Difficult bosses and horrible bonfire placement in late game

At about 33 hours into the game, I THINK I'm nearing the end. I beat the Bed of Chaos boss, and I believe I need to go the Ruins of New Londo now to kill Sif or something, but a trend I've began to notice with a lot of the late game bosses is that the bonfires are placed very far away. The Bed of Chaos for instance, even with the Chaos Servant shortcut activated, took me about 5 minutes to run through - I HAD to kill the enemy on the bridge, because the one time I did try to run pass him, he one shot me. Also, whoever designed the Bed of Chaos boss needs to be punished - unless if Dark Souls 2 actually has a proper freaking jump button, there shouldn't be a boss that requires platforming.

Anyway, I feel like I'm just dying to the bosses over and over and over again now, and it's no fun at all anymore. It started with Artorias, who I think I died to about thirty times before I FINALLY beat him. These fights feel less like fights now, and more like memorization games with NO room for error. With Artorias for instance, I memorized all of his moves, I could dodge them perfectly, and he STILL was able to beat me a lot - It felt more like pure luck that I beat him rather than anything, and the feeling I got after beating him wasn't satisfaction or joy, but it was relief that I wouldn't be banging my head against a brick wall over and over again. Now I'm trying to fight Manus, and the stupid bonfire issue makes this fight even worse - the boss is hard enough without the stupid five minute run. I know the game is punishing, but come on, it's just not fun at all running back, it's beginning to feel like busywork.

So is this how it's going to be from this point on? Are bosses consistently going to be placed very far off from the bonfires? Even Seath, who wasn't that difficult of a boss fight, was far away from the nearest bonfire. Also, are bosses going to continue being this difficult? Manus in particular is kind of making me want to just stop playing, because he attacks so ridiculously fast and his moves are hard to dodge. I'm just getting tired of dying so much - and yeah, I know it's called Prepare to Die, but I'm Prepared to Quit if this keeps up. I was loving this game up to this point, now I'm rapidly beginning to lose interest.

You seem to have missed a bonfire in Lost Izalith.

The Bed of chaos boss is almost on top of a bonfire- I think it's the closest bonfire to a boss in the game. Weird you think that one is far. Sounds like you missed some.

So you know, some bonfires are hidden.

I agree, Bed of Chaos is the worst boss in the game. It's more of a puzzle than anything that requires you to jump on a small tree branch. It's still kind of intense but really unfair considering there is no other boss like that and you have not been trained to think like that up to that point in the game. But, you know, Dark Souls likes to fuck you where it can haha

Artorias and Manus are DLC bosses and I believe they made those bosses harder because at that point they were able to see how people play so they would know what would be more challenging (as people, apparently, constantly ask them to make the game harder). With Artorias it's all about dodging and watching what he does. He was the hardest boss in the game for me. I had a little trouble with Gwyn as well and people say he's simple.

There is some bosses in the game that are farther from bonfires than others. I don't know how much they really thought about bonfire placement, but that's kind of how Dark Souls is in general. You have to be patient and know that you'll be doing some parts over and over again. I personally enjoyed it as the art style is intense and the combat is thrilling so it didn't bother me. I also farm a lot when I want to relax but not really do anything else (generally for hard humanity). Some people would probably think that's just crazy.

I didn't have any difficulty with Manus, he was pretty easy. He attacks fast but he didn't do much damage to me. I have heavy armor and 2 hand strength/end build though. I don't know if that makes a difference. if you have a dodge build it may be rough as he knocks you around a lot. I'm sure there are strategies out there for you if that is the case.

It could also be a case of just needing to take a break. Sometimes when you come back to games it's like your brain is refreshed and you do better.

If you couldn't make a single error on the Artorias fight then you probably need to put points into vitality.

I'm currently doing a low level character with crappy equipment and I've been fighting Manus for about a week. I started with 99 green blossoms (I use one before I enter the fog gate and sometimes use another while I'm in there) and now I'm down to around 40 of them. Most of his attacks can one shot me and I only hit for 60 dmg with a normal Uchigatana attack. What is your soul level and equipment because you should be able to hit a lot harder than me and not get one shotted by his basic attacks.

I've easily died over 40 times to Manus and it doesn't even take 3 minutes to reach the fog gate.

You missed a bonfire. Hint: Dragon asses.

But most of the late game bosses are some of the easiest in the game.

Like i honestly had more trouble with the church gargoyles than any of the lord soul bosses.

The bed of chaos (very poorly designed boss imo) wasn't that bad of a run, if you get the hidden wall bonfire (which almost always has a TON of player messages around it, so its hard to miss) you can avoid every single enemy on the way to the boss cus its just those stupid fire breathing stone snowmen.

One of my only complaints in the game is the unnecessary slog to get back to the last four bosses if you mess up. I've beaten the game five or six times by now with two different characters, and I've never beaten the Bed of Chaos in less than three attempts. The Four Kings usually get me a few times too, though I've never died from Nito and Seath is pretty easy...but wait until you get to the end boss. If you have any trouble with him at all (I have on a couple playthroughs), the lead-up to him is pretty disheartening.

Why they couldn't have some sort of bonfire you unlock if you've proven you can get to the spot repeatedly with no troubles is beyond me. I'd just have issues with some tricky attack pattern and have to wade through a million black knights again, and it's stupid. Hope they fix it in the sequel. It's already much, much better than Demon's Souls.

@random45: You provided zero information, absolutely nothing, about your build and equipment selection. For all we know, you could be doing a naked SL1 run with starting gear, or trying to cheese the game with a Vitality-only SL150 character wearing full Havel's and the Great Shield of Artorias.

Dark Souls is a gameplay-focused game. You need to be good at it to be able to beat it, and it seems to me that you're doing something wrong. It may be your build, it may be your gameplay style, it may be that you're missing bonfires along the way... I don't know, because you didn't say anything about any of these points. Artorias, for example, is one of the hardest bosses in the game, because he's fast and hits very hard. You shouldn't be dying in just one hit, so either dodge more, or get more Vitality. The same goes for the Pole Demon in Lost Izalith: he shouldn't be OHKOing you, so get more VIT. Seath wasn't that far off from a bonfire. I'd say around 2-3 minutes away, going from the bonfire at the Duke's Archives (near the secret wall) to the end of the Crystal Caves. The Bed of Chaos, while not very far away from either bonfire, yeah, is actually quite lame... but most of the bosses are pretty much straight-on fights. They all have their own little quirks, but they all boil down to "don't get hit, hit the until they die".

Dark Souls is by no means an insurmountable task, provided you are finding an effective style of gameplay. If you've hit a wall and keep dying and dying on the same boss over and over again, it's high time you changed your strategies.

Something doesn't quite seem right here...

The gargoyles are really hard because the game isn't really built for tackling more than one difficult opponent at a time. The lock-on is too rigid and awkward for those fights. It sucked in Demons Souls when fighting Maneater, it sucked in Dark Souls with Gargoyles and Smough/Ornstein and it will suck in Dark Souls 2 when they undoubtedly put in a dual boss fight somewhere.

That said Bed of Chaos is probably the most awkward and ill-fitting boss fight out of the entire series, with Dragon God from Demons Souls trailing as a close second.

Aren't bonfires kinda long away from some of the bosses right from the getgo? The walk to the Taurus demon or whatever the first boss was called took some time, because you had to fight many enemies with starter gear. You should consider dropping some points into vit so you can survive attacks though, that way it becomes easier to do bosses in less then 5 tries. Also: the bonfire close to Manus is like a short, combat-less stroll to the fog gate...

The only horribly placed bonfire in the game is the one before the Centipede Demon ... because it's placed right before the fog gate.

The bonfire run to Manus is less than a minute, I don't know what route you are going but there is a quicker one and you're wasting your own time. The annoying part is just the sorcerer who will probably hit you in the back with dark magic while you run down the fallen column.

Manus is not so hard to beat if you are just patient and can block. Learn to read when he will slam his hand down and keep it there for a while, and attack his hand. Don't try and attack him at any other point, and just get out of the way when he roars. For his dark magic, well, it's just a case of timing and constantly circling so you don't get hit by the big blast that's harder to dodge.

If you are struggling this much with Manus and Artorias even after learning their attacks then my guess is you have some problems with your equipment or your build.

I was just pissed last night, and I went to bed shortly after writing this. Let's see, I believe my stats are:

18 VIT
30~ Attunement
22 Endurance
44 Intelligence

And the rest either have none, or very few stats spent in them, and my soul level is 80 something. I'd load the game, but I'm currently at work so I can't do that. As evident by my stats though, I use magic rather than anything else, and my HP is low. Artonias didn't one-hit me, I think I could withstand 3~ hits from him before I died. As for Manus, holy crap, you guys say he is easy? I don't want to know what you consider to be hard.

As for gear, I'm wearing really light stuff, since heavy armor makes me run really slow, so I guess that also hurt my survivability. I believe I'm wearing the headpiece from that one woman you save from the Hydra, since it increases your magic damage, and the rest of the gear is a mishmash of whatever I really need at the time. As for weapons, I'm using the Heater Shield +5, and the Lightning Spear from Sen's Fortress, and my alternate weapons is the Sorcerer Catalyst and Longbow for pulling enemies from far off. I generally don't have trouble with any enemies in the game other than the bosses, since my magic usually kills everything in 1-2 hits.

My strategy when it comes to bosses (other than the stupid Bed of Chaos fight), is to block and cast Lightning Spear and Crystal Lightning spear, since those spells do a shit load of damage, even to bosses, and hope I kill them before they kill me. Early on this work fantastically and I could beat most bosses on my first try, but the later game bosses are becoming more and more difficult.

It does annoy me that they have bonfires hidden though - I searched the entire area around the Chaos Servant entrance, and I didn't see one at all. It would have made my life so much easier, but I was able to accumulate over 100,000 souls since I kept dying and killing the same enemies over and over, so I suppose it's not TOO bad.

@random45: Its definitely much much harder to play Dark Souls as a mage. Having such crazy low vit like that and wearing light armor is basically asking to be 1-2shotted by everything. You might want to consider equipping the Ring of Favor and Protection, and wearing some heavier armor.

Also you're fighting the DLC bosses, they're a lot tougher than most of the regular game for that reason, so skip them if you are having too much trouble.

This is why not everyone will finish dark souls. It's hard.

And you haven't even got to the four kings yet. That's where I was ready to quit.

Dark Souls don't give a puppy what you think.

@random45:

44 int? Get the Tin Crystallization Catalyst, Dark Bead, and Power Within. I promise you, you will absolutely trivialize the game

This thread is in right after someone posted that the later half is too easy to a fault.

@random45 said:

Seath is the only real egregious slog back to the boss in the game. The rest are a bit annoying by comparison. The biggest thing you need to do right now in my opinion is upgrade your equipment. That Heater Shield should be at least +10 at this point, +14/15 if you've drained New Londo, and upgrading your armor will help your suvivability (but not by a whole lot). On top of your Lightning Spear (which you should upgrade as well), you should consider making an Enchanted weapon of your liking. You'll be putting out pretty good damage with your Intelligence that high, as well as have a normallly upgraded one for buffing and Magic/Lightning resistant enemies.

A lot of times when you *think* you've missed a bonfire its just that the bonfire is hidden. Also, welcome to Dark Souls. It hates you.

Thanks for posting your stats. I have good news and bad news. The good news is I know your problem. The bad news is it's the same problem I have right now fighting Manus at soul level 30. I have 17 Vitality (719 HP) and 26 Endurance. The best shield I can use is a Crest Shield+5 and Manus will still one shot me if I try to block his huge one handed slam or any of his Dark Sorcery attacks. I haven't tried Full Havel because I wouldn't be able to block his attack and counterattack at the same time. Blocking will do nothing will my low vitality. As I've mentioned before I can only deal 60 dmg per Uchigatana attack (a two handed jumping attack deals 182 dmg) so it's impossible for me to tank. My only option is a drawn out 15 minute fight where I have to dodge to avoid dying.

You can't stop getting one shotted with your current stats. You might be able to get by on a full havel build since our damage output with 44 Intelligence should be huge. You could take him out with a few casts with that much Intelligence. What is your exact damage output?

EDIT. Super update. After writing that post I turned on Dark Souls and gave Manus another shot. Here is the result.

Sounds like Dark Souls and it's not going to cater to you. If you want to quit, you won't be the first.

Huh, turns out I have all three of those things. I'll have to try it out.

Yeah, ok, you're all masochists. I tried fighting Manus all night, and it feels like I'm (yet again) hitting my head against a brick wall. I got so close several times, but his dark magic is INSANELY hard to dodge - one mistake on this boss fight generally means you're dead. Not to mention this boss actually does have some abilities that one-shot me. I know he is possible for people, but for me, I think this is my limit, I can dodge his melee attacks really well, but his freaking dark magic as I said before is super super super hard to dodge! How can you dodge that shit?! Is the final boss going to be this insanely hard too?! Argh, I can't handle this shit anymore.

Edit - I wanted to summon players for it, but there are no signs anywhere, and Sif is about as useful as a cardboard box during this fight.

I just started playing, I got past the demon guy. Killed a zombie thing, fell down some stairs, and then got killed by another zombie thing. I think I'm an hour in now but at least I have a shield...

Given your vitality his dark magic will one shot you. However, there are ways to dodge all 3 of his dark magic attacks without the silver pendent (silver pendent blocks the dark magic). The trick to dodging the dark magic is to be able to see the tells so you know how to dodge.

1) Dark Magic Forward Fireballs: Manus will move his staff and hand backwards to shoot out his forward fireballs. Dodge left or right.

2) Dark Magic Ring of Constriction: Manus will hit his staff on the ground and you'll see the fireballs appear from the bottom of his staff as they encircle you. Run toward Manus to get next to him. There is an area around Manus where the balls can't reach you.

3) Dark Magic Rain: Manus will raise his staff to the sky and keep it there as the fireball rain down on you. Back roll/dodge as fast as you can. You'll need enough stamina for 4 back/dodge rolls.

Watch this video and learn the timing and the tells for his attacks until you can quickly recognize which Dark Magic attack is coming at you. I killed him today and I dodged him for 10-15 minutes. You should be able to kill him in 5-7 minutes. Maybe even less since you have range spells. How much damage does each spell do? Manus has 6,666 HP.

I have no problems with the amount of damage I deal to him, it's simply surviving his attacks. With the Tin Crystallization Catalyst my soul spears can deal over 50% of his HP in less than a minute if I manage to land them all. I generally just use Soul Arrows and other weaker spells until I get him down to 60%, because that is when he starts to do the dark magic, and like I said before, I can dodge his melee attacks pretty well. After he is below 60% health, I bring out the big guns in an attempt to take him out as fast as possible, since I can't survive long with him spamming his dark magic.

Watch the video for the dark magic tells and follow my dodging tips and you'll be able to kill him before he can even cast 3 of his dark spell attacks since you can deal more than 50% damage in less than 1 minute.

I agree. I am not the best player, though I am ecking my way through. Sooner or later I may hit a wall and just say no. But the level up system gives me hope, and I am not above grinding. I hope the op finds the bonfires as needed to continue. I love this game

Ok, this is ridiculous. I decided to try again tonight and I beat him ON MY FIRST %)(%ING TRY.

I got amazingly lucky and he only was able to cast one spell before I downed him. As for the amount of damage I did, my soul spears did roughly 700~ per hit, and my crystal soul spears did just below 1000 per hit. My normal soul arrow did about 175 damage per hit, and the 5 floating soul orbs did 600~ per hit assuming each orb hit their target. Overall, I think I just got lucky and he mercifully did the easiest dark spell to dodge.

Still, I'm glad that I managed to down the hardest boss in the game, so I hope the rest of the game won't be quite as difficult as this, haha.

I got to the Four Kings and beat it on my first try. Their attacks are so ridiculously slow and telegraphed that I didn't even realize it was a boss at first. Compared to Manus, those guys are nothing.

Four Kings is a cake walk, all you need is the crest shield from the Asylum and the attacks barely make a dent. Just poke them to death with a decent spear while blocking. Same thing works for Nito provided it's a SK Spear.

I just got to Nito and died - he's not necessarily hard - his attacks are generally easy to dodge, it's the freaking minions all over the place. You need a Divine weapon to take care of them, and I'm a mage, so my strongest stuff is via my spells, which only handles these guys for like 2 seconds. If I could clear the room before fighting Nito that would be so much better.

Did you not find the silver pendant? It makes avoiding his dark magic about ten times easier.

Whenever you hit a road block you have to changed up your tactics and/or gear. Also with bonfires later in the game they start to hide the easy to reach bonfires, so you have to search a bit more to find them.

How much have you upgraded your armor? Since you've only put 40-ish hours in, I suspect you haven't done much grinding for souls/titanite to upgrade everything useful. That could help your survivability.

Lost Izalith is probably the worst part of the game, but yeah, as others said, you may have missed a bonfire there. Also, the DLC/PttD area bosses are harder than the rest of the game, presumably since they were added later. Artorias is hard but if you summon help hes pretty easy. Manus becomes easier if you rescue baby Sif and summon him to help (his summon sign doesn't appear until past the fog, so don't look for it outside). Minor spoiler so I blocked it out, but its a useful tip. Also it changes the cutscene on one of the other bossfights, but I guess you have already done that one if you beat 4 kings.

Nope, never found it. I have no idea where it was, but fortunately I was able to beat him regardless.

With Manus, the biggest issue was that I just couldn't dodge his dark magic that well. Another poster provided a useful Youtube video that showed his tells for each dark magic and how to avoid them, and after that I was able to do it a bit easier. Also, the Bed of Chaos boss fight is just poorly designed, I don't care what anyone says. If you have a boss that requires platforming, then have a reliable jump button damnit!

Heh, funny thing is that I NEVER upgraded my armor. Every time I tried, the armor I was wearing was seemingly unlisted, so I just skipped it. I hate farming, so that is why I didn't try too hard on this front. I still managed to beat the game regardless though - the final boss was a freaking joke. No wonder people wanted the DLC bosses to be harder.

I respectfully disagree - The Tomb of Giants was without a doubt, my least favorite part of the game. It's incredibly dark, a lot of the enemies there can't be taken down with magic, and the final boss had a crap ton of minions during his fight. Fortunately, I realized that running around Nito's arena would aggro all of the adds, so I just stayed in the spot where I dropped in at, and was able to only fight Nito with 2 other adds, which made the fight significantly easier. I also love the change of cutscene when you had to kill Sif! I really wish there was a way to spare him! Sif was so ridiculously easy as a boss though that I kind of felt bad - Manus pretty much made me stop fearing any other boss in the game because of how much more difficult he was.

I don't quite understand your posts. How did you know that the Sif cut scene had changed? I got the impression from your posts this was your first play through and you hadn't really been using the internet for help.

Has your opinion changed on the game much since your original post? It looks like you were finding it annoying because you were going through the DLC which was designed to be more difficult.

Anyway you should try a melee build, sorcery makes the bosses a bit boring in my opinion. Not sure on how different it is in terms of difficulty but the game just feels entirely designed in mind for the player to be using melee weapons.

Also looks like you missed kalameet boss.

@haffy: The main reason I decided to do the DLC early was because I knew it would change Sif's scene. I don't even remember HOW I know that, but that's why I did it so early on. For most of the game I didn't use the internet for help, but I did look up where to progress at parts when I got lost. This was mainly a 'I'm pissed and I want to bitch about it' post. That being said, even after looking up how to dodge Manus' magic, I couldn't do it. I beat that boss with pure luck because he only cast a spell once, and I was able to dodge a little bit of it.

I was mostly annoyed when I wrote this because of how significantly harder the DLC was - prior to that I was going through the game at a steady pace, which felt fair and just about right. Doing the DLC so early threw me completely off.

And yeah, some of the bosses I think were designed for melee weapons as well - they are so freaking trivial when using magic that it's ridiculous.

Also, I didn't go for Kalameet. I read online you need a guy to shoot him down, and I didn't have the key. I was so close to the end of the game at that point, that I just decided not to bother. Plus, I read online that he's HARDER than Manus, and you know what? Fuck that.

Dark Souls is definitely one of the best games I've played in a long time.

Definitely - not every character is going to have any sort of ranged attack, so there always has to be a viable melee strategy to get through an encounter. Even the Butterfly conveniently lands for you to punch it in it's stupid butterfly face.

@random45: Hmm, I think Manus is a much harder boss fight if you don't use the pendant. Or maybe I just know Kalameets move set pretty well now after spending an hour to get his tail one time lol.

Glad you enjoyed the game though. Reading through your posts reminded me of playing the game for the first time and one of my friends first time. Just random moments of fuck this game and what the fuck. Then looking back and relaising how fun the game is.

@random45: Magic should be like your pistol sidearm not your main assault rifle

Well, while it does trivialize PvE content, it's almost completely worthless in PvP. Whenever I got invaded, I should have just jumped off a cliff, since I couldn't ever do shit to anyone who was capable of dodging.