What to do before killing Radahn?

[Complaintdesk]

To the best of my knowledge, I have progressed all the required quests (Ranni, Blaid, Seluvius, Sellen) to the point where I must kill Radahn to progress them any farther. I recently read a guide (but absently forgot to bookmark it) that recommended killing Rykard in Volcano Manor and a couple of others. I just finished reading another guide that said, "Killing Rykard in Volcano Manor, can lock one out of other questlines in Volcano Manor.

I am not in a rush to kill Radahn. I have decided to clean up as much as possible in Caelid, before killing Radahn, in case I need help from my son or nephew in the area. Killing a boss can prevent summoning friends to assist in that area, in my experience.

There are a plethora of guides out there, and many times as in the aforementioned kill Rykard, they are not all chronologically in agreement. Quite a few I have come across make recommendations that can foul up other questlines.

Can anyone please recommend an accurate guide, with a list of which bosses to kill, in an order that does not interfere with other questlines.

Merci beaucoups.

[Sephylon]

You don't need to kill radahn to progress the story, just ranni's quest. You also don't need anything, killing him doesn't lock anything outside some lines from jerren showing he knows iji

[Lumina]

About killing Rykard: In Volcano Manor you can get 5 assassination quests ( 3 from Taneth, 1 from Patches and 1 from Bernahl. Make sure to finish this 5 quests before killing Rykard, when you're interested to get the quest rewards. You can do this only before killing the boss.

[SotiCoto]

Okay... lemme see if I can remember this right... It depends what you want to achieve... and what I did on my first playthrough was convoluted and paranoid as hell... because I also didn't want to ruin any questlines.

#1. Sort Blaidd's little mini-quest in Limgrave first. So snap to summon him, then go to the evergaol and beat up blokey mcwhatever there. Blaidd tells you to chat to the giant. This gets parked here... I'd also recommend dealing with Kenneth Haight's quest since it is a simple matter... and also Patches. Damned Patches.

#2. Start Sorceress Sellen's quest. Just buy her sorceries. Get to the point where she tasks you with finding Azur... who is up on Mt Gelmir... which is super far into the game and a nuisance to deal with.

#3. Go find Alexander before going to Stormveil Castle. Get him loose. Go find him in the Gael Tunnel. Open the shortcut for him. He should go to Radahn-land to wait there. I also bought all of Bernahl's Ashes of War at this point. In fact if there is ANYTHING left to do in Limgrave or the Weeping Peninsula before you even meet Margaret for the first time, you're not thorough enough. I'd also strip-mined most of Caelid by this point... horrifyingly tough as it is in the early game.

#4. Progress the nonsense with Rogier, Fia and D. So meeting Rogier in Stormveil Castle, finding out what happened to him below... I'd ALSO recommend meeting with Nepheli Loux and taking her to beat Godrick. And obviously deal with Roderika... but then who doesn't? Still, I accidentally skipped a stage of Roderika's questline by accessing the first grace of Liurnia before going into Stormveil Castle. There were no consequences for this, however. ALSO nip right back to where you first met Varre to get a gesture from a message left there...

#5. Help Rya out in Liurnia. Simple enough. Get her thingie-whatsit back from crab-man. Also, assuming you've talked to Diallos at the hold, chat with him in Liurnia and back at the hold again. I also joined chatted to Varre at the Rose Church. Yes. Him. I'll get to why eventually...

#6. Progress both the Rogier / Fia / D questline (get the black knife print, return it, witness the shanking) and Nepheli's questline (go to albinauric village in the poison swamp under the cliff), get half an amulet, etc. Note, getting D killed doesn't make any difference to your ongoing transactions with Gurranq.

#7. At this point, continue what Blaidd suggested, go meet with Iji, then fight your way to Ranni and speak to her... You may have to go back to Rogier in the roundtable hold and chat about the situation with him THEN go back to Ranni in order to progress. Anyway... chat with everyone in Ranni's tower until Blaidd gets sent down to Siofra, but the one you want now is Siluvis... in his tower. Get through his condescending drivel until he gives you the potion for Nepheli...

#8. Now... if you want to turn Nepheli into a doll then things become simpler. You just give her the potion and go back... HOWEVER... I wanted a Dung Eater puppet, so things became complicated. Anyhow... find the bells, get back to the Chapel of Anticipation, get the War Hawk Ashes or whatever for Nepheli Loux. Hand them back to her. Raya Lucaria still parked, not been to Altus Plateau yet.

#9. More Ranni-quest. Go find Blaidd at Siofra. Chatty chatty. He says to talk to Seluvis. So go talk to Seluvis. I hadn't turned Nepheli Loux into a puppet so his quest was parked, but he did his part anyway. And he wanted me to talk to Sellen... so I went to chat with her. And this is where Radahn comes into play. So chat to Blaidd... and then we can go to Altus Plateau without invalidating chunks of this questline.

This is probably where you have got to... roughly speaking... but I went and made everything complicated. REALLY complicated.

#10. Off to Altus Plateau. I took the Magma Wyrm route. I had reasons about not wanting to use the lift despite having both halves of the medallion... but I don't remember them. I met Millicent at the Plateau and had a chit-chat with her (was doing her questline too) before letting Rya whisk me off to Volcano Manor. I got my pizza-cutter, chatted with Diallos, Bernahl and Patches. Now obviously beating up snek-boi will ruin the Volcano Manor questline... SO I started doing their assassination quests... and also backtracked around Mt Gelmir far enough to find Azur and progress Sellen's questline... BUT some of the assassination targets are in the Capital, and I need to get the capital to find Dung Eater anyway... BUT getting into the capital means having two Great Runes. Problem is I'd parked Raya Lucaria for Sellen's questline (I don't think this was necessary, but I wasn't going to risk it), parked Radahn because apparently it has a lot of questline-breaking potential, and I'd parked Snek-Boi for the sake of the Volcano Manor questline. Oh... right...

#11. Go find Varre's red phantoms on Altus Plateau, then nip back to the Rose Church and join the bloody fingers. Yeah. This is going exactly where you think it is going... Destroy the Mohgwyn Dynasty for a second great-rune. This was beyond a doubt THE hardest part of my playthrough. Bar none. It was horrifying, but I got it done. Second rune get. Capital accessible. Personal stupidity... vindicated?

#12. Once in the capital, I burrowed my way through the sewers to find the Dung Eater... and started progressing his questline to the point where I could give him Seluvis's potion and make him my slave-puppet for all eternity. The price? No more crabby patties. I also took care of the Volcano Manor assassinations in the capital. Seluvis now wants me to betray Ranni... but we're not going to be doing that.

#13. Somewhere around here, Diallos got tired of Volcano Manor. I haven't been to the mountaintop to kill his brother yet... but he left. I had to go back to Liurnia and find Jarburg. Now there is a spot nearby where Alexander is supposed to get stuck... but I never saw that because Alex is parked at Radahn and I've already done the circuit of Mt Gelmir... Anyway, I went down to Jarburg and spent the better part of an in-game month trying to get through all of Jar-Bairn's dialogue and get Diallos to spawn, etc.

Okay... take stock... by this point I believe Rogier is still barely alive... D1 is dead... D2 I haven't met yet... Fia is gone to the depths... Nepheli has her hawk ashes... Diallos is in Jar-Burg with his little buddy... his brother is waiting to be killed on Mt Giant... Sellen is still fine in her starting place... Dung Eater is in Seluvis's cellar... Seluvis is waiting for you to off Ranni ... and both Alexander and Blaidd should be waiting for the Radahn Festival, along with Seluvis's puppet girl (she gives a gesture, doesn't she?). And of course Jerren.... so...

#14. Kill Radahn.

After this it should be fine to progress all the rest. And you probably saved yourself a lot of time and trouble by just beating up Rennala for her rune rather than going after Mohg as I did.
For the record, I didn't get around to finishing off Snek-boi of the Volcano Manor guys until I'd accessed Crumbling Farum Azula and beaten Malenia at her Haligtree and discovered that Bernahl only invades AFTER the king-snek is dead. At which point I did a lot of backtracking, side-tracking, and who knows what else? And Rya went off on an adventure. Such a nice little snek.
Anyway... I eventually ended up meeting D2, finding Ranni's knife, getting Seluvis killed, getting my Dung Eater puppet (who replaced BIRB who accompanied me ever since I gave Neph her ashes back), finding Ranni's original body and returning the knife print, witnessing Rogier's death, meeting Mini-Ranni and beating up a void-skull-dragonfly-centipede-thing for her... finishing off Ranni's questline entirely and making her waifu... taking Blaidd out back like Old Yeller and doing what must be done... taking Raya Lucaria for Sellen-sensei (finally) only for her to end up a ball of faces (sad times)... finding Fia (and ghost Rogier), fighting a dream-dragon, and getting a neat rune... but D2 killed Fia, and I Comet Azur'd his face before he could even finish his deranged rant, and solumnly swore I'd murderise D1 myself on every subsequent playthrough (which I have done) in the hopes of saving Fia (cheating on Ranni already, apparently)... and eventually did all the other stuff...
... ending with a split timeline in which one version of myself did as Fia wanted and installed the Death Rune so everyone can have their mortality back... and another timeline variant where I just went walkabout with Ranni...

So yeah.

[zab]

stop reading guides

[Sabaithal]

Make sure you explore whatever you want to in the southern section of east limgrave. Aside from that not much.

[Complaintdesk]

Thank you ever so much SotiCoto. It looks like I have properly progressed all the questlines. Rogier is dead, so is D1 and Fia has left RTH. Blaid & Alexander are in Redmane Castle, Dialos is in Volcano Manor, DungEater is in RTH. Sellen has the Comet Spell. Got Varre's White Mask, and working on Mohgwyn, which I will finish with my son & nephew this week. I will progress through Volcano Manor, holding off killing Rykard until conflicting quests are done. I progressed Millicent's questline and am gonna grab the Winter Soldiers arm at the Shaded Castle tomorrow. Bogart has left his prawnshack, and I know a trick to keep him alive so I can buy Boiled Crab from him forever.

Limgrave, Weeping Peninsula, Liurnia and Siofra River and thoroughly explored, and all the quests associated with them are completed. I've a few areas and things to complete in Caelid, Lyndell, Mohgwyn and Volcano Manor are this Tarnished next projects. The information you shared SotiCoto is of great value and much appreciated.


Quando omni flunkus moritati

[Complaintdesk]

One thing worth mentioning for anyone deciding to venture into Volcano Manor before killing Starscourge Radahn. DO NOT complete the contract from Patches. Completing Patches contract is to kill Great Horned Tragon, killing Tragon will make him unavailable as a summons to help killing Magma Wyrm Makar & Starscourge Radahn.

[Lumina]

Originally posted by Complaintdesk:

One thing worth mentioning for anyone deciding to venture into Volcano Manor before killing Starscourge Radahn. DO NOT complete the contract from Patches. Completing Patches contract is to kill Great Horned Tragon, killing Tragon will make him unavailable as a summons to help killing Magma Wyrm Makar & Starscourge Radahn.

That's a good point, thx for sharing this.

Hm, but when I think about it, you can only finish this quest after killing Makar, otherwise you wouldn't be able to get into this boss room and to touch the red sign.

[yukiof]

Originally posted by Sephylon:

You don't need to kill radahn to progress the story, just ranni's quest. You also don't need anything, killing him doesn't lock anything outside some lines from jerren showing he knows iji

unlocking Nokron this early is always a good thing

[Sephylon]

you don't need radahn to do the magma wyrm at the lift

[Complaintdesk]

Originally posted by Lumina:

Originally posted by Complaintdesk:

One thing worth mentioning for anyone deciding to venture into Volcano Manor before killing Starscourge Radahn. DO NOT complete the contract from Patches. Completing Patches contract is to kill Great Horned Tragon, killing Tragon will make him unavailable as a summons to help killing Magma Wyrm Makar & Starscourge Radahn.

That's a good point, thx for sharing this.

Hm, but when I think about it, you can only finish this quest after killing Makar, otherwise you wouldn't be able to get into this boss room and to touch the red sign.

Indeed to complete Patches' contract from Volcano Manor, Magma Wyrm Makar's instance must be accessible. The reason I thought I should point this out was I have read a few comments where people wished they had Tragon's help during the Radahn or Draconian Tree Sentinel battles, but didn't because they had killed him. I've also read quite a few comments by people who killed Lord Rykard upon arriving at Volcano Manor, not knowing that would lock them out of all the Volcano Manor quests along with all the pretty awesome rewards from those quests. Due to the fact that I enjoy the questline PvE aspect of these games, I wish FromSoft had created an option for orthodox quest progression. A feature that would make killing certain NPC's impossible, until quests they influenced were completed, or at least a popup warning.

[SotiCoto]

Originally posted by Complaintdesk:

A feature that would make killing certain NPC's impossible, until quests they influenced were completed, or at least a popup warning.

No to the former (one of the reasons I prefer Morrowind to Oblivion & Skyrim). Maybe to the latter. But personally I'd prefer more backdoor options and less unique loot. Heck, maybe no unique loot. There should be at least two copies of everything that isn't an explicitly personalised weapon. And if anything is intended to be given as a reward to the player, it should be possible to find it somewhere in the vicinity if the quest has been broken.

[Complaintdesk]

Understood SotiCoto, that is why I prefaced my suggestion with an option. I should have clarified, what I was suggesting was an option in the start menu of a new game giving the player the option of an orthodox quest progression playthrough. I was thinking along the lines of how some games have difficulty choice options (in the options menu) for each playthrough.