Defeating Iris' Greatest Fear on Deathmarch, made easier

[Korben Dallas ॐ]

Greetings Witchers,
If you played Hearts of Stone on Deathmarch, then I daresay it's no doubt you spent a fair amount of time trying to figure out how to beat Iris' Greatest Fear, which takes place in the Painted World and consists of 6 Olgierd apparitions. They seem to have immense attack power. nearly one-shooting you at every blow they land, and in fact they will most of the time. Let's not forget that red-glowing sword attacks which cannot be blocked and pierces through Quen, killing you instantly.

Did it feel like cyberbullying for you as it did for me? Perhaps, and avoiding such an unfortunate experience from an otherwise very enjoyable game is precisely what this thread is about. The following is what I found to be a very efficient way to defeat the 6 ghostly ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.
Perhaps the fight won't be instantly easy as soon as you read this, but I hope it will spare hours of banging your head against your desk rambling about how unfair the game is.

I think it would be really nice if other players shared the strategy they came up with in order to defeat this boss, as it may fit other builds for which my method could prove inefficient. Also, the more the merrier. :)

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If you're reading this here, you've probably already figured it out: you need to let the ghosts come to you one by one in the empty corner of the room if you want the fight to be even remotely fair. Taking on them all at once is seemingly impossible. You also noticed it requires a lot of patience and steel nerves. Basically you're now playing a rhythm game (or a Souls-like, there's actually not much difference).

At first, it does look like the 6 ghosts are giving you an increasingly hard time as you defeat them, but that really is a scam: there's only one pattern (and a couple deviations) which you need to follow in order to beat the ♥♥♥♥ out of them, one at a time.
The only difference as the fight goes on is that there's gradually less room for error, which directly translates from two facts about the 3rd ghost and the 5th one: starting from the 3rd, there will be (a lot) more of these one-shot-through-Quen attacks, and reaching the 5th, they start blocking instead of taking your blows quietly. The pattern stays the same nevertheless and soon enough these ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of ethereal painted Olgierds will be nothing more than ♥♥♥♥ stains on a canvas. Quen is technically all you need, but a couple Tawny Owl potions will guarantee your safety, while some Thunderbolt potions will make your life easier by shortening the fight a great deal.

So first of all, here is the pattern: count three fast attacks, then dodge to the side. 1, 2, 3, dodge, 1, 2, 3, dodge, and so on and so forth until you wipe out the 6 of them.
You only need to deviate from the pattern in a few occasions, but we'll go over them.

The four first ghosts are basically the same: they walk towards you, when close enough they attempt kind of a shadow strike which you can dodge, and that's where the pattern starts. After you dodged the shadow strike to the side, land 3 fast attacks. The ghost will then attempt to vomit at you. Upon dodging the vomit to the side and landing another three hits, one of two things will happen: the ghost will either disengage by doing its shadow move (at which point you just rinse and repeat the pattern), OR it will become kind of softlocked into trying to throw up at your face repeatedly, but your three attacks already shifted Geraltf further to its side, which means you can skip the dodging and keep spamming fast attacks until it disengages with its shadow move.

Make sure you always have Quen active. If you take a hit, no big deal, just dodge a couple steps back until your stamina replenishes, then cast it again. Then re-engage the pattern.

From the 3rd ghost onwards, the ghosts will start charging at you with their one-shot attack whenever you're not in melee range. If you've died enough times before reading this, perhaps you are already assuming that a red-glowing sword means instant death, and while it remains abslutely valid, there is one flaw to this seemingly over-powered attack which you need to be aware of: you can interrupt it. You can then completely negate the threat posed by this attack simply by staying in melee range and applying the pattern.

The 5th and 6th ghosts are different still, in that they block your blows instead of taking them. This tricks you thinking that the pattern becomes inefficient, but worry not, for it remains your most powerful asset through this last part of the fight. The only thing that really changes is how the ghost reacts to the pattern, and it really isn't that much of a change, as you'll see.

Let's assume you just killed the 4th ghost. As soon as the black threads evaporate from the dead ghost, rush towards the 5th one, which will prevent it from one-shot-charging at you. Spam your three fast attacks, which will be blocked, and immediately dodge to the side. Instead of trying to throw up at your face, the ghost will let out kind of a red mist whose effects are exactly the same as the vomit from earlier, that is merely knocking you back. However, instead on doing its regular shadow strike afterwards, it will start charging a one-shat attack. But you can interrupt those, remember? If you dodged the red mist correctly, you will be in range for a fast attack which will knock the ghost back and stun it. You'll know you did it right if you can see a red haze surrounding the ghost. At that point, rush towards it and strike it with as many fast attacks as you can (that may be between 2 and 4 attacks). Soon enough it will start blocking your blows again, at which point it's just rinse and repeat. So yeah, the pattern isn't exactly the same, it becomes the following: count 3 blocks, dodge to the side, spam fast attacks until the ghost blocks again. The 6th ghost really is the same, just don't forget to rush towards it at the beginning to prevent a one-shot charge.

And voilà, Iris' Greatest Fear is no more.

For reference, although that may not be exactly relevant, here's how my Geralt was spec'd when I finally beat it:
- Geralt lv. 38, fully mastercrafted cat school armor set and blades
- 6 combat skills (and 2 greater red mutagens):

• Resolve (lv. 5, no adrenaline loss upon taking damage)
  
• Undying (lv. 5, adrenaline points are consumed to restore 100% of health upon taking a blow that would otherwise be lethal)
  
• Fleet footed (lv. 5, no damage from hits taken while dodging)
  
• Whirl (lv. 5, hold left click to engage Beyblade mode)
  
• Razor focus (lv. 5, 1 automatic adrenaline point upon entering combat, +25% adrenaline gain)
  
• Sunder (lv. 5, heavy attacks reduce enemy damage resistance by 25%)

- 3 magic skills (and 1 greater blue mutagen):

• Exploding shield (lv. 3, Quen knocks enemies back upon exploding)
  
• Melt armor (lv. 1, Igni permanently damages enemy armor up to 15%)
  
• Firestream (lv. 2, channeled flamethrower mode for Igni)

- 2 alchemy skills and 1 general skill (and 1 greater green mutagen):

• Cat school techniques (+25% crit damage and +5% fast attack damage per light armor piece)
  
• Acquired tolerance (lv. 3, +1 max toxicity per known lv.1, 2 or 3 alchemy formula)
  
• Refreshment (lv. 3, 15% of health restored upon drinking one potion dose)

Among all of the above, only two things I think were absolutely necessary: Fleet footed and Exploding shield. Refreshment was mildy useful as most blows actually "only" hit for 95% of your health, and the heal burst is appreciable for speedy recovery in such cases. Undying did not work, rendering adrenaline points almost useless (that is apart from the +30% damage output they give you from the Battle trance passive effect), and thereby making the rest of my ability build nearly as useless. Precisely because of that, I think the strategy I went through above can apply to any build, although that remains to be tested.

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Hope this whole thing helped! Good hunt to you fellow Witchers, and feel free to share below how you beat Iris' Greatest Fear!

[max.strauss]

Counterintuitively the fastest method is to activate all ghost copies of Olgierd at the same time. With the bomb "Superior Dancing Star" Geralt gets rid of Iris' greatest fear problem in about one minute:

https://youtu.be/ikWUlwbu8eI

[Yumeko]

> red-glowing sword attacks which cannot be blocked
you should very much be able to both counter and block the red sword attacks.

[Korben Dallas ॐ]

Originally posted by max.strauss:

With the bomb "Superior Dancing Star" Geralt gets rid of Iris' greatest fear problem in about one minute

I'm both glad this exists and sad it makes my whole post nearly useless

Originally posted by Hi im Royeen:

you should very much be able to both counter and block the red sword attacks.

I was never able to block even one of those, let alone parrying one. If you're actually supposed to be able to block those and I couldn't, that may explain a lot as to why I sucked at this fight

[max.strauss]

HiR is right: Counterattack is a good attack/defense method in this fight:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oefQVr051Xw

Olgierd's ghost copies practise the same fighting style as Olgierd himself; using counterattack it's possible to beat him in a reasonable time (DM with Enemy Upscaling ON):

https://youtu.be/YGlOBWyUcEk

Originally posted by Deqyra ॐ:

...it makes my whole post nearly useless

Not really. It's possible that someone who hasn't a deep red build like mine can't reproduce my solution.

[skooma addict]

There's another easy and fast solution: play on Story and Sword difficulty

[Crustallos]

Originally posted by max.strauss:

Counterintuitively the fastest method is to activate all ghost copies of Olgierd at the same time. With the bomb "Superior Dancing Star" Geralt gets rid of Iris' greatest fear problem in about one minute:

https://youtu.be/ikWUlwbu8eI

This was the solution for me, took me about 40 seconds on Deathmarch. Just trow the bomb, whirl around and repeat only used 3 of the 4 bombs.