@bnutz2k: Put the sign in the drained poison area if you want to do that boss. Of course Jester Thomas will always upstage you, what a badass motherfucker.

@lawgamer: Apart from the DLC the bosses are of higher quality in Dark Souls II; there's a handful of bosses on par with the DLC batch/Gwyn. Smelter is substantially harder than every other fight in the series.

I beat the Covetous Demon and the Belfry Gargoyles on my first try.

A considerable amount of bosses I beat without much trouble, but died because of a dumb mistake just to run back and beat them easily like the Lost Sinner, Flexile Sentry, DragonRider, and the Skeleton Lords.

oh yeah took down lost sinner first try! wooo!

I beat the following bosses on my first try:

• The Last Giant
• Executioner's Chariot
• The Skeleton Lords
• Flexile Sentry
• Lost Sinner
• Belfry Gargoyles
• Royal Rat Vanguard
• Royal Rat Authority
• Scorpioness Najka
• Demon of Song
• Dragonrider
• Twin Dragonriders
• Prowling Magus and Congregation
• Giant Lord
• Throne Watcher and Throne Defender

I had both Old Dragonslayer and Velstadt down to one hit, but I got cocky and they punished me for it.

Ahhh just took down Pursuer first try on NG+ on that first platform you see him. Hope this is a sign of things to come.

It may be hard to tell sometimes but you definitely grow as a player and your skills/judgement vastly improves by the end of the game.

Just beat Skeleton Lord on first try. He's super easy so the fight wouldn't be notable except that my weapons broke midway through the fight and I still was able to go into the menus, equip a new weapon and come back and kill.

@fredchuckdave: I'd really like to hear your explanation on why you think the Smelter Demon is the hardest boss in the series. Sure he's powerful but there's plenty of time to drink estus flasks and my adaptability is probably lower than most people at this point. EDIT: So I've just fought him a couple more times in co-op and the only hard attack to dodge is his shockwave aoe which he didn't do against me when I fought him.

I just beat the Smelter Demon on my first try, really thought he would be a lot harder from what I've heard. I don't think I'm using an overpowered build or anything either, I'm soul level 110 and used a great club+8 and a tower shield+5 wearing drangleic armor unupgraded. I even had my jester hat on as I didn't realize he was through that door so I didn't have time to change to a proper helm. All of his attacks were easily blocked, maybe the people who had trouble were either trying to roll or used smaller shields. With the way stability works in this game I doubt I'll ever not use a greatshield in any of my builds.

Well thinking back I got.... Flexile Sentry, Belfry Gargoyles, Demon of Song, Scorpioness Najka, Prowling Magus + Congregation, Covetous Demon, Old Dragonslayer, and the Guardian Dragon all on the first attempt. Most of them I got in two shots, a few in three. The only bosses I know took me more than 3 attempts were the Smelter Demon (easily hardest boss in game), Nashandra (I just wouldn't fight from range was tired/bullheaded), and the Ruin Sentinels (summoned NPC wasn't there first time, they were suicidal on attempt 2, and I choked on 3).

Skeleton Lords is actually a real nasty fight if you don't know what is coming and get there OP. I died the first time because I killed parts of it so fast it caused add spawn to swamp me, and the second time because I didn't know the spawn pattern and the stinking pinwheel things all landed on top of me and hit from 3 different angles.

@topsteer: You had a very powerful weapon and sounds like you got lucky with his attack pattern, if Smelter does the big overhead 2 hand smash over and over he's pretty easy for example. Also try doing it with Lucatiel staying alive.

@karkarov: Yeah, quite a few of the bosses are easy if you get there when you're extremely powerful (which due to the nature of the layout is inevitably going to happen) and much harder otherwise; people seem to have tremendous difficulty figuring out that if they're 1-2 shotting everything in the area they're probably a bit overleveled. Skeleton Lords are a tricky fight to be sure. I barely beat Skeleton Lords with a pretty powerful character because I killed all 3 Lords before killing their minions (or even realizing they spawned) and took a bunch of damage after that; somehow or other I killed most of the Skelewheels in like 2 or 3 swings; I was fortunate more or less.

@fredchuckdave: Yeah that's what got me on the first attempt, I had killed all three lords before I even realized killing them caused adds. Then it was me versus like 12 dudes :P. Even still I "almost" won. I think I just had two wheel dudes and one estoc undead left when the wheel guys hit me from two different angles.

My route through the game was looney though in the extreme. The first "lord soul" boss I found was actually the Rotten (dropped down using the cat ring), I got to the Scorpioness and didn't attempt it before I even killed the ruin chicks in the Bastille, I got to brightstone cove before I killed the Lost Sinner, then I doubled back, killed the sinner, killed the Rotten, then was like WTF??!?? until I got a hint from someone to talk to EVERYONE until they had no more to say and got the Copse opened. Needless to say I was a mite bit overleveled by the time I got there. To make it even funnier I got to the Warf before killing Pursuer but somehow missed the switch to activate the ship so still ended up killing the Pursuer for my initial route into the Bastille. Though I did find the switch eventually.

@fredchuckdave: I don't think it had much to do with my weapon, I could have beaten him with a weapon a third as powerful. I fought him twice in co-op, won one and lost one. The one I lost the host had summoned Lucatiel who tried to stay close to him and kept on triggering his aoe attack which eventually killed the host. Also I wasn't human for that fight so I couldn't summon Lucatiel and I have no interest in summoning npcs to see their story which I think is a horrible mechanic.

If the Smelter Demon was an early boss then I'd agree he'd be really hard but by the time I get there I should have my builds pretty far along in terms of what weapons, armor, spells or miracles to use so I should have something close to the great club in terms of power. I don't mean to say that I'm great at Dark Souls or anything, I still make a lot of stupid mistakes and have trouble on a lot of enemies and bosses. I got stuck on the Royal Rat Authority for instance and it didn't seem to be that hard of a boss but I just kept making the same dumb mistakes.

@topsteer: Smelter can be the fifth boss you face in the game. Also this weird notion of claiming that making a boss go 3 times as fast is not making it easier is completely insane; the bleed alone through the tower shield would kill you by that point. I did close to 80 runs of Smelter without an extremely powerful weapon/spells and the hosts won about 25 of them (about half of those being solely due to my efforts in keeping the boss' attention/not taking a single hit while staying in melee range); 2 is not a good sample size and your weapon is going to skew it. For comparison's sake I did around 100 runs of Ornstein and Smough within a few weeks of launch and the hosts won about 65 of them.

What I mean by that is that I had plenty of estus flasks left to survive a longer battle, of course it's easier with a stronger weapon but he wasn't doing that much damage through the tower shield and I never took a direct hit and like I said earlier he gives you plenty of time to use healing items. I didn't mention those two co-op fights for data but to point out that summoning Lucatiel is the worst thing to do in that fight and again I think you're overselling my weapon. I think you're putting too much emphasis on your co-op runs when that in itself will skew things, most people who summon for bosses are having trouble against them so your 25 out of 80 will obviously be a low percentage since it doesn't take into account people that beat him without summoning or people like me who had no trouble.

@topsteer: Personal bias is negated by a large sample size involving other participants; your individual experience is almost completely irrelevant in the grand scheme of things; thus you have to do a large number of summons with an average-ish build if you really want to know how difficult a boss is; simple. Your post is essentially the antithesis of basic logic; for many of the successful attempts I did maybe 60-70% of the damage to the boss so if anything those attempts were heavily skewed in my favor and the host would have had very little chance in my absence. You fought the boss 3 times and have come to your opinion, I've fought it 85 times and have come to mine.

Now, eventually people will just have their handy dandy guides on hand every time they fight Smelter and that will increase the success rate or they'll luck into a powerful enough build on the first go-around; but until then there is ample time for experimentation and testing.

The giant never hit me, and the guy in the ghost ship was easy. The protector one-shotted me from full when he had almost no health left and I beat him on my second shot Otherwise, I died at least a few times on the other bosses so far (just beat the giant rat-dog-thing)

Weird. I've been having a tougher time than with either Demon's Souls or Dark Souls 1. The Last Giant in particular was super annoying until I stopped locking on which made it way, way easier.

@theht: Not to worry I'm almost positive you are in the majority (even extreme majority) there; just a small number of vocal people like to bitch on forums without thinking about it beforehand. Categorically I'd say Dark Souls is roughly 20% harder than Demon's Souls (i.e. there is reason for debate) and Dark Souls II is 75-100% harder than either (things like the Darklurker, Dark Chasm of Old, Dragon Shrine, and NG+ with melee builds being absolutely incomparable to anything else in the series). Of course the only people that will really have a valid opinion here are those that play Dark Souls II first; and for those I wouldn't be surprised if the average death count is well over 300.

@fredchuckdave: Fighting bosses in co-op is a horrible way of determining their strength, there are way too many variables. I'm talking about the difficulty of beating him solo and you're talking about co-op where he he has vastly more HP and if the host dies then it's over. If all you're going to bring up is co-op fights then I'll end it here, I don't think Smelter is hard solo and made my points to support it and I really couldn't care less how hard he is in co-op.

When I started playing DS2, I thought that the game must be so much easier as I was 1 shotting bosses left and right without preparing or any foreknowledge. The first 4 bosses I tried all fell immediately. Then I met this guy: Lost Sinner (also it isn't a guy!) . Who worked me over right good. Since then there have been some easy bosses (Covetous Demon), and more than a couple hard ones (WTF SMELTER DEMON, RAAAAAGGGEEEEEEEEEEEE).

IMO, anyone saying this is too easy needs to keep going. It gets quite a bit harder.

I've only killed 6-7 bosses, so far the only ones I haven't killed first try was The Pursuer and the 3 Alien dudes. And I'm terrible at Dark Souls, I find the mobs leading up to the bosses way harder than the bosses themselves.

@topsteer: You have to distance yourself from your personal experience and look and see how other players respond to fighting the boss; whether his patterns turn out to be challenging for them and so on; the best way to do this is by being summoned. There is a large number of variables for any encounter of any fight; the more repetitions you have the clearer the picture will be. For comparison I did around 30 fights with the Flexile Sentry in Co-op and the host won every single time.

If you want a Taurus vs. Last Giant discussion I've never had a single unsuccessful attempt at Taurus as a phantom and the Last Giant has won maybe 25-30%; the skill of the host is going to be lower at this point in the game than when they reach Smelter, naturally. But the Last Giant is certainly a challenging boss relative to other early game bosses in the series (save perhaps Capra Demon); as is Pursuer if you don't luck into the exact strafing pattern you need. Note Pursuer is obviously much, much easier in Co-op because of the ballistae.

If you're truly so confident of the easiness of Smelter you can always just toss a Bonfire Ascetic in and try him again; and again as many times as you like. It's definitely a good place to farm souls.

@fredchuckdave: I don't even have any bonfire ascetics, haven't found one yet and I hate that they're so rare. If i had one I'd probably use it somewhere I can farm titanite chunks or other materials. Fighting Smelter again wouldn't prove anything except that he's harder on NG+ which is the whole point of NG+. I'm not a fan of NG+ in these games anyway, I just start a new character instead.

took out chariot boss in one shot, didn't really know what was going on(was wandering around trying to figure out how to stop it until i found the lever which was hard to see) and probably out leveled it a bit since i only went there after i was almost done with the game.

You think Lost Sinner's difficult now? Just wait till you tackle her in NG+... bloody flame throwing phantoms all up in your grill to go along with everything else!

Also, what really needs to be emphasised with the Souls games is that they can be both difficult and easy, it's that a lot of it is determined by your playstyle. Having ranged capabilities can make certain bosses a complete cakewalk, whereas for someone who's completely melee may have more trouble with. Most forms of magic also appear to be rather overpowered, especially hexs and regular magic due to their cast speed and their ultimately decimating damage. I've also played with Sun covenant players who can do like double damage just with one lightning spear than three hits of my +10 Black Steel Katana with 50 dex.

Think I beat Dragonrider, Flexile Sentry, Lost Sinner, Queen Mytha, Najka, The Rotten, Magus, and Demon of Song on my first go.

The Smelter Demon is the only boss I've ever had to summon help for in any of the 3 Souls games. I was just doing NO damage whatsoever (40 damage a hit), and he would one shot me in some pretty odd ways. Other than him, I did most of the other bosses in 1 or 2 tries. Like I said before, having played the other 2 Souls games had prepared me pretty well for whatever they were going to throw at me...damn Smelter Demon.

I Beat the Pursuer alone on my first try with my health reduced to half (didn't burn an effigy beforehand). If you just stand close to him and circle strafe right none of his attacks hit you. It was weird thinking back on Brad and Vinny complaining about him.

All the other bosses took a bunch of tries and had to summon some help a couple of times, but once the patters were down it was just a question of timing. Also the guy in the boat is a lot easier to fight on his club side instead of his sword side because it's a lot slower.

All in all, I've beaten 6 bosses so far and the Pursuer was my proudest moment.

I think I beat over half of the bosses on my first try, but when I was stuck, I was truly stuck.

hory shiet Three Ruin Sentinels

Playing Scholar of the First Sin.

I've beaten the last....ten bosses on my first try?

Is it just me or is this game's difficulty fucking ridiculous? regular enemies go down in a couple hits. I've got a +10 broadsword and I'm level 115 but 80% of my playtime so far has seriously been a walk in the park. This is bizarre. It's so friggin easy

Funny, i didn't know i could go to Heide's Tower of Flame early on. So I killed every bosses in the other path and it was quite challenging specially when I got to the DLC bosses which i didn't manage to kill Elana ( that's when i found out about Heide's Tower of Flame ). From Heide's tower onward i beated every boss on first try ( pretty easy ), except for Mytha. The game would have been much easier for me if i knew about Heide's Tower of Flame early on xD