Found at the end of Crumbling Farum Azula, Maliketh must be defeated before you can progress to Leyndell, Ashen Capital and complete the game. This boss’s second phase is one of the toughest fights in the game — unless you use the strategy below, in which case it’s kind of a breeze.
NOTE: Thanks to a nerf to Flame of the Redmane, the below strategy is no longer effective. Please bear with us while we update this guide.
General Tips
If you have the Blasphemous Claw, it can be used to parry Maliketh’s attacks with the Black Blade — you’ll know the attack can be parried by the Claw if the boss’s sword is emitting yellow sparkling lights.
A shield can be very helpful in phase 1, and while you’ll take a lot of chip damage, can be used in phase 2 as well until you’ve learned the dodge timings.
Rolling forwards/past Maliketh can allow you to avoid subsequent attacks.
Strategy
For this strategy, you’ll need to have grabbed the Ash of War: Flame of the Redmanes from just north of Fort Gael in Caelid. You should apply it to a weapon that you’ve upgraded, unless that weapon is unique and cannot have Ashes of War applied to it. In that case, you can put it on something light like a Dagger, and then swap to your upgraded weapon after staggering the boss.
You should also consider equipping a 100% physical defense shield for phase 1, since the boss’s attacks are rapid and hard to dodge. Additionally, make sure you’ve got the Mimic Tear or Black Knife Tiche upgraded as much as possible (they’re arguably the strongest choices, but if you have another powerful summon that you like using, that’s OK too). Finally, make sure you have at least 4 Cerulean Flasks, since you’ll be spamming the Flame of the Redmanes weapon art.
Properly prepared, you can head into the boss room and summon your spirit of choice. If you’ve got a shield, it’s best to play defensively until the boss is targeting your summon. Once it does, you can run over and try to land Flame of the Redmanes twice — if you can land two within a few seconds of each other, the boss will be staggered. Get a critical hit on its eye (don’t forget to swap to your strong weapon if you’ve got Flame of the Redmanes on something that’s not upgraded), and then while it’s recovering, you can cast Flame of the Redmanes twice more to stagger him again.
After you do this twice, you’ll probably be out of FP. After you stagger the boss and find yourself out of FP, drink from your flask before critically striking the boss — worst case scenario here is that you don’t get the crit off and have to cast Flame of the Redmanes twice to stagger him again. That’s totally fine, and preferable to drinking after critting and letting the boss get out of the chain-stun cycle.
When phase 2 starts, do the exact same thing: wait for the boss to target your summon, then run over and spam Flame of the Redmanes until it’s staggered, and then cycle critting and staggering until he’s dead. The boss is much scarier in phase 2, and can do lots of damage even through a shield, but once you stagger him you can keep him infinitely staggered, so you only have to catch him once!
Unabashed FromSoftware fanboy still learning to take his time with games (and everything else, really). The time he doesn't spend on games is spent on music, books, or occasionally going outside.
Since patch 1.08, sadly Flame of the Redmanes have been nerved and staggering the boss is not working anymore. Apparently Poise have been nerved from 40 to 10 following some Redding notes.
220,000
I had luck with rock sling and mimic.
Thanks for sharing Campbell!
Since patch 1.08, sadly Flame of the Redmanes have been nerved and staggering the boss is not working anymore. Apparently Poise have been nerved from 40 to 10 following some Redding notes.
Thank you for the correction Rach, we’ll make a note of that in the guide and get it updated ASAP.