How to beat Kwolok?

[Human Required]

Prefacing this by saying I'm locked on normal difficulty (there's no way to change difficulty mid-game?) and am experiencing the launch week optimization issues/stutters/frame lag that others are being plagued by, which is making this boss way harder than it needs to be.

With that said, how the hell do I beat Kwolok? I manage to get to the water phase thanks to the ability to self heal, but once he's at half-health in the water, it's basically game over for me. Any strats to whittle down his health super fast? Between the stuttering and just raw difficulty, I'm really stuck on this one.

Doesn't help there are zero boss checkpoints.

Edit: I beat it on the very first try with user "Nope"s tip about using the bow! For the first phase of the fight I used the normal bow and stayed far away. During water phase, I switched to the split-shot shard and kept shooting him. First try, got him! I had less than a picometer of health left, but I did it. Thanks again, Nope!

[Nope]

Bow and muti-shot shard, you would be able to kill him fast and get the under 2 minutes achievement even on hard

[Human Required]

Originally posted by Nope:

Bow and muti-shot shard, you would be able to kill him fast and get the under 2 minutes achievement even on hard

Thanks, this is a good tip. I'll go grind some orange glowies to get the multi-shot shard.

[Scott]

I know it seems that way at first (I went through this) its frustrating because of them taking away your heal ability. This actually makes Kwolok significantly harder than any other boss in the game, you heard that right.

You just need to learn the patterns, swim in a u around kwolok taking potshots at him but don't get greedy. When he starts to suck up water my instinct was to leap out of the water not realising theres a tentacle blocking the path so the trick here is to swim dash every so often in the opposite direction.

When he shots the purple sludge at you swim towards the climbable wall and climb it, glide back down and take a few pot shots at him.

When he launches the 'heat seating drones' send them back at him.

Finish him off with the spear.

[RojoHero]

I found Kwolok to be easier than Mora... though I had a lot more upgrades this time around. Ok so... You want to keep moving agianst this boss and like all bosses... range weapons are preferred to melee. There is a respawning blue crystal so go nuts with spears or arrows.

First phase you dash around and poke him at range... watch for the shockwaves. Keep moving so he doesn't punch you with his tongue. LISTEN... the tentacle monster will slam the ground and a tentacle with spawn underneath you. If you keep moving you won't get hit.

Second phase... water time. Resist the urge to jump out of the water whenever he's about to do an attack. If he tries to swallow you, water dash against the current. The Poison can be dodged by just doing a U underneath him... jumping out and smacking him with a spear/bow/orb. Keep moving and he can't punch you. Whenever you see a projectile... redirect it back at him with bash. These do a lot of damage to him and will cut your kill time significantly. There's actually an achievement for killing him quickly.

[nbst]

That boss is *by far* the hardest boss in the whole game, and is almost impossible if you do not have the right abilities to defeat it. The fact that you cannot heal is artificial difficulty that adds up to the overall bad boss design.
Thankfully all other bosses are fantastic.

[Human Required]

Originally posted by nbst:

That boss is *by far* the hardest boss in the whole game, and is almost impossible if you do not have the right abilities to defeat it. The fact that you cannot heal is artificial difficulty that adds up to the overall bad boss design.
Thankfully all other bosses are fantastic.

What abilities do you recommend? I have enough orange glowies to either get splinter (one arrow turns into three at 50% damage) or resilience (25% less damage)

[Teiryn]

He takes significant damage from Light Burst, make sure to charge it up fully. Do note that you can still cast it in the second phase, you just gotta do it mid-air and you cannot charge it up fully afaik, it still does decent damage though.

[Human Required]

Originally posted by Aura:

He takes significant damage from Light Burst.

What is that? I don't have that ability available either from the trainer or from the shard shop. Should I invest in the split-shot arrow shard?

[Nope]

Originally posted by Aura:

He takes significant damage from Light Burst, make sure to charge it up fully. Do note that you can still cast it in the second phase, you just gotta do it mid-air and you cannot charge it up fully afaik, it still does decent damage though.

You mean Blaze?

[Teiryn]

Originally posted by Nope:

Originally posted by Aura:

He takes significant damage from Light Burst, make sure to charge it up fully. Do note that you can still cast it in the second phase, you just gotta do it mid-air and you cannot charge it up fully afaik, it still does decent damage though.

You mean Blaze?

No, light burst. The lob of light you can cast and bash on. It also deals damage.

[Nope]

Originally posted by Aura:

Originally posted by Nope:

You mean Blaze?

No, light burst. The fireball you can cast and bash on. It also deals damage.

That would mean he have to abandoning the place and go to the ice area first

For OP, another note about the bow and split-shot. I didn't even invest on that ability, I just slot in the level one split-shot and pulverized the poor old frog lol

[drp_]

Make sure you dont have hunt shard, it works on bosses w/o any reason whatsoever.

[Human Required]

Originally posted by Nope:

Originally posted by Aura:

No, light burst. The fireball you can cast and bash on. It also deals damage.

That would mean he have to abandoning the place and go to the ice area first

For OP, another note about the bow and split-shot. I didn't even invest on that ability, I just slot in the level one split-shot and just pulverized the poor old frog lol

I actually did try to go to the ice area first. I tickled the bear's nose and climbed a few structures, but even with triple jump and whatnot, I couldn't find a way to progress past a certain point. It feels like I was there too early.

Edit: also, thank you for the split-shot vouch. I got the ability and will give it a shot(s)!

[Teiryn]

Originally posted by Human Required:

Originally posted by Nope:

That would mean he have to abandoning the place and go to the ice area first

For OP, another note about the bow and split-shot. I didn't even invest on that ability, I just slot in the level one split-shot and just pulverized the poor old frog lol

I actually did try to go to the ice area first. I tickled the bear's nose and climbed a few structures, but even with triple jump and whatnot, I couldn't find a way to progress past a certain point. It feels like I was there too early.

Edit: also, thank you for the split-shot vouch. I got the ability and will give it a shot(s)!

I did that area before the one you're at now.

[Scott]

Do yourself a favor and get the spirit spear weapon, It deals incredible damage to Kwolok.