DARK SOULS™ II

DARK SOULS™ II

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OPtional boss area OP no more (Frozen Outskirts Cheesethrough)
By He cute
Horses are giving you a hassle? Tigers are terrorizing you? Worry no more, this guide is your saviour! (If you read it, that is.)
   
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Introduction
Hello there, you are probably here because had, are having or are close to having a mental breakdown! Relax a little, and take a break from the game. This spoiler-free guide will give you some pointers on how to cheese your way through horrifying horses and tips on beating the boss(es) of the Frozen Outskirs a.k.a. Who Thought This Was a Good Idea / ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Horses area.

Let us begin, shall wel?
Neigh no more / The Cheesening
Alright, the aim of this part is to teach you how not to meet ANY horses while you are jogging towards the foggate.

  • First, after you exit your coffin, summon Vengarl and Feeva - this will be important later if you find beating the boss really terribly hard; they are tankier than players and that helps a lot. If you can manage it solo or with players - just skip to the next step.
  • Go back to the coffin, then face towards the sun (or the bright source of light or whatever)
  • Begin sprinting like a madman towards it. Don't let your stamina deplete through, wait for it to regenerate a little, but keep sprinting whenever possible.
    This is important, if you pause for long enough the whole thing I'm about to communicate to you will be in vain, so remember: keep sprinting.
  • You will, soon, reach a wall of ice. That's a good thing. Now turn left, and while hugging the wall, sprint toward the pit where the bridge to the bossgate is. The wall will take you there, don't worry. But don't stop until you're at the edge of the pit! You'll know that you're safe when the snowstorm stops completely and doesn't resume
  • Walk around and down to the bridge, go across it and after a little walk you'll be at the boss gate.

Why this works? you might ask. Well, I don't know. I can only assume that it's because there are two conditions that spawn those bastards (yes, the horses), one being an area trigger (that is, you approach a certain area, and the horse appears) and one being a vague thing, that if you stand around / don't move too much for a period of time, you'll get your ass hooved to you. THIS IS JUST AN ASSUMPTION!!! However, from my experience the method works flawlessly, trust me, I did die enough times to know.

The method only didn't work two times when I got invaded and decided to stay and fight. Not a good idea. Just keep running.

Anyway, on to the next part...
The actual bossfight
This part contains general tips on fighting the kittens and also my method of beating the encounter. The fight is very similar to the one with Aava, but the main difference is that there is two of the tigers now. Oh and they are black. Even if you are familiar with the abilities of Aava, you should probably read on still.

Right, so, for this part I'll assume that you have Vengarl and Feeva with you, and you're standing infront of the foggate with full HP and all your Estus charges still at your disposal.

First, you wanna buff up as much as possible and not be fatrolling. If you are melee, use a the most hard hitting weapon you have. Wearing a high phys+magic defense armor helps, but isn't a must.

The idea is to have one cat attacking you, and one cat attacking a summon. They will change targets time to time, in the same time as the other does. You can see who they are focusing easily as they will stare at their target. If you see your cat changing target, you can safely assume that the off-screen kitty is about to tear you a new one. However it is possible that both cats will keep focusing you for a while, in which case, just sprint around 'till their agro resets, do not attempt to fight.

The key is to hit the one targetting you, whenever there is a safe opportunity, once, then roll/move away and wait to read what it does next. Just like with most bosses, but this time there is no room for mistakes.

We'll take a look at abilities of the felines, most of these are pretty easily readable if you pay attention. May take some practise to be able to read them though. All abilities are knockdowns (I think).

The slap of pain

The most basic melee attack of the bosses. Bad/no tracking. The cat will look away from it's target, get into a position that looks like it's about to pounce, then after about a second it will quickly and violently bat at it's target, causing high damage.

If you don't roll away, while you are the target, and you're still infront of the boss, the attack will be repeated with the other paw.

Try not to dodge instantly when you see it getting to ready to do this attack, wait a little bit, and try roll ing under the boss. You may or may not need to roll again, if you're still infront of it.

When you are under it, you have time to attack it once, but beware, it may hit you with...

The slap of arced death

This attack happens when you are not infront of the cat, but it's still targeting you. Basically it does a swipe with a very large arc, that can even hit you while you are under and behind it (at least I think, I mean the point of the attack is to eliminate the cheese you can do with the Royal Rat Vanguard).

So don't stick around it for too long, this is true all times!

Dodging

These things dodge A LOT, making it hard to hit them for melee, unless the target is focused. Because after they dodge they can use their...

Gap closers

Usually following a dodge or a target change (where the target is far ofc), the boss leaps at their target, which ends either with a grab attack (won't describe this), or with a swipe. If the one focusing you decided to change target, you can safely assume that you're about to be either jumped or ice sharded (more about this later), by the other one. If they are both jumping at you in the same time, well... though luck I guess... anyway...

This is safe to insta dodge, preferably towards them, it most possibly won't hit you if you do. Also a good opportunity to hit their belly once / estus, then roll away, else it punishes you for not respecting its boundaries, either by a slap of arced death or the following two abilities:

WoG

The tiger stops tracking you, raises it's head and growls, then bamm, a magic version of Wrath of the Gods will smite yee! It's quite quick. If you get hit by this it means you stayed too close to it for too long. Damn.

Weird-ass icy you-stayed-in-melee-range-for-too-long icy punisher thingy

The third and last way of proximity control. The beast raises its left paw (I think there is a louder-than-average growl too, not sure atm), some magic stuff appears on the ground around it, then after about 1.5 second, each magic stuff bursts into many deadly icicles.

So when this happens, just back away, heal if you need to then get ready to dodge again.

The icey homing soulmass like ability

Terrifying. They jump away, roar and summon 5 icicles which then bolt towards their target real fast. Also real damn painful.

Here's what you do. If you think you can run to the side, between the front and the hind leg of the boss, before the icicles get launched, you do just that, the body of the boss will absorb the stuff. Then you can hit it once then roll away.

If you are far from the casting tiger, quickly turn away so that it's at your 3 or nine, and start running. If you did it right the icey spears should land just behind you.

Remember: do not block this. If you don't have high magic res, this attack will K you O. Hard. It probaly staggers even the highest stamina shields too, I didn't try, but you don't wanna get staggered if it does. It's much better to get hit by the 1st one, get knocked down and avoid the rest of the damage than to block.

Dodging these is also hard, so just do what I advised you to do.


Also a healing ability

When only one kitty remains, at low HP it will roar, then be devoured by a red-ish aura and start to heal about 50% of it's HP. Meh. Patience.

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In conclusion: do not get greedy with hits, pay attention to target swaps (and then both tigers), do not heal when you are about to get rekt, and learn / practise the warnings of each ability.
Conclusion
And that concludes the guide, I hope this was a helpful read, good luck and try to have fun!

PS.: If you actually do run into horses, a good strategy is to have a weapon to make pancakes and then pancake the horses to death. Pancake.
34 Comments
What is a name? 7 Dec, 2014 @ 11:31pm 
Plenty of horses still show up.
He cute  [author] 7 Oct, 2014 @ 8:02pm 
@Cr8ToT, maybe I should. Maybe I will.
Sif 7 Oct, 2014 @ 1:50pm 
With the homing soulmass like ability, you can literally just run sideways if you're in front of it. All of them will miss. If you're close enough though, run behind the kitty and hit him, then roll out.
Cr8ToR 7 Oct, 2014 @ 9:55am 
Great guide.
Consider puting a youtube video for +11 :)
Tomzai 5 Oct, 2014 @ 6:57am 
So i just need to ingore the horses when i run while hugging the wall?
[AReV] Bob Eaterson 5 Oct, 2014 @ 5:57am 
This method works but it doesn't give you time to buff up when you arrive at the boss making it even harder to beat. I suggest having patience and killing the ponies enough times. I just singled the boss a bit ago, took me over 20 tries.
[AReV] Bob Eaterson 5 Oct, 2014 @ 5:56am 
Kill the Snow Ponies enough and they will stop spawning. After a good amount of time they never showed up on the route I took.
Scorpion62 4 Oct, 2014 @ 1:13pm 
This does not work as described. It's not a bad technique to try, but it DOES NOT work as described.
SunbroStang 4 Oct, 2014 @ 11:45am 
This doesn't work for me fullly, but the amount of horses is manegable.
Bird of Few Birds 4 Oct, 2014 @ 11:16am 
More like the guide to get ganked by horses but this time near a wall.