It's interesting what you miss if you're hollow. I found out that Witch Beatrice was available to summon before fighting the Moonlight Butterfly but only if you reverse hollowing. I also read that she can be summoned again - and does huge damage - for the 4 Kings. But the article said her sign shows up if you summoned her for the butterfly.

Is there any way of summoning her if you haven't done it at the Moon Butterfly? Or am I past the point of no return?

Thank you

@LaudaSolem: I don't have the answer to your question, but I can say from my experience that if you play a melee character, you do NOT want Beatrice for the Four Kings. If you're melee, you can get close to one and pick them off without aggro-ing the others. If you summon Beatrice, she'll start attacking whomever and end up pulling them all onto you, making the fight way harder.

I tried using Beatrice on my NG+ fight against the Four Kings. DO NOT SUMMON HER. The Four Kings fight becomes more difficult if you have people with you. I tried taking them on 4 different times with groups of 1 and 2 people and each time we got wrecked because we couldn't take one down before the rest showed up. It only took me two times by myself to take them out on NG+ because I was able to deal more damage in proportion to their health bar. If you have people with you they'll spawn faster and have larger health bars.

I'm about to take them on in NG++ at SL 111 so I'll see how that fight goes.

@escher said:

@LaudaSolem: I don't have the answer to your question, but I can say from my experience that if you play a melee character, you do NOT want Beatrice for the Four Kings. If you're melee, you can get close to one and pick them off without aggro-ing the others. If you summon Beatrice, she'll start attacking whomever and end up pulling them all onto you, making the fight way harder.

they only appear 1 at a time in a certain time frame and They Auto-aggro on you so there is no hiding if your melee unless some patch recently made them dumb as hell and they suddenly cant see you in pitch black even though you glow. She is needed if you dont have fire attacks as that is the best bet on killing them before the others are summoned slowly to aid in destroying you. Beatrice though seems to glitch out and just plainly fall to her death next to me even when I have the ring on so she has never helped me on that fight. And on the note to not summoning her for butterfly and not appearing at 4kings is not true. She appears as 4kings no matter what as long as you are human.

Four Kings have multiple AI strings and Beatrice's damage output doesn't outdo the increase in HP they get from her being there. She might completely annihilate the butterfly but bringing her for Four Kings leads to 2 or more of them bumrushing you instead of just one while others take potshots. Phantom players can help in the sense that they can trivialize the fight with certain builds, but a mediocre phantom will be just as bad as Beatrice. Four Kings is easily the worst fight in the game so do whatever you think is necessary to win and try to forget you ever had to fight them so you can enjoy the rest of this great game.

Doing them on NG now and having a hard time. So I read summoning for this fight is a bad idea. Anyone have any tips?

Not to troll, but 4 kings was too easy for me to even keep an eye out for beatrice. In all 3 of my chars I beat them on the first try in both normal and ng+, you don't need no beatrice just block and attack.

Doing them on NG now and having a hard time. So I read summoning for this fight is a bad idea. Anyone have any tips?

@laserbolts: I remember having a difficult time with them on NG+ so I tried a lot of things. I don't remember what worked. I know that I used Havel's Armour at one point, I used the defensive spell that reduces damage from magic as well. I probably also tried the wolf ring at some point. I might have even used Havel's Ring and Mask of the Father to raise my equip load enough so that I could move at mid speed in Havel's armour. The battle is basically a race. If you can defeat a king and heal before the next king reaches you then you can win. Basically you need to maximize DPS. Part of that is having enough poise to not get knocked down.

@mosespippy:

thanks for the advice. this is my second time through the game and I couldnt remember what I did the first time. I just tried upgrading my spear and 2 handing. the boss went down pretty easily. dont even need to block just roll.