The very first challenge in the DLC is kinda whack (on Challenge mode)

[Renteka-Bond]

I know I'm on the highest difficulty and resistances are totally trashed in that mode, but this challenge just feels straight up unfun. The dodge hitboxes are simultaneously incredibly generous yet not generous enough.

I get the idea behind the challenge, dodge through the assailants, but there are a few quirks that make this unfair:

The Flaming Bulls' hitboxes feel too big for how cluttered they get. However, the bigger offender is the visual noise: they're so big, bright and particley that it's hard to parse visually or auditorily the bigger issue, that being -

The archers and their ice fields. Not only do they have huge hitboxes in the air, they leave persistent ice fields on the ground that are incredibly hard to see on the white/beige ground, but also do WAY too much damage when you step over them, which is really easy to do when you're busy running around trying to evade the big bulls (that you can hardly see past) AND the rolling stone waves. I've had attempts where I've gotten, presumably, far in, only to accidentally walk over the nigh-impossible to see ice fields then die to huge chunks of damage in about a second, assuming I don't just get pegged in the head from the Archers shooting me since I had to dodge in a small radius due to the overlapping waves of bulls.

I'll muscle through it, but this was not a good first impression to the DLC, imo. Maybe it's different on lower difficulties, but even having accepted that the Challenge mode basically makes armor pointless, this just feels bad.

[Shirokaido]

I had a similar experience, and you've got the right idea that you just need to muscle through it. The rest of the challenges have been fun to overcome, imo. It was just that first one that got me to rage quit after a few attempts.

[Casul Gamer]

Haven't played the DLC yet, but this doesn't surprise me. You can lower the difficulty temporarily (I didn't realize this was possible until recently).

I normally don't like doing that sort of thing, but I now do this with some bosses. It just isn't fun for me to spend 30-60 minutes grinding a single boss.

[Renteka-Bond]

Originally posted by Casul Gamer:

Haven't played the DLC yet, but this doesn't surprise me. You can lower the difficulty temporarily (I didn't realize this was possible until recently).

I normally don't like doing that sort of thing, but I now do this with some bosses. It just isn't fun for me to spend 30-60 minutes grinding a single boss.

I'd prefer not to lower the difficulty, haha. I wouldn't even mind it if it was a boss, I don't mind bashing my head against a fight wall.

This ♥♥♥♥ just absolutely sucks though. Easily the worst experience of the game so far. I literally can't even get to the rest of the dlc til I get past this garbage.

[Dephase]

Yeah I found that the most annoying "fight" of the entire DLC (dodge the flaming bulls + the rolling floor + the archers). Using the daggers evasion or a stance ability helps a lot: long iframes and invulnerability (considering I had 160 AP and the trinket to recover 3AP in 3s, that last quite long). The real fight vs the boss is quite easy actually.

The same applies for Singularity aka the final "fight". You just fight adds, while standing in a circle near some pillars to charge them (for 3 times) and then just resist the attacks until the "boss" health drops to 0. Stance abilities + daggers evade are your BFFs

[majik]

Died quite a few times before getting through it too. I usually dodged through the rolling stone walls on the ground, and dagger dodge through the bulls. Try to lure the arrows on the sides of the map. Don't be afraid of moving from one side of the screen to the other. Then the boss at the end is pretty trivial. Hope this helps, good luck :)

[Age 40 btw Tony Dancer]

♥♥♥♥ the Hippo challenge. The amount of times shields did not block the shots was way too frequent. The Judge boss can hit you for well over 5000 damage, invincible wasn't even a suggestion if you want to take a hit.

Then there's the spear boss who you just body because it's a simple trash fight into a duel. She may hit hard, but she's also well telegraphed and has poor tracking outside of dashes.

[Renteka-Bond]

Originally posted by majik:

Died quite a few times before getting through it too. I usually dodged through the rolling stone walls on the ground, and dagger dodge through the bulls. Try to lure the arrows on the sides of the map. Don't be afraid to moving from one side of the screen to the other. Then the boss at the end is pretty trivial. Hope this helps, good luck :)

This was very helpful, thank you! I'd used the daggers the whole game, but I only used the Dagger Dash to gapclose and attack, didn't consider the I-frames. I finally got past the WAAAAY too long phase 3 of the bulls. Thank god the Archers go on a 5 minute break in the middle. However, I got ♥♥♥♥♥♥ in the boss and found out you have to do the ENTIRE thing over again JUST to get back to the boss.

WHO was this for? How did it manage to get even worse? It's not even like the boss is hard, i literally got hit twice, each hit just did like 1432 damage a piece, so i died in 1 combo where the first hit launched me 30 feet in the air, so I can't even input any commands.

Edit: Jesus Christ, 30 minutes later, I finally got it. Boss was easy to cheese with the auto targeting fire spirit spell as I ran around making sure I didn't get ganked by the bulls or Arrows. Absolutely dreadful for this challenge.

To illucidate for people who may not be on Challenging Mode or made the effort to try to negate C. Modes Resistance debuff, this is the kind of damage I had to deal with in conjunction with the game's jank:

My Max HP: 2405

Bulls: 1468 on hit, alongside being launched into the air and stunned.

Stone Waves: About 200-300 damage per tick, but it pushes you back and briefly stuns + it can chain into itself. Plus, the Bulls can hit you while staggering from the waves.

Arrows: Hard to calculate since if you get hit by one, you're probably getting hit by multiple, but I frequently saw 'at least' 1300 HP on 1/2 hitting me.

Ice field: Hard to see and the ticks did about 250 hp. I 'think' multiple fields stacked on top of each other also stack damage.

So it often came down to if I screwed up even once, it was an insta wipe. There were tons of runs where I'd make it partway through phase 3, only to accidentally run out of stamina or dodge slightly short and get chained by 1 Bull and die instantly.

As I mentioned in the OP, I'm aware that the Challenge mode borks resistances and in the main game, I was willing to bite my tongue on it as I didn't actually mind it too much since I think it's an interesting way to not directly rack up the numbers on the enemies. But this challenge highlights so many of the games little issues with stunlocking and dodging, it was just a completely un-fun experience, quite easily the worst one I've had in the game by far.

[y u kik me?]

Also in challenge and I had troubles as well but I felt it was mostly my fault. I have spear equipped and have the quick steps along with quick recovery and marathon runner perk and it is very doable.

The first part can be cleared flawlessly pretty easily, the 2nd part with the bulls, rollers, and archers are very annoying. But most of the time I felt like it was mostly my own fault. I use the crescent blade skill to give me some invulnerability during the 2nd part. Once cleared and the boss is somewhat easy... so long as you don't die to him. I was surprised to have to do everything again. I did spend most of my salves on this challenge though since I normally save my salves and just heal using the mines since I'm too stingy with heals in this game for some reason haha

I even tried parrying the bull but nope, it eats all your stamina. I also found out from this challenge that Hilda can't do an about face and jump immediately to the point that jumping over the rollers is more detrimental than just dodging everything. I also noticed that the hit boxes of the bull can be seen under their feet. It's the V shape aura they emit.

[y u kik me?]

On a side note I stopped playing this game for a month or so, found out there was a dlc release, saw the paragon armor set and immediately my desire to play the game was stoked. So I waited until the release and I ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ love the paragon armor set. Also I had no idea how to start the dlc and just activated it accidentally after talking to the priest in base XD