During my numerous hours of playing Dark Souls, I'll admit to having searched for tips and tricks on how to beat some of the seemingly unstoppable bosses in Dark Souls, but there is one boss who has no clear strategy posted on a wiki or any forums on how to kill him if you're not able to exploit a glitch to do so, or happen to be a Dexterity based character.
The Hellkite Dragon. That annoying spiny fellow who saw fit to give you PTSD flashbacks to Demons' Souls. You all know what I'm talking about.
That terrifying moment when you had finally beaten the Phalanx, where in your cockiness at having beaten your first boss and regaining your human form you pressed the advantage. Wading through the common enemies like a scythe cuts down wheat, you found yourself at a bridge, with loot ripe for the taking; and then it happened. A terrifying roar and the sound of burning flesh, and you're back in the main area once more a spirit, and once more broken by a relentless game created by a mastermind to break your spirit.
Yeah well the Hellkite Dragon does exactly the same thing. You walk onto the bridge and he chars your ass into a glowing spot on the ground. I'm not entirely sure about anyone else who played Demons' Souls, but the Red Dragon brings up some strong feelings of animosity, and having another big red dragon subject me to the same infuriating tactics... Well maybe I'm just sore about the butt roasting, or maybe it's called righteous vengeance, because I went and figured out how to kill him on my spell casting character, so to anyone else who feels that vengeance is a dish best served cold here's how to do it as a caster, and potentially a very high level melee character.
Hellkite Dragon is a very predictable boss, he only has a few behaviors. He either chars every living thing on the bridge to a crisp. He perches comfortably on the castle overwatching the bridge, he heals himself on his perch, or he responds to damage on his perch by flying down to the bridge. It is his last "response" behavior that can be taken advantage of to kill him.
Obtain any kind of bow that you want, even if you don't meet the requirements for it, and get some arrows. Shoot him from under the bridge to get rid of the Hollows on top. At this point, go to the bridge access stairwell, and shoot him from around the top of the stairs. This will cause him to come land on the bridge. While he is landing he is defenseless, so you can charge up a heavy soul arrow as he's coming down and lock on as it's about to fire. Roll down the stairs and wait at the bottom. He will fire breath and fly back up to his perch. Rinse and repeat and soon the sweet taste of victory will be yours. This is how I got the bastard.
As for melee characters, if you're high enough level you should be able to 2h whatever your best weapon is with some Gold Pine Resin on it and slap him to death while he's landing. This is only conjecture, but if he's defenseless long enough to be hit by a Heavy soul arrow and then gives you enough time to roll out of the way, his landing animation should probably be long enough to beat him into oblivion if you weaken him a little first by smashing his tail.
That's it for now, good luck and good dragon hunting.
This is impossible - dragon heals itself!
ReplyDeleteThis is far from impossible. The generally accepted way to slay the dragon aside from managing the glitch, shooting him from the tower, is to take a bow and arrows to the corner where the rats are under the bridge and shoot him. You should be able to hit him 4 times per trip to the bridge he makes, and there are multiple accounts of him dying when only 16 damage per shot is applied. (This equates to 64 damage per trip.)
ReplyDeleteMy method involves luring the dragon onto the bridge and dealing anywhere between 100-350+ damage per cast, dependant on soul level and what version of Heavy Soul Arrow you have access to, Great Heavy Soul Arrow being preferred.
In my attempt, I hit him with approximately eight Heavy Soul Arrows, dealing 200 damage per cast. He returned to the bridge and healed once for approximately 15-25% of his health.
200x8=1600 damage.
If we assume that the dragon had 1200 health, and is able to heal for 25% when he does heal, he is able to heal for 300 health.
This leaves the total health I had to take away from the dragon at 1500, meaning my last Heavy Soul Arrow would have done 100 overdamage, which when I killed him he only had a sliver of health left, thus being consistant with my experience in killing him.
Perhaps you missed him on a few of his landings, or your soul level is inadequate, or more appropriately your character's intellect is too low. More information than " This is impossible - dragon heals itself!" is required in order for me to diagnose why you're not succeeding at killing him.
Trust me, anything I can do to get this dragon killed more often just makes me happier. I have serious issues with dragons and bridges thanks to Demons' Souls and this is my revenge.
i'm curious, what was your int stat at? only 8 heavy souls arrows? Not great heavy? that seems so easy, unless you have outrageous int? i will try this.
ReplyDeleteI actually did have fairly high int when I did this, my int stat was in the range of 40 +/- 5 or so points, as I was going for a glass cannon early type build, which I was going to "evolve" into an all-rounder.
ReplyDeleteUsing Great Heavy Soul Arrow at around 20-25 int and finishing with a few Heavy Soul Arrows would, I imagine, be more than enough to take him out. I actually hadn't figured out where/how to get Great Heavy Soul Arrow at the time, and that's also part of what contributed to me putting so much Int in that early.
On another note it's probably my own fault for not specifying that this is intended to be a caster strategy, it occurs to me that I really only say to use Heavy Soul Arrow, which could be construed as me telling you that just having Heavy Soul Arrow is enough, and for that I apologize.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the feedback, much appreciated.