Shadow of Erdtree
The difficulty in Elden Ring’s Shadow of the Erdtree is…something. Things start out really hard, then slowly get easier as you power up, then eventually, if you’re keeping up with the Scadutree shards, you can kill even tougher bosses in just a few tries.
Then there’s Radahn.
Shadow of the Erdtree’s final boss isn’t remotely balanced, so much harder than anything you’ve encountered before. And I would argue in many ways that he was more difficult for my class, a mage, wizard, whatever you want to call him. A tainted one who uses all blue magic. Because all the “light” Radahn clears I see are usually melee players with massive shields and one-hit swings. It is not doing this by magic.
So I beat him. It took forever and a ton of trial and error for a build, but I got the hang of it. Here’s how:
Statistics: Scadutree (19), Revered Spirit Ashes (9), Will (65), Mind (45), Endurance (35), Strength (20), Dexterity (40), Intelligence (85), Faith (15), Stealth (9)
Guns
The Staff of Loss – This is to upgrade the Night Comet with 30% more damage, plus the scaling from maxing the thing.
Magical Hookclaws with Bloodhound’s step – I know Bloodhound’s Step got nerfed and ideally you can use two staffs for more damage, but I’ve played 150 hours of this game using it as my main dodge mechanic and especially for Radahn, I didn’t want to spoil muscle. memory time. I tried to roll and there was a 0% chance I was beating him that way.
Armored forces – Higher values that still kept me at medium load. I think that was the veteran’s armor for me.
charm
Cerulean Amber Locket +3 – I was finding that having to dodge so much with Bloodhound’s Step was draining my mana for attacks, so I increased it dramatically with this.
Dragoncrest Greatshield Talisman – Perhaps most importantly as the highest physical resistance negation, which is a ton of his attacks. I wouldn’t fight without it. Go get from the original map.
Holy braid – Higher Holy Negation that charges his attacks in his second phase. Also a must-have type for this fight. It’s in the upper right of the map in the Shaman Village, accessible via the O Mother emote on the statue from Gaius’ fight.
Boltdrake Talisman +3 – He doesn’t have a lot of lightning attacks, but I thought he had enough to use.
physical
Opaline bubble – A shield from the start so you can summon early and save at least one of his initial attacks, mainly the thunder roll he always does right at the start.
Cracked Tear with the Magic Shroud – Even if I’m just activating this up front, I like to try to get to Phase 2 as quickly as possible by putting more damage up front. Getting through this phase quickly also means that your Mimic tear may not have done much damage.
CALL: Imitation tear. I swear to God it’s the only call that can go any distance in this fight. When I won, he had survived to the end. One trick you can do here is to put Marika’s Blessing into your potion rotation. Mimic Tear won’t use your normal potions, but will use this to max heal sometimes. Not every time, but sometimes, which can make it outlive you. I got maybe five different summons to +10, ranging from high damage ones to tanks, nothing else even survived half of the first stage. Every summon I tried except Mimic Tear was terrible in this fight and they really need to feed everyone’s health. I didn’t have either of the two NPC summons because I accidentally switched both quest lines.
Spell: Night Comet – Yes, spelling, singular. That was it. Mainly it wasn’t just that I used it all the time and it did a lot of damage with Staff of Loss, but because it would force your Mimic tear to only use it. Putting in other good spells as well results in a lot of variability in what the Mimic will end up using, and Night Comet does a lot of damage to the Mimic and has very low cast time, unlike say, throwing moons at it .
Defense article – For this I only used Boiled Crab. I used to do this whole dance with Golden Vow, but I got tired of doing it before every fight and trying to find time to reactivate it. Managing a lot of consumables kept bugging me. But Cancer has a short time to eat and you can use it between moves.
war
Radahn Phase One – Here he only uses physical attacks or occasional lightning and a fire move. The most annoying are his multi-hit combos where you generally just want to stay away from him if possible so he misses with most. Sometimes he adds a final swing at the end of this that can catch you, which is annoying.
Meteor throw – This is very easy to double dodge once you understand the timing.
Rotation collapse – Very easy to avoid if you see it coming and it’s not the first five seconds of the fight when you’re summoning
The pull of gravity – This is bad. The window of time is so narrow, many people think you can’t avoid it, but you really can. I eventually figured out that using the audio hint because it would almost make me dodge automatically after getting caught so many times. If you are caught, immediately dodge back several times until the spikes are no longer sticking out of the ground.
Slash fire – This is not a good action. I almost never got hit by it.
When damaged – Almost always when his attention is on Mimic Tear, which can get you 5-6 shots from Night Comet. You can probably hit a comet after most dodges for individual moves, but if you get greedy you’ll break. I mostly used those windows for potions or crabs.
Radahn’s Second Stage (75% health): Screwww this stage. This is brutal. There is some luck involved honestly.
Giant light meteor shower – Almost always he will start the fight with this move. If you start running right back, you can avoid it and you’ll have a window at the end to use some potions. Mimic Tear is an idiot and will always get hit, but at least it will keep him busy. However, I eventually gave up on that. I took as many shots from the Night Comet as I could and simply parried the blast, which with my holy protection, was just one potion to take to regain it.
Rush/Slash combos – These are the bad ones. There are at least three of them that rush you and often shoot out extra beams of holy light to catch you. Generally, dodging towards him or slightly to the right can cause him to miss often. The final holy blast AOE he does in a lot of these combos, I only avoided being basically on top of him when he did it. I died more from these combos than anything else in this fight, and dodging felt like luck half the time since you can barely see what’s going on with all the holy beams everywhere.
Mikela’s kiss – This is a grab move that doesn’t hurt you at first, but if Miquella charms you a second time, you’ll die automatically. There is a rune to negate this, but I wouldn’t bother since the capture isn’t that hard to dodge at least once in the fight. This is actually one good move for you because Miquella will often grab your Mimic Tear and after the animation is over you can probably get about five hits from the Night Comet.
Old moves – He still does the meteor throw and gravity pull. If you’ve gotten to this stage a lot, you may be able to avoid these more consistently now. I would use them as medicine windows.
Giant 25% Health Meteor Slam – Once he gets that low, he’ll jump into the air and maybe five seconds later crash into the ground with a double AOE blast that practically covers the entire arena. This will probably kill you. I thought it was impossible not to get hit. But if you start running FAIR when he jumps and don’t stop or crash into a wall, you can get out of his range. But this may be the moment your Mimic Lot dies if it hasn’t healed itself. From here, Radahn will revert to his normal moveset and possibly kill you with combos. If not, you win.
When damaged – That is, only a few times. Before attacking the first blast. After that Miquella kisses your tear Mimic. When he’s going after your Mimic tear in general. You can risk a stroke between movement sets, but I don’t know if I’d bother and use it for medicine. The damage windows will be there, but survival is 90% of this fight. And life with the Mimic tear is very, very important.
Good luck, prepare to die.
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