Ruin Sentinels Yahim, Alessia, Ricce
HP: 2330 (x 3)
Skills: Crescent Sweep, Sweep Combo*, Halberd Slam, Leaping Strike*, Shield Toss*, Spinner
Souls: 33000
Difficulty: 3.5/5
Deaths: 7
Now that you've finally beaten all the trials that stand before you, you can proceed to the lair of the first soul lord. "The Lost Bastille", its a jail for undead prisoners, sound familiar? Anyway, proceed through this dreaded prison of knights and zombies, and you'll finally come across a fog gate. What do you do? Of course you enter it, but when you do, you see 3 health bars appear at the bottom of your screen. You know it more than anything; your fate has come.
 |
| Come on, 1v1 me bro. |
The Ruin Sentinels Yahim, Alessia and Ricce are some of the meanest bosses around during the early game. They gang up on you relentlessly. You fight only one of them at first, but that's really just a test to get you accustomed to their attacks, before they 2v1 you like assholes. They're certainly not Ornstein and Smough level, but they're pretty much up there when it comes to killing you together. You'll need lots of wits, perseverance and experience to win this fight. If you're a newcomer to the souls series, this fight can be hell.
Crescent Sweep - He performs a quick slash with a wide arc. Easily blocked with a decent shield.
Sweep Combo* - He attacks once, either vertically or horizontally, then follows up with a Crescent Sweep. More preferable to dodge than to block.
Halberd Slam - He smashes down on you with his halberd, doing massive damage and causing a lot of stamina loss if blocked.
Leaping Strike - He jumps in on you from a distance, closing the gap and smashing down on the ground.
Spinner - All Sentinels start spinning together at tops and come at you. Easily blocked.
The Ruin Sentinels are a horrible bunch to fight against from afar. I suggest being pure melee for this fight. When you first enter the fog door, you'll be faced with a single sentinel first. This is just to make sure you LEARN what the sentinels can do, and believe me, even against a single sentinel, a novice would get obliterated. To make things worse, on your first fight with the first sentinel, you are only fighting on a small platform, with little room for maneuvers. If you make a single mistake, you'll drop down below, fight against the other 2 sentinels, and you'll most definitely lose the battle.
 |
| Only 1 to go! |
One of its most frequently used attacks is Crescent Sweep, a single horizontal slash that is easily blocked, but covers a huge arc. Its easily avoided because it has decent start up time, and you might even get a few hits in. Next, he has Sweep Combo, a two hit combo that will always end with a Crescent Sweep. It might be slightly tricky to block, but its not that hard to dodge. You can still sneak a few hits in after the attack. Halberd Slam is a single strike that'll most likely break your guard and leave you in a stagger state. Though I must say, since it has a long recovery time, you'll have lots of opportunities to hit him after the attack, so just side step for an easy dodge.
The next attack is one that'll only happen if you're on the lower floor. Leaping Strike, like what its name suggests, is a leaping attack that lets a sentinel close the gap between you. It does a lot of stamina damage on block (most likely staggering you), but its easily dodged since you can see him coming from quite a mile away, unless you're focused on another sentinel. The final attack is one that the sentinels will only use on the lower floors. They will spin towards you in synchro, dealing decent damage, but this attack is easily blocked. Treat it as free time for you to heal, because they have ridiculously long recovery times for this attack.
As mentioned earlier, take the early 1v1 as a test for you to familiarize yourself with the Sentinel's attacks. Just go for the small windows of opportunity to attack him after each one of HIS attacks, and slowly whittle him down. Just make sure not to get hit to the lower floors. When you finally kill it, the other 2 sentinels will start to come in on you. You have some time before they jump up to that platform to come for you. They will come one at a time, but obviously, its going to be pretty hard to fight TWO sentinels on top of that tiny platform, so what you can is wait for one of them to come up, get a few hits on him. When the second sentinel comes up, drop down to the lower floors and prepare to face them both. At LEAST you did some damage to the 2nd sentinel to give yourself a small head start.
 |
| Get me the f**k out of this bitch! |
When you're down below, you need to face two sentinels at once. Hopefully you did some damage to one of them, so you won't need to go that extra mile. The same rule for ganking bosses apply here, you'll need to kite them so that BOTH of them are in your field of vision. You'll need to have eyes on both bosses, and only go for attacks when BOTH of them are recovering (sound familiar? Ornstein and Smough say hi). You won't want to stay too far from then both though, because if they alternate between gap closing and trying to murder you up close, it can get confusing to manage. Good times to hit them are when one sentinel just used a Leaping Strike on you, while the other is trying to run to you all the way from the other side of the map.
Another would be when both just used their Spinner attacks, since those have ridiculously long recoveries. Also, take note that when both of them use Shield Toss, they both lose their shields for the remainder of the fight, which makes them a lot easier to take down. Anyway, just keep tickling away at their health bars until one of them goes down, at that point, the other should be A LOT more manageable. Defeating them gives 33000 souls, a nice amount at this point of the game.
Next time, we take on the first Soul Lord.
Peace.
