I am having such a tough time beating Gwyn. My armor is black knight armor and I'm using the the furysword. I've watched vid upon vid of guys breezing past G like he

was paper. I've seen the parry-ripost move, the hide-behind-the-stone-formation move, the nuclear-fireball move, et al. but I still keep getting gashed. One thing that

concerned me was that my armor-weapon combo was not strong enough, but I've seen guys rip G with armor and weaps worse than mine. I've tried to do the parry-ripost but I'm

nervous when I play (having done this twenty times now), so my button reactions are either too late or too early. I need to get into the Flow, where it's effortless.

I apologize for the lameness of this post given that this issue has been raised infinite times. Maybe I'll just have to commit an entire weekend to finally killing this fucker.

Gwyn's hard the first time through. The people you're referring to with the weaker weapons and armor all had to go through a learning process like you are so don't feel bad that you can't kill Gwyn easily on your first playthrough.

I'd honestly say just keep trying with either the parrying or the rock formation until you get it right.

Would you drop some of your armor to gain speed and agility or keep it on? With my guy I've noticed that he loses stamina fast and recharges slow. It seems like other players on vid walkthroughs have guys who have juiced their stamina to the max. I have a ring on to recharge my stamina faster but it's not fast enough. If G hits me and I block w/shield I'm stunned and stamina goes down by at least half.

I also thought of summoning but no signs are ever there. I just want to finish this game.

He has a combo of 3-4 horizontal swings. That's what I used to parry riposte him since I sometimes would get nervous like you. When you get comfortable his jab move is pretty easy to parry as well. But just for safety, dodge everything but that horizontal/diagonal slash combo. To give yourself time, block the first swing, parry the second swing. Let your stamina come back and repeat.

The parry riposte method is the most reliable for the most part. It can be tricky to get the timing of Gwyn's first strike down, but his second strike has an incredibly large parry window. I suggest using a high fire resist shield (black knight shield, for instance), and using Gwyn's first strike as a setup swing for your parry. If you don't want to learn the timing on Gwyn, you can use the black knights 3 hit swing combo just outside of his boss room to learn the timing better (or, use the silver knights in anor londo for even less punishment).

Basically, let the first swing hit your shield, and know that gwyn will always swing very soon after, and parry him. Practice using the knights, since their attacks have very similar timing. If you successfully land a parry/riposte, you should have enough time to heal off any damage you took prior to landing the hit.

Obviously, you don't have to use the parry/riposte method. If you want, you can strip down to light armour for a quick roll, and dodge gwyn's attacks. Bait him into his grab attack and punish it with a hit or two. This relies on you being a fairly proficient dodger though. You can also go pure tank method. Grab Artorias' shield and abuse its stability, while attempting to steer clear of the grab move.

Hope this helps. I've beaten Gwyn a number of ways, but the simplest is the parry/ripose method (unless you are an int build, in which case you should just abuse the homing crystal soul mass spell).

@LaudaSolem said:

Would you drop some of your armor to gain speed and agility or keep it on? With my guy I've noticed that he loses stamina fast and recharges slow. It seems like other players on vid walkthroughs have guys who have juiced their stamina to the max. I have a ring on to recharge my stamina faster but it's not fast enough. If G hits me and I block w/shield I'm stunned and stamina goes down by at least half.

I also thought of summoning but no signs are ever there. I just want to finish this game.

The closer you are to Gwyn, the more Gwyn will hit you. I don't mean he'll swing twice I mean his one swipe will count as two hits. This can drain stamina incredibly fast so just keep walking away from hit until he does something unsafe and get a hit or two in. I must also ask if you're lowering your shield when he isn't actively trying to kill you because if your shield is lowered than you regain stamina quicker.

As for you first question I'd just ditch the armor. Chances are he's killing you in one or two hits so why sacrifice mobility?

I lower my shield after a block to regain stam. Thanks for the help. I'm gonna bite the bullet and f him up (and see the lame ending I've heard about).

btw, can't wait for DS2

Gwyn is considered easy because people parry him to death. Try killing him without a shield and parrying... and base HP :) I've done it.

OK, this is how you kill him the easy way...

1. Get the Buckler or a shield you are comfortable parrying with and upgrade it to, say, 10+ for better stability.
2. Get Power Within(PW).
3. Get the Hornet Ring. It is behind "the grave of Artorias where you fought Sif.
4. Upgrade your Furysword as much as you can because Gwyn is weak to fire.

Strategy:

Fight him near the fog door or on a place where he will be on a plane higher than you. That way his two handed first attack will miss you and it's pretty easy to parry the second.

When he is one-handing the sword, just block the first hit(you can't parry it) and then parry the second. It's easy. You should be able to do a ton of dmg to him.

If you need to heal you should bait an attack that has a slow windup or when he tries to grab you.

If you use the Black Knight Halbert fully upgraded with the PW and Hornet Ring you'll probably kill him in two parries.

While it might seem kinda stupid to parrot a bunch of people, the Parry-Riposte attack is the easiest way to kill Gwyn. You need to watch his animations on the swing in order to get the parry down, and it might take you three or four "deaths" to really get the hang of it, but you will. And once you do, oh man does Gwyn ever become your bitch, OP.

Keep parrying, keep learning the pattern.

As with most other bosses in Dark Souls fear is your biggest enemy. It's hard to tell someone how to not to be afraid, but try to look at it as if you have nothing to lose. If you can get over your fear you'll quickly find yourself victorious. As for some general tips, use your hardest hitting weapon, equip the hornet ring, using iron flesh can easily save you from a screw-up (although won't last the entire fight) and on the flip-side you can use power within and maybe cut down how many succesful parries you need (although ofc riskier). Both pyromancies are at full effect even without any investment in pyromancy at all.

I usually beat Gwyn by circling the dirt mound that's in the room and keeping him on the opposite side of it. He can't hit through it, but if you use a long enough weapon (spear) you can.

I had a greatshield and didn't parry at all, I found him really easy (beat him first try)

course I was takin away so much health with one swing (I had the gold hemmed robes set with a demon great machete +15)

@Animasta: Sounds like you grossly overlevelled it, which is fairly common post the souls boosting patch I guess, but better than Iron fleshing/Avelysing it I suppose. I'm assuming you had a really exciting high Vit/Stam/Poise build as well.

As for Gwyn I've never tried parrying him and not sure how that became ubiquitous other than people failing and looking at youtube; if you backpedal in a circle around the arena and attack only when his grab whiffs it's not too bad (BK Shield for the inevitable hit he does land) So few people play this game blind it's staggering.

@Fredchuckdave: I don't think I had any poise but I can't remember (I did have plenty of stamina and vitality, which is why I could still mid roll with the greatshield of artorias and demon great machete)

and 80 is probably overlevelled but I really had nothing to spend souls on once I fully upgraded my weapon.

Don't know if you have any magic going on your build, but if so, I remember killing him more or less entirely with the one spell that generates a couple of the little shots that fire off when an enemy is close. I didn't even have too much magic stat, but it would knock him for 1k sometimes when they'd all connect. Never even messed with parrying.

It's the last boss in Dark Souls. You're going to have to die a bunch, until you learn how to avoid taking damage, while figuring out the times at which he is vulnerable to attack. You know... Dark Souls bosses. For an actual tip, you can parry him and deal major damage with a riposte, but I was always crap at that. Good luck!

@Animasta: Yeah you had ridiculous stats if you were using Artorias' shield which is kind of borderline joke level for NG+7 (Can block Bed of Chaos); that's the one thing about the souls games is you can trivialize them; which is why Vagrant Story is still a more difficult Action RPG in addition to being superior in several other regards.