Red Sparrow is Driving Me Bananas!

[Doesnotcompute83]

I have been trying to defeat this boss for 2 hours. The funny thing is that my level 92 character relies on physical attacks with a sword. As such, Blue Magpie was easy for me. However, Red Sparrow is hard just because the weapons I use against her hardly does any damage to her. I used Uptanco's Horn on her, which makes some progress - I managed to shave about 75 percent of her health - but her attack just too much damage even though I recognize her patterns. As such, what type of magic she uses so I can wear an item that resists it. Thanks.

[Doesnotcompute83]

I finally beat her, but she didn't drop any items (I am aware she has items as I managed to steal some from her in my previous unsuccessful bouts with her) nor my exp went up, so it was a bit pointless. :(

[Sakhari]

From what I've been able to gather:

- The large, bouncing projectile can be mitigated/absorbed with high Fire resist.

- The standing arrow barrage attacks can be mitigated a bit with defense or physical resist (like the bonus from the Raven set)

- The damage from the charged shot, small homing projectiles, and the jumping arrow barrage seems to be the same no matter what I equip. They appear to ignore defense and resistance entirely.

Anyway, good on you for beating her. She actually does drop a complete set and a bow (and I could swear I've gotten Orange enchantment stones out of her as well but I haven't seen that in a while) but unlike Magpie, you don't get them as guaranteed drops and have to farm/steal the pieces over several encounters.

The full armor set gives you up to ~90% to all resistances and doubles your base bow damage with all pieces equipped and the bow bumps your charged-shot multiplier up from x4 to x6 (on top of that doubled damage from the armor). So, while it is a hassle, the reward for grinding out a few more encounters can be useful if you're looking to play a bit longer.

[Doesnotcompute83]

Originally posted by Sakhari:

From what I've been able to gather:

- The large, bouncing projectile can be mitigated/absorbed with high Fire resist.

- The standing arrow barrage attacks can be mitigated a bit with defense or physical resist (like the bonus from the Raven set)

- The damage from the charged shot, small homing projectiles, and the jumping arrow barrage seems to be the same no matter what I equip. They appear to ignore defense and resistance entirely.

Anyway, good on you for beating her. She actually does drop a complete set and a bow (and I could swear I've gotten Orange enchantment stones out of her as well but I haven't seen that in a while) but unlike Magpie, you don't get them as guaranteed drops and have to farm/steal the pieces over several encounters.

The full armor set gives you up to ~90% to all resistances and doubles your base bow damage with all pieces equipped and the bow bumps your charged-shot multiplier up from x4 to x6 (on top of that doubled damage from the armor). So, while it is a hassle, the reward for grinding out a few more encounters can be useful if you're looking to play a bit longer.

Thank you for thee information. I will make sure to equip fire resistance since the balls can be annoying - in my battles with her, I noticed that the large bouncing balls do less damage after each bounce. I plan to fight her more to get all the times, but I've realized that I can simply use the feather to teleport back and save if I steal sometime of hers that is an armor or weapons piece.

[Sakhari]

The feather (understandably) seems to be disabled in the boss room. It doesn't visibly grey out or anything - the 'use' button just won't do anything while you have it selected. So stealing and bailing with the loot doesn't appear to be an option.

That was one of the first things I tried after losing a couple times in the beta and as of about 30 seconds ago, it still seems to be the case.

[Naewyng]

I personally had a much harder time with blue magpie than redsparrow :D

I beat redsparrow third attempt, and I'm rocking a huge owl claymore :D

[Olga 1987]

Originally posted by Naewyng:

I personally had a much harder time with blue magpie than redsparrow :D

I beat redsparrow third attempt, and I'm rocking a huge owl claymore :D

What equipment does your character have? I use a North Crusher Axe and the Dephil set and get killed constantly. Blue magpie was a lot easier.

[Naewyng]

Originally posted by Olga 1987:

Originally posted by Naewyng:

I personally had a much harder time with blue magpie than redsparrow :D

I beat redsparrow third attempt, and I'm rocking a huge owl claymore :D

What equipment does your character have? I use a North Crusher Axe and the Dephil set and get killed constantly. Blue magpie was a lot easier.

When I first beat it I had random bits of equipment everywhere lol

Then when fighting red sparrow (which I killed on like 3rd or 4th try iirc) I was using the blue magpie set, unupgraded.

[Olga 1987]

Originally posted by Naewyng:

When I first beat it I had random bits of equipment everywhere lol

Then when fighting red sparrow (which I killed on like 3rd or 4th try iirc) I was using the blue magpie set, unupgraded.

I've just upgraded this set. Maybe it'll help, thanks.

[Sakhari]

Originally posted by Olga 1987:

I've just upgraded this set. Maybe it'll help, thanks.

Alternatively, if you're having trouble and don't mind trying an arcane setup, the Weird Pot spell actually stuns her briefly when you hit her while she's doing the charged shot move (which is easy since it's a spammable spell that hits her pretty consistently) so you can frequently stun-lock her while burning out your mana and deal a good chunk of damage every time you catch her.

There's no substitute for learning to avoid her attacks regardless of what you use but that spell makes it easy to jump around, dealing regular damage without stopping while avoiding her at a distance.

[Olga 1987]

Thanks for the advice. I usually use very few arcane items, so I forgot about it.

[Naewyng]

Here's a recording of me fighting her. I didn't play for like 2 weeks and somehow forgot my buttons lol, I played very badly here, I forgot how to heal at one point and messed up my buttons, changed my weapon and my spell xD

https://emalm.com/?v=8dxtd

I was also wearing very bad gear, used to farm (high money/item rates). Usually I'd almost beat the boss with good gear, then change to this for the final hit, but I was too lazy here lol

The attack I hate the most is the one where she backsteps and throws out like 4 homing balls, because they don't instantly home, it takes them like 2 seconds to start homing in, and if you dodge past them, they will just go into you when they start homing xD

[Olga 1987]

Great video, thanks a lot. I mostly hate the single arrow attack: it's difficult for me to notice its start.

[crystalgatedh]

Originally posted by Sakhari:

The full armor set gives you up to ~90% to all resistances and doubles your base bow damage with all pieces equipped and the bow bumps your charged-shot multiplier up from x4 to x6 (on top of that doubled damage from the armor). So, while it is a hassle, the reward for grinding out a few more encounters can be useful if you're looking to play a bit longer.

The high resistance is partially due to a bug. Look at any upgraded piece of armor, except for clothes, that grants resistance. Look at how much resistance the item description tells you you get and look at how much you actually get in the status screen. You will find that with the exception of clothes, you get more from upgraded pieces than the item description says. For example, my Black Gloves +6 gives me +26 ice and lightning resistance according to the item description, but when I equip them, I actually get +32 to those resistances. This bug will affect all Red Sparrow armor except for the Red Sparrow Coat.

It's worth noting that even without the bug, you'd get quite a lot of resistances.

[brnyleeman194]

I beat Red Sparrow on my first try with the Lagh Blade +7 leveled to do damage to attack level +470.5 wearing the Gold Armor. I'm at Level 283 but Red Sparrow still does quite of damage even at Easy difficulty. I had a stash of 36 health potions due to having 4 total toolkits. I burned through about half my potions just to stay alive due the damage. Luckily, i have a huge pile of potions in storage to restock and save after getting parts of the set. You do have to time the jumps to avoid the energy arrows and energy balls. Sometimes i don't time the jumps right since depends where the position of the boss is. The air dashing move is your friend here to quickly get some distance from Red Sparrow. Even the Blue Magpie boss is similar in difficulty too. Bear in mind that I'm on my 4th New Game+ and this is before the content update for my character level.

[Olga 1987]

What did you upgrade on the Cat Island?