Taurus demon
HP: 1200~
Skills: Jumping smash, Standing smash, Poke, Hammer swing*
Souls:1000
Difficulty:1.5/5
Times died on 1st playthrough: 1
Welcome to the 2nd post of dark souls boss profiles, where we cover all the bosses of dark souls. For today, we will going through the 2nd boss I fought during my playthrough, and thats the Taurus demon. This guy should be familiar to fans, since he appeared alot in screenshots and trailers. He seems so unbeatable at first, but once you figure out the secret of the fight (which isnt that hard to figure out at all), you can beat him no problem. Taurus demon is the boss of undead burg.
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| He's quite a terror to fight against on the ground. |
Jumping smash- He leaps foward in an attempt to smash you. Its slow, so you gotta time your dodges carefully.
Standing smash- Same as jumping smash, but without the jump. This is even easier to predict once you see it coming.
Poke- This seems to hit me alot, but thankfully, its the lowest damaging out of all his attacks. He stabs you with the blunt thin end of his hammer, almost without warning. Roll away or block, but blocking will cost you a hefty amount of stamina.
Hammer swing*- This hits hard, and its hard not to get his by this. He lifts his hammer sideways and attempts to swipe you. It has good range, and blocking it is a bad idea, since it staggers you. Dodging this is tricky too, since the timing for his swing is awkward as hell, and I always roll at the wrong time. Rolling back once won't cut it, roll back twice just to make sure. Rolling sideways is suicide. If you are hit by this, you will fly (literally).
Another easy boss. If it isnt obvious enough, you aren't suppose to literally 1v1 this boss like a pro, because he will slaughter you. The arena you fight in is super linear, and its just a straight path back and forth. In other words, you don't have alot of room to dodge. There are multiple ways to winning this fight, using the intending jumping stab method, melee him 1 on 1 (not recommended unless you are high leveled or confident with your melee skills), or ranged combat (once again, not really recommended).
I'll start with the easiest method first. When you enter the arena, look for a ladder near your position without moving any further foward (moving too far up front prompts the taurus demon to appear). Climb it and dispatch the 2 skeleton archers up there. Now climb back down and go prompt the taurus demon. When he shows up, climb up the ladder to the top and wait for him to reach your position. When he reaches the tower, he will look up at you, not doing anything, this is your chance to strike. Do a jumping stab on him. Depending on your starting class, you can do up to 400 damage easily. Beware though, if you idle too much up there, he will jump up there and personally clobber your ass.
After your first stab, the rest is easy as well. Run to the halfway point of the arena, and watch him run towards you. When you see him readying an attack, run past him and back to the ladder. If you dodged the attack, take this time to climb up the ladder real quick, if you are hit, reposition yourself and try to dodge his next attack before running for the ladder. Granted that you dodged his attack, you will be able to climb the ladder without taking a scratch, since he will be too busy recovering from his attack to come aftee you. Wait for him to come at you again, and do jumping stab to take off another good chunk of health. Rinse and repeat until dead, shouldnt take more than 4 or 5 times for most classes.
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| Kids, don't try this at home. |
If you are a mage or hunter, ranging this guy is also a possibility. Especially with mage, since jumping stab with dagger does crappy damage, you're gonna want to range this guy with magic, you're gonna have better results. As usual, start the battle up the tower, do a jumping stab on him. After that, take this battle differently. Prompt him to attack, if its anyting but the jumping smash, roll back a few times, then fire soul arrows at his face. Rinse and repeat, he doesnt have a whole lot of magic defense to begin with, and you definetely won't even need 30 soul arrows to kill him. Hell, I doubt you need 20.
Meleeing him requires a sheer amount of skill, since the arena is so linear. The usual roll and smack strategy applies, but this guy hits to hard its not even funny. I don't recommend meleeing him at all (unless of course you are in NG+). What you're gonna want to do here should be fairly similar to previous strategies. You run, prompt an attack, hit his ass, rinse and repeat. But this time, make sure the attack you are prompting is jumping smash, since it has huge recovery time and you can ALWAYS run behind him when he does this.
Taurus demon is superbly easy to beat if you use the intended jumping stab method, its just a matter of running and climbing. Other methods arent recommended, but if you have shitty damage with melee, it can't really be helped. Meleeing him is the hardest, but people have done it. There are harder bosses to come, don't worry.
Peace.
