A New Appreciation for Bed of Chaos

[Melth]

Every time I play through this mostly great game, I come away with a deeper and deeper appreciation of how terrible Bed of Chaos is.

When I first played Dark Souls, I thought BoC was boring and had a couple of cheesy 'gotcha' attacks that would kill you until you learned the proper counter by guess and check, but I didn't hate it.

But every time I've played through again I've found 2 or 3 new terrible things about the fight. Remarkably bad decisions that the designers had to go out of their way to make, breaking their own established rules- or very basic bugs or oversights which they didn't bother testing and fixing. Through a combination of very hard work in some areas and remarkable laziness in others, they managed to make Bed of Chaos not just a bad souls boss fight, but one of the worst boss fights I've ever seen in a professional videogame!


This time the new discoveries included that the root you need to land on has a terrible platforming hitbox so that you can just fall through one seemingly solid part of it, and that sometimes the boss's hand attacks will inexplicably push you in the exact opposite direction of the way the hand is moving! Also, sometimes the swipe hand attacks which are normally easy to block will completely ignore a block instead.

I used to have a mild dislike of it. Now it's a combination of amazement and hatred.

[Castyles]

It's madness.

[felipebrandini]

As you enter the arena, go to the left or to the right and kill one of tthe bulbs. Logout of the game, login again, get pass the fog and go kill the other bulb. Logout again, login again and keep running to the right to jump down on the platform, kill the boss. GG

[BlooMood]

Originally posted by felipebrandini:

As you enter the arena, go to the left or to the right and kill one of tthe bulbs. Logout of the game, login again, get pass the fog and go kill the other bulb. Logout again, login again and keep running to the right to jump down on the platform, kill the boss. GG

I have a hunch you didn’t read the actual message at all.

And yes, hard agree as far as the boss goes. Legitimately every play through I swear I run into something new I dislike about it and I do try to go in with the positive “maybe I can beat this in one go” mindset.

In my most recent attempt I had logged out like the comment I quoted mentions, then logged back in to go after the second root. I slid down the long slide to the boss and it began the fire pillars on the slide down as it sometimes does only this time, it had them targeted right where I was gonna land, killing me instantly when I dropped in since I was stuck in the “get up from a drop” animation. This also happened multiple times when I dropped down to the branch to get to the bug. It’s just a completely unavoidable death if it starts up the geysers as you are in midair to the branch.

I really don’t appreciate the run back to the boss after these deaths.

I personally feel that a lot of my hatred for this “boss” if you can even call it that, stems from the run back to it. If I’m going to be killed instantly in a bunch of pretty cheap ways I can barely (or sometimes can’t) prevent, a bonfire right outside the fog gate to minimize the down time I feel would have made it a bit more tolerable.

Granted, I’d have preferred a much more fleshed out boss that had a good bit more time and effort put into it.

[Scuzz]

This is, in my mind, a 3 death boss. One for left, one for right, one for a bad jump to the center.

[Melth]

Originally posted by EternallyLazuli:

In my most recent attempt I had logged out like the comment I quoted mentions, then logged back in to go after the second root. I slid down the long slide to the boss and it began the fire pillars on the slide down as it sometimes does only this time, it had them targeted right where I was gonna land, killing me instantly when I dropped in since I was stuck in the “get up from a drop” animation. This also happened multiple times when I dropped down to the branch to get to the bug. It’s just a completely unavoidable death if it starts up the geysers as you are in midair to the branch.

I really don’t appreciate the run back to the boss after these deaths.

Oh yeah, the unavoidable deaths due to the boss lucking out with fire blasts while you are still landing are something I discovered and learned to hate on my previous playthrough!

That's the kind of thing which should obviously be unacceptable and which even the slightest bit of testing would have revealed as a problem, because it's extremely common for the boss to try that attack while you are in the slide (where it is harmless). Any reasonable person seeing that would wonder whether it is possible for the boss to luck out and do that attack right as you land.


Either of the two runs to the boss are obnoxiously long and boring as you said. Even the Izalith shortcut is barely a shortcut because they saw fit to make it contain an ultra-long straight run with a monster which can easily OHKO a new player blocking the way.

There is, however, one single thing I will say in the devs' favor about the run to the boss:

Did you ever notice that the elevator from Daughter of Chaos down to the shortcut is the only elevator in the game which resets itself for the player's convenience? No other elevator in the game will re-position itself to help speed up a boss run, but that one will actually go to where you need it automatically and wait for you. It's great, and it proves that they were being deliberately obnoxious on other boss runs where they COULD have had elevators conveniently reset themselves, but chose not to!

[BlooMood]

Originally posted by Melth:

Originally posted by EternallyLazuli:

In my most recent attempt I had logged out like the comment I quoted mentions, then logged back in to go after the second root. I slid down the long slide to the boss and it began the fire pillars on the slide down as it sometimes does only this time, it had them targeted right where I was gonna land, killing me instantly when I dropped in since I was stuck in the “get up from a drop” animation. This also happened multiple times when I dropped down to the branch to get to the bug. It’s just a completely unavoidable death if it starts up the geysers as you are in midair to the branch.

I really don’t appreciate the run back to the boss after these deaths.

Oh yeah, the unavoidable deaths due to the boss lucking out with fire blasts while you are still landing are something I discovered and learned to hate on my previous playthrough!

That's the kind of thing which should obviously be unacceptable and which even the slightest bit of testing would have revealed as a problem, because it's extremely common for the boss to try that attack while you are in the slide (where it is harmless). Any reasonable person seeing that would wonder whether it is possible for the boss to luck out and do that attack right as you land.


Either of the two runs to the boss are obnoxiously long and boring as you said. Even the Izalith shortcut is barely a shortcut because they saw fit to make it contain an ultra-long straight run with a monster which can easily OHKO a new player blocking the way.

There is, however, one single thing I will say in the devs' favor about the run to the boss:

Did you ever notice that the elevator from Daughter of Chaos down to the shortcut is the only elevator in the game which resets itself for the player's convenience? No other elevator in the game will re-position itself to help speed up a boss run, but that one will actually go to where you need it automatically and wait for you. It's great, and it proves that they were being deliberately obnoxious on other boss runs where they COULD have had elevators conveniently reset themselves, but chose not to!

I have noticed it! Usually I don't end up thinking about it very much unless I happen to catch it as it's snapping to place to meet me but it is a very interesting design choice for it to be the only elevator to do that. On top of that I also think the shortcut door to Izalith is a very interesting choice in a similar way, given how it can act specifically as a full area skip, pretty much straight to the BoC, as well as skipping over another entirely unique boss, all at the price of humanity. Granted, this isn't indicated at all when you get the highest rank in the covenant to my knowledge so they didn't necessarily make it a "known" skip to the average new player, but it's still interesting all the same to me that it is one.

Always just feels to me like the development team was really lacking confidence with the area, which makes sense given the rushed nature of it. I do think they learned from the Bed of Chaos at least, in later titles I can't necessarily think of a boss that hits the lows that this one does. I'd say 2 has some offenders here and there, but not for the same reasons BoC strikes, at least none that I recall from my recent play through of that.

[ɮɛǟ ♛]

Such a shame for this boss, because lore-wise and visually it is amazing, with strong themes and meanings. A "good" thing they made is the saving progress once you broke its orbs, saving us some annoyingly repetitive attempts.

[Average Juice Enjoyer]

If you REALLY hate it that much, go look up how the speedrunners beat it and learn to do that. Yes it's a gimmicky boss but it can be beaten with 0 risk of failure (provided you take the time to learn how to do it) and only two firebombs. You cannot complain that the fight is bad and annoying but then not accept that there are alternate ways to beat it.

[BlooMood]

Originally posted by ɮɛǟ ♛:

Such a shame for this boss, because lore-wise and visually it is amazing, with strong themes and meanings.

This exactly. I say I really dislike the boss and while that is true, I just wish it had gotten the love and attention it deserved. It really is an interesting concept which had a lot of potential to be something grand had it been given more time.

[(Edgy) Asriel Dreemurr]

Originally posted by Melth:

Even the Izalith shortcut is barely a shortcut because they saw fit to make it contain an ultra-long straight run with a monster which can easily OHKO a new player blocking the way.

On top of that, it’s also the only titanite/prowling demon in game that respawns.

[Scuzz]

Originally posted by Juice Machine:

If you REALLY hate it that much, go look up how the speedrunners beat it and learn to do that. Yes it's a gimmicky boss but it can be beaten with 0 risk of failure (provided you take the time to learn how to do it) and only two firebombs. You cannot complain that the fight is bad and annoying but then not accept that there are alternate ways to beat it. :bloodstain2:

I have seen someone (don't remember who) take out the side orbs with a bow and then do the center jump. Boss went down insanely fast. I tried it but could never hit the orbs with a bow. :)

[RabidBurp]

You know a boss is terribly designed when it's the only boss in the trilogy to have checkpoints in battle.

[Melth]

Originally posted by Scuzz:

Originally posted by Juice Machine:

If you REALLY hate it that much, go look up how the speedrunners beat it and learn to do that. Yes it's a gimmicky boss but it can be beaten with 0 risk of failure (provided you take the time to learn how to do it) and only two firebombs. You cannot complain that the fight is bad and annoying but then not accept that there are alternate ways to beat it. :bloodstain2:

I have seen someone (don't remember who) take out the side orbs with a bow and then do the center jump. Boss went down insanely fast. I tried it but could never hit the orbs with a bow. :)

Yeah, I often take out the left orb in particular with a bow. It does sometimes take quite a few shots though. There is one particular pixel you can hit from one particular angle basically, and that's only after shooting away all the random branches.

[dcy665]

I started out just frankly not "getting it", then I was into strong dislike, then I hated it.

My last run, I changed my tactics, and now it is not a problem anymore. Next time through I'll check to see if it was luck or it was simpler. Oh! And share the results, of course.

[Melth]

Regardless, it's better than the terrifying boss I was imagining when I heard people talk about how absolutely horrible it was while I was first playing the game. Judging by the name and lore and people talking about platforming, I was imagining that it would be a gigantic platforming challenge jumping from ledge to ledge over instant death lava (probably with the platforms themselves doing mild lava damage) while the boss endlessly spawned hordes of demons.

In comparison to that, it's pretty tame.