Flexile Sentry, new game+5 difficulty via bonfire ascetics. I'm not using magic of any kind and can't anyway. Bows and crossbows are a death sentence in this fight. I'm putting lightning on my favorite weapon and using that.

Flexile himself isn't hard. His hits will destroy me of course, but as long as you keep his club-side facing you he's very easy to dodge. It's those damn assassins (yes they are actually assassins. I picked up some of their gear during NG+4). I'm not even sure what their deal is really. They seem to have an initial attack that is straight-up the fastest attack I've ever seen from an enemy. It'll sneak in when I'm hitting them with my first swing and knock off half my health (at least). From there it's easy to see how quickly I die to the two (or 3?) other assassins in there, assuming the F.S. doesn't catch me off-guard.

This fight is Capra Demon on a whole different level, and the run up to his fog gate is far from easy. Some of those Varangians don't stop chasing you, so I fight my way there every time... and you have to take your time in NG+++++.

So... anyone tackle this challenge?

Roll and pray to god those iframes pull through. Not especially helpful I know but... I beat Flexile Sentry at I think it was NG+3 through pure luck -- I was also a melee character without any magic capabilities (at the time; that character's got some pyro stuff now). Like you said, the actual boss isn't anything special, but those fucking assassins are, well, pretty damn good assassins.

How the fuck have you beat it 4 times already?

@evo: He used multiple bonfire ascetics to respawn the boss und bring him to NG+5 level.

Seems like it easier to just put down a summon sign if you want to farm a boss.

Yesterday I had an awesome time at this one boss. I put down my sign to help with a boss and got summoned into a doods game with one other helper already there. We took down the boss and I run outside and put my soul sign down again. I get summoned and it's the same two people except now the other guy is the summoner. After we beat the boss second time, I turned human and I see their signs so I summoned them into my game and we beat the boss together again.

It was pretty great.

...guh?

Every time you burn a Bonfire Ascetic, it ups that are one NG level. OP used 5 to bump the area up to NG+5. Each time you use one all the pick up items (not unique stuff) and the boss respawns. These changes are also permanent, and the area will up to NG+6 if he ever gets here in a NG+ run.

Why did he do this? I'm not sure.

@humanity: That is pretty cool.

I've had one boss run were it was me and the same dude getting summoned to help the host 5 times in a row. Me and him every time. After the fifth time he sent me a message on PSN saying "You think you can cover my shift next wed, I need the day off also. And we should really ask for a raise bro, this boss shit is out of control." I though it was funny.

@sterling: I left a summon sign in front of the shaded something foggy woods. Got summoned like 15 min later so I already knew the way to the boss. I helped the guy get through the fog, then we cleared out the entire next area and took out the boss on the very same run. The guy sent me a message saying thanks for everything. Those moments of co-op are great.

@sterling: Yea, I was running some of the bosses last week and had a similar situation. Helped a guy beat the Scorpioness and after a few more runs at her I moved onto Dukes Dear Freya and my the first time getting summoned there was the same guy. He sent me a message afterwords to thank and noting it was kinda funny that it had happened. Loving the co-op in this game.

Can't say I've ever faced the guy on NG+5, but consider equipping the poise ring and cracking a radiant lifegem just before the boss. You might be able to take down a couple of the assassins without getting stun-locked, recovering whatever health you lose all the while.

@development: The assassins become quite easy to deal with as long as you have other people there to help you. Heck, it can be an AI controlled summon, as long as there's something there to ensure you don't get surrounded. I have fought him a couple of times, and never needed more than a single try as long as I had folks with me.

If you absolutely insist on fighting him alone, then you want to ensure that your encumbrance is beneath 70 % and that you're wielding a large, heavy shield to absorb as many hits as possible without depleting your stamina. This fight is going to be all about positioning, in that you'll have to play very defensively until the stars align just right and you're able to deal some damage to a single assassin before again going on the defence. They jump around a lot and have lengthy finishers to their animations, this is true for the boss as well. It becomes a battle of attrition. In order to ensure you got a chance in hell, you want physical resist armour + ring, grass to boost your stamina regain, as well as an Elizabeth mushroom, as you won't have time to heal until one assassin goes down. Oh, and you're gonna' have to pull off some nice rolls, hope you've leveled adaptability.

It's absolutely doable, though it ain't fun in any kind of way unless you got aoe spells. (I found fighting him with my hex character to be dissapointingly simply, whereas my pure melee character found him to be a different beast entirely.)

I DID IT. Well, kinda. Not solo. That might actually be impossible unless I farm a bunch of twinkling titanite for better armor, but even then I don't think it'd make a giant difference. These little fuckers, guys. Okay, so there's two of them, not three. I've run it enough times that I'm at least comfortable in that room and not in full panic mode. So it doesn't matter what you do to these guys. You can stun them... but I wouldn't even call it a stun. You hit them, they wobble a little, then instantly launch into a combo double-fist lunge/shield-break that is also their most powerful attack. It can kill me in one hit sometimes. And you should watch a video of these guys; they practically glitch across the room they move so fast. They have a maneuver where they run around the room at superman speeds, so locking-on becomes a death trap, and good luck keeping track of Superman while Flexile is doing his rampage thing and the other assassin is god-knows-where.

I had to summon Lucatiel. She never makes it to the end of the fight, of course, but if I can manage to get her to draw aggro from Flexile and one of the assassins (happens maybe half the time), then I'm able to kill one (usually) and then poke at the other one in the back while it's scratching Lucatiel to pieces. From there I'm home free. I'm in "Bonfire Intensity 8" right now, and it has finally gotten too ridiculous to keep going with my current gear/level. I'm around 125, but I wasted most of my twinkling titanite on some shit armor so all the good armors are level 0 right now. Gonna come back after I get more powerful and claim what's mine.

There's a black phantom that rides the pirate ship in NG+ and beyond. He has special gear you can get. I have managed to beat this boss a couple times since I created this thread, but I still only have the torso and leg pieces. I'd be fine with missing out on the gloves, but I need that head piece, man. It completes the look! The assassins have some pretty sick gear, too. I wanna see if they drop anything besides their gloves and daggers. Their daggers are worthless, by the way: weak, low crit bonus (120 or 130 I think), and no bonus bleeding or poison damage.

edit: @do_the_manta_ray that's pretty much exactly my strategy, minus the Elizabeth Mushrooms, because I'm not sure where to get a bunch of them. I'd rather not look it up on a wiki. The problem is dodging the assassins just seems to be a total guessing game at this point. Their launch attack is near-instantaneous. Maybe in a few more runs I'll be able to suss out their "tells" for the lunges. Their jumping attacks also have a kind of 'homing' arc to them. Absolutely brutal. Maybe I'll need to get a faster weapon than my halberd... but I really love my Mastadon Halberd.