While this boss fight might look complicated on the surface, the strategy for defeating this boss is anything but that. All you will need is the Serpent-Hunter found near the entrance, and a little bit of luck.
General Tips
You’ll be taking a significant amount of fire damage during the encounter, so don’t hesitate to equip armor with a high amount of Fire Damage Negation.
The Serpent-Hunter can be upgraded just like any other weapon.
General Strategy
Regardless of whether you’re playing a melee or ranged focused character, the strategy for this encounter remains the same. First thing you’ll want to do is grab the Serpent-Hunter weapon near the entrance.
This weapon has no attribute requirements whatsoever, so you don’t have to worry about using any Larval Tears. While this spear may not be that impressive outside of this room, it deals high amounts of damage and has increased range against great serpents, one of which we’re about to face. Make sure to equip the weapon as this whole strategy revolves around using it.
Phase 1 – God-Devouring Serpent
The fight will not begin until you walk closer to the serpent in the middle of the room, so make sure to use a summon of your choice, use your Flask of Wondrous Physick if you equipped it with a Crimsonburst Crystal Tear, and use a Flask of Cerulean Tears to replenish your FP as we’ll be needing a lot of it in Phase 2.
Now while it may feel counter-intuitive, run into the lava and stay as close as possible to the boss’s side while continuously using light attacks. Your summon should be helping you by distracting the boss, which will allow you to mindlessly spam light attacks.
While your summons will keep the boss in place for the most part, the boss will sometimes slowly slither away, at which point you should either keep running after the boss, or use jumping heavy attacks to break the boss’s stance. Once you go through his health bar, the boss will transition into Phase 2: Rykard, Lord of Blasphemy.
Phase 2 – Rykard, Lord of Blasphemy
Here the fight will be getting a bit trickier. Instead of standing in the lava, close to the boss, you will want instead to be standing a short distance away, in front of the boss. From there, all you have to do is keep using your weapon’s special attack: Great-Serpent Hunt. Repeatedly using the special attack will prevent the boss from using most of his attacks.
There are however still a few things to look out for. First and foremost, the special attack has a follow-up upward thrust that happens if you press the button again. We don’t want to use that, and instead, we’ll only be using the first part of this special attack as it’s much more reliable. Additionally, you should be ready to use a Flask of Cerulean Tears if you run out of FP. It’s recommended to have them ready in a quick slot to avoid giving the boss any unnecessary breathing room.
Lastly, while this strategy will almost always work, there are a few attacks that will not be interrupted by your spear’s attack. The most deadly one will be a homing skull with a fiery trail. If the boss releases one of those, you could try to reposition when it’s coming close, but it will be very difficult to do so. There are also a couple of sword attacks that while not nearly as deadly, are also un-interruptible:
Double Thrust: The boss will quickly thrust his sword forward two times in a row. Considering you should be spamming your special attack, and you won’t be seeing this attack very often, in most cases you can just tank this one and heal up when needed.
Sword Combo: Here, the boss will always start with a horizontal swing, which will be follow by another delayed swing, or a few snake bites. While the snakes bites have a very straightforward timing, the follow-up delayed swing can be a bit tougher to dodge through.
While there are a few more moves that you might end up seeing, most of them will be much easier to dodge. There is one exception however. If the boss uses an attack that causes many skulls to start following you from up above, you have two options: run away as far as possible and keep running until the skulls are gone, or just die and repeat the encounter while hoping for a better outcome.
There will be a small amount of randomness to the attacks that the boss uses, but fairly often, you’ll be able to avoid all of them and continue attacking the boss until he dies. And while this doesn’t make this strategy perfect, it’s by far the easiest and fastest way to defeat the boss. So if you end up dying to an attack that went through, just keep trying and you just might get the boss stun locked for the entirety of the fight. Lastly, if you’re still struggling, you can always upgrade this weapon to make this encounter even easier.
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