Difficulty: 2/10
Useful Instincts: You won’t have any yet
Useful Vestige (co-op): You won’t have any yet

Strategy:

• Pretty simple - just hit him in the face, and dash away when he does an arm swipe.
  
• Watch out for him rearing his head back to do a bite-attack.
  
• Practice timing your critical hits - you’re going to need to get that timing down.

The three bosses around Nearbarrow Camp can be fought in any order.

Recommended fighting order: The Fallen Rider gives you the Fallen Strike instinct which can be nice to have for the other 2 bosses, so you could try him first. The Towering Dyad seems slightly more difficult than the other two, but not by much.

Difficulty: 5/10
Useful Instincts: Thorn Bloom can be useful to get some extra damage in, but it can be risky since it uses your wisps. Might be good to keep focusing on the basics (timing critical hits) at this point.
Useful Vestiges (co-op): Phantom Strike

Strategy Phase 1:

• Focus on avoiding his attacks, and getting in hits between them.
  
• He can chain swings together so make sure you keep avoiding them until he finishes the chain.
  
• If he does a stabbing-attack then there should be a moment to dash in and get a hit or two in.
  
• Watch out for him raising his shield - if you hit him while it's raised, he will counterattack.
  
• If you run away from him, he might do a jumping attack, which you can dodge and then also get some hits in.

Strategy Phase 2:

• Keep your focus on avoiding attacks.
  
• He does huge swing arcs so you’ll either have to dash twice to get away from him, or dash behind him to avoid it.
  
• If he starts to kneel down he is going to do the big circle-swing attack, so run away as soon as you see him kneel down.
  
• If he rears his upper body backwards then he is going to shoot out his arm at you - you’ll have to dash at the right time to avoid this, right when the arm is shooting out.
  
• Sometimes he’ll jump and slam down on the ground in front of him - pretty easy to avoid, and if you get behind him right when you see him about to do this you can get a couple attacks in.

Difficulty: 5/10
Useful Instincts: Fallen Strike can be useful in Phase 2 of the fight to get up close to the brain-fly quickly to get some hits in if you’re far away. Thorn Bloom can be useful in Phase 2 if you get an opening where it’s safe to use some of your wisps for it.
Useful Vestiges (co-op): Phantom Strike

Strategy Phase 1:

• You have to destroy the big bubble. Keep attacking it until it breaks, only dashing away from it when you need to to avoid any bugs coming at you.
  
• You can get through this phase pretty quickly if you chain critical hits together.

Strategy Phase 2:

• Now you have to kill the brain-fly, which keeps moving around. It’s basically a bullet-hell, so your main focus should be avoiding dying and only attack when you have a good opportunity/opening.
  
• There are a variety of attack patterns, and some of them have better openings for hitting the brain-fly than others.
  
• Try not to get too close to the sides of the arena or you might not have time to react to a bug flying in.
  
• When you get about halfway through this phase, the brain-fly will start looking beat up and wobble around, so you’re getting close to beating it at that point.

Difficulty: 5/10
Useful Instincts: Thorn Bloom
Useful Vestiges (co-op): Phantom Strike

Strategy:

• You have to destroy both of the feet to win. The Dyad will do regular stomps, but also big AoE stomps. If you notice that his bone-toes curve inward while he is lifting his leg up, then he is going to do an AoE stomp.
  
• A good strategy is to wait for an opening on one of the feet and charge up Thorn Bloom twice, get a hit in, and then dash away.
  
• When you damage him enough, he freaks out and stomps around a bunch. He also freaks out and stomps a bunch when you destroy one of his feet - when he is doing that, you can get some hits in on his other foot.
  
• He launches out plant-pods that land on the ground and turn into plants with spikes. Watch for their shadows on the ground when they get launched, since they’ll kill you if they land on you. Then just stay away from them so you don’t get spiked. If the Towering Dyad steps onto one of these plants he destroys it, so its somewhat possible to bait him towards them to make him get rid of them.
  
• The final attack he does is where he screams and it activates the plants to shoot out spikes - when you hear the scream look for a nearby safe spot to avoid the spike projectiles.

Make sure to beat the time-trial that's in the area just before the boss to get an extra Memory slot. The Double Dash instinct that you get from beating the Towering Dyad makes it easier, too.

Now the game starts getting harder. Most of the bosses around Fort Holgrove can be fought in any order, except for the Marassa Twins you have to beat the Eldritch Hornet, and for the Grandmaster you have to beat the Bridge Crawler.

IMPORTANT: Make sure you got the Nimble instinct from the Dryad Door that's to the left / upward of the bridge that the giant was guarding in Nearbarrow Camp. The Nimble instinct is really good and lets you dash at basically any moment (normally when you attack you are commiting to the attack and have to wait before you can dash again, but with Nimble you can dash at any moment). I used it with every instinct loadout.

In this area I think the Grandmaster , the Marassa Twins, and the Corpse Orchard are the hardest bosses, so I’d suggest fighting some of the other bosses first. You can also get some weapon-damage-upgrades by collecting Fossilized Cordyceps items as you’re exploring around and bringing them to the Blacksmith skeleton at the center of Fort Holgrove.

Difficulty: 6/10
Area: Felled Lands
Useful Instincts: Fallen Strike or Double Dash, Nimble, any instinct that boosts damage
Useful Vestiges (co-op): Phantom Strike, Echo Parry

Strategy:

• For this fight, you have to avoid his direct attacks (swinging his stick, and him jumping at you and ground-pounding) as well as him lighting the ground on fire. When he swings his stick he either does a single swing or a double swing. If he starts swinging his stick, you can dash behind him and get a hit in.
  
• When he jumps up and does a ground pound on top of you, you can dash away to avoid it, and then usually hit him a couple times.
  
• He does two things to light the oil on the ground on fire - he either raises his stick up in the air and then stabs it down at the ground, or he breathes in and does a fire-breath attack. Watch & listen for him breathing in to know when he is going to do the fire-breath. Sometimes he just jumps around putting oil on the ground - if you can figure out where he is going to be when he stops jumping, use Fallen Strike or dash up to get a hit in before he does his next attack.
  
• One more ability he does is where he jumps 3 times slamming his stick down at you on the ground - he makes a special noise before he does this, and has a red-glow effect behind his body so watch for that. Time your dashes right before he hits the ground with his stick - on the 3rd dash, dash up at him so you can get some hits in.
  
• Once you deal enough damage he will switch to his final phase, where he shoots out a bunch of oil and lights himself on fire. You can’t hurt him during this so you just have to survive. Run to a safe spot that doesn’t have much oil, and just dash to avoid him running at you a couple times. He’ll then go to the center and charge up a huge explosion - run far away to one of the corners while he is charging up to avoid getting hit by it.

Be sure to get the Memory from the time-trial that you run past on the way to the Scourged Lamplighter arena. Pro-tip: Double-dash helps in this one a lot. You can also Fallen Strike into the breakable stuff to try to break it faster. Pick up the yellow wisps as you go and use them to dash/etc to go faster.

Difficulty 1/10
Area: Wetlands Plateau
Useful Instincts: Fallen Strike
Useful Vestiges (co-op): Phantom Strike

Strategy:

• Not much to say about this boss, you just have to figure out the gimmick. You can only hit it when it does the attack where it opens up its stinger area and glows red. Just have an attack charged up and ready to release at the right moment, or Fallen Strike right into it when it opens up.
  
• If you try to attack it at any other time it’ll just fly away. It has one other attack where it makes a clicky-noise and flashes white, and then flies at you 3 times - dash at the right moments to survive it.

Be sure to get the Memory from the area down the path and to the left after beating the Eldritch Hornet. In that area there is a red fog that destroys your wisps, so you have to make your way through it without dashing. Weave your way through the spinning-plants, then do circles on the fly-trap plants while you break the branches that are blocking the path.

Difficulty 8/10
Area: Wetlands Plateau
Useful Instincts: Fallen Strike, Old King’s Technique + Infection, any damage boosting instinct. Instincts that affect your dash are pointless since you can’t dash.
Useful Vestiges (co-op): Oxalis, Phantom Strike, Echo Parry

Strategy:

• This boss fight replaces your dash with the ability to swap between the blue and red color. You can absorb enemy attacks that are the same color as you currently are, and you die to enemy attacks that are the other color. Your weapon is also removed/disabled, and you have to absorb enough attacks to get your weapon back for a couple seconds so you can hit the enemies.
  
• The enemies do a bunch of attack patterns, increasing in difficulty as you progress. The fight is pretty hard at first, until you start figuring out your strategies for each of the attack patterns. It also takes some time getting used to the color-switching mechanic. In a lot of cases you can just try to survive an attack pattern, absorbing some of the attacks as you go, and then if you have your weapon at the end of the attack pattern get some attacks in before their next attack pattern starts.
  
• Fallen Strike is a good way to quickly get close to one of them since you can’t dash. Old King’s Technique + Infection does really good damage, but keep in mind that switching-colors takes one of your wisps so make sure you don’t use them all up.
  
• Absorbing one of the big-lasers (where one of the Twins lifts their head up and it shoots out from their head across the floor) will give you your weapon back instantly so that can help.

Attack Pattern Strategy (some of them):

• The one where there are alternating circular bursts of outward projectiles: stand in the middle and switch colors to absorb them
  
• Lasers in the center that make an X shape that rotate around: go to the laser of your color and follow it around the circle. Can try to hit the enemy and switch colors as the lasers cross over you, but make sure you don’t run out of wisps
  
• AoE lightning - run away
  
• Lasers that are pointing up & down and move horizontally: run to either the side and focus on switching colors at the right time to survive
  
• Spiral shape at the center of the arena: follow along with one of the sections of your color, when the projectiles stop spawning try to get some attacks in
  
• Spiral shape with one color on the left and the other on the right: I ran all the way to one side, switched to the color for the spiral on that side, and then just focused on manually avoiding the projectiles from the other color
  
• One laser moving vertically and one laser moving horizontally: I ran towards the bottom right corner and switch colors when needed

Difficulty 5/10
Area: Unknown Chasm
Useful Instincts: Torchlight, Fallen Strike, instincts that let you do burst damage
Useful Vestiges (co-op): None, if one player gets spotted both players get killed

Strategy:

• Avoid being spotted by the lights to survive. Hit the Abysm’s mouth when he opens it to damage him.
  
• In the first part of the fight he will do various attacks where he’ll appear at a spot and open his eyes and look around. Watch for where he is going to appear by looking for his red eyelids, then dash away from that spot.
  
• If you see his red-eyes blinking then he is about to look in that direction quickly, watch out for that.
  
• When he opens his mouth, do a burst of damage to him to make him scream and go to the next part of the fight.
  
• In the second part of the fight he chases you on the left side of the screen - keep running and stay far enough to the right so that he doesn’t see you. Then you’ll fall down to another spot for the final phase.
  
• Final phase, he does a couple different attacks here, just dash away from where his lights will be.
  
• There is a checkpoint at the final phase, so if you die again you’ll respawn and go back to that spot. When he opens his mouth, dash up or use Fallen Strike to get up to him quickly and do a burst of damage.

Difficulty: 7/10
Area: King’s Pass
Useful Instincts: Corpse Maker, Stinger Burst
Useful Vestiges (co-op): Oxalis, Phantom Strike, Echo Parry

Strategy:

• You have to defeat the boss before he crawls to the top of the bridge. If he gets to the top he will do an unavoidable attack to kill you. If you run too far away from him he will start crawling up the bridge faster, so stay close to him as much as you can, and dash backwards when needed.
  
• There are 4 archer NPCs you can talk to in the King’s Pass area to recruit them to help with the fight - they shoot arrows that knock him downward a bit.
  
• The Bridge Crawler does bite attacks - he can do a big bite forward, or can bite towards the left/right side. He can chain multiple of those together.
  
• He also shoots out his tongue - if you touch it he will drag you into his mouth and kill you. His tongue is usually in the center, so go to the left or right side to avoid it.
  
• He also vomits onto the bridge, and if you step in it you can’t move or attack, but you can dash out of it - so try to completely avoid that.
  
• Some attacks can knock him back - a critical hit knocks him back a little bit, but if you have the Corpse Maker instinct (from Corpse Orchard) that will knock him back a lot. Another strategy is to trigger Stinger Burst right when he is about to bite towards the side that you are on, so it blasts you backwards out of his bite range. Double Dash is also good to dash backwards quickly if he is about to bite the side you’re on.

Difficulty: 9/10
Area: King’s Pass
Useful Instincts: Fallen Strike, Nimble, Corpse Maker
Useful Vestiges (co-op): Oxalis is extremely good if you have it, Phantom Strike, Echo Parry

Strategy:

• One of the hardest bosses in the game, if not the hardest. If you don’t know how to play chess and how the pieces move, then you really need to pay attention to each piece’s movement during the phases where he is introducing the pieces. You’re going to have to fight the full chessboard at the end, so knowing how they move and attack is crucial.
  
• The pieces are “attacking” only when they are moving across the board (otherwise you can run up against them). The Knight piece acts differently - it jumps up in the air and then slams down doing an AoE attack.
  
• You have to hit the King piece enough to get the Grandmaster to move on to the next phase of the fight. The King piece attacks at a reliable interval (like maybe every 4 seconds?) and will attack in your direction, so you can use that to your advantage.
  
• After the 3 phases where he introduces the pieces, you start the real battle. You have to beat 4 or 5 phases to get to the final phase which is the full chessboard. If you make it to the final phase, you get a checkpoint - so if you die on the final phase you’ll respawn at the final phase. The phases leading up to the final phase get progressively harder.
  
• For the phase with the wall of Pawns, you need to bait out a pawn to do its diagonal-attack, so you can create an opening to get past them.
  
• On the phase with six queens try to bait the queens away from the King piece, and then quickly get behind the King piece and start attacking.
  
• Always try to keep track of when the King piece is about to do its attack again, so that when you do get close to it you can get your attacks in and then be ready to dodge back. The pieces turn red right before they attack, so you have a little bit of time to react.
  
• This is a fight where Nimble is awesome because if you’re hitting the King piece and its about to attack you (or another piece is about to hit you) you can dash away at any moment, even if you’re in the middle of an attack.
  
• The final phase is hard to plan what you’re going to do since the pieces are moving around randomly. I started by running up and getting one or two pawns to attack diagonally to open a gap to go through, then waited a bit for them to come across the board so there was some open room on the backside of the board. Then mostly focused on not dying, and trying to find an opening where the King was vulnerable. The Knight pieces are interesting because you can use them as a wall/blocker for making sure other pieces dont hit you from that side. Same with the King, since it only attacks like every 4 seconds, you can run to the side of the King with the least amount of enemies and kinda use the King as a blocker. The fight overall is pretty tough, but if you can get in and do some burst damage to the King two times, you can usually get the Grandmaster to point where he picks up the King piece, and then when he puts it back down you can usually beat it in two more bursts of damage.

Difficulty: 7/10
Area: Primeval Jungle
Useful Instincts: Double Dash, Kinship, Old King’s Technique (+ Infection) for burst damage, Thorn Bloom for burst damage
Useful Vestiges (co-op): Oxalis is extremely good if you have it, Echo Parry, Phantom Strike

Strategy:

• This boss does two things - shoots out spike patterns in a grid of spikes, and a “red light green light” mechanic where if you move while the red-light is active it instantly shoots a laser at you and kills you.
  
• The laser will kill you even if you are dashing. If you stand still during the time where the red-light is active, the plant will fall down to the ground and become vulnerable. This is the only time you can attack it. Try to do as much burst damage as you can while it is vulnerable: Thorn Bloom + Critical hits, or Old King’s Technique (with infection), etc.
  
• Learning the spike patterns will help a lot. You usually want to stand somewhat near the center of the arena since walls of spikes may come in from the side, but you also may want to not stand directly at the center of the arena since sometimes spikes can go outward from the center. So standing a bit off-center and towards the back is good.
  
• Keep track of how many wisps you have, and only dash when necessary. You’ll have to think ahead a little bit when the red-light is about to become active to decide where there is a safe spot to stand still at.
  
• In the first phase a wall of spikes comes across as the red-light is about to activate, so you have to past the wall, but another wall of spikes will come from the same side a moment later, so you have to make sure you didn’t dash too far past the first wall.
  
• Double Dash instinct is really nice in this fight since you can spend 1 wisp to move really far. Kinship is nice for the extra wisp for dashing too. Managing/conserving your wisps for dashing is probably the most important thing in this fight.

Difficulty: 7/10
Area: Primeval Jungle
Useful Instincts: Any instincts that help with burst damage. Elongated Blade might make parrying easier?
Useful Vestiges (co-op): Echo Parry is good. He will block Phantom Strike and Oxalis unless he is already stunned, but they can still be good.

Strategy:

• This boss has a parry-style mechanic where you have to attack into his attack to parry him. Any time he swings at you, you can swing right back at him and parry him and it will result in him getting knocked back and stunned. That’s when you can get a couple hits in on him to damage him.
  
• If you attack him while he is standing around, he will just block your attack.
  
• At the beginning of the fight, if you hit him so that he blocks your attack, it should trigger him to counterattack by teleporting and doing a swinging attack at you - so you can then parry that.
  
• He also will sometimes respond to you dashing by instantly teleporting nearby and quickly swinging at you, so be ready for that.
  
• Once you get the hang of the parrying mechanic he isn’t too bad. There is an attack at the end where he flies around and then comes in swinging at you, and you have to parry him 3 times and then he gets stunned for a while - just make sure you focus on when you release your attack to parry him.
  
• Another attack he does is where he teleports around doing different poses, and then finally does an attack - he says something that sounds like “DAH LEH” when he finally does the attack so you can listen for that.

After beating the Master of the Bloom make sure you go through his arena and to the left to get to the Kinoko’s Hollow area so you can do the time-trial in there to get another Memory. In this time-trial you have to survive for like 20-30 seconds with a bunch of stuff attacking you and the floor full of fly-traps. The hardest part is when the vines shoot out to grab you and drag you off of the platform. There are two things that help with this: If you dash at the moment the vine is going to grab you, you will completely avoid it. You can also equip the Out Of Time instinct to guarantee you’ll do a critical hit to break free from being dragged. Make sure you don’t activate a fly-trap thats in the direction you are going to be dragged. Since you dont have to attack anything, you can switch out all of your instincts for things that help you survive, like extra wisps.

You should have a lot of the Instincts unlocked now, hopefully at least 8 of the Memory, and at least some of the Blacksmith weapon upgrades. If not, now is a good time to get some of them before these final 3 bosses.

Difficulty: 7/10
Area: Misty Foothills
Useful Instincts: Extra wisps (Kinship). Gap-closers (Fallen Strike / Double Dash). Spike Dash can get some extra damage in over time.
Useful Vestiges (co-op): Echo Parry, Phantom Strike. Oxalis is pretty good but it's hard to know where he will be to decide where to place it - but the extra wisp your teammate gets can be nice.

Strategy:

• This boss does melee attacks, grabs, and abilities that affect your wisps.
  
• If you see the screen start to shake, it means he is about to run by and try to trample you - make sure you dodge out of the way.
  
• If he jumps in and starts swinging his weapon and/or his claw arm, then you can dash out of the way, and then dash back in to try to get some hits on him - but he might do a tail swipe at the end of that attack combo so watch out for the tail starting to curl up if he does that.
  
• If you see him jump across the screen above you, he is about to do 3 horizontal lunging attacks. Time your dodges upward or downward to avoid them.
  
• He can do the mechanic like the vine plants where he drags you in and you have to land a critical hit to break free. If you are struggling with that attack, then you can try to time a dash right when his arm reaches out to grab you (listen for the sound he makes when he is about to do that) or you can equip Out Of Time instinct to guarantee you land a critical hit.
  
• Sometimes he will teleport right next to you and try to grab you - be ready for that, and dodge away immediately.
  
• You can get some hits in at the end of almost all of the attacks before he jumps away.
  
• He does two attacks that affect your wisps. With one of them he makes all of your wisps blow up (but they will still regenerate). With the other one, he steals one of your wisps permanently (until the end of the fight or if you die and respawn). When he is going to steal one of your wisps, he does a big charge up - you can either run away from it to avoid getting your wisp stolen, or if you are close to him and don’t care about your wisp getting stolen you can try to get some hits in while he is charging up.

Difficulty: 9/10
Area: Council’s Domain
Useful Instincts: [Fallen Strike + Nimble + Kinship + Damian] [Old King’s Technique + Infection + Beast]
Useful Vestiges (co-op): Oxalis is great. Echo Parry and Phantom Strike are good.

Strategy:

• You have to defeat each of the Perennial Council guys one at a time. They will call in the other guys to do an attack, and then they go back to their spots on the ledge.
  
• There are usually moments in time where it's just you and the one Council guy, so you can pretty easily get some damage in during those moments.
  
• When they call in the other guys to do an attack, focus on surviving - also keep an eye out for what the main guy is doing while the rest of them are doing an attack, sometimes he can do a jumping attack that shoots a circle of spikes up from the ground and surprise you.
  
• You’ll have most of the instincts and memory at this point so there are lots of combos you can try on them - I listed two above that I’ve used.
  
• You can either go the safe route and whittle down the main guy you’re fighting over time, or you could do the opposite and try to do a ton of burst damage to him to defeat him as quickly as possible.
  
• As you beat them, the team-abilities get slightly more complex (even though they are doing the same 3 or 4 attacks, they start to mix up which attacks each of them are doing).
  
• You can usually tell what they are going to do based on what position they go to (like if they land on the sides of the arena they are going to lunge across, if they land at the top they are going to do big weapon swings while walking downward, etc).
  
• All in all, try to survive the team-attacks, and then get your damage in on the main guy while he is alone. Then repeat until you’ve defeated each guy.
  
• The Riposte instinct can be a fun challenge in this fight but I haven't beaten them with it.

Difficulty: 10/10
Area: Inner Sanctuary
Useful Instincts: [Fallen Strike + Nimble + Kinship + Damian] [Spike Dash + Double Dash + Specialist + Lord of the Fireflies]
Useful Vestiges (co-op): Echo Parry

Strategy:

• This fight has three phases, each with a bunch of attack combinations. The first phase usually only has one or two things going on max, but Phase 2 and Phase 3 get increasingly chaotic.
  
• The attacks that the enemies do are all the same in each phase, but there are more enemies doing their attacks in the latter phases, so pay attention to the attacks in the first phase so you know what to look out for later.
  
• Some attacks have audio cues that can help out a lot. Listen for the Corpse Orchard doing its red-light attack, the Oak Devil about to do its vine-grab style attack, the Eldritch Hornets “click” sound it makes before it flies at you.
  
• If you see the Queen piece attack past you, remember that it is going to come back (it attacks towards you twice).
  
• The Fallen Rider can phase in right in front of you to try to block your attack, so always be on your toes for that.
  
• The Fallen Rider also does an attack where he jumps in from the top left side - listen for the sound it makes when he appears (like a "zing-zing" sound).
  
• If you see the Corpse Orchard appear to do its red-light attack, pick a direction away from everything and start running that way - you don't want to be near anything when you have to stand still.
  
• This fight is pretty hard. The Source enemy moves around pretty fast, so you have to be chasing it down - so I suggest some sort of movement-helping instincts like Fallen Strike, or Double Dash, etc.
  
• I wrote two instinct builds up above that I beat it with.
  
• The first one uses Fallen Strike to stay on top of the Source, and you can keep chaining between Fallen Strike and critical hit attacks with Nimble.
  
• The second build is interesting and uses Spike Dash and a ton of wisps and wisp regen. It takes a lot longer to win, but you have a ton of dashes to use to avoid attacks, so you can play it safe and whittle the enemy down over time. If you try that build, make sure you dont just spam the dash button or else it sometimes won’t work, I think if you press dash too fast it might not trigger Double Dash.

If you have any other tips let me know and I'll add them.