September 2024

Shadow Of The Erdtree's Final Boss Still Packs A Punch

🟣 Content Overview :

Radahn's final boss fight remains extremely challenging even after a nerf.
High defensive power and resistance to Holy damage are crucial.
Use Thollier and Ansbach as NPC summons if their quests are completed.
Mimic Tear is highly recommended for this fight.
Radahn's attacks include powerful combos, gravity magic, and area-of-effect damage.

Game Tips: Even After a Nerf, Shadow of the Erdtree's Final Boss Is One Tough Bastard

Thankfully, we have a comprehensive guide to get you through the game's toughest fight.

Elden Ring

By Justin Clark

Published Thursday, 1:30 PM

Approaching the two ghoulish towers at the end of the game.

Screenshot FromSoftware

Streamers Visuals

Shadow of the Erdtree warned you right at the outset that it was out to hurt you and continue hurting you.

But once you've burned down the Sealing Tree and made it through the final dungeon, you just might be feeling pretty confident again.

The final boss Radahn changes that immediately.

Even after his recent nerf, this is one of the toughest gaming challenges you're ever likely to face.

Preparation

Given just how extensively these two fights can absolutely mess you up, preparation is a number one priority.

While there's leeway in most boss fights to figure out how to fight your own way and still win, this is a very different story.

There are certain things every player should consider before you even think of walking up those stairs:

High Vigor is nice, but you're gonna need as much raw defensive power as possible here.
The Dragoncrest Shield Talisman can help, as can the Verdigris Discus Talisman for tanks.
If you fully completed their quests, Thollier and Ansbach will be available as NPC summons for this fight.
You'll want as much resistance to Holy damage as possible for the second part of this.
For Tanks, either mix a Wondrous Physick flask that raises your max stamina and regenerates it faster or equip the Two-Headed Turtle Talisman.
This is the fight where Miquella's Broken Rune comes into play, but the amount of time needed to use it may not ultimately be worth it.
In an ideal world, your Scadutree Blessing level is over 13, your Revered Ashes over 8.
For weapons and spells, bring anything that can inflict Bleeding, Scarlet Rot, or Frostbite.

Now then, here we go.

Spoiler Warning

Promised Consort Radahn Abilities

Hello again, friend of a friend.

Now you know why you had to kill Radahn's crazy horse-abusing form first before you could even get into the DLC.

Sorry to tell you though, Starscourge Radahn is small-time compared to his fully resurrected form.

He'll give you a good example right away since the first thing Radahn does is launch himself at you with a spinning cyclone move, which for the vast majority of builds is an immediate one-hit kill.

If you survive that, then it's time for a swordfight.

That's not good news.

Radahn's Greatswords are the size of trees and although his strikes can come in combinations of two to five, every hit puts a massive dent in your stamina.

Even if a Spirit Ash or summon manages to distract him, he can turn around on a dime mid-combo.

That's to say nothing of Radahn managing to land a clean hit, which can easily put you in critical condition.

He's got a couple of extra tricks up his sleeve on top of that:

He can perform a somersault strike once or twice in a row.
His four-hit combo ends with an overhead swing that buries his blades in the ground with area-of-effect damage when he pulls the blades out.
There's a two-hit uppercut combo with the two blades that juggles you into the air if the first swing hits and smashes you back down with the second.

On the magical side of things, aside from pulling out that spinning cyclone attack if he gets too far away from you, he can enchant his blades with gravity magic, leap in the air taking chunks of the ground with him, and fire them at you as projectiles.

There's a two-hit combo that creates a bloody rift that hangs in front of Radahn and explodes in a few seconds.

That explosion can inflict bleeding on you.

And hey, just for old times' sake, he'll do a version of Starcaller Cry except the gravity pull now does continuous sapping damage and the explosion spawns deadly barbs that can wipe you out in two seconds.

Promised Consort Radahn Strategy

The big good news is after FromSoft dropped that 1.14 patch, Radahn is a little kinder and gentler than before.

But we're talking the difference between getting hit by a train versus getting hit by a Jeep.

At least one of those scenarios, the driver can slow down a little, and that's exactly what FromSoft did to Dahnny Boy compared to the unholy terror he was before.

Thanks, Miyazaki.

There's some more tiny good news for you.

You only need to get Promised Consort Radahn down to about 70 percent health.

Of course, the problem is getting even 30 percent of the man's health down in the most brutal, relentless fight in the entire game.

Seriously, once Radahn is in range, he will have his foot on your neck.

Just about everything he does will wear down your stamina, your life bar, or both.

Extending yourself to do damage is a risk every single time.

As such, there isn't so much a consistent winning strategy for Radahn as telling you how to deal with each of his attacks.

You have to make the call on how best to capitalize, and lucking out with his attack patterns plays just as big a role as sheer skill here.

The only other good news is that if you listened to me with the Preparations section, if you can inflict one of the three status effects on him fast enough, this fight can be over a lot quicker than anticipated.

Your Spirit Ash can help if used wisely, and I reiterate that the Mimic Tear is your best friend with this just because having two of you doing the same damage in the same way can speed this up.

I repeat, you don't want this to turn into an endurance match.

The HP boost Radahn gets from bringing Ansbach or Thollier into this will do just that, which is why you bring them in at your own risk.

Here's the thing though.

The most effective use of the Mimic in this fight requires a mental adjustment.

See, most of the time using the Mimic or a summon, its job is to distract the boss while you sneak up behind and do the real damage.

It's the other way around here.

You personally can adjust and deal with Radahn's attack patterns on the fly.

The Mimic cannot.

And as such, your job is actually to pull aggro on yourself as much as possible, partially so your helpers can get some damage in but mostly with the hopes of keeping your friends alive and ideally with more than half health for the second stage of this fight.

You'll see why later.

With those in mind, let's go over seven different ways Radahn's gonna try and mess you up:

When you walk in, you'll have a few seconds to call in your Mimic Tear before he comes at you with the world's biggest Psycho Crusher.
Sword combos: By now, shieldless folks should have pretty decent common sense when it comes to rolling through combination strikes, and Radahn's are big but nearly all of them leave him open just long enough for a single hit.
There's a sweet spot of distance away where Radahn will simply lurch towards you.
The first strike of his Bloodflame attack leaves a bloody slit in the air.
The somersault attack: Another potential opening with a big telegraph; however, assume every time he's gonna flip twice and you'll never be surprised.
The leaping debris attack: The dangerous part actually isn't the projectiles, though yeah if they hit they do a ton of damage, but the windup.
Starcaller Cry: Chances are pretty good unless you're halfway across the arena, you're taking damage from the initial gravity pull.

If you're diligent and able to capitalize on any and every fleeting gasp for air Radahn gives you, you'll get him down to the 70 percent sweet spot.

And from there, things will get so much worse.

Radahn Consort of Miquella Abilities

After Miquella enters the chat, it's a whole new ballgame.

Radahn keeps all of his abilities from the Promised Consort phase except most of them now leave pools of Holy magic in their wake.

Ah, but you didn't say all of them, you say, hopefully desperately.

You're right, after firing the debris attack, he'll fly across the field at you directly with four afterimage strikes—all of which do heavy damage if even one of them lands unshielded—and his four-hit combo now ends in a giant shower of deadly Holy light.

It's not all of them, really.

And then there's the new stuff:

Radahn will typically start this stage of the fight with his new widespread area-of-effect attack by floating into the air, setting the entire field alight with exploding pillars of Holy magic.
He can now teleport around the area before striking with a combo.
If you're at a distance, he can fire the same magical waves as the candelabra-wielding magicians wandering around the Abyssal Woods.
He has a standalone afterimage rushing attack which will hit multiple times and strip the life out of you if any one of them lands.
The timing on Starcaller Cry changes a bit with more of a delay after the initial pull, the initial rise of spikes doing less damage but he'll follow that up with an illusory strike which ends with a final Starcaller Cry that does a ton more damage.
Radahn also has a rather benign grab attack; if it lands the first time, Miquella places a crown of light over your head and will very kindly ask you to surrender.
If the grab lands a second time though, you actually will.
Once he's down to about 25 to 30 percent health, Radahn will take off from the field like a rocket and after about seven seconds, he'll crash back down like he's trying to kill the dinosaurs.

To the surprise of no one, it's instant death if you're caught anywhere in range of that.

Radahn Consort of Miquella Strategy

Maybe he's just sad.

Maybe he got some bad news recently.

Did you try prayer yet?

Well, if that didn't work, I'm very sorry, you're actually gonna have to try to kill this asshole.

And as before, all we can really do is tell you how to deal with this slew of new problems:

As mentioned, 90 percent of the time Radahn will start off with the floating area-of-effect explosions.
If you're fast, you might actually be able to run out of range of the explosions, but given how unpredictable Radahn is at a distance, this may not be the best option.
You're actually better off getting closer.
If you tilt the camera down a bit, you can see where the light shafts will strike and have a pretty good chance of avoiding them.
Even if you do take a hit the first time he does it though, it does less damage than it will the rest of the fight.
That's especially true if you've got the Golden Braid.
If you're close enough, you and/or your Mimic Tear might be able to land a hit or two as he's rising before you need to start worrying about explosions.

With enough Holy protection, Tanks have a pretty decent chance of still going toe-to-toe with Radahn the same way they did in his first form but now you have to square with the fact that your health will be getting chipped away every time Radahn swings on you along with the normal debilitating stamina damage.

If you were sturdy enough to withstand the normal combos, you're gonna need to learn to roll somewhere in the middle of them.

The upside for daredevils, however, is that every single normal sword combo now gives you an opportunity to guard counter the Holy magic at the end of it.

Again, extremely good stamina-health management come into play here, but if you're smart, aggressive, and fortified enough, this can be a wild-ass fight that's over faster than you think.