Red wyvern, bridge ******

[Xadiz]

Getting real tried of being repeatedly slaughtered, anybody care to join me in jolly co operation?

[onl33z]

I can help you kill it if the Gargoyles are still alive.

[Tarik Torgaddon]

There's a pretty good guide on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9OQV3uTMUw&t=121s
I didn't have any idea how to beat this ♥♥♥♥ before watching this guide and I've played 300+ hours lol

[Xadiz]

I killed the gragoyls x(, im in blight town.

[Call Sign: Raven]

Not gonna lie, that is pretty much the most tedious way to beat Hellkite.

First priority should be to cut his tail. That will prevent him from healing himself while on the castle.

After that, use a projectile to make him go agro, or just wait a few seconds and he will jump down himself.

Move towards the leg on your right as soon as possible. Get a few swings in. If he jumps up to breath fire, there is a safe spot along the wall if you count the 3rd or 4th brick up. Most of the time, he will continue jumping up and breathing fire, and you can continue to get hits in while he is in that loop.

Eventually, he will change tactics, usually turning around. As soon as you see that, take cover under the stairs, wait for him to go back to the castle, then repeat.

I should make a video of this, but I don't have a way to do it.

[Xadiz]

Originally posted by Harrison Ford:

Not gonna lie, that is pretty much the most tedious way to beat Hellkite.

First priority should be to cut his tail. That will prevent him from healing himself while on the castle.

After that, use a projectile to make him go agro, or just wait a few seconds and he will jump down himself.

Move towards the leg on your right as soon as possible. Get a few swings in. If he jumps up to breath fire, there is a safe spot along the wall if you count the 3rd or 4th brick up. Most of the time, he will continue jumping up and breathing fire, and you can continue to get hits in while he is in that loop.

Eventually, he will change tactics, usually turning around. As soon as you see that, take cover under the stairs, wait for him to go back to the castle, then repeat.

I should make a video of this, but I don't have a way to do it.

thats cool my dude, ill try anyway, ta

[Mr. Oibyr]

I never kill him anymore and he never kills me. We have an "understanding", lol.

No, his pattern is simple enough to explain;
-running from Solaire is the WORST scenario, have high fire resist, run/roll down the stairs before 2nd breath. I avoid this by always coming from the Perish way, which needs master key(unless you know how to skip the Taurus).
-the BEST way is from the burg bonfire ladder I walk into his line of fire and out as he starts breath to clear out undeads, wait 20secs or use an arrow and run around his left(your right)foot as he lands near you, run to the right of the bonfire(at the Sunlight Altar), wait, and after he leaves the place is yours until you go back to that ladder(sometimes needs quit out to bring back "Helky").
-every time you warp to Sunlight Altar bonfire(introduced "Undead Perish")...he's gone.

[Tormènt]

Cheese with range from below.

[sekai]

In addition to Harrison Ford, you can cut off its tail with a bow from below (where you have to go through the rat room).

This will require a large quantity of arrows if you're low level or if you don't use and upgrade your bow and if you don't want to use more expensive arrows.

It will also require manual aiming with the bow to shoot at the tail, so you will have to spend the first few arrows trying to find a personal rhythm to hit the tail reliably. Assuming you have 0 investment into bow related perks, it will take a few tens of arrows, think it was something like 30-40 Standard Arrow or something like that.

The Hellkite Drake will be aggro'ed, come down, and return to the gate after every shot at its tail. It's also a rather time-consuming process. But it gets you the tail without any risk.

[Tormènt]

Taking the shortcut up from the Undead Burg is less problematic and brings you tail-side. You will also get an opportunity when it jumps down to get a wing shot or 2.

Edit: I forget what conditions the drake heals under so may or may not want to use poison arrows.

[Call Sign: Raven]

Originally posted by Yawen:

Taking the shortcut up from the Undead Burg is less problematic and brings you tail-side. You will also get an opportunity when it jumps down to get a wing shot or 2.

Edit: I forget what conditions the drake heals under so may or may not want to use poison arrows.

Drake will not heal if the tail is cut.

[Xadiz]

So I destroyed his tail, and if I use a bow he stops to heal whenever his health get around 50% back up to 75%. Thats if I use ranged. He does heal when the tail is cut.

Any attempt at melee the ******, he flies down both ends of the bridge then hovers above the damn thing and one shots me. I cant figure out how to read his animations, especially as most of the time hes hard to bloody find.

Not unlocked warping yet btw. Just beaten the queen and headed to the valley of the drakes.Following the beginners path on the wiki, I tried free roaming and lets just say after 10 hours I'd been shafted by skeletons, parried by multiple skeletons ( a first in a ds game for me), killed by ghosts and the most rotten dragon I have ever seen.

[Call Sign: Raven]

Originally posted by White beard:

So I destroyed his tail, and if I use a bow he stops to heal whenever his health get around 50% back up to 75%. Thats if I use ranged. He does heal when the tail is cut.

Any attempt at melee the ******, he flies down both ends of the bridge then hovers above the damn thing and one shots me. I cant figure out how to read his animations, especially as most of the time hes hard to bloody find.

Not unlocked warping yet btw. Just beaten the queen and headed to the valley of the drakes.Following the beginners path on the wiki, I tried free roaming and lets just say after 10 hours I'd been shafted by skeletons, parried by multiple skeletons ( a first in a ds game for me), killed by ghosts and the most rotten dragon I have ever seen.

Interesting! In my experience he never heals without the tail. Maybe it just takes longer for him to do it, I wonder?

Now I want to experiment! lol

[Call Sign: Raven]

Okay, useless data time!

So, I booted up both the Remaster and PTDE to see what would make the Drake heal.

Turns out, he heals himself with or without the tail!

However, it takes a full 60 seconds of him idling before he tries to heal. I couldn't get him to heal sooner than that, no matter what I tried. Yes, I sat there with a stop watch. If you stand near the staircase to the Burg bonfire shortcut, he will jump down after 30 seconds of idling, as long as you are on the bridge and hiding in the usual safe spot. Obviously if you hit him with a ranged attack he will come down sooner, but this isn't enough time for him to start healing. That takes a full minute to begin.

He will also try to heal if you hide under the bridge and let him idle for 60 seconds.

I guess the reason he never heals for me is because I keep constant pressure on it after I cut the tail. The more you know! lol

I did not experiment with ranged attacks, as this took a good 20 minutes already. I'm assuming if you are very far away and pinging him with ranged moves that he will heal instead of hovering the bridge.

HOWEVER

Jesus christ, PTDE runs like balls and looks TERRIBLE when going back from the Remaster. The only reason I keep it is so that I have an easy way to play with the randomizer mods, but wow! I didn't realize it looked and ran THAT badly. Yikes From, what were you guys thinking?!

[Call Sign: Raven]

Are there any good FREE programs that enable me to make video? I was trying to find my strategy for killing the drake, but I can't find any videos of it online and I want to share it with you to help you beat him, if you haven't yet. It's a melee-only strategy that I use with low-level builds, and doesn't require any ranged attacks at all.

[Tormènt]

Really I thought PTDE looked decent due to heavily overused post processing which added to the poor performance, but in anycase not sure how good OBS works, just a quick search. Seem like everyone has their own integrated software now; My graphics suite has one, Win 10 has one.