Dear Lord, how are you meant to fight Odur?

[Detective Costeau]

Seriously, how is this considered reasonable for a first boss? I understand the game is meant to be challenging, but
1) multiple combos that can take off half your health if you mistime a deflect (I can't find any reliable way to dodge his combos), critical hits with incredibly short windups that take off *more* than half your health,
2) Wildly inconsistent stagger. Sometimes saber hits stagger him and you can get a combo in. Sometimes Odur just hyperarmors through your hits and then rips off half your health for the mistake. Why does a hit sometimes stagger him and sometimes not? Hell if I can tell, it was the same hit both times.
3) As far as I can tell the only way to use plague weapons is by damage trading. I have tried this fight 20+ times and never managed a hit with any plague weapon that didn't get me hit during the animation.
4) If you don't rip off his green health *right away* he can just teleport to the other side of the arena and spam cards at you until he heals.
I was genuinely enjoying the game up to this point- pretty much all of the stuff I was leery of in the demo I played has been fixed mechanically, but having an absurd skill wall at the end of the very first real level is sapping my will to continue.

[MarkedMarkyMark]

1) Deflecting isn't always the answer unless you got the timing right, you can always dodge if you're insecure, but yes, the three combo he does is hard af to deflect

2) I wouldn't say its inconsistent, you can tell when he's winding up to start and attack, its just that depending on your saber combos you can't start a deflect (A combo upgrade will especially F you), you can also dodge away quickly regardless of combo.

3) Not sure if you have, the claw Plague will stagger him, you can always change your level around to fit your build, normal claw i think would be really hard.

4) Use the feather when he's far away or when you feel he'll recover, feather is a good way to keep the health from recovering.

But yeah he's a huge spike, but he does take a lotta damage, i was 1 pip away from defeating him last night, real hard but i'm finding it fun, it does feel like you're fighting Vergil, hope the other bosses are as interesting.

[Evagorn]

Some more advice, if you'd like:
The best way to deal with him in phase 1 is relentless aggression. Attack him with saber attacks without letting up for even a moment, until he deflects you himself and stops your combo. When this happens, he will do one of two counters: either a leap back, pause, followed by two rapid slashes with his cane, or he'll stay close and do a sudden kick. Once you learn the deflect timings for both attacks, you can punish him mercilessly, and utterly control the flow of combat for the first phase. Just sneak in a single Claw attack after each successful deflection combo, and you'll be able to whittle him down in short order.

In phase 2 things get a bit more complicated, but the basic strategy holds. Close the gap as quick as you can and attack him. However, in phase 2 he will start to disappear and come at you with an aggressive combo. The best method I found was to just face him head on, and wait for the deflect. It takes a little practice, but his combo is always the same, so once you've mastered it, you can lock down that attack. The one exception to the aggression rule is that in phase 2, he has an ultimate attack, and the only way to consistently dodge it is to run away as fast as you can when you see it. It helps to hover just a slight distance away from him initially to give yourself the maximum window of time to run.

And like the person above me said, throwing feathers is a great way to stop him from regenerating. Just throw one every so often if he's at a distance, though I recommend closing in, obviously.

Best of luck!

[Devilish Bear]

At what level are you guys fighting him at as well? Im at level 12

[Evagorn]

I just completed my save file and can't remember what level I was, but that seems about right.

[Azarath]

The feather dash trait is great for closing the distance when he jumps away. I didn't have a problem with dodging his attacks, you just have to hold it at first when he disappears until right when he reappears, and always dash away from him. And be extra careful if he isn't staggering, don't commit to a full combo, and be ready to dash away. I haven't really bothered deflecting much at all in the game, seems too risky so I just dodge everything.

You can also grind a bit to get some more levels to unlock more traits if you're underleveled. I think I was around 12. At that level it doesn't take long to get enough XP.

[chaoticWolf17]

Originally posted by Crab Stole My Skin:

I was genuinely enjoying the game up to this point- pretty much all of the stuff I was leery of in the demo I played has been fixed mechanically, but having an absurd skill wall at the end of the very first real level is sapping my will to continue.

^^This.

[CrysisPoRusski]

со второй попытки его убил, босс лёгкий

[MarkedMarkyMark]

Originally posted by Evagorn:

Some more advice, if you'd like:
The best way to deal with him in phase 1 is relentless aggression. Attack him with saber attacks without letting up for even a moment, until he deflects you himself and stops your combo. When this happens, he will do one of two counters: either a leap back, pause, followed by two rapid slashes with his cane, or he'll stay close and do a sudden kick. Once you learn the deflect timings for both attacks, you can punish him mercilessly, and utterly control the flow of combat for the first phase. Just sneak in a single Claw attack after each successful deflection combo, and you'll be able to whittle him down in short order.

In phase 2 things get a bit more complicated, but the basic strategy holds. Close the gap as quick as you can and attack him. However, in phase 2 he will start to disappear and come at you with an aggressive combo. The best method I found was to just face him head on, and wait for the deflect. It takes a little practice, but his combo is always the same, so once you've mastered it, you can lock down that attack. The one exception to the aggression rule is that in phase 2, he has an ultimate attack, and the only way to consistently dodge it is to run away as fast as you can when you see it. It helps to hover just a slight distance away from him initially to give yourself the maximum window of time to run.

And like the person above me said, throwing feathers is a great way to stop him from regenerating. Just throw one every so often if he's at a distance, though I recommend closing in, obviously.

Best of luck!

Just beat him, Aggression was the answer for me as well, even for the second phase, if you're fast and aggressive enough he won't even have the time to do his cool ult. I feel like if your parry is true and you got those bigger parry damage perks he'd be even easier, but that 3 combo was too harsh for me, especially the starter, so i dodged the first one and parry the next two.

The second phase flourish he does is super easy to parry tho', that absolutely depleted his health, first phase is way harder due to that.

[Reykam]

Personally i had no problem just dodging him and conter attacking, i use long dodge to avoid his combo chains on the second phase and then i get in with feather dash and start combo, dodge back when he does the parry attack and then in with the claw, rinse and repeat dancing around him with long dodge

[Detective Costeau]

Yeah, I finally managed to beat him after 30 or so attempts. I honestly don't think he's even a bad boss, just way too punishing for how early in the game he is. As people said, the trick at least for the first phase is just to try to get his AI stuck in a loop of counterattacking you.

[thee.alemaozinho]

As others said, play aggressive. I did not even try to deflect, so when he started his combo I double-dogded out of range, and closed in with the skill that lets you counter after a dodge.

[Misery1ndex]

Def dont deflect him. I used the halberd plague weapon, with the long claw and energy gain on claw attacks. if you just dodge backwards on his 2 combo. you can get 3 good pokes in, and 2 long claw attacks which is a pretty substantial amount of damage. i was stuck on him for close to an hour until that method worked for me.

[CheechWizard]

He's definitely a difficulty spike for sure, took me about 7-8 tries. I deflected one of his melee combos and either followed up with a claw attack or used the Halberd plague weapon. Eventually you'll get the rhythm down, when fighting him don't focus on winning, put some time into memorizing his attack patterns.

[Diamond Knight]

Phase 1: Combo until he deflects. He either jumps back, lunge and ashina cross or he kicks. Both are easy to dodge to the right. So dodge and claw (not reave). Combo again until deflect. Keep repeating. Reave the killing blow. It helps in phase 2.
Phase 2: Same idea but he does 2 ashina crosses or 2 kicks instead. Dodge both and claw. The double kick is sometimes unsafe to claw but I found I could still trade every so often. You can't lock him in a damage cycle like phase 1 so you have to be more careful and reactive hence the phase 1 reave will help. When he jumps far away, throw feathers periodically to interrupt and close the distance. You don't want to deal with any cards.
I've not done any deflecting yet cos my mouse doesn't have enough buttons.

[Leoscar]

Like all mobs in this game I've encountered, you can't really counter them spontaneously because the timings are so unnatural with oddly long or short windups.

Hyperarmor isn't random but is frankly dumb : mobs are staggered when hit, but during stagger they can start their combos which give them infinite hyperarmor just like that, so keep swinging until they don't react to your hits. Attacking them enough will eventually also allow them to deflect your attack and follow up with, in the case of Odur, a delayed kick.

As far as plague weapons go, I can only recommand the dagger if you have the secondary effect upgrade, it deletes wound damage and is really easy to use.