Warning to all players

[Dr. Professor Commander]

Dragonlord Placidusax site of grace remains active into NG+ after beating him, meaning you can travel there while he is still alive, which can seriously spawn trap unsuspecting players that are unprepared and confused, or forgetful. IF this happens don't do what I did. I ALT+F4'ed out of the game, and it was treated as a crash, spawning me back where I traveled from fortunately. There's another way though. After I was able to sit at a site of grace and changed some of my loadout, I returned to subject him to slaughter for spawn trapping me. This is a serious warning to anyone/everyone... You will spawn directly under him if he is alive, and if you run out to summon a spirit/player, activation of both requires you to enter an animation lock, allowing his excessive lightning storm spam to seriously hurt, or kill you. You won't be able to sit at that grace to change spells or Physick flask properties either.

Here's how to solve the problem should you become spawn trapped

As soon as you spawn, SPAM the hell out of the map key like mad before your ability to open it gets combat-locked and get out if you need to escape. Report it as a bug so the devs can fix it.

I'm never making that mistake again, and I think it's an oversight because that was far worse than being rushed the moment you enter a boss room, even worse than Maliketh sprinting at you, or Lorian from DS3 teleporting onto your head right as you enter, it broke the game and made it unfair entirely. I hope the devs address this because I'm not the only one. Just today I noticed a comment on his Fextralife page asking why that was possible/if there was a reason for it, though I'm not sure if they got spawn trapped like me (I hope they didn't because that wasn't fun at all without me having the appropriate buff incantations to help with simple survival or being able to equip them). It's very easily a confusing and frustrating issue that can bait people (like me) into potentially giving up, and reluctantly starting fresh after dedicating hundreds of hours to the game. That's how I felt because I was about to do just that, and I'm pretty sure after such an investment others would be pretty upset with all the wasted time like I was.

Please report this if you have the capacity to, because that was complete bullsh*t and things went from "Tough but fair" to game-breaking unfairness. I'd rather try to save others from making that mistake and suffering from the same fit of rage I did. On NG+8 getting out of that felt hopeless for my unprepared character. So my goal with this also is to spare others from feeling like that as well with this new post + newly discovered advice since I deleted my old rage-filled post (seriously, feeling like you wasted all those hundreds of hours isn't a good feeling). If you're unsure about whether or not you beat him on a particular run, enter prepared, and prepare to stay if you plan on taking him on unless you follow the advice given above. Even then you have very limited time to activate your map and select a new site of grace before he begins his attacks, which will knock you out of your map and/or kill you and risking the spawn trap issue I experienced.

Hope you fellow Tarnished all have a wonderful Morning/Day/Evening wherever you may be!

Yes, I also beat him and it was very satisfying. The giant two-headed turdbag ate a generous amount of pest threads (which deal very high damage to large bosses because their limbs are each treated separately when taking damage, so when the threads hit multiple body parts, like his wings and body with the same casting, expect a much higher damage output), at which point I proudly said "Who's the unfair one now MF!"

[Toad]

I'm confused how it 'spawn traps' you. You can quit to menu in the options screen and it should pull you back out of the fight.

Unless I'm misreading you?

[Heimdall313]

Productive AND informative? This is a rare but welcome post.

[MEGA MAN]

i dont understand at all what i read here but it scares me D: lol

[Golfcrocodile]

This doesnt happen only in NG+, it also happens in normal NG. I learned that the hard way.

[Dr. Professor Commander]

Originally posted by Toad:

I'm confused how it 'spawn traps' you. You can quit to menu in the options screen and it should pull you back out of the fight.

Unless I'm misreading you?

You might be misreading me, I'm not sure, so I'll try to clarify

Quitting to the menu won't work in this instance, I tried that too before I finally just started mashing the hell out of my map key before the loading screen even ended. Since I was prepared to kill him the second time I didn't care how long I remained in his arena, and wanted to figure out a way to help others avoid such an unnecessary and frustrating experience.

It's because when you teleport to his grace you appear directly under him where the grace would be. If he kills you quickly on the harder difficulties, escaping can become a seriously frustrating problem because you respawn in that very same spot directly under him since you traveled to that grace. The fight starts the moment you spawn in, and locks your map from opening. It's even worse because you need to be at a grace to change your spells/incants, and if you're unprepared, I'm sure you could see where things may become problematic and lead to a spawn trap. I even had trouble navigating my menu to change my weapons/armor... Basically had to continue sprinting blindly with my menu open using the keyboard to keep going and the mouse to select the items I needed to equip, so it isn't just casters that can suffer. His lightning storm will continuously try to hit you at the start of the fight, or I noticed he does that big explosion too and one other attack more frequently with the lightning storm being the most spammed.

The only way to really escape is to either win, or hit your map key as he wakes up and starts descending (which happens surprisingly quickly), too late during that animation and you're locked into the fight til you win or die.

It would honestly be better for the devs just to patch it out. This isn't a rage quitting situation, because of how fast he can kill you and prevent your departing it's more of a potential "Get people to put the game down and not pick it up again after hundreds of hours seemingly wasted" situation. I doubt FS wants to lose players, who may not want to buy future content that's released because something like this wasn't addressed.

Originally posted by Golfcrocodile:

This doesnt happen only in NG+, it also happens in normal NG. I learned that the hard way.

I didn't discover him until NG+7 and this was only my second time fighting him on NG+8 lol. It was a bit of a nightmare because the game's difficulty was capped at that point. I hope you got outta things alright without too much frustration lol. I was raging HARD and felt like I was going to go insane. I had all offensive sorceries that he was resistant to when I got confused and travelled there to see why it was active. Basically the equivalent of trying to kill Godfrey or Radagon with Holy damage without the option to change much.

[Toad]

Originally posted by Stormin Norman:

Originally posted by Toad:

I'm confused how it 'spawn traps' you. You can quit to menu in the options screen and it should pull you back out of the fight.

Unless I'm misreading you?

You might be misreading me, I'm not sure, so I'll try to clarify

Quitting to the menu won't work in this instance, I tried that too before I finally just started mashing the hell out of my map key before the loading screen even ended.

When you say it won't work, do you mean you can't select the quit option in the menu, or that when you load back into the save you are still underneath the boss? Normally quitting to menu during boss fights will spawn you outside of the boss arena. This is the part that I'm confused about, if you could clarify.

[Dr. Professor Commander]

Originally posted by Toad:

Originally posted by Stormin Norman:

You might be misreading me, I'm not sure, so I'll try to clarify

Quitting to the menu won't work in this instance, I tried that too before I finally just started mashing the hell out of my map key before the loading screen even ended.

When you say it won't work, do you mean you can't select the quit option in the menu, or that when you load back into the save you are still underneath the boss? Normally quitting to menu during boss fights will spawn you outside of the boss arena. This is the part that I'm confused about, if you could clarify.

Oh, no you can quit. It's because the grace you travelled to is inside the arena, it'll be where you return once you start again. His arena is normally entered via an interaction and a cutscene, not a fog wall like most bosses.

[Toad]

Originally posted by Stormin Norman:

Oh, no you can quit. It's because the grace you travelled to is inside the arena, it'll be where you return once you start again.

Ahh, that answers my questions. Thank you for bringing attention to this bug.

[Dr. Professor Commander]

Originally posted by Toad:

Originally posted by Stormin Norman:

Oh, no you can quit. It's because the grace you travelled to is inside the arena, it'll be where you return once you start again.

Ahh, that answers my questions. Thank you for bringing attention to this bug.

It may not be a bug, I can't exactly speak on that. I'm simply not sure why it remains active with an active boss. It's just got some serious problem causing potential that can be so bad for some people that it would be better to be removed and become activated again after the boss is dead by entering his arena the normal way.

[Cuddle_Rat]

God I could only imagine being trapped in a room with him, he was right up there with Malenia in terms of difficulty my first time through the game.

[Dr. Professor Commander]

Originally posted by Cuddle_Rat:

God I could only imagine being trapped in a room with him, he was right up there with Malenia in terms of difficulty my first time through the game.

Exactly what I was thinking when I made this to try and prevent some of you guys/gals from having to go through it yourselves! The experience was a pure, unfiltered, total lack of fun that nearly made me put the game down for a long time and go back to DS3.
Imagine investing over 400 hours and getting to NG+8 on one character only to feel like you're essentially in a permadeath state and may need to start fresh lol. It was borderline heartbreaking. My first post was filled with more curse words than just "bullsh*t" like this one, and I made a few condescending statements directed towards the devs, but I calmed down and made one that was more "productive" in regards to the community lol... I was absolutely f*cking furious and sad about it simultaneously. I'd rather help others avoid it than insult the devs for a possible oversight anyway, but I can't be sure on that 100% so it was a bit uncalled for to be so insulting which partially influenced my change of tone on this post.