When do you guys feel comfortable fighting Commander O'Neil?

[Thomas Devlin]

I started a new playthrough as a faith strength build, I come to O'Neil admittedly earlier than I probably should have, basic vagabond kit with the golden halberd, get my ass handed to me, I use the NPC cooperator, barely makes a difference. I level up a little bit, spend a ton of time grinding cleanrot knights for better gear, come back with full cleanrot set and the halo scythe, still incredibly hard, decide to come back later. I get the blackflame spell at stormveil, it melts Godrick, I unlock his great rune, it gives me enough FP to summon Oleg, I think to myself "This has to be enough to kill that ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥" I go back to Aeonia, buff up, my new gear does absolutely nothing, Oleg dies instantly and I do even worse than before. I say ♥♥♥♥ this and decide I don't even care about killing him anymore, head back to the grace with a sliver of health, literally standing right in front of it when a cleanrot knight whacks me in the back of the head with a light disk and kills me. Does anybody else have this much trouble with O'Neil? I know caelid is tough but jesus christ, it feels like this boss was pulled from a different area

[mldb88]

Two things really helped me with that fight, the first was using a weapon with wide sweeping attacks to deal with his soldiers and the second was using Torrent. He can definitely be a pain in the ass for sure, but 70% of the battle was recognizing when to back WAY the hell up to avoid his AoE. The other 30% was figuring out how to do that while also juggling his adds.

[fauxpas]

Yep. I hate him, but fortunately he's fairly easy to lure out of his nest of summons and fight (or cheese if you wish) him one on one (assuming you don't accidentally attract the Rot Knights).


Fighting him inside his nest is a matter of staying mobile but I generally don't do Calid until Ranni's quest takes me there so I've cleared Limgrave, Weeping Penn, and Lurina.

[Honk1]

Get Golden Parry or Carian Retaliation (or any parry, but these have the best frames) and try parrying him. Back off only when he does his rot tornado attack. The parrying timing is pretty forgiving and once you get that down, the summons are the only problem.

Also, you being on a faith build using the halo scythe wearing full cleanrot armor sounds like you might not have enough vigor.

[Darkstorm]

Get enough arrows get high ground, he can't reach you there. His archers might, but you can deal with them early. It's how I defeated him first time. I know, lame attempt but ez.

[Sabaithal]

He's not that difficult if you slow down and read him. His combos hit decently hard, but they're rhythmic and predictable. Simply put do the classic "I'm already a dead man walking so lets just dodging his attacks as long as possible" thing, which is the best way to learn any and every boss' attack patterns. It won't take long with O'neil.

His summons are a bigger problem honestly. If you have Banished Knight Engvall I would hold him back and summon him once Oneill calls in the axe dudes. Engvall is pretty dang good at taking on groups of opponents.

[Dragonirian]

Aeonia fight is easy cause you can use torrent to climb branches and just snipe that guy, if you so desire.

[Dopaminer]

You don't have to fight him in his "arena", just lure him out to those geysers nearby, they do really help. Never forget to use your surrounding environment, its an open world adventure game after all ;)

[Clail]

Its been awhile but I think I either used spirt ashes that summons several allies to tangle with adds, or I summoned a couple players/NPC's.

As with all bosses, learn his moveset and how to survive it above all. Then its just a matter of poking him in his vulnerable moments.

[Bricky strong]

I beat him by myself with +3 weapons rune level 25. I used a big hammer to take out his two goons, which is the hard part. I backstabed them which isn't that easy so it took a while and then I manged to get rid of them without dying.
So the commander is the easy one once you know his movesets. He stutters with some attacks to catch you missing the timing, so once you know when he does it, it becomes easy. He does the same things over and over.
I beat him with poison arrows.....That's how I do it at low level.

[NotForMe]

There is a merchant near the Bellum church who sells bewitching branches.

Immediately run to one of his two summons, and use a branch on one.

[PhoneGone]

Killed him after about half of Lyendell

[The Spirit of Jazz]

Originally posted by NotForMe:

There is a merchant near the Bellum church who sells bewitching branches.

Immediately run to one of his two summons, and use a branch on one.

He means O'Neil, the rot guy. Not Niall, the frost guy.

[fauxpas]

Originally posted by The Spirit of Jazz:

Originally posted by NotForMe:

There is a merchant near the Bellum church who sells bewitching branches.

Immediately run to one of his two summons, and use a branch on one.

He means O'Neil, the rot guy. Not Niall, the frost guy.

The one you have to kill to get to the Snowfields? ... I melted him with Azur before I realized he used frost. 😁

[Darkstorm]

Originally posted by fauxpas:

Originally posted by The Spirit of Jazz:

He means O'Neil, the rot guy. Not Niall, the frost guy.

The one you have to kill to get to the Snowfields? ... I melted him with Azur before I realized he used frost. 😁

The one in the middle of rot lake in Caelid.

[fauxpas]

Originally posted by Darkstorm:

Originally posted by fauxpas:

The one you have to kill to get to the Snowfields? ... I melted him with Azur before I realized he used frost. 😁

The one in the middle of rot lake in Caelid.

I addressed him in my earlier post.