It's funny, Mohg has classic bad guy written all over him, but getting to him (in the "true" fight) is, I think, far easier than getting to Malenia, and his fight is, while not easy (though let's revisit that) he's definitely easier than the Goddess of Rot herself.
My Wretched character has been one on which I've tried to be very thorough - I intend to basically do everything in the game that I can. I cleared I think almost the entirety of Limgrave and the Weeping Peninsula before I even entered Stormveil Castle (though I still had a little trouble on Godrick - which I hadn't really thought of as that tough of a boss on my previous characters).
Anyway, I'm using Fextralife's Blasphemous Herald build, and boy howdy does this thing just destroy foes. It's a Strength/Faith build that uses the following weapons: Blasphemous Blade (one of Rykard's remembrance weapons,) Gargoyle's Greatsword (off the Valiant Gargoyle fight that leads you to Deeproot Depths) and the Gargoyle's Blackblade (off the gargoyle boss standing outside of Gurranq's Bestial Sanctum). Basically, depending on if you want holy or fire damage, you swap between the Blasphemous Blade or the Blackblade (fire, holy, respectively) and then swap out ash of war to make the Greatsword either sacred of flame art, and wield it in the off-hand.
You power-stance by using two greatswords, and then you get most of your damage with jumping L1 attacks, though both the Blasphemous Blade and the Gargoyle's Blackblade have very powerful weapon skills. You then use the Clawmark Sacred Seal to buff with things like Golden Vow, Blessing of the Erdtree, and Flame Give me Strength, which all come together to make your double-whammy strikes hit like a freight train.
I've found that a lot of bosses - especially the slower-moving, big ones, get carved up pretty quickly here. You can't use a shield or even block with a weapon, so you need to rely on dodging for survival, but this is why we use the Dragoncrest Greatshield Medallion (or a lesser version given that you don't find that until basically right before Malenia.)
While I think it does a little less damage, usually I'm happier to be in "fire mode" given that the Blasphemous Blade has a passive effect that restores a decent chunk of HP each time you kill an enemy, and its weapon art not only hits super hard and knocks foes over and has decent range, but it also heals you I think for some portion of the damage it does.
Anyway, because I'm being very thorough, I went down into the depths under Leyndell, slaying Mohg, the Omen (which I guess is a projection of the real Mohg - and even though I found Mohg's Shackle I didn't wind up using it on either fight) and went all the way down to the Frenzied Flame Proscription, where you have to strip down to nothing but your skivvies to meet with the Three Fingers, who grab you, marking you with the Frenzied Flame.
The visual effect here is pretty cool - your eyes now glow yellow and you have these fingerprint scars on your body. But this also leaves you only the "bad" ending (well, one of two that I think are really objectively bad - the Dung Eater one isn't exactly great). However, if you complete Milicent's quest line (which starts with meeting Gowry right before the town of Sellia in Caelid) and then beat Malenia, you can get an item that you can then use in Placudisax's arena in Crumbling Farum Azula to purge yourself of the Frenzied Flame and allow for the other endings.
Ironically, the ulcerated tree spirit you need to beat before you can do the last stage of Milicent's questline gave me more trouble than Mohg, and maybe even more than Malenia - though the latter was easier for an odd reason.
So, Mohg I beat on the second try - the first I think I only died because he hit me right as I was drinking my flask of wondrous physick with the tear that cures his curses, and I thought I had successfully quaffed it, but didn't, so I died to his bleeds. The second attempt, though, this build just showed how insanely powerful it is and I killed him before he could get into his second phase (not unlike when I took him out with Comet Azur on my sorcerer build).
Again, this Blasphemous Herald build is really, really strong. If you buff up for the fight before you enter, you're going to be landing such insane damage on the boss that the fight will be over very quickly.
Malenia was not so quick - she has to be the toughest boss in the game, though I still haven't actually done Malikith or the bosses that come after him (on this character, because I've been so thorough, I might not feel so hesitant to finish Farum Azula, as I think I've done just about everything in Leyndell).
Now, I did wind up winning thanks to an odd glitch, but I don't feel so bad because I got her down to like 10% on a previous attempt and only later realized I hadn't been wearing by Claw Talisman, so if I had, I would have already won, probably. Here's the glitch:
During the first phase of the Malenia fight, when she's listed as "Malenia, Blade of Miquella," right as she was at very low health, I staggered her, and I hit R1 to start a critical hit just as the damage-over-time of Black Knife Tiche's ability ticked her down to zero.
When the cutscene ended, my character performed the critical hit animation and knocked Malenia out of the sky, so she just fell prone rather than doing her big rot-flower attack that usually starts the Goddess of Rot phase. But more than that, apparently there was some glitch with how her health was calculated, and so my striking her as she spawned left her at 1 HP. I ran up to her as she was recovering from the fall and landed a nice jumping L1 and that took her out.
Pretty crazy. But, now I have Miquella's Needle and can rid myself of the Frenzied Flame effect once I get to Placudisax (who, while not easy, is probably not going to be as tough as Malenia).
I've basically not done any grinding on this character - he's effective enough that I haven't lost a ton of runes to death, and I've been so thorough that he hasn't hit any boss where I feel like he's just not powerful enough to face them. At this point, he's level 142, with 50 Faith, 45 Strength (and the Omensmirk Mask for an extra 2) and now I'm pushing his Vigor to try to hit 50 (the other points are in Endurance and Mind, and I think a tiny amount in Dexterity).
I am still kind of blown away by how many Runes the enemies past the Prayer Room site of grace in Ephael give - it feels like that's there to make it very easy to catch up if you're a little underleveled to face Malenia.
But oh yes, the plot to spare Melina. As you approach the Frenzied Flame Proscription, Malenia basically begs you not to go further. See, the Frenzied Flame basically doesn't like that there's any distinction between different things, and wants to melt reality back into a single mass. Oddly, there's a real emphasis on Birth as the distinction between the world as it is and the world the Frenzied Flame would create. Hyetta, the woman you feed all those Shabrir "grapes" to in Liurnia, is there as well, and encourages you to seek the flame. You can expose her to the flame as well, burning out her eyes and granting you the Frenzied Flame Seal, whose incant scaling works with Strength, Dexterity, Faith, and Intelligence.
The reason we do this, though, is because we can use the Frenzied Flame to burn the Erdtree instead of Melina - she leaves us, and even vows to kill us if we become the Lord of Frenzied Flame (the bad ending,) but the logic here is that if we can then purge ourselves, we get to burn the Erdtree without killing Melina, and then avoid the apocalyptic ending that the Lord of Frenzied Flame would entail.
It just means having to beat the hardest boss in the game and find some of the most obscure and difficult-to-reach places in the game.
No comments:
Post a Comment