Best way to beat Birkin in the crane fight?

[Ploppy]

I just finished the crane fight on Claire B 4th run and found it just as hard as the 1st time on Claire A (about 6-7 attempts to beat it). Leon B/A was okay, only took a couple of attempts, I didn't die with Leon, just reloaded to get it 'perfect' for fun.

I have played the game on standard setting in this order: Claire A, Leon B, Leon A, Claire B.

So the problem I had with Claire is Birkin won't stay down for long and sometimes when she talks after pressing the button making you think the crane will 100% hit, Birkin gets up and leaps the full distance of the platform and either hits you or picks you up getting you both killed.

If I want to do a Claire run in the future, what's the best weapon combination to beat him without too much fuss?

I know I beat him with SMG and flashbangs but the SMG damage had random stun times and felt unreliable on different attempts. I aim for the eyes as much as I can as they should bring him down faster. Acid rounds from the GL seem to do damage over time so I can't really use them as a fast stun on their own.

Any pro tips on where to stand, what weapon to use, how to avoid him stun-locking you when you try to bait him to the end of the platform etc?

[Xengre]

引用自 talgaby：

Not really inefficient. You can do 11× bonus damage against zombies, lickers (+60%) and G-Adults (+140%) have a natural weakness to it. It is the only way for Leon to kill an Ivy for a kill count challenge, everything else just puts them into hybernation.

By the way, you get 700 bonus fuel for it, on top of the 400 you start with, not just 300.

Yeah, you get a decent amount of extra fuel. Aside from a kill challenge tho, where you barely even have enough enemies in the game to meet the 100 kill count, killing Ivys just really isn't worth it. I can't even recommend killing G-Adults and maybe 1-2 lickers in the west hallway if it is your first run to simplify matters (leave them alone in later runs tho). Using alternate means to kill lickers, knife in particular on PC, is just more ideal tho. The flame thrower would be nice with its AoE even tho it takes a good amount of fuel and time to kill even a standard normal zombie if you could group up enemies to take multiple out at once but such grouping is pretty rare and a simple grenade would do that much better. The flamethrower is in a really odd position. Excellent vs bosses while really underwhelming against other types of enemies compared to other options (and the ones it is better against don't even need to be killed). It is literally the opposite of how Claire's flame rounds work out interestingly enough. If Capcom had made killing G-Adults and Ivy an actual necessity to some extent things would be different...

[COAT]

All I did was run and hit the button, dodge his swipe while running to the other side of the platform, wait a couple seconds, dodge as I ran back towards the button, and then hit him with a flame round, and then hit the button. Plenty of time for him to get hit, and you should only really have to use three flame rounds.

[Soapy Papoose]

In standard mode, I didn't test in HC mode yet, you can actually beat him with the crane by not even shooting him. It is risky but once you are used to the crane you can keep circling the room and he'll get nailed easy. It is quite hilarious to do. Use the flashbang provided if necessary.

I tried it in HC just once and he came back a third time which i was not prepared for and killed me. I wiped him 2nd go at him cuz salt :p . It was my first playthrough on HC so idk if he just keeps going till he's damaged enough or 3 is the max cycles for him in HC mode.

[talgaby]

G3 has a 50% damage reduction against the flamethrower and the burning effect of the flame greandes.

As for G2, two crane hits will always dispatch him, regardless of difficulty, but if you do enough damage, one is also enough.

[Nicovahkiin]

Flame rounds with Claire, Flamethrower with Leon, and flash grenades if you can't avoid getting hit/get bad RNG with G2's moves.

[Ploppy]

引用自 BECAUSE I'M KIRA!：

https://youtu.be/dGl1dYPR3yM

See if I try that he attacks me more often or I just can't keep him in the crane zone long enough

Thanks for the post, very useful, I will have to try this.

I wish we had a boss attack mode to practice efficiency and speedruns

[Elensar]

Stagger him with flame rounds, when he's on his knees slash at him with the knife, repeat until you've made him stagger a few times then activate crane. You can use a flash bang to hold him in place so the crane will hit without him running around too much. It's a little harder than leons run but still fairly easy.

[Ploppy]

引用自 Elensar：

Stagger him with flame rounds, when he's on his knees slash at him with the knife, repeat until you've made him stagger a few times then activate crane. You can use a flash bang to hold him in place so the crane will hit without him running around too much. It's a little harder than leons run but still fairly easy.

Yeah that's what I thought after watching the leon speedrun, just swap flamethrower out for GL flame rounds. knife to build up damage for a 1 crane kill/finisher and flashbang to keep him there when you run to the button.

[Solid Gamer]

Flashbangs

[KuuKuu]

this helped on my attempt....looks more complicated that it is...starts at 1:25:08

https://youtu.be/2F0o-81kmhg?t=5108

[Xengre]

引用自 holychair：

引用自 talgaby：

G3 has a 50% damage reduction against the flamethrower and the burning effect of the flame greandes.

I didn't know that - the vids where people just burn him so that he barely even begins his last phase convinced me that using the flamethrower against him is quite convenient, though. Grenades also work great (probably better in fact), but saving those for the supertyrant has much going for it.

I wouldn't use it during the earlier part of the fight. Idk the specifics on the dmg from it against him and I've never bothered with it during earlier parts of the fight but once he begins to berserk and turn reddish near the end of the fight the fuel just sitting in the boss arena is more than enough ammo to basically guarantee autowin the rest of the fight which is a well known fact and why the flamethrower is so popular against G3. It basically invalidates the part of the fight where the boss would be most aggressive. It requires no aim and can be used from either side of him. Also, since there is no real use for the flame thrower after that boss you could either opt to use your already low ammo by the end of the fight on finishing him up for use the ammo that is free that isn't going to be used again to save your remaining ammo for the Tyrant and stuff.

As one final additional note I suspect the flame thrower may not be crippled by HC and adaptive difficulty modifiers the same way other weapons are. I've no solid evidence of this at all but noticed it ALWAYS performs the same way on bosses no matter how high adaptive difficulty gets where by comparison (I tried G3 like 6x prior back to back before resorting to the flame thrower on my HC S+ Leon A run) and with approx 20+ mag rounds, 30+ shotgun rounds, 6 grenades, 3 knife it simply wasn't even close to enough to finish him as adaptive difficulty had reached so high that my dmg was too heavily negated on G3 and I ran out of everything 6x in a row before auto losing because I couldn't hurt him further. I grabbed the flame thrower on the 7th or so try, which forced me to leave the magnum ammo and 3 grenades, and on the final phase using just the fuel in the boss arena I managed to expend everything in my inventory except one final low life knife which killed the boss on the last hit that broke the knife ending the fight. That means that little bit of fuel in the boss fight effectively did more damage than 15+ magnum rounds and 3 grenades (unupgraded magnum) combined. So while this wasn't a concrete thorough test run multiple times that is still a very noticeable result. It is also entirely possible my game glitched and the boss was getting incorrect dmg resistance (which some others noticed occasionally similar issues specifically about G3 when I made a thread on the topic). Even if it wasn't a glitch I don't think people usually end up with adaptive difficulty getting that high (it may have non-linear scaling, esp at the highest difficulty values depending on how the algorithm is written). Just something to consider. I wouldn't take this final note too seriously because, while it clearly does happen sometimes it doesn't seem to be excessively common as far as I can tell based on online comments about the boss.

[talgaby]

引用自 Xengre：

As one final additional note I suspect the flame thrower may not be crippled by HC and adaptive difficulty modifiers the same way other weapons are.

I did test it out with hard numbers, and it is. But since the base damage on rank 5 is 2.5 HP/tick, which gets reduced to 2.0 HP/tick on rank 8 and on, the difference is next to negligible.
You only lose 30 damage (from 100 to 70) when you apply a flaming stack on him on rank 8, but most of the damage comes from his maximum 6 stack limit, meaning you can almost constantly keep the flame up without losing damage.
Plus it does not hurt the eyes at all, so you skip phases.

Although considering shooting out three eyes twice will make him just lose over one-third of its health without any player input, flamethrower stats are somewhat questionable.

[Xengre]

引用自 talgaby：

引用自 Xengre：

As one final additional note I suspect the flame thrower may not be crippled by HC and adaptive difficulty modifiers the same way other weapons are.

I did test it out with hard numbers, and it is. But since the base damage on rank 5 is 2.5 HP/tick, which gets reduced to 2.0 HP/tick on rank 8 and on, the difference is next to negligible.
You only lose 30 damage (from 100 to 70) when you apply a flaming stack on him on rank 8, but most of the damage comes from his maximum 6 stack limit, meaning you can almost constantly keep the flame up without losing damage.
Plus it does not hurt the eyes at all, so you skip phases.

Although considering shooting out three eyes twice will make him just lose over one-third of its health without any player input, flamethrower stats are somewhat questionable.

Great info.

[Diabolicus]

引用自 Xengre：

引用自 Yaz：

Knife

Not for G2...

Throw grenade at shutter door leading to next phase the moment the claw appears in the roof to instantly end that first phase and make him bust open the door saving time and potential injury.

For Leon A you can use about 350-400 fuel on G2 to 1-shot him with the crane. Lure him to where the crane can hit, and hit him with about 250-300 flame thrower to drop him and lay on EXTRA damage (important). Run back over to crane controls to start crane and flash bang him as he starts to get up in the process. While he is flash banged and the crane starts coming dump the remainder of the fuel on him and he should end up kneeling again in the process and take enough dmg that when the crane finishes swinging it instantly kills him.

Claire A, idk, haven't bothered doing her HC as I got bored of the game after 5 full runs and my Leon A S+ HC run cause it just gets repetitive after a while.

I "killed" the Birkin Stage 2 with Knife and is possible and is the fastest method.

[Diabolicus]

引用自 holychair：

引用自 Yaz：

I "killed" the Birkin Stage 2 with Knife and is possible and is the fastest method.

You're right, it is indeed possible. Also: There is a reason they give us a knife (and a flashbang) here, and that reason is that the knife is useful in that fight. I personally always use the knife only when he's down, though, to save up on flamethrower fuel or flame rounds.

Yeah, same here.