Any tips for Crucible Knight?

[Nomadski]

So for context I've made it to the large Lake area, have beaten Stormveil including Godrick the grafted and am now exploring back trying to beat the bosses I left for another day.

Can't seem to click with the Crucible Knight in the Stormhill Evergaol though. Obviously can't use my spirit summons, and trying to play at distance or up close seems to result in failiure, with him having a constant attack pattern that I just can't seem to predict from tells.

So any tips or tactics melee based players used to help me git gud with him?

[Quo Vadis ?]

he is pron to parry

[Nomadski]

Originally posted by DELENDA EST:

he is pron to parry

Damn. I was hoping someone wouldn't say that.

Ok I guess I have to practise my parry on him.

[Andrew. (the weeblord)]

Crucible knight has mixups that will punish you for going in. Some moves simply are not safe to go in.

First phase, he has 2 completely safe patterns with zero mixups
1. Shoulder charge
2. Ground stomp + 2 sweeping swings

Second phase is where it turns into a colossal pain. Shoulder charge is no longer safe. He follows up with the tail swipe if you try and go in. It's a super drawn out fight for a colossal sword user, but there are still 2 safe openings
1. Ground stomp + 2 sweeping swings
2. His flight -> charge

When you see him fly up and start to charge, immediately start running to where he *will* be when he lands and iframe roll the charge so you don't get hit. Bait out the double tail swipe by being close to him (iframe the swipes, of course). If he doesn't use it, don't go in. Just back off

Good luck

[Jámez Bondo]

You can punish him after the ground stomp+slam. Just wait until he raises his sword (that indicates this particular combo), dodge the ground pound and wait for his follow up slam. Now delay just a little bit so he doesn't also follow up with his double swing and go for a jump attack.

If you wait for this sequence, you can get in a safe hit reliably. There are other openings, but I've found this one to be the easiest.

[Alkatraz]

Take it slow, dont panic roll
dont get greedy with attacking.

when you see he's about to stomp you can jump over it.

[Vheissu]

Crucible knight is hard, even for Souls vets!

It's possible to parry/riposte most of their attacks. Takes practice to get the timing down, use a buckler or parrying dagger if you have them. Otherwise, the lightest shield you got.

Circle to their shield side and they will try to use the shield slam - but its actually pretty easy to dodge, giving you an opening to get a hit or two in.

If your weapon has decent reach, its possible to land some nice jump attacks. They like to counter with tremor, slash, thrust (I think that's the pattern, may be a little different). So to escape you time a sideways roll, block, sideways roll.

Starting around half health they like to do a flying attack (pretty easy to dodge) and a close range tail swipe (very hard to dodge). Here I try to bait them to use the shield slam instead of the tail swipe, by circling around their shield side.

Good luck!

[Dregora]

After a few attempts, I think his swings become very telling. He has a very comfortable rythm in his attacks that allow you to dodge all of them. I really enjoyed this fight once I realized this.


Also I am pretty sure you can jump over the tail swipe. Not 100% sure, but it seems that most sweep attacks the ''intended'' way to deal with it is to jump over it and punish.

Jumping allows you to dodge as much as dodge roll does.

[Vheissu]

Originally posted by Dregora:

After a few attempts, I think his swings become very telling. He has a very comfortable rythm in his attacks that allow you to dodge all of them. I really enjoyed this fight once I realized this.


Also I am pretty sure you can jump over the tail swipe. Not 100% sure, but it seems that most sweep attacks the ''intended'' way to deal with it is to jump over it and punish.

Jumping allows you to dodge as much as dodge roll does.

Yeah, jump has iframes! Not as many as roll though, so its only good for attacks that have small hitboxes, like the crucible knight's sword.

[Orrin82]

Parrying was the key for me here. Try to get close to him and parry his diagonal slashes they are probably the easiest to learn, you can also parry his thrust attack but the timing is a bit harder so it might be easier to just dodge it.

When he holds his sword in one hand and stomps the ground he will often follow it up with a diagonal slash if you stay close to him.

If he holds his sword in both hands when he stomps the ground then you'll probably want the dodge away from him and wait for him to finish his combo then there's a good opening for a hit or two depending on your weapon.

After half health be careful of his tail attack that he can follow up his other attacks with, you can dodge it or perhaps even jump over it and hit him in the air (haven't tried it myself).

[Ishy]

This is indeed the type of boss where I found it easier to stay close, at least in the first phase, as he's rather good at closing in and punishing you if you try to make distance between you. But it's a fun fight for sure, and parrying is not necessary.

Overall, most of his attacks are fairly straightforward and have similar dodge timings, just make sure you don't panic roll instantly. There are basically only 2 real dodge-bait attacks, the shield slam and the strike where he lowers the sword such that it causes sparks on the ground and then swings after a while.

I tended to stay right in front of him and almost always roll clockwise around him (my front left) to avoid attacks, seemed to work well. The flow of the fight was roughly as follows:

1. Stand in front, wait for him to attack. He usually starts with a diagonal one-handed slash.

2. Dodge front left, he slashes again, dodge front right so that you're roughly behind him. He might follow up with a third strike, but for me almost never did. You can strike him, just be ready to dodge immediately after the strike in case he does another diagonal slash.

3. He starts shield slam or does a stomp attack.
- In case of shield slam, wait a bit, then dodge and strike him when he's recovering.
- In case of a stomp, roll again front left and wait for the follow up attacks (can be single-handed strike or 2-handed, and possibly 2 follow up spins if it's the 2-handed variant). Strike after this/these.

4. Start again from 1.

Every once in a while, he does the low strike with sparks. You need to wait to dodge that, but you should be able to see when he does it.

With a colossal sword, I could always only get 1 strike safely in. Sometimes it was possible to get 2, but more often than not I was punished for being greedy. I also couldn't stagger/poise break this boss with just basic attacks. You can replace a strike with a drink if you've been hit.

Note that even when you get caught in his stomp stagger, you should be (or at least I was) able to recover enough to dodge the next attack if you dodge immediately once the stagger is over. This applies to both the one-handed follow-up and the two-handed variant. Just dodge towards him and to the left. For the following 2-handed round sweeps, I dodged back towards the right (against the sweep), but I'm sure it can be done some other way as well.

The second phase isn't much different, except that he can follow the basic strike(s) with a tail sweep, which must be dodged quickly. Also, if you're at distance (and sometimes maybe up close), he can perform a double tail sweep, of which the latter hits really far away. The swooping attack isn't difficult to dodge, just watch him when he jumps backwards in the air, and dodge once he starts coming towards you. After the swoop there's also usually time to drink.

[AILAD]

Wait till you have to fight two of them at the same time.

[Nomadski]

I got him down to nearly a third but then he pulled out MegaTailSwipe x2 and killed me.

Ugh.

I'm getting there.

[AMABATUKAM]

He's very easy to parry. Use a small shield.

[Nomadski]

Parrying is my absolute worst ability...as in I have very little to do it. It's why I dumped Sekiro very quickly.

Managed to do him though! Found the two handed attack he did was extremely good chance to get a powerful hit on him so goaded that. Then in the second phase I kinda cheesed his tail ability by dodging it and immediately light attacking him. Seemed to work every time.

Took ages but hey, found a path through him.

Thanks for all the tips guys!

[Livy]

Originally posted by RevelationSpace:

Wait till you have to fight two of them at the same time.

That one should have had an achievement... A nightmare to do even when cheesed as caster.