Camouflage is useless.

[Ryan Mangold]

Cannot run past a single enemy in the Cathedral with Camouflage. They spot me from a distance, and then proceed to do their little rush attack from above. I literally get hit every single time I try to reach the boss room, and then just kill myself because I'd rather not go in with less health. Don't even try telling me "boss ez" because this is legit my first souls-like and I find the bosses incredibly hard, and they take hours to kill without watching guides.

[Seth Abercromby]

Argent Wolf Berserker is one of the few times you have to fight enemies on the way, and not so say 'Boss Ez', because especially against a beginner he isn't, but he doesn't have the same 'privileges' as other bosses in that he's just an ascended normal enemy. You can parry and backstab the Berserker for some easy damage opportunities, and always assume you will be in range of his mace and dodge appropriately.

[Ryan Mangold]

Originally posted by Seth Abercromby:

Argent Wolf Berserker is one of the few times you have to fight enemies on the way, and not so say 'Boss Ez', because especially against a beginner he isn't, but he doesn't have the same 'privileges' as other bosses in that he's just an ascended normal enemy. You can parry and backstab the Berserker for some easy damage opportunities, and always assume you will be in range of his mace and dodge appropriately.

I don't even have that much trouble with the boss, but the few times I actually make it to him, I've already used at least 2 of my heals because that first enemy on the path follows me the entire way, and constantly is using that long-range attack, and then when I get to the final staircase, the two enemies in the building beforehand also use the attack, but at that point I have no stamina to run or roll so I'm screwed. I really, really hate how badly Cathedral is designed, and the long run to fight the boss is so annoying, especially when I literally cannot dodge every attack on the way with my skill. I've spent just over 2 hours running, and maybe 15 minutes fighting this boss. I can't even have my friend help me because Gamepass uses NAT Types to decide whether people can join you or not still, which is extremely frustrating.

[Seth Abercromby]

Probably the easiest way to prepare for this fight, and the areas to come, is getting the Regen Extenders and Regen Activation Factors you might have missed. These directly buff your regeneration by giving you more stock or more healing per use.

[Ryan Mangold]

I have used a few of those, and have 2047HP currently, sitting at level 54. I still don't have time to heal in the fight though because of how tiny the arena is. I feel like they put so much effort into making the area as painful as possible to navigate, with no uniqueness anywhere and the same re-used puzzles, but they just had no time to actually playtest it and think to themselves: "Hey, this is extremely boring and frustrating to navigate, and we've made the boss fight really painful to run back to as well, and we gave the player very little room to fight the boss with, this isn't good game design!"

[Seth Abercromby]

I get ya, Argent Wolf Berserker can be a frustrating roadblock because of the fact you have to fight a bunch of annoying enemies on the way there and the area is specifically designed to give his mace a huge advantage by covering almost all of the available space each swing.

Only thing I can really tell you is take the gold knights with the same diligence as when you aren't trying to get to the boss room (you can take the side path that leads you back to the lever you used to open the boss room to fight them one at a time, but that is a rather annoying detour of its own), fish for some backstabs to increase your ichor stock and remember that even light weapons can block the attacks of Berserker well. If you're feeling cornered just holding up your guard can give you a moment to breathe and heal.

Also Yakumo is a bro and can stagger Berserker pretty easily.

[Ryan Mangold]

Thank you! I read a looooooot of threads saying that the partners are worse for you in this boss fight, but with Yakumo and a Zweihander, I could block a lot the attacks, and use him as bait when I needed to heal! I finally beat it!

[Seth Abercromby]

Congrats! Since you mentioned this is your first souls-like it's not entirely uncommon to run up against a wall like this in these games. It's exhausting having to be so focused the entire time you're playing and you often don't even realize you've been running yourself ragged mentally. If the frustration is getting to you, the best way to improve is ironically to just take a break for a few hours or come back the next day. You'll have all the muscle memory but a refreshed focus to tackle the challenges anew.

[warlok]

Oh boy, Boobstein and Smoke are gonna be fuuuun.

[Xengre]

Camoflauge is absolutely amazing for getting somewhere fast if there is a bunch of enemies along the way and you don't need to clear it for exp/etc. reasons. They will look towards you but as long as you cast it again before it wears off they will basically ignore you unless you physically bump into them in which case most will still ignore you but some wont. The Cathedral white knight thingies that teleport are "special" because their AI is all sorts of borked. I've had them teleport from other rooms randomly when I never went anywhere near them (especially if they are on a floor above or below in such a way they can't see me or absolutely shouldn't be aggro'd to me). The axe wielding one is especially bad and may even glitch its animation and just instantly teleport with an animation cancel so, yes, that place is just "special" in some ways.

Bosses aren't as bad once you get some experience with a game like this and learn not to overcommit, reserve stamina, and get used to finding windows to attack vs windows that aren't safe at your skill level to be aggressive during. In addition, check out the various buffs because buff stacking in this game is very much a huge thing and helps make things soooo much easier, in particular heavy offensive buffs. The faster targets die the less time a battle drags and chance for mistakes to occur. It isn't wrong to even stack 5-7 offensive buffs + a few offensive buff passives. Also, there are times where defensive buffs might be the difference in being 1 shot and not, or at least reducing high damage (even if it isn't 1-shot damage) to much more manageable levels and even cases you can outright negate damage or totally gut it with the right defensive buffs/elemental veil resistances/etc. (cough fire place, you will know the place when you get there).

Originally posted by warlok:

Oh boy, Boobstein and Smoke are gonna be fuuuun.

^Since this is OP's first "souls-like" title I will explain what this reference means because you will see it a lot in games like this despite possibly never playing the game its from. It refers to a boss fight in Dark Souls (original aka 1) where you fight two bosses at once. For some reason it gave countless players a great deal of difficulty making it a rather notorious boss (don't ask me why, everything in that game moves like molasses idk why people find it hard but that is apparently just me). In this game there is a similar dual boss with conflicting elements (ice + fire). Major tip come back to it if you get super stuck there: The same gear + defensive buff trick you might have used in the fire zone can be used here to make this into a single boss fight or close to it, ideally keep the fire element as the one you negate or trivialize to almost zero damage so you only have to really care about the ice enemy... esp as I'd argue the fire guy is much stronger even at melee range than the ice girl.

[Xengre]

Originally posted by JJ, Professional Fool:

I am having a hard time linking this to a souls like. Sharing certain mechanics wanting to emulate another title is more fitting. Like people saying dota 2 and league of legends are similar but not really. 2 deaths to a fall and having boss bars aint enough. This is an action RPG with multiplayer elements. The combat is not fluid for me. A lot of games have rolling and mimic the item wheel.

It is a neat JRPG. It is a stretch to mark this as the measuring stick for a souls like. Maybe dont compare it. Thissles are lirlterally bonfires but so is every game that uses savestates to heal.

Might as well call every game ever with one similar thread mechanic a souls game if you tried hard enough. Its the digital age after all.

Honestly, just to name a handful of similarities...

-Identical bonfire type system
- Dungeon Crawler similar map design approach
- similar haze/soul currency design (identical in fact just different name) and loss/recovery when you die
- identical material upgrade type system
- identical infusion type system with nearly identical type effects for most of it
- similar boss design as well as reasonably similar bosses in many ways
- similar management of many monsters types/designs (actually borders on absurdly identical except some of the range attacks that a few enemies have which DS is heavily devoid of)
- similar healing rejuvination/estus system, literally just different name (even how it applies to multiplayer
- similar multiplayer concept for much of it
- home base system
- fast travel system
- overall magic/skill usage design (though this game also adds passives and has more effects by far giving more variety than DS)
- etc. not even remotely close to done

so yeah they are incredibly similar and it isn't just "one similar thread mechanic". They aren't exactly the same but they are absurdly similar, not that most seem to mind, (esp considering its different developers at that) while being unique in their own way.