Nashandra
HP: 8770
Skills: Curse Orbs*, Scythe Strike, Scythe Combo*, Horizontal Dark Beam, Vertical Dark Beam, Dark Explosion
Souls: 90000
Difficulty: 2.5/5
Deaths: 2
So, the original last boss of the game. Nashandra sits in wait in the throne of want and appears to challenge you after you beat the Throne Watcher and Throne Defender. Instead of the beautiful woman that she was rumored to be that Vendrick fell in love youwith, you get an undead, mass of the abyss that turns out to be a shard of Manus from the original "Dark Souls". This ugly skeleton woman wants to kill your ass and that's exactly what you will do to her. Note that for the first time in 3 games, we get an actual final boss that takes some skill to beat, unlike Old King Allant and Gwyn in the previous games, who were complete cakewalks for final bosses.
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| Curses! Curses for days! |
Nashandra means business, and she shows that off with her extensive array of attacks. She's got some tricks up her sleeve, but with the right mindset and playstyle....she's actually not that hard at all. Some basic dodging skills will bring you far in this battle, and her large size doesn't help her at all since her attacks are pretty heavily telegraphed.
Curse Orbs* - She summons 3 curse orbs which remain stationary around certain parts of the arena. Staying near them will have the curse meter build up. Will annoy you to no end if they aren't taken out ASAP.
Scythe Strike - She brings her scythe down on you for some good damage. Nothing much, its slow do just dodge it.
Scythe Combo* - She does a combination of scythe swings that can do massive damage. Individual strikes are slow, so dodging is the best answer.
Horizontal Dark Beam - A very powerful but slow beam attack that goes sideways. Cannot be blocked.
Vertical Dark Beam - A very powerful but slow beam attack that fires straight. Cannot be blocked.
Dark Explosion - She just explodes in the area around her after a brief pause. Heavily telegraphed, run when you see her just stop and do nothing.
Considering how many attacks she has, its very easy to bait her into a cycle of spamming her beam attacks and for you to punish her endlessly without any form of proper retaliation from her. If she sticks to doing her melee attacks, its her best shot at taking you down, since they tend to do a ton of damage. Of course, she uses these at close range, which is also your best shot at taking her down since most of her defenses are quite high except for her physical defense. When she starts swinging that scythe of hers, whether its for the single strike or the combo, move away and bait out another attack before going in on her.
Either way, she always opens the battle with Curse Orbs. She summons 3 orbs that are placed around the arena. Fighting around these orbs is bad news, as you'll get cursed very quickly. The game plan is to run around the arena and take these orbs out as they die in one hit. While you do so, Nashandra will probably be spamming beams at you, keep a look out for those as you run around taking out these orbs. The beams are slow but deal a ton of damage, so make sure you lock on to her to see what kind of beam she's going to shoot, then make a run for the orbs. With those out of the way, its time to make our assault.
As mentioned earlier, Nashandra is scarier up close, but she can't do that if she's firing her laser beams. The plan is to stay at mid range, bait Nashandra into firing her beam attack, dodge it, then spring to her and start attacking. If she's still casting her dark beams, she cannot attack with with any other move. As soon as the dark beam ends, back off, bait her to cast it again, and do the same thing. Rinse and repeat. She has a lot of health so you have to slowly whittle her down. She'll occasionally break the pattern by recasting Curse Orbs or using a Dark Explosion, but all in all, if you exploit this strategy she becomes laughably easily. Otherwise, you can just take advantage of her horrendous speed and go for hit-run strategies.
Beating Nashandra gives you a whooping 90000 souls. The game usually ends here as you can literally walk up to the throne and get your ending, but if you're playing the "Scholar Of The First Sin" expansion, you'll get one more teensy little battle....
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Aldia, Scholar Of The First Sin
HP: 6800
Skills: Fire Shot, Tentacle, Tentacle Swarm*, Teleporting Burst
Souls: 0
Difficulty: 1/5
Deaths: 0
If you've encountered Aldia at least 3 times prior to this one, you'll get the opportunity to fight him and receive the 2nd ending to the game after you defeat Nashandra. Note that if you die to him you can still re-enter the fog gate and battle him like any other boss as per normal without having to beat Nashandra first.
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| What an ugly fella indeed.... |
So Aldia is ugly as shit but that doesn't stop him from being one of the coolest NPCs in the game. Anyway, he's unfortunately pretty easy so prepare to roll over him if you've got even the basics of the game hammered down onto you. He doesn't have a lot of attacks and he's immobile, so just go crazy on the dude. He even has less HP than Nashandra.
Fire Shot - He shoots some straightforward fire projectiles at you that are easily blocked or dodged.
Tentacle - He plants a single tentacle into the ground, then it comes up to impale you. Easily dodged as the attack is usually instant, meaning a reactionary roll is simple.
Tentacle Swarm* - Same as Tentacle, though instead of one, he assaults you with a bunch of these. Just spam roll to get away.
Teleporting Burst - After taking some damage, he teleports away , dealing damage upon appearing.
There is actually little to no threat that Aldia poses to you THIS late in the game. His attacks aren't particularly difficult to dodge, and 3 of them do little to no damage if you're decently leveled. He's immobile, he has lesser HP than Nashandra, and since he can't run or dodge from you, you will just be getting free hits on the fella all the damn time. When you're actually hitting him, all he's going to do is use Tentacle, that's it. It does little damage, and when you hit him enough, he teleports away. When he reappears, run up to him and hit him again, rinse and repeat.
During the later parts of the battle he uses Tentacle Swarm instead of Tentacle at times, which does more damage, but the game plan is still the same. Keep on mauling on him and 6800 HP won't seem like much very soon. No special moves near death, nothing, he'll go down soon enough.
He gives no souls upon death, seeing as how easy he is, its no surprise. You can get the 2nd ending after beating Aldia, and that's the end of that for the main bosses in the game. Next time, we'll cover the optional dudes that we haven't actually gone through yet.
