Shadow of the Erdtree
The difficulty in Elden Ring’s Shadow of the Erdtree is…something. It starts off very difficult, but slowly gets easier as you get stronger, and eventually, if you keep up with Scadutree fragments, you can kill even tougher bosses in just a few tries.
Then there’s Radahn.
Shadow of the Erdtree’s final boss is not remotely balanced, far more difficult than anything you’ve encountered before. And in many ways I would argue he was tougher on my class, a wizard, magician, whatever you want to call it. A Tarnished who uses all blue spells. Because all the ‘easy’ Radahn clears I see are usually souped-up melee players with huge shields and one-hit staggers. You don’t do that with spells.
So I beat him. It took forever and a lot of trial and error for a build, but I beat it. Here’s how:
Statistics: Scadutree (19), Respected Spirit Axis (9), Strength (65), Mind (45), Endurance (35), Strength (20), Agility (40), Intelligence (85), Faith (15), Secretive (9) )
Weapons
Staff of loss – This is to buff Night Comet with 30% more damage, plus the scaling by maxing the thing out.
Magic Hook Claws with Bloodhound Step – I know Bloodhound’s Step got a nerf, and ideally you could wield two bars for more damage, but I played 150 hours of this game with it as my main dodge mechanic and for Radahn especially, I didn’t want to mess up my muscle memory timing . I just tried to roll and there was a 0% chance of beating it that way.
Shield – The highest values that still kept me on Medium load. I think this was Veteran’s armor for me.
Talismans
Cerulean Amber Medallion +3 – I noticed that having to dodge so much with Bloodhound’s Step depleted my mana for attacks, so I increased it dramatically with this.
Dragoncrest Grand Shield Talisman – Perhaps the most important as the highest physical resistance denial, which is a lot of his attacks. Without this I wouldn’t be fighting. Remove it from the original map.
Sacred Braid – Highest Holy Negation that has its charges from its attacks in its second phase. Also kind of a must for this fight. It’s located at the top right of the map in the Shaman village, accessible by emoteing O Mother at the statue near the Gaius battle.
Boltdrake Charm +3 – He doesn’t have many lightning attacks, but I thought there were enough to use it.
Physically
Opaline Bubbletear – A shield right at the start, so you can summon early and tank at least one of his first attacks, especially the thunderclap he always does right at the start.
Magical enveloping cracked tear – Even if I only activate this beforehand, I like to try to get to Phase 2 as quickly as possible by doing more damage beforehand. Getting through this phase quickly also means that your Mimic Tear may not have taken much damage.
Call up: Mimics tear. I swear to God this is the only call that can go any distance in this fight. When I won, he had survived to the end. One trick you can do here is to put Blessing of Marika in your potion rotation. Mimic Tear doesn’t use your normal potions, but sometimes it does for maximum healing. Not every time, but sometimes, allowing him to outlive you. I maxed probably five different summons to +10 ranging from high damage to tanks, nothing else even survived half of the first phase. Every summon I tried except Mimic Tear was terrible in this fight and they need to massively boost the health of all of them. I didn’t have either NPC summons because I accidentally bricked both quest lines.
Spell: Night Comet – Yes, spell, singular. This was it. Mainly it wasn’t just because I used it all the time, and it did big damage with Staff of Loss, but also because it would force your Mimic Tear to use it on its own as well. Using even other good spells results in too much variation in what the Mimic will end up using, and Night Comet does great damage to Mimic and has a very low cast time, unlike, say, throwing moons at him.
Defensive article – I only used Boiled Crab for this. I did this whole dance with Golden Vow, but I got tired of doing it before every battle and finding time to reactivate it. Managing too many consumables left me getting hit again and again. But Crab has a short eating time and you can use it between moves.
The fight
Radahn phase one – Here he only uses physical attacks or occasionally lightning and one fire move. Most annoying are his multi-hit combos where you generally just want to stay far away from him if possible so he misses most of them. Sometimes he adds a final swing at the end of this that can catch you, which is annoying.
Meteor throw – This is pretty easy to avoid once you know the timing.
Spin crash – Very easy to dodge if you see it coming and it’s not the first five seconds of the fight when you summon
Gravity – This one sucks. The timing window is so tight that many people think you can’t dodge it, but in reality you can. Eventually I realized that using the audio cue would cause me to almost automatically dodge after being caught so many times. If you get caught, immediately dodge backwards several times until the spikes stop coming out of the ground.
Fire Slash – This is not a good move. I’ve almost never been affected by this.
When damage -Almost always when his attention is on Mimic Tear, which gives you 5-6 Night Comet shots. You might be able to get one comet in after most of the dodges for individual moves, but if you get greedy, you’ll get crushed. I usually used those windows for drinks or crab.
Radahn Phase Two (75% health): Fuck this phase. This is brutal. To be honest, there is some luck involved here.
Giant light meteor shower – He almost always starts the fight with this move. If you immediately run backwards you can avoid it and have a window at the end to use some potions. Mimic Tear is an idiot and will always get hit, but at least it will keep him busy. Eventually, though, I gave up. I got as many Night Comet shots as I could and just tanked the blast, which with my holy defense was just one potion to get it back.
Rush/Slash combos – These are the bad ones. There are at least three rushing you, often shooting out extra beams of holy light to catch you. In general, dodging towards him or slightly to the right could cause him to miss frequently. The final holy AOE blast he does in many of these combos, I only dodged because I was essentially on top of him when he did it. I died more from these combos than anything else in this fight, and dodging felt like luck half the time because you can barely see what’s going on with all the holy beams everywhere.
Miquella’s kiss – This is a grab move that doesn’t hurt at first, but if Miquella charms you a second time, you automatically die. There is a rune to negate this, but I wouldn’t worry about it as the grab isn’t that difficult to dodge at least once per battle. This is actually one Good move in front of you, as Miquella will often grab your Mimic Tear, and after the animation is over, you can probably perform five or more Night Comet hits.
Ancient movements – He still does the meteor throw and the gravity pull. If you’ve reached this stage more often, you may now be able to avoid it more consistently. I would use them as potion windows.
Giants 25% Health Meteor Slam – Once he gets that low, he’ll jump into the air and probably crash to Earth five seconds later with a double AOE explosion that pretty much covers the entire arena. This will probably kill you. I thought it was impossible not to be affected by it. But when you start running right If he jumps, and doesn’t stop or hit a wall, you can get out of his range. But this can be the moment your Mimic Tear dies, unless he heals himself. From here, Radahn will go back to his normal movements and probably kill you with combos. If not, you win.
When damage – Namely, only a few times. Before the first blast is fired. After he kisses Miquella your Mimic Tear. If he goes after your Mimic Tear in general. You can risk one hit between movesets, but I don’t know if I’d bother, and I’d use it for potions. The damage windows will be there, but survival is 90% of this fight. And your Mimic Tear life is very important.
Good luck, prepare to die.
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