how hard was the ancient guard for you ?

[sleepy toad]

This guy kicked my ass the first few times i fought him, it took a bit of grinding and a full stack of healing potions to get through his fight.

Definitely didn't mind the challenge, but i'm wondering if the difficulty spike is that steep or i'm just bad at the game.

[quintonhoffert]

He killed me a bunch of times, but I didn't have that much trouble with the rest of the game. I was also able to kill him fairly easily when I figured out the right strategy for him. In his second phase, you want to jump and do jump attacks a lot, because when you're in the air he can't hit you with his scythe swings. When he digs his scythe into the ground after the two swings, just roll in the direction opposite him so that the scythe goes through you without doing damage. When the hand gripping the scythe glows green, he's going to do melee poison attacks, so just go away a bit. All in all he's not such a hard fight, just a bit hard to learn because every time you die you have to go back through Death's Dimension and then his first phase is easy but long.

[sleepy toad]

yeah, after i figured jump attacks were the safest way to attack him, the fight definitely became easier.

With that said, it seemed that beating him locked me out of finishing a bunch of side quests i had started, so i guess i'll load a previous save and do those before i beat him.

[Rage]

Honestly, I found him vastly easier than the majority of late game bosses. There is like a difficulty slump after guard though for a while that will give you time to recover. That being said, I def think it's worth the struggle to the end.

[jay jay the dank planezinho]

He killed me a few times. I was being to aggressive though. If you wait a bit to dodge his attacks, he's not that difficult.

[Mattrex]

He beat me the first time, but I stomped him the second. He telegraphs his greatest weakness during the first phase and during his "hiding" phases: the enemies he summons drop a load of throwing daggers. And his weakness is that he has no long-range attacks.

Trying to stay in melee range and dodge his attacks was tough, but I soon realized that I could hit him with throwing daggers from outside of his attack range, and fill up during the hiding phases. He would spend most of his time swinging his scythe around in front of my face while I pelted him from afar.

[quintonhoffert]

Originally posted by Mattrex:

He beat me the first time, but I stomped him the second. He telegraphs his greatest weakness during the first phase and during his "hiding" phases: the enemies he summons drop a load of throwing daggers. And his weakness is that he has no long-range attacks.

Trying to stay in melee range and dodge his attacks was tough, but I soon realized that I could hit him with throwing daggers from outside of his attack range, and fill up during the hiding phases. He would spend most of his time swinging his scythe around in front of my face while I pelted him from afar.

That's smart, but all the same I'm glad I learned how to kill him while engaging with him. I enjoy the fight, and I don't think I would if I'd off-screened him. Props to you for figuring out the most efficient way to get him though. I noticed that all his adds dropped throwing knives, but I didn't realize I could effectively damage him from outside his range since his swings hit such a wide area.

EDIT: I'll second what Rage said though. Of the three story bosses that are required after the Guard, I thought that one was generally harder, but the other two were significantly easier. I also thought that a few of the optional bosses were significantly easier than the Guard. And one of those optional bosses, while generally harder, can be basically cheesed by stacking a certain resistance since all of its attacks deal elemental damage of one particular element. I just fought it again in a new game cycle, on hard, with 70 resistance to its element, and its hits did roughly the same damage to me as the Giant Rats. There are definitely a few fights that you can defeat by preparing for and out-gearing. You can't really do it for the Ancient Guard though since it's too early in the game for you to be able to properly accumulate gear that is good against certain type of damage.

[kud13]

Guard is super-cheesable, cuz you can spam throwing knives in Phase 2.

You should have Percival's armor from the Cave, so all his adds drop extra knives. When he goes in the tombstone, instead of attacking him, youcan just farm more knives, and spend the entire fight phase on the opposite side of the screen chucking knives at him.

[Olga 1987]

He was kinda tricky for me on Normal and he killed me several times; though, I think it happened only until I've made some progress with dodge timing in this fight. So, if you can dodge successfully, it won't be too difficult to kill him in melee: I defeated him with Iron Halberd +3 and Hand of Shadows; I was wearing the Slumber set due to its Stamina bonus.

[gungadin22000]

Not very good at this sort of game, but using the unupgraded basic bow from the first merchant made him fairly easy. Killed him in one go, but I did have to use all my healing potions before I worked out his attack patterns.

His scythe swipes have huge range, but your bow still outranges them. I pretty much killed him from across the map.

My reward: no boss drop that I noticed and 250+ throwing knives from his summons.

[ChonkyRat]

really simple but i guess its dependent on your playstyle. i died once to him.

i found the bird magic power from finding the guy who you have to locate twice, mukdarr i think? anyways he gives you a magic spell that shoots birds.

spam this from a safe distance on ancient skeleton face and hes really simple.

[machinedgod]

Wait till you find the second ocarina and use the gate again... :-|