Latenna the Albinauric Spirit Ashes (after agreeing to help NPC in area beyond boss room)
SpiritSummons Available: Yes
Found at the end of the Lakeside Crystal Cave Dungeon in Liurnia of the Lakes, the Bloodhound Knight is a challenging foe. It can be quite slippery, its attacks come quickly, and it can build up Hemorrhage and chunk your health bar badly. In this guide, we’ll give you a specific, easy-to-implement strategy to take down this tough boss.
Since summons are available, ranged/magic users will want to immediately summon their tankiest summon. The Skeletal Militiaman are some of the best summons for keeping this boss’ aggro; since this boss doesn’t have many moves that will hit them while they are reviving, they should last the whole fight. Melee users can also feel free to summon, although it’s not a necessity like it is for ranged characters.
Strategy
Note: Ranged and magic users can use the following strategy, but instead of landing a jumping attack, take advantage of his slow recovery from the leaping attack mentioned below to cast spells or land arrows/bolts. Of course, if you come properly prepared with summons, you ‘ll want to just let them take damage while you fire away.
The real challenge with this boss is how few windows you have to safely attack, especially if you don’t have a weapon that can stagger the boss. With that in mind, this strategy is a slow ‘n steady approach that takes advantage of one specific window in which it’s safe to damage the boss.
The Bloodhound Knight has a move where he drags his claws on the ground, then slashes upwards with them, and then follows this with a leaping attack. After he lands, he can’t do any other attacks, or move, for a brief window — begin your own jumping attack as he lands.
Don’t mistake his similar move, where he drags his sword on the floor, for this one! Only the move where he drags his claw is followed by a leaping attack that offers you a safe window to counter.
Rather than trying to roll through his attacks, try to stick to the middle of the room and simply sprint away from him while he attacks. Wait patiently for him to use the drag/leap attack, and then land a jumping attack of your own. Immediately roll away from him after landing your attack, and then roll a second time after waiting to see what he does (sometimes, he’ll dash in front of you, so if you spam roll twice in the same direction you might get cut off and roll into an attack). Try not to roll or jump unless you can see him starting an attack — stamina is a precious resource with this strategy. That being said, when in doubt, just roll or jump (most of his attacks are horizontal).
The two dangers with this strategy are getting stuck in a corner, and running out of stamina. Therefore, it’s important to let go of the sprint button if the boss is across the room from you and you’re getting low, and you also want to make sure you’re in the center of the room as much as possible. This would be easy if not for the boss’ ability to teleport. Sometimes, he’ll teleport very close to you — you can choose to either panic-roll away from him, or continue running away from him and jumping into the air if he swings his sword. The second option is tougher to pull off, but allows you to maintain your speed and make distance a little better.
If you’ve got a heavy enough weapon and a decent HP pool, you don’t have to bother with hitting and running. Instead, you can be the aggressor, and use leaping attacks — his own attacks will often miss if you jump in such a way that you land right in front of him. It’s a good practice to roll after you land your attack to avoid his sometimes very quick counterattacks.
Once you defeat the boss, make sure you exit via the southeastern passage in order to find the NPC Latenna.
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.
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