(Major Spoilers) Tips for the final boss?

[PalmTree]

I honest to god didn't expect this game to turn into a bullet hell for the final boss.

The Radiance is kicking my ♥♥♥ hard. Easily the most challenging boss in the game so far. I'm kind of starting to get the hang of dodging her attacks, but I still have a multitude of problems that I can't seem to work around.

1- She doesn't stagger or flinch whatsoever, which means she's constantly attacking, which makes it incredibly difficult to find a good opportunity to heal, even with Quick Focus.

2- Her attacks leave very few gaps to dodge in certain cases (namely the one where she sends a wall of nails across the screen). Sometimes I get lucky and it will be near the ground so I can easily dodge it, but most of the time the opening is off the ground and difficult to maneuver through. It makes it hard to find opportunity to hit her during certain attacks.

3- She has so much HP. I've got the pure nail, but I was an idiot and didn't get the Unbreakable charms from Divine before banishing the troupe so I don't have a reliable damage booster. It takes forever to get to her second phase, which is the farthest I've managed to get.

I'm sorry if this comes across as complaining- it's a well designed and epic battle, and I'm just really struggling with it in comparison to how I fared against the rest of the bosses. Are there any general tips or charms that could help to make the fight a bit easier?

[Darc Vader]

If you haven’t tried it, Abyss Shriek with Shaman Stone does a good deal of damage, as do nail arts (which are unaffected by Fragile Strength anyway). As for healing, you could try Shape of Unn instead of Quick Focus, so you can weave around some attacks.

[Boa]

Just Abyss Shriek that Moth till she's dead

[Roast Goose]

Personally, I'd forgo healing charms and use things that improve your attack and speed so you can avoid getting hit. Don't get greedy trying to whack Radiance too many times in one go; there will always be more opportunities if you avoid getting hurt. This approach also saves soul for your magic attacks, particularly for the abyss shriek.

[ramonpontes]

Patience is the key for this battle.

You can see some very useful setup of charms to use here:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=875851140

Since you don't have unbreakable strength, you may change your setup to full mage:
Soul Eater
Soul Catcher
Spell Twister
Shaman Stone

In the first stage, as said before, use Abyss Shriek when you have the chance. With the above combination, you can use more magic, and it will do more damage. Your nail hits will also recover more magic.

Some prefer to just spam the Abyss Shriek to force her to go to the second stage, but I would advise to try to dodge and cast the spell 1 or 2 times when you are safely below her. But if you're having problem with this stage of the fight, try the first method.

On the second stage, you should not rush. Memorize her attacks and dodge them until you have a good positioning. Try hitting her with magic, specially Abyss shriek when she ais above you. Try to land some nail attacks also, so you can recover some magic.

[ms cirno]

I would suggest using Quick Slash and just wailing on her, but also keeping an eye out for her other attacks.

[Jesterofgames7712]

Shape of unn + Quick focus lets you avoid most her attacks aside from her pillar of light, Wall of nails, and homing balls.

I also used sharp shadow for additional shadow dash distance and occasional extra damage and it destroys her homing balls if you dash through them.

You can also try nailmaster’s pride to charge slash her.
Or try the spell build.

[Boksha]

Quick Focus helps a lot in this fight. I beat her the first time with a combination of Quick and Deep Focus, and that's no coincidence; if you know when and where to heal, you can live basically forever, which helps much more than shortening the fight a little with damage charms. In hindsight, Deep Focus was a pretty bad choice; Soul Eater has a similar effect (reducing the number of hits you need to get to heal one mask) but without forcing you to slowly heal two masks at a time.

Originally posted by PalmTree:

1- She doesn't stagger or flinch whatsoever, which means she's constantly attacking, which makes it incredibly difficult to find a good opportunity to heal, even with Quick Focus.

There are absolutely good moments to heal. For example, after the final bursts of her laser attack, or right after the radial swords attack. With Quick Focus, the number of places you can heal increases; for example you can also heal when a wall of swords has a gap at ground-level.

Originally posted by PalmTree:

2- Her attacks leave very few gaps to dodge in certain cases (namely the one where she sends a wall of nails across the screen). Sometimes I get lucky and it will be near the ground so I can easily dodge it, but most of the time the opening is off the ground and difficult to maneuver through. It makes it hard to find opportunity to hit her during certain attacks.

It's important that you deal with her attacks ASAP so you have time to counter-attack and prepare for the next attack. To that end, it's important to remember to stay close to the center of the arena as much as possible; dash through walls of light as early as you can, dodge walls of swords as early as you can, direct homing orbs to the floor (or the closest platform in the platform stage), etc. Also, only move and use movement skills like dashes or the Monarch Wings when you really have to; if you hang on to a dash or double jump, it'll be there when you need it. If you use it and didn't dodge anything with it, you might get caught in a bad spot. Double jumping especially, since it also puts you further away from the floor, meaning it'll take longer before you can jump again.

Originally posted by PalmTree:

3- She has so much HP. I've got the pure nail, but I was an idiot and didn't get the Unbreakable charms from Divine before banishing the troupe so I don't have a reliable damage booster. It takes forever to get to her second phase, which is the farthest I've managed to get.

Try to get a rhythm going where, whenever you can, you jump and hit her twice on the way down (if she appears far off the ground, you may only get one hit in, but that's OK)
Her first 3 phases have a combined total of 1000 HP, meaning you'll have to hit her 50 times, which sounds like a lot, but you can actually get like 8 hits in during her laser attack, and like 4 during most other attacks. Winning in 2 minutes or so is quite doable.

[D0HERRITT]

Good luck with that, It took me like 5 consecutive hours to defeat her. (I was about ready to give up & try again later, too...)