Skeleton Lords
HP: 780, 780, 520
Skills: Fire Ball, Weapon Strikes, Death Call*
Souls: 15000
Difficulty: 1.5/5
Deaths: 0
With The Lost Sinner, The Duke's Dear Freja, and The Rotten out of the way, there's only 1of the soul lords left. Head to the Huntsman's Copse for a party with a ton of undead hunters, zombies and fat butcher blokes. Go to the very end to meet the 3 lords that are overseeing the entire area: The Skeleton Lords. Like the Royal Rat Vanguard, prepare for a pretty awkward battle, and not one of your usual 1 v 1 epic battles.
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| Come on guys wtf is this? 1 v 1 me! |
The Skeleton Lords are just 3 very immobile, weak, and slightly tanky skeleton dudes that don't provide much to a fight. They each can do nothing much to kill you, and even with the 3 of them focusing you at once, you won't have too much to worry about unless you eat all 3 attacks at once. Here's a rundown on what they can do at their best.
Fire Ball - A Skeleton lord will shoot a straightforward projectile at you. Does moderate damage, but easily blocked or dodged.
Weapon Strikes - The Skeleton lords each strike you with their weapon of choice. Very slow and very short range, easily blocked or dodged.
Death Call* - When a skeleton lord is killed, a bunch of skeletons will spawn depending on which skeleton lord died.
The moment you walk into the arena the 3 skeleton lords will rise up from their thrones to face you. Funnily enough, when they land on the ground, they have rather long idle animations for you to take advantage of. At this point of the game, you should be strong enough to knock down their puny HP bars with your entire stamina bar's worth of damage. When they are idling when they get off their thrones, rush to them and take one of the skeleton lords down in an instant. You have the choice of either the scythe or halberd skeleton, do not kill the staff skeleton lord as it spawns deadly wheel skeletons.
Whichever of the 2 skeleton lords you choose to kill, he will trigger death call, summoning a group of skeletons depending on which one of the lords you killed. The Scythe and Halberd Skeleton Lords will spawn normal skeletons with shields and swords which can be rather easy to take down. The strategy to this is really simple. You've dealt with multiple skeletons before, so just take down 1 skeleton lord, kill off the group of skeletons that it spawns, then turn to the next skeleton lord, kill it, kill its spawns, rinse and repeat.
Whatever you do try not to kill multiple skeleton lords at once without clearing out the normal skeletons, because you will get swarmed really quickly. By themselves though, the Skeleton Lords are easy. Their attacks are slow, their melee attacks have no range and they take forever to swing. Their fireball attacks are slow as well, letting you dodge them with ease. Take them down one at a time, leave the staff Skeleton Lord for last, as he spawns wheel skeletons on death, which are harder to deal with as a group.
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| Wheels! Wheels everywhere! |
Killing the Skeleton Lords net you 15000 souls, which is not much to write home about. Anyway, since this boss doesn't take much effort to beat, its understandable. We're not done for today, there's still someone we can kill in the Huntsman's Copse.
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Executioner's Chariot
HP: 4140
Skills: Arena Run*, Galloping Strike, Dark Fire*, Stomp, Rear Kick*, Furious Bite*
Souls: 19000
Difficulty: 3/5
Deaths: 10+
Deep into the Huntsman's Copse there's a bridge that leads to a whole new different area. There you'll run into executioners. They attack you frantically with their powerful weapons and relentless combos. They protect the path to the Undead Purgatory, where undead are killed off in a torturous game of cat and mouse. Guarded by a great sword wielding red phantom, the Undead Purgatory houses one of the most unique battles in the game, which is against the deadly horse & rider combo, Executioner's Chariot. If you go into this one expecting an easy battle, then you're going to be in for a surprise.
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| Run, run and die. |
There's actually not a lot to this battle, despite it being a rather tough one. There's NOT A LOT to it, serious. You'll spend this entire fight running around a circuit while the Executioner's Chariot runs around the ring trying to RAM you into oblivion. The real fight only starts when you knock the rider off the chariot, and you'll need to get into a brawl with the horse. Before that, its a run around the ring, filled with infinite revival skeletons and those pesky necromancers.
Arena Run* - The basic run around the arena by the chariot. You can see him coming from a mile away. You'll need to hide inside the small gaps within the arena to completely avoid its onslaught. A single hit does massive damage, but doesn't warrant an insta-kill. Unblockable, but with the right timing, you can roll through it.
Galloping Strike - He runs straight at you for good damage. Can be blocked at the expense of a lot of stamina, but can also be easily dodged.
Dark Fire* - He spews flames forward or in a sweeping arc motion for a lot of damage. You can dodge it by being at his flanks, otherwise, this move is rather unpredictable.
Stomp - A simple forward stomp. Easily blocked or dodged.
Rear Kick* - He kicks backwards with his powerful hind legs, doing a lot of damage very quickly. Fairly low start up time, making it hard to see this attack coming.
Furious Bite* - He swings his head to bite you when you are near his front, Can be blocked, but has a fast startup.
The start of this battle is where the Executioner's Chariot is at his best. He runs around the ring constantly, and you'll need to always look for gaps to hide into. However, during this entire phase, you are CONSTANTLY harassed by skeletons that revive themselves everytime they are killed. This is HIGHLY irritating when you are trying to run through the circuit and they constantly block your way. They are easily dispatched, but since they always come back to life, it is in your best interest to ignore them.
Keep running and as you go deeper into the circuit, you'll run into necromancers. Killing these bitches will stop the skeletons they are in charge of from respawning, giving you A LOT more free space for breather. The amount of skeletons increase as you go deeper, making it one hell of an annoying experience. There are 2 necromancers, kill them both, kill all the skeletons, and then there's nothing left to stop you from running the circuit without any interuptions. Get to the end of the circuit to pull a lever to pull down the gate. The chariot will crash into the gate and the rider will be knocked off, now its a one on one brawl against the horse.
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| Here horsey horsey horsey... |
Against the horse in a 1 v 1, its all about bursting him down. The Executioner's Chariot is a fairly squishy target that's easy to take down, BUT, do note that he can take you down fast as well. He's got plenty of damaging attacks to easily crush you, and its not worth trying to drag it out with him because in this enclosed battle space, he can easily close the gap on you to finish you off. His melee attacks are rather powerful and some have very fast start-up, most dangerous of them all would be his Furious Bites, which are fast and powerful.
If you flank behind him he has his rear kick, which does a lot of damage, is fast to come out, and knocks you down, leaving you open for another attack. At mid range, he breaths his dark flame breath, covering huge areas and doing massive damage. As mentioned, he is thankfully, very easy to take down quickly. Rush him down with endless sweeps of attacks and he goes down eventually. The key is to not slow down and keep going for him, trading a long, slow battle against him is just not going to end well for you.
Killing him nets you 19000 souls. This is an optional battle, but nets you access to the Brotherhood Of Blood Covenant (lets you kill people, wee). Next time we head further down the path to the Old Iron King.
