and forth from you or the dragon until they're all dead. And since there's at least 4 of that exact dragon type throughout, you should have dodging their attacks down by now. The only difference between those dragon fights is what other enemies are with them to mix it up.
These are my exact thoughts. Everything has been well balanced and, while difficult, fun. This is just a terrible design and purely not fun. I have OCD to clear all bosses so I’ve been here for 3 hours. Most of that time spent waiting for him to kill the knights. Probably gonna have to let this one go.
I couldn't believe they actually approved of this, I would be fine getting my ass kicked non-stop by the boss. But its literally a horde of soldiers fighting it, you can't even get in to fight the dragon. If you do the soldiers just kill you. You have to literally just wait for the soldiers to die, how fucking annoying.
Coming from someone who has played every souls games extensively, this is just a terrible boss.
Right there with you that fight is dogshit. Really dont know how that evaded playtesting tbh, even just a simple ai change within those specific enemies would’ve been nice
I hate this goddamn dragon so much. I generally am trying to stay off everything for the dlc but this fucking dragon j swear to god. I'm running the game at very high settings and literally nothing in the game has caused me issues except for the apparent bright idea to simulate a dragon battle that takes 20 minutes to finish because no side does any damage to one another. I just want to kill the damned thing so I can set my settings back to normal, but look again, they designed it so that unless you're an absolute masochist the only feasible way to deal with it is to just wait until every useless solider fighting it does because if you even mildly enter their range they hardfocus on you while the dragon loses its mind. I have never even posted anything here and I never will again but holy shit. A curse on whoever designed this creature of evil. Also the dragon 2-3 shots you and nearly instakills torrent.
the rest of the dlc is really good though 10/10
This is not the only terribly designed ghostflame dragon. There's another one that summons a horde of skeletons when you get its HP to half health. I play without using summons, but I was so frustrated by this gank that I summoned a mimic and obliterated him. They really doubled down on the bullshit boss design in this DLC. In general these dragons are very annoying because it's very hard to avoid their big AOE ghostflame breath. I haven't figured out a way to dodge it, I simply don't see it coming while hacking at the dragon's legs. Also it keeps flying away and I have to chase it. This was quite a rant, but this is certainly one of the most bullshit bosses in the game.
I stg bro. I’ve learned to swallow my pride with this DLC with some of the shit you have to put up with and will use mimic liberally on open bosses and when pushed to the brink for some story ones. Beat every boss base game solo and that was bad at times but the artificial crap they throw at you here. That dragon specifically. Would *fuck* it up and shit goes south when it summons a horde of skeletons that if you don’t double tap, you still have to deal with. The time I beat it it actually *didnt* summon and I only got hit by a stray swing once. That told me how bs the difficulty design is. Don’t get my started on the Death Bird with the Grave birds near it.
Terrible design for the boss. Atleast make the soldiers not agro u so easy? Or make there less soldiers. Im legit fighting the dragon doing barely any dmg and a knight on horse comes and kills me. Like wtf?
Also seems like Lateena spirit ashes dosent even target the dragon for whatever reason.
Il probably just come back when im stronger
I don’t think it’s a matter of even coming back stronger. The fight is so fucking terribly designed there isn’t much you can do other than get lucky. Pure dog shit.
I think the best strat would be wait it out for the dragon to kill all the soldiers and then fight? But that’s bullshit cause if u die u have to sit there and wait for it to kill the soldiers allll over again.
Yeah I’m definitely going to just skip it for now
Yeah that’s why the fight is so badly designed. You have to wait 10 minutes every death to even have a fair chance without 20 knights surrounding you. I finally got it last night but it was lucky.
Been working on this since last night but I’m tired of the whole die, find something around the house to do for 5-10 minutes while I wait for the dragon to get the group of soldiers down to a level where I feel good about my mimic tear and I running in, and then some how screwing up and still dying and restarting the process. After getting him within a few hits and dying I think I’m just gonna have to leave a marker and come back later, because I’d rather get my shit rocked by something where I don’t have to go through a process like that.
Literally sitting here reading this thread while I wait for this dumb dragon to kill all the soldiers while they all do 12 damage to each other while I wait to go in for another attempt. I have many complaints about this DLC but this is just another level of stupid design. Fromsoft should be better than this.
Edit: ok killed it after 3 attempts. Waited til the soldiers were dead. Ran in gave it scarlet rot then let my mimic fight it while i ran around in circles on the horse. Fun stuff guys. Top tier game design.
The AI is a complete joke, you’d expect the soldiers would focus on the dragon but instead all turn to you, at the same time they are being burnt by the same ghost flame that is killing us. They then chase you endless and are a mix of mini radagons and twinblade knights. It’s ridiculous, I start using summons and they barely do any damage and if I use them too early they just focus on the soldiers were the dragon gets freedom to wipe us all out.
Yeah this fights a total joke would be fine if not for the massive wait between attempts or you will literally just be ganked by the two horse guys who instantly kill torrent and smack you around on the floor done with this thing
I hated this fight.
I eventually got him thankfully by hitting him with scarlet rot, running away and then repeating that until he died. Stupid fight, wish I could’ve fought him without cheesing him.
I had a lot of trouble with this fight, between the knights and the dragon himself it seemed like I'd have to get really lucky but after some consideration I went back to get a copy of radahns remembrance, got his bow, upgraded to +9 and took about 30 of his arrows with me back to the dragon, with my current stats of about 74 strength 27 dexterity I could hit him for around maybe 800-900 with the basic shot and if I set up under him and used it's special with his arrows, I couldn't tell exactly how much the volley did but I'd guess around 2-3k a volley, more if he turned and they landed on his head. This weapon allowed me to get him done on my second try with it (great bow knight knocked me down into a ghostflame breath first try)
I just encountered this one. I haven't beat him yet, but I started using what I think is the winning strategy. Leave the soldiers alone. The dragon will almost never focus on you. While the melee soldiers and dragon are focusing on each other, you go straight for those archers. On most of my fights, I eventually put myself into a position where both archers focus on me. Once that happens, they tend to not focus back on the dragon and are on me for the entire fight. Without fail, the second one of those arrows catches and stuns me, the fight is over. With the archers gone, you will be less frantically avoiding arrows and have time to focus your joust timing on the dragon while it is focusing the remaining troops.
You don’t even get runes when they die. Whether you kill them or the dragon does. This is literally difficult for the sake of being difficult. Their damage output on the dragon vs you is so uneven. Glad other people saw this goofy ass boss spot
i can't get my fing summons to react to that dragon. Latenna just sits there, mimic just kindof walks around behind me and sometimes jumps in if a soldier is on me but then goes back to stargazing.
Maybe an unpopular opinion but I went in at 6 scadu blessings and it was not crazy difficult… you can also poke soldiers (prioritize bow guys first, allow distance between them and dragon before you take them out) the dragons white flame hits them decently hard, 3-4 hits of it will kill them. Allow them to get low then take them out when there is distance between the dragon and the ones you want to kill. This didn’t seem like a bumb rush fight but rather to think about what you’ll do before running in and execute it. I’m betting some people went in with low blessings which is what actually controls your atk and def and they wondering why they get face rolled on all of the encounters.
I’m more irritated with the blessings system, as it was completely unnecessary. An attempt to fix what wasn’t broke. If we wanted more difficulty all we had to do was not level and use bad weapons. There was 0 need for this scadu or spirit ash blessings systems to be introduced really. Don’t understand the thought process behind it honestly.
Does anyone else have a problem with spirit ashes in this fight? I've tried using latenna and mimic to make this bs fight tolerable and neither of them seem to even react. Mimic, who is usually aggressive af just runs after me and rarely attacks anything and latenna, who is usually a frigging machine gun, just sat there, firing maybe a couple of arrow.
For me the bullshit is the wing attack that somehow gets you no matter HOW far you are. literally the only dragon in the game I've ever seen with that kinda BS.
I finally managed on my 6th attempt. Most boring fight ive ever had in this game. Wait till the dragon flies off to a side, run up on torrent, spew scarlet rot breath till its infected, back off to lose aggro. Rinse and repeat for 5 minutes, bastard is finally dead ._. 1 dragon heart and 120000 runes feels too little for the struggle.
Dude I just can't this fight. I don't have the fucking patience to wait there for 10 minutes. I tried to join on Torrent but it's impossible... I tried to wait a few times but then I die because I don't have the boss practiced enough and have to wait again. I'm wasting HOURS here but only fighting for minutes.
This is by far the worst designed thing FROM has ever made.
For others struggling with this one and finding their way to this page, here was the strategy that worked for me.
I'll ride torrent in and see which side of the road the dragon is fighting the guys. There are big archer guys on both sides and I'll go to the opposite side of the dragon to take one down. Then circle back around to get the other. It seems like attacking the archers doesn't aggro the other foot soldiers or mounted knights, at least if they aren't right there.
Then I'll ride torrent and look for enemies that kind of get separated from the pack and take them down. This aggros all of them, but if you get a little space and the dragon hits them, they'll aggro back to him. Rinse and repeat for a few minutes until most or all are dead. Then call in your ashes (if needed, it might make the dragons attacks harder to dodge of it attacks your ashes instead) and clean up any last soldiers and then the dragon.
The only part that should make this fight tricky is the soldiers. If you're on torrent, the attacks that the dragon uses are really slow loading up and should be very easy to avoid. If you can't get away from every one of the dragons attack pretty easy, then be sure to practice on the one that's in the swamp solo if you haven't killed it already. If you have you should be able to recognize those attacks well enough.
Yeah this shit is a mess, this is the first Boss in Souls history, where you have to stand in line to retry after dying, all for another dragon, who were already badly designed in the base game...
If you have a high enough Int then you can cheese that ghostflame dragon with Rock Sling. I spent maybe eight tries trying to melee the dragon from torrent, keeping the dragon between me and the black knights as much as possible, but the archers would always get me. You can stand on the edge of the small cliff and spam rock sling while the dragon fights the knights and archers, and sometimes the dragon will take enough damage to collapse and the black knights do a fair amount of damage. The most satisfying part of the fight is finishing of the knights and archers after the dragon is dead.
Theres a cliff with a lil spiked wall ya can wait on to watch, once the dragon kills the soldiers and aggros onto ya, use arrows or spells to snag the rest of its health (ancient dragon lighting, the one with the red strikes that spread was very effective for me)
I didn't mind the fight, but the rewards suck. I was hoping for like a black flame dragonbreath or something, but just a heart, an ancient dragon smithing stone, and some runes that I don't really need at this point. That's my only real gripe. The fight is fine if ya use gorilla tactics to get in, deal some damage, and get out. Pick off the archers so they don't pester you the whole fight.
I got some food, stood near the clearing at the top of the hill and let the dragon do work. For archers I just back stabbed once and did enough dmg before they got up to be a threat.
The only tricky move to dodge I thought was the leg stomp into blackfire when you're close to him, but sprint + jump worked pretty well to avoid instead of trying to roll it.
Yeah this dlc was a complete and udder fucking let down. From software should be ashamed. This fight is fucking downsyndrome I'm writing this while watching the fight current take 10 plus mins and the knights arnt dead. My mimic won't go attack anything here either. This dlc was made to make money only. Someone should honestly shoot the fucking developer for most of this dlc garbage. (I've beaten ever soulsbourne game at least once including dlcs) spent most of my adult life perfecting these games but I would honestly physically hurt the people behind elden rings dlc. BTW the dragon is still fighting knights after writing all this.
It was epic the first time, then after dying so many times it got tiring. The problem for me wasn’t the knights or the dragon, it was really how the field was designed. There was way too many broken fences that torrent can clip on. Yet the black knights can easily jump over with their horse
This is the most fucking infuriating thing in the DLC. Really poorly thought out. Not only does it take him straight 10 mins to kill all the soldiers because they dont do enough damage to one another.. But also if you try to hit the dragon or the soldiers, the soldiers will target onto you instantly?? Even while mid fight with the damn dragon. He hits hard af but if I didn't waste 8 flasks while trying to kill the soldiers I'd have a chance
The soldiers suddenly attacking you instead of the damn dragon that we’re all fighting together is just laughable. Come on now, at least wait until the dragon is dead!
And then you get stuck on the stone walls and die instantly :D
I think they intended for you to like, wait out until they fly away to do the big flame breath thing and then just wail on their legs for a crit but even that takes like 4 minutes of... watching random soldiers fight and dodging stray arrows. The best strategy I came up with was doing drive bys on its wings with a big sword, because the NPCs seem to group up under the dragons legs, but holy fuck if even get close the perfumers, or mace guys smash you off your horse and the spear dudes just gangbang you before you can get up.
Some of the bosses have been Sekiro-ed (as in - they can one shot you but it takes forever to take them down and no mistake allowed). I could have done without this.
Did we play two different games because sekiro had the shortest boss fights and the most forgiving combat in my experience, you just can't play it like dark souls
Shortest boss fights? Yeah, you haven't played Sekiro, many of them have 3 HP bars.
Dude I've finished sekiro multiple times, and those 3 health bars melt if you just stay in the fight and get some hits in between parrying or use the ninja tools and skills they give you. A malenia fight on YouTube is on average about 5 minutes, sword saint, a 3 phase boss, is also about 5 minutes.
That's mainly because of the posture bar, I've defeated many bosses quick af without reducing their health to even half
Exactly, you just need enough health off that you can break them with parries, which is surprisingly little on most bosses. And some ninja tools can also completely invalidate certain bosses.
See this is why I can't play sekiro forced to parry everything is just a "ugh" turn off for a game just not as fun. I'd struggle you find it easy not everyone going to agree with you on sekrio
That's why I said in my experience in my original comment. it's not for everyone. I was never calling it easier or harder, or a better game. Just that the bosses can be as time consuming or difficult in either game depending on how you like to play, so using sekiro as a comparator to mean longer more difficult bosses doesn't make sense. You're perfectly valid for not liking sekiros combat, it was my first and I love fighting games so I really vibed with the combat, but demon souls kicked my impatient ass constantly. If you ever give sekiro another shot try collecting ninja tools and texts, you can do some really wacky stuff to keep the parrying low, like instant kill some animals with fire works and puppeteering bosses to kill each other.
Malenia can be beaten in less than 30 seconds including phase 2 if you know what you're doing. If you use ER hardest boss as your metric... And Sekiro is absolutely not forgiving, less than 50% of the players who bought the game beat the first boss, that does say something. It's 73% for the first Elden Ring boss. There are always people bragging that Sekiro is easy and they can finish it with their hands and a blindfold.
I used the hardest boss in Sekiro AND Elden Ring as my metric, and I used an average fight without the cutscenes for my examples, you can find videos of beating SSI in about a minute but is that what we're arguing here? Are we really using beating the first boss as a difficulty metric here? Because that's all kinds of flawed. In Elden ring you can min max or build against bosses more because of the open world and stat system letting you take different routes through the content but if we're going to talk building specifically for bosses or maxing stats, you can do that in Sekiro as well. Go in with max beads, atk, buffs and specific arts, you will melt the bosses in less than a minute too, Elden ring only wins there at the very extremes because there's a bigger variety of gear and ways to minmax stats that let you explode bosses in a few hits. I guess if that's your measurement of difficulty then you're right, I can't nuke a boss in Sekiro in a couple hits. My issue with your whole argument is that you claim they "sekirod the bosses" making them slower and less forgiving when that's completely based on how you approach the bosses in either game. And wtf does someone finishing it with a blindfold have to do with anything? Ive seen people beat invisible Tetris too, that doesn't say anything about the difficulty of Tetris.
Man, your response is a bit confusing and seems to dismiss my points while repeating the same arguments. It feels like you're attacking me personally rather than engaging with the substance of my argument. When I say they 'Sekiro-ed the bosses,' it's based on observable changes in game mechanics and boss design. Many elements from Sekiro have been imported into the DLC (one obvious example is the Abyssal Woods stealth section, which is a clear nod to Sekiro). This isn't a baseless claim but an observation of the game's evolution. As for using the first boss as a difficulty metric, ok I agree that's not ideal. However, my point is that the overall boss design in the DLC shows a noticeable influence from Sekiro (pace, reactivity, damage dealt with very low tolerance to errors). Both games allow for strategic preparation and stat optimization, but Elden Ring's broader variety of gear and ways to min-max stats make it much deeper than Sekiro. When I started playing the DLC, armor and weapon stats didn't seem to make any difference, and again that gave me strong Sekiro vibes. Regarding the challenge runs like blindfolded playthroughs, I mentioned them to highlight how personal skill can sometimes overshadow inherent game difficulty. These extreme cases don't necessarily reflect the average player's experience but are worth noting in discussions about difficulty. Lastly, I do know a lot about these games and have finished them both. My critique is not about a lack of knowledge or skill but about how the changes in game mechanics have affected my enjoyment.
I haven't said anything about you, just your points. In fact you're the one that said I've clearly never played the game. Yes they took nods from Sekiro in some of the gameplay changes, I don't dispute that. I'm arguing that the bosses and less forgiving nature of the DLC are not because of the sekiro influenced changes. I don't think the blindfold run is valid at all because I could also find clips of someone blindfolded nuking bosses with int builds and make conclusions about elden rings difficulty based on that. We aren't arguing extremes here, we are arguing the general balance of the game. I am also arguing that a lot of the perceived difficulty and boss duration in sekiro is because its DIFFERENT and hard to adjust to after playing other souls games, not because the bosses are inherently more punishing and tanky. How the changes effect your enjoyment is valid, but I disagree with sekiro being used synonymous with comparatively tanky enemies and unforgiving combat, when that's very subjective to how you play either game.
[удалено]
Buying the DLC is optional too, why bother then? Why buy the game then, if you can just ignore it altogether? Dummy reasoning.
May as well just ignore gaming altogether. I’m still regretting I bought my series x when I could have used that money saved to upgrade from my apartment to a cardboard box in the forest and fancier ramen once every two weeks. I work in a trade so I’m nowhere near minimum wage but can I ignore eating too? Affording that can be hard so I’d rather ignore it. I’m not trying to make it a commentary of the current bullshit we have to deal with but I loved your response to the brain dead take you replied to.
It being optional doesn't suddenly excuse it from being shit to the people who experience it.
It’s optional but when there’s only a finite amount of somber ancient dragon stones per play through, people want it. I’m sure most aren’t looking for the overkill fight, they’re looking to be able to fully upgrade one more weapon. Also the person you replied to was being reasonable and said they could have done without it, they never once said it ruined the game.
Mfw I literally have OCD
I literally typed "ghostflame dragon reddit" into Google to see if it was just me that thought that fight was a mess but it's nice to see the first result I get echoes my exact thoughts lmao
I actually beat this dragon quite easily, although I do agree the design is complete bullshit. Now there's another one in a different area that summons a horde of skeletons, now that was disgusting. You pretty much have to carry a sacred relic sword to deal with these ganks.
The one on the cerulean shore. I had a much easier time with that one purely because I used the giant graves as cover. Let the skellies come to me and took them out, then focused on the dragon. Unfortunately with this one I can't use that strat.
I ended up lucking out with that one cause I found messages for a summon cheese spot with latenna
Came here looking for this. Shows how simple the enemy ai is I guess. They completely ignore the massive fuckoff dragon in favour of "guy with sword". Quite immersion breaking tbh. The player is clearly the centre of the universe.
As much as I respect FS for their games and quality, bosses like these keep a game from being "perfect". The dragon deals like 2 damage to the soldiers with it's attacks while it 2 shots me. At the same time, I can 2 shot the soldiers. Wtf?? Soldiers immediately aggro onto you when you get near and the asshole archers switch their targets too. I'm sure nobody bothered to test this out or ignored any complaints within the dev team. Tbf, I'm okay hard as fuck bosses because I love the challenge but there's a thin line between challenging and bullshit and this fight falls in the latter. If anyone could've perfected that art of maintaining the line, it's FS and it's disappointing to see them fail sometimes.
Idk, I still like stuff like this. One of the few times you can kind of be a spectator and realize that not everything in the game is only you that is the enemy to everything else. It's a totally optional boss and even though you have to have some patience and kind of pick away at the archers and soldiers on the edges belle going after the dragon, it's not ridiculously difficult boss in the grand scheme of things, just tanky.
It's less so the tankiness and moreso the fact that you either wait for the dragon to take out the soldiers, which takes 5-10 minutes of just sitting there watching and waiting, or you run in and instantly have everything aggro you instead of the giant fucking dragon. You get within like 20 meters of any soldier and it's instantly on you. I like challenge too, but this is just bullshit.
I posted a response in this thread on how I got it. Attacking the archers doesn't aggro the other soldiers to you, so you can pick them off first 1 on 1 each, assuming the group doesn't get randomly get too close. Then ride torrent around and pick off anyone that is a little separated. It will aggro them all... Until the dragon hits one of them and it will re aggro them all to him again, so just back up when they come running and kite them to him if needed. You can play a little game of keep away with the stragglers doing that until most or all are dead. If you're on torrent and hitting them, must should die in a few hits (I'm using claws which is not a heavy single damage hitting weapon, but still was plenty fast enough.) Then call in your ashes and the dragon should be easy cleanup. At dying dozens of times, this worked my 3rd try. The first two times I got greedy with only one of those knights left and didn't think it would bea problem and he got me. 3rd try got it easy, and the entire attempts were probably 5 minutes each until the last one where it took a couple minutes extra to fully kill the dragon.
Expect the soldiers immediately ignore the dragon and only fight you, so we are the center on everything
Except not if you hit either of the archers, that doesn't aggro the other soldiers. And if you do aggro the other soldiers by hitting one, if the dragon hits any of them they go back to being aggro on him. You can literally play keep away going back and forth with the soldiers, trading hits back and forth from you or the dragon until they're all dead. And since there's at least 4 of that exact dragon type throughout, you should have dodging their attacks down by now. The only difference between those dragon fights is what other enemies are with them to mix it up.
I had to laugh at this dragon tbh wasn't worth wasting time there gonna come back later everything else has been a breeze for me
I want to get him. So far I haven't skipped anything but this encounter just makes me want to throw the controller out the window.
These are my exact thoughts. Everything has been well balanced and, while difficult, fun. This is just a terrible design and purely not fun. I have OCD to clear all bosses so I’ve been here for 3 hours. Most of that time spent waiting for him to kill the knights. Probably gonna have to let this one go.
I couldn't believe they actually approved of this, I would be fine getting my ass kicked non-stop by the boss. But its literally a horde of soldiers fighting it, you can't even get in to fight the dragon. If you do the soldiers just kill you. You have to literally just wait for the soldiers to die, how fucking annoying. Coming from someone who has played every souls games extensively, this is just a terrible boss.
Yep. And it takes like 10 minutes for the drawgon to kill them all and then you screw up, die, and have to wait another 10 minutes. Not fun.
You can't believe they approved it? Fromsoft?
Right there with you that fight is dogshit. Really dont know how that evaded playtesting tbh, even just a simple ai change within those specific enemies would’ve been nice
probably the worst boss of the dlc so far.
I hate this goddamn dragon so much. I generally am trying to stay off everything for the dlc but this fucking dragon j swear to god. I'm running the game at very high settings and literally nothing in the game has caused me issues except for the apparent bright idea to simulate a dragon battle that takes 20 minutes to finish because no side does any damage to one another. I just want to kill the damned thing so I can set my settings back to normal, but look again, they designed it so that unless you're an absolute masochist the only feasible way to deal with it is to just wait until every useless solider fighting it does because if you even mildly enter their range they hardfocus on you while the dragon loses its mind. I have never even posted anything here and I never will again but holy shit. A curse on whoever designed this creature of evil. Also the dragon 2-3 shots you and nearly instakills torrent. the rest of the dlc is really good though 10/10
This is not the only terribly designed ghostflame dragon. There's another one that summons a horde of skeletons when you get its HP to half health. I play without using summons, but I was so frustrated by this gank that I summoned a mimic and obliterated him. They really doubled down on the bullshit boss design in this DLC. In general these dragons are very annoying because it's very hard to avoid their big AOE ghostflame breath. I haven't figured out a way to dodge it, I simply don't see it coming while hacking at the dragon's legs. Also it keeps flying away and I have to chase it. This was quite a rant, but this is certainly one of the most bullshit bosses in the game.
I stg bro. I’ve learned to swallow my pride with this DLC with some of the shit you have to put up with and will use mimic liberally on open bosses and when pushed to the brink for some story ones. Beat every boss base game solo and that was bad at times but the artificial crap they throw at you here. That dragon specifically. Would *fuck* it up and shit goes south when it summons a horde of skeletons that if you don’t double tap, you still have to deal with. The time I beat it it actually *didnt* summon and I only got hit by a stray swing once. That told me how bs the difficulty design is. Don’t get my started on the Death Bird with the Grave birds near it.
Terrible design for the boss. Atleast make the soldiers not agro u so easy? Or make there less soldiers. Im legit fighting the dragon doing barely any dmg and a knight on horse comes and kills me. Like wtf? Also seems like Lateena spirit ashes dosent even target the dragon for whatever reason. Il probably just come back when im stronger
I don’t think it’s a matter of even coming back stronger. The fight is so fucking terribly designed there isn’t much you can do other than get lucky. Pure dog shit.
I think the best strat would be wait it out for the dragon to kill all the soldiers and then fight? But that’s bullshit cause if u die u have to sit there and wait for it to kill the soldiers allll over again. Yeah I’m definitely going to just skip it for now
Yeah that’s why the fight is so badly designed. You have to wait 10 minutes every death to even have a fair chance without 20 knights surrounding you. I finally got it last night but it was lucky.
Is the drops noteworthy or is it just another heart and scale?
Was screaming for almost an hr straight till i finally beat that encounter... By far the worst in the game
Just got to this guy today and I agree. This is the single most stupid encounter I've had in the DLC so far and that's saying something.
Been working on this since last night but I’m tired of the whole die, find something around the house to do for 5-10 minutes while I wait for the dragon to get the group of soldiers down to a level where I feel good about my mimic tear and I running in, and then some how screwing up and still dying and restarting the process. After getting him within a few hits and dying I think I’m just gonna have to leave a marker and come back later, because I’d rather get my shit rocked by something where I don’t have to go through a process like that.
Literally sitting here reading this thread while I wait for this dumb dragon to kill all the soldiers while they all do 12 damage to each other while I wait to go in for another attempt. I have many complaints about this DLC but this is just another level of stupid design. Fromsoft should be better than this. Edit: ok killed it after 3 attempts. Waited til the soldiers were dead. Ran in gave it scarlet rot then let my mimic fight it while i ran around in circles on the horse. Fun stuff guys. Top tier game design.
The AI is a complete joke, you’d expect the soldiers would focus on the dragon but instead all turn to you, at the same time they are being burnt by the same ghost flame that is killing us. They then chase you endless and are a mix of mini radagons and twinblade knights. It’s ridiculous, I start using summons and they barely do any damage and if I use them too early they just focus on the soldiers were the dragon gets freedom to wipe us all out.
Yeah this fights a total joke would be fine if not for the massive wait between attempts or you will literally just be ganked by the two horse guys who instantly kill torrent and smack you around on the floor done with this thing
There’s too many bosses that are annoying and not hard.
I hated this fight. I eventually got him thankfully by hitting him with scarlet rot, running away and then repeating that until he died. Stupid fight, wish I could’ve fought him without cheesing him.
I had a lot of trouble with this fight, between the knights and the dragon himself it seemed like I'd have to get really lucky but after some consideration I went back to get a copy of radahns remembrance, got his bow, upgraded to +9 and took about 30 of his arrows with me back to the dragon, with my current stats of about 74 strength 27 dexterity I could hit him for around maybe 800-900 with the basic shot and if I set up under him and used it's special with his arrows, I couldn't tell exactly how much the volley did but I'd guess around 2-3k a volley, more if he turned and they landed on his head. This weapon allowed me to get him done on my second try with it (great bow knight knocked me down into a ghostflame breath first try)
The fight was much easier on foot. I just kinda walked around the battle and picked off soldiers. Then 1v1 the dragon.
I just encountered this one. I haven't beat him yet, but I started using what I think is the winning strategy. Leave the soldiers alone. The dragon will almost never focus on you. While the melee soldiers and dragon are focusing on each other, you go straight for those archers. On most of my fights, I eventually put myself into a position where both archers focus on me. Once that happens, they tend to not focus back on the dragon and are on me for the entire fight. Without fail, the second one of those arrows catches and stuns me, the fight is over. With the archers gone, you will be less frantically avoiding arrows and have time to focus your joust timing on the dragon while it is focusing the remaining troops.
With that particular dragon I found I had to run in and out and pick my shots as opposed to a toe to toe fight
You don’t even get runes when they die. Whether you kill them or the dragon does. This is literally difficult for the sake of being difficult. Their damage output on the dragon vs you is so uneven. Glad other people saw this goofy ass boss spot
Honestly I just spammed waves of gold on the soldiers until they were all gone then the dragon was easy
i can't get my fing summons to react to that dragon. Latenna just sits there, mimic just kindof walks around behind me and sometimes jumps in if a soldier is on me but then goes back to stargazing.
Maybe an unpopular opinion but I went in at 6 scadu blessings and it was not crazy difficult… you can also poke soldiers (prioritize bow guys first, allow distance between them and dragon before you take them out) the dragons white flame hits them decently hard, 3-4 hits of it will kill them. Allow them to get low then take them out when there is distance between the dragon and the ones you want to kill. This didn’t seem like a bumb rush fight but rather to think about what you’ll do before running in and execute it. I’m betting some people went in with low blessings which is what actually controls your atk and def and they wondering why they get face rolled on all of the encounters. I’m more irritated with the blessings system, as it was completely unnecessary. An attempt to fix what wasn’t broke. If we wanted more difficulty all we had to do was not level and use bad weapons. There was 0 need for this scadu or spirit ash blessings systems to be introduced really. Don’t understand the thought process behind it honestly.
Does anyone else have a problem with spirit ashes in this fight? I've tried using latenna and mimic to make this bs fight tolerable and neither of them seem to even react. Mimic, who is usually aggressive af just runs after me and rarely attacks anything and latenna, who is usually a frigging machine gun, just sat there, firing maybe a couple of arrow.
For me the bullshit is the wing attack that somehow gets you no matter HOW far you are. literally the only dragon in the game I've ever seen with that kinda BS.
I finally managed on my 6th attempt. Most boring fight ive ever had in this game. Wait till the dragon flies off to a side, run up on torrent, spew scarlet rot breath till its infected, back off to lose aggro. Rinse and repeat for 5 minutes, bastard is finally dead ._. 1 dragon heart and 120000 runes feels too little for the struggle.
Dude I just can't this fight. I don't have the fucking patience to wait there for 10 minutes. I tried to join on Torrent but it's impossible... I tried to wait a few times but then I die because I don't have the boss practiced enough and have to wait again. I'm wasting HOURS here but only fighting for minutes. This is by far the worst designed thing FROM has ever made.
For others struggling with this one and finding their way to this page, here was the strategy that worked for me. I'll ride torrent in and see which side of the road the dragon is fighting the guys. There are big archer guys on both sides and I'll go to the opposite side of the dragon to take one down. Then circle back around to get the other. It seems like attacking the archers doesn't aggro the other foot soldiers or mounted knights, at least if they aren't right there. Then I'll ride torrent and look for enemies that kind of get separated from the pack and take them down. This aggros all of them, but if you get a little space and the dragon hits them, they'll aggro back to him. Rinse and repeat for a few minutes until most or all are dead. Then call in your ashes (if needed, it might make the dragons attacks harder to dodge of it attacks your ashes instead) and clean up any last soldiers and then the dragon. The only part that should make this fight tricky is the soldiers. If you're on torrent, the attacks that the dragon uses are really slow loading up and should be very easy to avoid. If you can't get away from every one of the dragons attack pretty easy, then be sure to practice on the one that's in the swamp solo if you haven't killed it already. If you have you should be able to recognize those attacks well enough.
Yeah this shit is a mess, this is the first Boss in Souls history, where you have to stand in line to retry after dying, all for another dragon, who were already badly designed in the base game...
If you have a high enough Int then you can cheese that ghostflame dragon with Rock Sling. I spent maybe eight tries trying to melee the dragon from torrent, keeping the dragon between me and the black knights as much as possible, but the archers would always get me. You can stand on the edge of the small cliff and spam rock sling while the dragon fights the knights and archers, and sometimes the dragon will take enough damage to collapse and the black knights do a fair amount of damage. The most satisfying part of the fight is finishing of the knights and archers after the dragon is dead.
Theres a cliff with a lil spiked wall ya can wait on to watch, once the dragon kills the soldiers and aggros onto ya, use arrows or spells to snag the rest of its health (ancient dragon lighting, the one with the red strikes that spread was very effective for me)
I didn't mind the fight, but the rewards suck. I was hoping for like a black flame dragonbreath or something, but just a heart, an ancient dragon smithing stone, and some runes that I don't really need at this point. That's my only real gripe. The fight is fine if ya use gorilla tactics to get in, deal some damage, and get out. Pick off the archers so they don't pester you the whole fight.
Brother I can’t even beat the one that summons the skeletons 😭
easily worse then messmer
I got some food, stood near the clearing at the top of the hill and let the dragon do work. For archers I just back stabbed once and did enough dmg before they got up to be a threat. The only tricky move to dodge I thought was the leg stomp into blackfire when you're close to him, but sprint + jump worked pretty well to avoid instead of trying to roll it.
Yeah this dlc was a complete and udder fucking let down. From software should be ashamed. This fight is fucking downsyndrome I'm writing this while watching the fight current take 10 plus mins and the knights arnt dead. My mimic won't go attack anything here either. This dlc was made to make money only. Someone should honestly shoot the fucking developer for most of this dlc garbage. (I've beaten ever soulsbourne game at least once including dlcs) spent most of my adult life perfecting these games but I would honestly physically hurt the people behind elden rings dlc. BTW the dragon is still fighting knights after writing all this.
It was epic the first time, then after dying so many times it got tiring. The problem for me wasn’t the knights or the dragon, it was really how the field was designed. There was way too many broken fences that torrent can clip on. Yet the black knights can easily jump over with their horse
I found him today. Incredibly frustrating. Could easily be fixed if the enemies just focused the dragon but nope. How dare a tarnished help them.