Manfredd sucks

[grendel]

This fight isn't fun. I've been stuck here for days. I can sometimes dodge everything perfectly and take no damage, and other times I catch everything he throws at me. I'm a dex build using the whip and most of the videos I've seen on Youtube are people using the broken sword pre-patch doing literally 5x the damage I am doing. I watched a dex guy use the katana and he still did 2x my damage with every hit.

So it sounds like I need to level up another weapon or increase my HP but I think I'd rather die than try to farm the areas available to me for the XP to do that. So I guess I am just done with the game before I even unlocked all of the abilities.

I wish I could have all of the time I've spent so far playing this game back.

[𝙷𝚘𝚘𝚗𝚝𝚊]

I feel you. He took me the most tries of all bosses in the game. I was using ice sword +8 with 50 mind and I still dealt so low damage. He needs to have his health or resistances nerfed.

[grendel]

Yeah I am using +8 whip with 48 Dex and it's like I am tickling him. =\

[FilthySouls]

Yea, he's the first obstacle really making me question when/if I can continue with the game.
I also use a Dex build, but with the Severance Reaper as a weapon. I'm thinking of upgrading my vitality and mind or whatever stat it is that increases protection aainst dark damage, because that ghost version of him is what really messes me up. Not sure if that's gonna help, but hopefully..

[VonPumpkinson]

Mannfred isn't that difficult. Mostly situational awareness.

[FilthySouls]

Finally beat him.

Upgrading mind to get more darkness resistance agaínst the shadow version attacks def. helped since they basically one-shot me, before. However it's still a really tough fight and it took me a good while to get the right timing for evading and attacking in the 2nd phase.

[grendel]

I am 30 mind, how high did you go? When the shadow clones hit me, I take 74 damage and then the dot ticks for 1-2 damage per tick for several seconds. This combined with whatever the actual boss is doing usually kills me immediately.

Lowest I've gotten the boss' health is around 1/3, once phase 2 starts the window to actually do damage to the boss while dodging all of the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ gets pretty small, and since my Dex build damage is horrid it's a war of attrition that I lose every time

[FilthySouls]

I haven't touched the mind stat before this boss wrecked me so hard, it was 8 or 10 and I upped it to 35. That made the fight possible to begin with, but it remains difficult. You really gotta pay attention from which direction the ghost charges and evade it in time, right after I evaded him I got a few hits on his normal version or did a quick heal, rinse and repeat. Also Severance Reaper level 8 works well with a Dex build and did decent damage to him.

[almurat89]

I would recommend switching whips to another weapon. Whip is good for battles where you need to keep your distance from the enemy, which is not the case here, or anything else. I personally prefer a spinal chain blade. Also, if you haven't done it yet, try Whip's alternative attack; due to the boss's large hit box, it may end up with decent damage.
The best gun for this fight is a double-barreled shotgun (you need to stay close and aim the head). Best spells: one with two horisontal flame streams (it's hard to use but has the best damage output) and a vertical lightning bolt (aim his head). Keep in mind that, if you need this, an electrical cage provides protection against homing progectiles.
Falling from the ceiling and grounding blood explosion attacks provide the best windows for damage.
If needed, you can force the boss to turn around and use this window for healing or focus restorage; he can't attack for this short time.
Also, it is helpful to use a temporary save point to your advantage and never respawn at a normal save. After dying several times, just quit the game, go to the main menu, and choose your save file again. By doing this, you will spawn at your normal save point with all spent consumables back, since a temporary save never overwrites a regular one.

[grendel]

Unfortunately I don't have the materials to upgrade any other weapons. I did however 'beat' the boss. After many more failed attempts I alt-tabbed in disgust out of the game in the middle of another one to watch some Youtube and while the game was running in the background I heard the boss hit me once and then I didn't hear any more sound FX. I switched back to the game and the boss was frozen mid-animation doing one of it's attacks. It just stood there and let me hit it until it was dead. Closest I ever got legit was getting him down to 10% health.

Now I have the double jump.

[gungadin22000]

I beat him in 2 tries and only needed a 2nd try because I wasn't expecting a 2nd boss after the warrior lady.

I ran a full instinct build, so I think the resists I got from that pretty much trivialised him.

[quintonhoffert]

I just beat him a few hours ago. I don't actually think the fight is bad; rather, I think it highlights problems with the core combat system that make what would otherwise be a good fight less enjoyable than it should be. The two big problems are that the roll is basically useless, and that you can get damaged while getting up from the ground and there's no quick method of getting back to your feet.

All of Manfredd's attacks can be dodged reliably and fairly easily by jumping, but none of them can be dodged by rolling. The roll's i-frames work for most (but not all) minor enemies but most boss attacks can't be rolled, and it really hurts for Manfredd especially because he doesn't always use the same third hit on his three-hit combo. Sometimes he'll do a delayed slam that summons the blood pillars, but sometimes he'll do the less delayed slam that summons the blood rain and the three floating blood orbs (very rarely he'll also do a falling slam but that's easy to dodge). If he does the delayed slam with the blood pillars then rolling is better, because jumping can get you caught in the slam's arc. However, if he does the less delayed slam with the blood rain, then rolling gets you rekt because the slam's ground AoE is much larger and you can't reliably roll out of it. If the roll's i-frames worked on bosses then both of these attacks would be fair, but because it doesn't you can occasionally be locked into taking guaranteed damage if you get cornered and don't have room to maneuver on the side he's trying to slam. Usually you want to dodge away from him for both slams unless you're inside his model, but if you're up against the wall then you're just screwed for the blood rain slam. You can still dodge the other one but the blood rain will always hit and will often kill you.

The other problem, which combines with the first one, is that there's no fast way to get back to your feet when you've been knocked down, and you can also take damage while standing up. Against most enemies this isn't that big of a problem, but since Manfredd summons a lot of stuff (blood rain, blood orbs, blood pillars, the shadow Manfredd that mimics his attacks) most of his attacks that knock you down count as double jeopardy. In other words, if you get hit from the attack you'll get knocked down and take a guaranteed hit from the follow-up because the follow-up comes out faster than you can get up. If you could roll on the ground to get back up quickly, or use the air dash to catch yourself out of a fall, then this wouldn't be a problem, but since you can't Manfredd feels really bad to take a hit from because in the second phase (and sometimes even in the first), one hit WILL turn into 2-3, and if you're not at full health it will probably kill you. For example, on one particularly egregious attempt I got slammed by the blood rain/orbs, then hit by raining blood while downed, then the shadow Manfredd hit me while I was getting up, and that knocked me into a blood orb and killed me. Going 100 to dead while control was taken away from my character feels awful, and it shouldn't happen.

Without these problems, though, Manfredd is a good fight. If you play him patiently and don't get overeager, you have time to weave a hit or two in even with a slow weapon between most of his combos, and every shadow Manfredd attack can be evaded with a jump once you know the timing of how long to wait for it. A few of his attacks even take him away from you, giving you time to back off and heal, and Manfredd has very little in the way of long ranged attacks to punish item use so long as you dodge the shadow. If both of these things were fixed then he'd probably be my favorite boss in the game so far, but because of these fundamental combat problems I didn't enjoy it nearly as much as I should have. I still did enjoy the fight, but with the right combat system it would be a 10/10 fight, whereas I'd probably only give it a 7.5-8/10 right now because you can die via ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ in so many ways.

[Coinkydink]

I am by now resigned to the fact that i will likely not finish any of these games. The devs of these new old-school games always seem to cater to a small minority of diehards who were born with a gamepad in their hands and demand Ninja Gaiden levels of difficulty.

I am reading around here trying to figure out if i should invest time in this game but now that I see you need a specific build to beat this guy to get the double jump... I am definitely out :( This is 2023....

[almurat89]

>All of Manfredd's attacks can be dodged reliably and fairly easily by jumping, but none of them can be dodged by rolling.
>if he does the less delayed slam with the blood rain, then rolling gets you rekt because the slam's ground AoE is much larger and you can't reliably roll out of it.

You need air-dash for that stomp attack and to _roll_ away from rain drops if required. Yeah, roll is for movement here, but air-dush works almost for everything. Also, cornered situations are the best for damage dealing.

>Ninja Gaiden levels of difficulty
Well, I'm familiar with Ninja Gaiden nes games, and TLF has nothing in common with them relating to difficulty. I can defeat Manfredd without taking any damage because I create a strategy. Not because I "diehard". If you see an obsticle that you can't pass through you gotta look around what else you can do with it.

[dgresevfan]

Originally posted by grendel:

Yeah I am using +8 whip with 48 Dex and it's like I am tickling him. =\

HOW are you using a +8 whip? I thought the blueprint needed to get upgrades this high was locked behind needing the double jump which is itself locked behind Manfredd?

I read elsewhere that the vampire transformation ability is in Liturgical pass, and I saw someone using that against Manfredd on youtube, but I can't get through the Liturgical pass church area without the double jump.

[almurat89]

+8 whip is correct here, and for this jump you've mentioned you don't need a double jump, but something else, from another place.