Eris is...extremely un-fun or else I don't know what I'm doing

[KOCoyote]

What it says on the tin. I have had about three pretty perfect runs with really good upgrades ruined by Manic Pixie Nightmare over here and I'm getting reaaaaally annoyed.

I've pieced together how to counter a good chunk of her attacks by figuring out the timing and spacing, but a handful of them seem downright impossible to dodge out of the way of. Namely:

* Her rapid-fire cone attack where she slowly turns in a circle like a ♥♥♥♥♥-up lawn sprinkler spraying battery acid. I'm lucky if I can get to the edge of her range or radius and when I do, it feels arbitrary. Sometimes, a dash is enough to get me out of her turn radius, sometime's it's not. I also just don't know where to dodge, since the radius of the thing is wider at the mid point then I can dash

*Her machine gun spray of suffering, where she hits you like fifty times in the face and punishes you for daring to not being able to tap into the Speed Force to have the right reflexes to get out of the way. Similar to above, but rather than it being a case of not knowing where to dodge, getting hit by it just feels kind of arbitrary?

In addition to this, I am clueless how someone would fight her with a non-ranged weapon. I used the staff on my last run and got the furthest I've been able to get with that fight, but if I was using something like the ax or the blades, I have no clue how I'd even manage the kind of consistent hits I'm getting. Moving in close to her seems like a non-starter, thanks to her grenades and also, again, the SHEER WIDTH of her cone attack, so I feel like it's demanding a specific type of weapon.

Am I doing something wrong or is Eris just a nightmare difficulty spike? Any tips are appreciated.

[AltPlusF4]

For that cone shotgun blast, you can just dash behind her and hug her butt all day while she slowly turns towards you, unable to hit you at all and leaving herself wide open while you unload. It's actually one of the attacks of hers I prefer to see.

[Silyon]

So far as I can tell, Eris is difficult on purpose since she serves as the temporary final boss of the surface path. I still have trouble dealing with the speed her attacks come out and how quickly she can shift between patterns. Bringing along Frinos helps (least until the sweet dumb boy jumps out of her shotgun spread), as well as anti-guardian accessories like the Knucklebones or Evil Eye.

Apparently the bullet-eating dash boon from Hestia absolutely destroys her, but I personally don't like leaning on hard-counters as crutches.

[Neo NiGHTS ®]

There are quite a few topics on Eris, so you can check those for extra tips 😁

[Rod, of eight toes]

Eris will become pretty easy for you.

[TripSin]

Dash through her to behind her or get Hestia's soot sprint to brainlessly negate nearly her entire moveset.

[T34Boss]

Originally posted by TripSin:

Dash through her to behind her or get Hestia's soot sprint to brainlessly negate nearly her entire moveset.

This is basically what I was going to say. I really struggled with her until I decided to dash straight through her for most of her attacks.

[Mister Sir]

She is that hard and I say that while i have more than 60% to 70% win rate against her or so. Even if you learn how to stay out of her range or use pillars or get on her back while also avoiding her million year long bombardments from the sky, machine gun sprays, and 25% of the area being on fire, she then goes into her 10% life left stage where she literally just does not stop or give you any room to punish her as she dishes out insane dmg and then instantly goes into invincibility frames over and over.

Stupid ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ boss.

[Rod, of eight toes]

The more complaints I read, the more I wonder if these players are experiencing their first rogue lite.

Boss fights are supposed to be challenging. Learning how she fights and how to deal with her attacks will ensure your wins.

[Mister Sir]

Originally posted by Rod, of eight toes:

The more complaints I read, the more I wonder if these players are experiencing their first rogue lite.

Boss fights are supposed to be challenging. Learning how she fights and how to deal with her attacks will ensure your wins.

Curse of the dead gods, Have a Nice death, Dead cells, Skul the hero slayer, are just some of the more known roguelike games that I played and beat, and I can assure you Eris is not just a challenging boss, she is a bs boss.

[TripSin]

Originally posted by Mister Sir:

Originally posted by Rod, of eight toes:

The more complaints I read, the more I wonder if these players are experiencing their first rogue lite.

Boss fights are supposed to be challenging. Learning how she fights and how to deal with her attacks will ensure your wins.

Curse of the dead gods, Have a Nice death, Dead cells, Skul the hero slayer, are just some of the more known roguelike games that I played and beat, and I can assure you Eris is not just a challenging boss, she is a bs boss.

Skill issue.

[A Street Sweeper]

Originally posted by Rod, of eight toes:

The more complaints I read, the more I wonder if these players are experiencing their first rogue lite.

Boss fights are supposed to be challenging. Learning how she fights and how to deal with her attacks will ensure your wins.

The more responses like this I read the more I wonder if people are experiencing their first forum.

People respond to challenge in different ways. For example when I died to Eris a few times I certainly experienced the frustration of "How am I even meant to do this", but my response in games is typically to smash my head against them until I make it through. Other people prefer to ask the wider community for input or if they have had a similar experience (or to gripe and demand changes). There's nothing wrong with that and it surely doesn't mean they don't know how a roguelite works.

[Mister Sir]

Originally posted by TripSin:

Originally posted by Mister Sir:

Curse of the dead gods, Have a Nice death, Dead cells, Skul the hero slayer, are just some of the more known roguelike games that I played and beat, and I can assure you Eris is not just a challenging boss, she is a bs boss.

Skill issue.

I mean I get the memes and lols and all but some might actually take you seriously when you say that. On off chance you actually mean that, I do have to be blunt, use a brain for a moment and think. You do not have to accept everything a game throws at you and say nothing. Not every decision you, I, or in this case game devs make is going to be the right one, and therefore balancing can be off.

There is no skill issue to speak of when I can beat the boss. I might lose on occasion, and that occasion becoming more rare with each run, but just because I can beat a boss does not make that boss not a bs. It's same as laxasia in Lies of P or Melinia in Elden Ring, can I beat them? Yes, have I beat them? Yes. Are they fair? No. Same here. Average player going to struggle with eris as it is, she does not need a 10% hp final stage where she cycles between being invincible and landing in random zones to unleash bullet barrage that going to drain your hp 100 to 0 if you get caught in it.

[A Street Sweeper]

Originally posted by Mister Sir:

It's same as laxasia in Lies of P or Melinia in Elden Ring, can I beat them? Yes, have I beat them? Yes. Are they fair? No. Same here. Average player going to struggle with eris as it is, she does not need a 10% hp final stage where she cycles between being invincible and landing in random zones to unleash bullet barrage that going to drain your hp 100 to 0 if you get caught in it.

Just out of interest. Is there a boss you can think of in this game (or the last one) that you consider to be challenging without being unfair? I must say I don't really enjoy the Eris encounter, but I don't consider her unfair, so I'm curious to hear what difficult but fair looks like.

[Mister Sir]

Originally posted by A Street Sweeper:

Originally posted by Mister Sir:

It's same as laxasia in Lies of P or Melinia in Elden Ring, can I beat them? Yes, have I beat them? Yes. Are they fair? No. Same here. Average player going to struggle with eris as it is, she does not need a 10% hp final stage where she cycles between being invincible and landing in random zones to unleash bullet barrage that going to drain your hp 100 to 0 if you get caught in it.

Just out of interest. Is there a boss you can think of in this game (or the last one) that you consider to be challenging without being unfair? I must say I don't really enjoy the Eris encounter, but I don't consider her unfair, so I'm curious to hear what difficult but fair looks like.

It's a bit early to say since I have not tried all weapon aspects but chronos got clear tells and over all a pretty good fight despite being hard. One time he did go bananas on me and started eris level spam, and I mean like 5 teleports on a row into 2-3 triple attack combos, rinse and repeat, never seen him do this bs before or since so was an outlier, but yes, Chronos. Basically everything in first one was fair even if hard, even on extreme measures in my opinion.

To me personally it comes down to what the game is + mechanics within the fight. For example, a bullet hell is meant to have tons of stuff on screen with tight dodge windows, but that type of clutter can be out of place somewhere else, like Hades 2 for example, when you get a room fool of elite puffer fish or laser bags (one legit is hard for one, one is easy but both annoying).

So in games where you meant to punish bosses via dodging their attacks I do not find it particularly fair if the boss just breaks that and starts going ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ and not stopping. Thats why I hate milenia in elden ring despite knowing how to beat her inside and out, and thats why I hate Eris but only specifically on her last 10% hp phase. If I played so well that I can make it to that phase without losing a single DD, I do not see how it's fair for the game take a turn from skill test to a scramble where you got to just throw everything at the screen and hope something sticks as she goes from 100 to 0 bullet barrage to invincible frames flight over and over.

[Varsoon]

Hestia's sprint trivializes the fight.
Dash behind her, as many people have said.

Otherwise, if you just hide behind one of the two pillars in the area, she will be forced to come to one side of the pillar. If you just stay on the opposite side, every single weapon has an attack that can hit her while she's unable to hit you with anything besides her bombs.

Yes, she does blow up these pillars--with her hugely telegraphed Purple Bolt attack. When she's lining that up, you can just run down the beach and dodge around and she'll whiff the attack and not hit either pillar, either.

You can also always tell when she's about to attack because she has to load/rack the adamant rail to reload. She has patterns that are very easy to learn if you pay attention to her.

All in all, once you know these tricks, she's one of the easiest boss fights in the game. She's very much like Hecate in that she seems dangerous on first blush but once you realize that ALL her damage requires you being close to her and getting greedy, you can just play safe and beat the fight every time barely taking a scrape.