Being a Phantom for the Four Kings

This is intended for newer players who might not understand how to properly phantom before and/or after you get to the boss.  I've summoned a few players who obviously went down to New Londo, just for the sake of going down there.

Things to consider:

1-  You must have killed Sif in order to enter the boss fight.  Otherwise, there is no way to drop down and not die without the ring Sif gives you.  Most important consideration.

2- No one is there to farm ghosts.  MOST of the time, not all, but most of the time the host will take the short cut by dropping off the edge by the first 2 ghosts.  You have to drain the water in order to even be able to summon  someone.  So while trying to be a phantom that helps the host through the board is admirable, it's unnecessary 99% of the time.

3-  Use a transient curse when the host is ready to leave the blacksmith area.  They last a long time, and its not something you want as a buff going into the fight.  There are however, 3 ghosts near the boss fog that should be killed.  If you wait to use the TC at that time, you'll have a much longer duration until you can use a buff appropriate for the 4 Kings fight.

4-  Do not engage the Darkwraiths and the 3 ghosts by the fog door at the same time.  Sure, if it's not a new game, it's not that big of a deal, but after that it can be very problematic.  Also, a lot of people doing speed runs do not even summon anyone for the first play through.

5-  Go into the fight assuming its a new game or a + version.  Right now I'm at sl 47 and trying to platinum before I hit 55 (my forum event character).  I've seen people dual wielding the furysword trying to parry the dark wraiths (unsuccessfully), people run in and fight the 2 dark wraiths and 3 ghosts by the fog door getting obliterated, etcetcetc.  Don't assume because your at a lower soul level that it's the original play through.

6- Just needs restated: Don't be a phantom without the Abyss Ring...just don't do it.  I've had to homeward bone out a dozen times because of this.  I have 70 some soft humanity, and would prefer to keep them.  I'm human and make mistakes, what can I say.

Thank you for reading, maaal.

PS-Feel free to add something I've forgotten.  I'll put it into the op.

PSS-This really isn't about specific techniques to fight the boss.  There's plenty of info on that.

PSSS-Good Luck Soulers.

That's a pretty good guide.  My only comment would be that the color scheme for your numbering i.e. "4) " seemed to confuse my eyes.  


The colors look like I'm reading a 3D comic book without the glasses


Well done sir

I've had a few summons messaging me that I shouldn't heal them because they used a red tearstone ring. This is very frustrating if you're the host (and even more when you have an extra summon. If the RTSR phantom dies, you're stuck with a more troublesome boss. If you can't heal, you might die and waste a humanity/time. 
Just don't do it, not with this boss. :razz:

Q: isn't it correct notation to write:
PS
PPS
PPSS

This song is mandatory: (Video NSFW, song is)





Also, this is one boss fight where you do not mess around; get in, get them killed. Get out. Don't do anything fancy, don't take turns. Just kill it.

It's probably never a good idea to use a RTSR as a phantom. You simply cannot assume that the host will never need to heal. It's better to use Power Within. Bring a seance ring if needed.

As for the PS thing: It stands for Post-Scriptum, which is Latin for 'After Written' or something like that. You can add 'Post' (=after) as often as you want, to indicate that it's after something that is after something else, etc. You can't add 'Scriptum', that doesn't make any sense.

Good read, I probably need to keep tip number 5 and 6 in mind.

skarekrow13 wrote:That's a pretty good guide.  My only comment would be that the color scheme for your numbering i.e. "4) " seemed to confuse my eyes.  


The colors look like I'm reading a 3D comic book without the glasses


Well done sir

Tyvm Skare, and fixing......

WaffleGuy wrote:I've had a few summons messaging me that I shouldn't heal them because they used a red tearstone ring. This is very frustrating if you're the host (and even more when you have an extra summon. If the RTSR phantom dies, you're stuck with a more troublesome boss. If you can't heal, you might die and waste a humanity/time.
Just don't do it, not with this boss. :razz:

Elifia wrote:................It's probably never a good idea to use a RTSR as a phantom. You simply cannot assume that the host will never need to heal. It's better to use Power Within. Bring a seance ring if needed...........

Thank you Waffle  and Elifia.  Very good contributions.  I’ll add it to the op.

@Slarg

Thread has a theme song….<3

@drdrack

Glad I could help.

@grammer

Idk man.  I don't really care about grammer on the internet.  The only thing that bugs me is.....ugh....."swag".....

Sorry Animaaal.  I didn't mean you should fix it.  It was a pretty neat effect all things considered.  It took me a minute to realize what was going on and why it looked off.

It's not very different from usual phantom play aside from making sure you have the CoA.

You follow the host, avoid doing anything rash that deals you a lot of damage, and take things on/kill them to make life easier for the host (#1 priority is to keep host alive, if he dies your run ends.  #2 priority is avoiding damage/death yourself.  #3 priority is killing the boss.  Everything else is secondary to these 3.).

Then, you go into the boss fight trying to do as much damage as possible w/o needing flasks every 3 seconds.  No reason to hold back in a 4kings fight with their buffed HP.

Also, don't use a homeward bone.  Just quit.  No animation, faster, and when you reload, you're outside the fog door.

skarekrow13 wrote:Sorry Animaaal.  I didn't mean you should fix it.  It was a pretty neat effect all things considered.  It took me a minute to realize what was going on and why it looked off.

My pleasure ol’ man.  I was just trying to treat my elders with respect and cater to your poor ol eyes.

Shhhh:

IV_Mark_VI wrote:Also, don't use a homeward bone.  Just quit.  No animation, faster, and when you reload, you're outside the fog door.

NOW ya tell me…..thnx……

:

Erm... Homeward Bone costs either 300 or 500 souls. A TC costs 1,000 souls. If you quit and reload outside the fog gate, you could use a TC and trudge all the way back to the start of the level (granted everything is dead for your next run), or homeward bone to the bonfire to repair and start over.

If you don't have a homeward bone 'hot keyed', it would be faster to quit than to find it to use it.

If you quit/reload, all the enemies you've killed stay dead.  Also, there's jagged ghost blade, or equipping gold ring and beating up a bunch of ghosts to get back your TC (as you need a ring slot for CoA ring).  I rarely, rarely buy a TC.  I think I only ran out my first playthrough.

You also don't get any flasks, health or anything else back.  The boss gets their health bar filled.

Iv done this run a zillion times and it has to be one of the most random. Sometimes everything goes like clockwork, other times complete disaster within moments.
On one run I’ll be a rolling master; next time I get hit every single swing =P

My thoughts:

Never EVER count on the host to take out the ghosts.
Almost every single time I try for a double buff (Power Within and Cristal Weapon) run without using transient curse the host seems to be doing the same thing (or is mysteriously out of transient curses).

Be ready to pull the extra King.
Sometimes the host and/or the other summon does not notice when another King shows up. Be ready to get the King's attention and get him away from the group while the rest of the team beat down the weak King.

Don’t count on a healing.
If I go in without the heal spell or a humanity… the host always turns out to be slow on the flasks. ESPECUALY if I’m using power within.

Don’t stand behind a King?
It may just be me, but whenever the King ends up facing away from me, I get hit with the backswing on the horizontal sword swipes.

To hit or not to hit?
The one thing I’m not sure on is if it is a good idea to beat down a King while its soul sucking the host.
It causes damage to the main life, but not the Kings individual life… So it tends to cause a 2nd king to show up with the 1st king still an semi high life.

The King's spawn on a timer, so it's always worthwhile to dish as much damage as phantomly possible while someone is getting soul sucked. Even though that king's health isn't going down, if you do enough damage you can limit the fight to 3 kings or even 2 if you're capable of doing insane damage (Crown BDCR 50int tcc dark beads work well unsurprisingly)

Try as I might I've never been able to get just 1 king. 2 is the best I've gotten. Though I was able to "One shot" the Kings by waiting for 3 kings to be spawned at once then unleashing an RTSR Crown boosted Chaos Storm. Quite silly if you ask me

Jansports wrote:The King's spawn on a timer, so it's always worthwhile to dish as much damage as phantomly possible while someone is getting soul sucked.

That is good to know.
I had always suspected it was time based, but there were some runs where it seemed they jumped in early or waaaaay late (Or more likely that I just lost track of time).

Also the way 90% of the other summons just stood there and watched the host get drained made me think I was missing something =P

I was a host for a single phantom on the Four Kings today. Before entering the fog gate i equipped full havel's armour so that I could barely move. The phantom watched me struggle to walk to the edge, but when we dropped down, he ran straight for the king.

I could only move at a slow walk towards him (healing him when necessary) and he had the first king killed before I got there. The second king killed him before I could walk to them.

Ah... I wish he would have stayed with me. SL16; ng+

Maybe it's just me, but if the Host wants to tank, the phantoms should stand off with ranged attack; or evade the swings. I did summon a magic user, but didn't want the witch. She's worthless on ng+ or above, IMO.

Green__Eagle wrote:Maybe it's just me, but if the Host wants to tank, the phantoms should stand off with ranged attack; or evade the swings. ...

When a team like that comes together it is quite the sight.

Best one was this run where I was running my super 125 STR character with +15 great club, crystal weapon, power whithin.

Other phantom was running lightweight shotel build.

Host stayed way back and lobbed in spells and healed as needed.

Kings were all down in a flash