Improving Bosses

After playing your first playthrough of Dark Souls, the bosses get pretty monotonous. A few of the bosses really aren't even that hard for the first time around, and are even less impressive fighting them a second time. I feel as if many of the boss encounters could have been greatly improved making them tougher.

Here were a few ideas which would have ratcheted up the difficulty that I would have loved. Obviously many of these couldn't actually be in the game for making it an amazing feat to beat any boss, but these are just some random musings.

Asylum Demon
Two demons at the same time. It would be a vastly more interesting fight for those starting a new game for the twentieth time.

Bell Gargoyles
Two Bell gargoyles? Why not all four?

Capra Demon
Nothing. This guys hard, mainly because of the dogs. Maybe if the dogs were eliminated they could respawn after a bit, that would be tough.

Ceaseless Discharge
Maybe take away trick. Man that would be tough.

Centipede Demon
I always beat this guy first time around, so I don't have a huge idea on how to improve him. Maybe make the lava and platforms shift, so you have to move from area to area and platform to platform while fighting him.

Que-laag
Seems ok to me.

Priscilla
I'm not sure, because I've had playthroughs where I am continually one hitted while she was invisible, and plenty where I don't die once. Perhaps making her a bit quicker to go invisible when you are getting hits in.

Gwyndolin
No pillars.

Demon Firesage
Seemed reasonable, if not easy, could add extra enemies in the area such as statues, but that might then become too hard since you really need to watch your distance from his AoE attack.

Four Kings
Faster spawning? with perhaps the ability for more than one to attack you even if you are near another. Although it is pretty hard as is already.

Gaping Dragon
I don't even know. It's just so easy.
Whatever, put curse frogs everywhere, that would piss people off.

Sif
I like Sif, but once you get his attacks down he isn't particularly tough. I don't exactly see away to change Sif to make him tougher though.

Gwyn
No parry.

Iron Golem
Give him unlimited health, allow him to get back up from his crouch faster if you don't deal enough damage, and make you use his raged attack more frequently. Force players to have to knock him off the edge.

Moonlight Butterfly
Hated this fight. It's just alot of dodging. Unless you get Beatrice, then it's cake. No idea how it could be changed.

Nito
Continually spawn skeletons, so that even if you have a divine weapon, you would still continually contend with skeletons. This way you could just fight Nito's very predictable move set alone, but instead contend with a slowly growing skeletal horde.

Ornestein & Smough
Already really hard, maybe make the pillars completely destructible after you take down the first boss so that you can't continue to hide behind their pedestals.

Pinwheel
Skeleton babies, everywhere.

Seath
Dunno, can't think of a way not to make it less of a lame fight. The tail cut off is still tough though.

Stray Demon
So confined and imposing that you really couldn't do anything more. Apparently it pisses people off a ton as is. Never saw it as very hard.

Taurus
Maybe spawn undead hollows on either side of the bridge. Something to keep you on your toes like that.

The Bed Of Chaos
Personally my least favorite fight, since it isn't a fight, but rather an extended platforming section, during which you need to continually run back to the boss if you miss. Perhaps some actual combat would be cool, such as having to fight capra demons while all this fire was going on, since the bed of chaos is the source of these demons.

For Sif I'd say make the attacks faster and add some arena-dash attacks like ornstein's

cloudyeki wrote:For Sif I'd say make the attacks faster and add some arena-dash attacks like ornstein's

That probably would have helped the fight in general, since it was so easy to cheese Sif as he was since he only had melee attacks. Also there was no pressure since you could always back pedal away from him if you had a strong enough shield and weight until he did a specific attack that you knew you could beat.

But on the other hand, I was more considering what could be done that didn't need to inherently change the game and it's animation and models. But still that would have been a breath of fresh air for Sif

For sif you could give him a stomp and a tail whip because thats the main spot that people stand

To be honest in my opinion for Pinwheel, doubling his health would be sufficient. He's not meant to be a late-game boss but he is too weak, however his attacks are actually pretty powerful. If you gave him more health so his attacks and clones could actually take effect properly, he'd be more of a challenge.

If gwyn was without parry, it would be problem solved in my opinion, then again it would just make it like all Demon's bosses which you can beat by using obstructions and just range attacking their *** to death but Ce la vie.

Seath... lets be honest the reason it's a lame fight is because there's no movement.. Give him legs and then we're talking.

Sif is fairly good as is, though I'd make him a bit smaller but faster. In my opinion there is a lack of speedy bosses to mix it up from the usual colossal giants you encounter in your travels, and Sif had the potential to be so.

Any early game bosses in my opinion should be left. If you were a total souls newbie, you'd understand the hellishness of Taurus, Gargoyles and Capra, in my opinion even capra is one of the better thought out bosses on the game, maybe have 2nd gargoyle spawn with full health would be reasonable?

Bed of chaos: Implement the idea they had but didnt have time/resources to, I respect FROM's probable judgement on that one, and it's lame they were unable to put in what they wanted with him.

Nito: All attacks inflict toxic, Miasma of Death inflicts acid damage to equipment, also I think he needs more attacks.

Four Kings: Make their grab Allant's level reducing grab, lets be honest it's almost the same move, more poise damage by them so tanking does not reduce the battle to simplicity.

Gaping: I'm lost for words with this guy, liked his equipment break attack but rarely uses it or is effective.. Make his attack rate faster and get rid of the ridiculous pause after the charge that I exploit every time.. Perma-channeller that doesn't soul arrow you too perhaps?

Quelaag, I think was overall great boss, only thing I think is the sword attacks can just be run under, so I think range should be more for them, make the fire on the sword bigger. I think having shields like Black knight and dragon fire available that early on ruins this boss a little to be honest though

Snorlax and Pikachu: pillars getting destroyed completely is a good idea, super smough should not grow but simply speed up a bit. Also give them some cool combo attacks

Serious_Much wrote:To be honest in my opinion for Pinwheel, doubling his health would be sufficient. He's not meant to be a late-game boss but he is too weak, however his attacks are actually pretty powerful. If you gave him more health so his attacks and clones could actually take effect properly, he'd be more of a challenge.

If gwyn was without parry, it would be problem solved in my opinion, then again it would just make it like all Demon's bosses which you can beat by using obstructions and just range attacking their *** to death but Ce la vie.

Seath... lets be honest the reason it's a lame fight is because there's no movement.. Give him legs and then we're talking.

Sif is fairly good as is, though I'd make him a bit smaller but faster. In my opinion there is a lack of speedy bosses to mix it up from the usual colossal giants you encounter in your travels, and Sif had the potential to be so.

Any early game bosses in my opinion should be left. If you were a total souls newbie, you'd understand the hellishness of Taurus, Gargoyles and Capra, in my opinion even capra is one of the better thought out bosses on the game, maybe have 2nd gargoyle spawn with full health would be reasonable?

Bed of chaos: Implement the idea they had but didnt have time/resources to, I respect FROM's probable judgement on that one, and it's lame they were unable to put in what they wanted with him.

Nito: All attacks inflict toxic, Miasma of Death inflicts acid damage to equipment, also I think he needs more attacks.

Four Kings: Make their grab Allant's level reducing grab, lets be honest it's almost the same move, more poise damage by them so tanking does not reduce the battle to simplicity.

Gaping: I'm lost for words with this guy, liked his equipment break attack but rarely uses it or is effective.. Make his attack rate faster and get rid of the ridiculous pause after the charge that I exploit every time.. Perma-channeller that doesn't soul arrow you too perhaps?

Quelaag, I think was overall great boss, only thing I think is the sword attacks can just be run under, so I think range should be more for them, make the fire on the sword bigger. I think having shields like Black knight and dragon fire available that early on ruins this boss a little to be honest though

Snorlax and Pikachu: pillars getting destroyed completely is a good idea, super smough should not grow but simply speed up a bit. Also give them some cool combo attacks

For what I said about the earlier bosses I understood would be impossible for first time players, I was thinking about more what I would have liked to see during my NG+ experience rather than simply going through the same bosses.

I still feel pinwheel, although he should have more health, if he was a boss for NG+ could have another facet like baby skeletons. Even with clones and such, if you have phantom leroy, or even if you don't, his attacks are very easy to dodge.

Nito having a ton of acid and toxic attacks would really make him a battle of attrition which would be really cool. I still feel though that skeletons should should play a bigger part, because even if he can cause status damage, all his attacks are cake to dodge.

I don't know what From original idea for bed of chaos was, could you please tell me.

I agree about making Sif much faster, there were far too many strong slow bosses.

Lastly on the gaping dragon. . .
I don't know. Even if he didn't stay stunned for so long it would just be a long battle waiting for him to be stunned. Also, I've never touched his acid, you see him start throwing up and you just run away, it wouldn't change no matter how often he did it.

Even a permanent channeler wouldn't solve the problem, because plenty of people take him down without even bothering with the first channeler.

I don't know specifics, it's just that epic name bro translating the interview that was released with the recent art book said that they had a much better idea, but they ran out of time so had to implement the slap dash approach we play on our versions.

I agree with your gaping points, like i said lost for words... Ideas too. If I'm perfectly honest I'd scrap his moveset and modify his design, I'd make him more of a drake like creature like Bridge wyvern, but with acid (digestion) being the focus of his breath attacks. I don't think that it's worth discussing changing him for NG+ when he was just poorly designed :|

Also to elaborate on seath, needs a larger boss room... Perhaps it isn't even a room perse but an area beyond the crystal caves that houses the immortality crystal in which seath tries to fly around more. Large but also mobile I would have made him personally, kinda like gargoyles kind of movement would have been good.

But ah I see, that is a really interesting idea having bosses be different on NG+, perhaps this could be a sort of story implement too if possible on the next souls game. as a concept I think that is brilliant personally buggy.

Serious_Much wrote:I don't know specifics, it's just that epic name bro translating the interview that was released with the recent art book said that they had a much better idea, but they ran out of time so had to implement the slap dash approach we play on our versions.

I agree with your gaping points, like i said lost for words... Ideas too. If I'm perfectly honest I'd scrap his moveset and modify his design, I'd make him more of a drake like creature like Bridge wyvern, but with acid (digestion) being the focus of his breath attacks. I don't think that it's worth discussing changing him for NG+ when he was just poorly designed :|

Also to elaborate on seath, needs a larger boss room... Perhaps it isn't even a room perse but an area beyond the crystal caves that houses the immortality crystal in which seath tries to fly around more. Large but also mobile I would have made him personally, kinda like gargoyles kind of movement would have been good.

But ah I see, that is a really interesting idea having bosses be different on NG+, perhaps this could be a sort of story implement too if possible on the next souls game. as a concept I think that is brilliant personally buggy.

Can I have a link to ENB art book video?

But yeah, gaping dragon seemed overall just poorly designed. A great horrific concept, that couldn't really be executed in any real way. Maybe if his digestion attack had a smaller AoE and then stuck around for a very long time it would be a better battle, but then still it would just be a matter of not getting stuck somewhere that he could charge and you would have to run through the acid. He was just too slow, but I think making him just a Wyvern would be a cop out, because they're tough, but that isn't really the set of a boss. Although it would have been nice to have one flying boss.

And with Seath, opening it up seemed kind of key. I know the fact that his attacks were AoE were supposed to make it hard, but he took so long to charge them that you weren't really in danger. So instead, a more mobile seath would have been interesting, especially if the crystal he shot would stick around for a bit of the battle before again disappearing.

But yeah, changing around NG+ to make it tougher in more ways than simply upping damage and health of enemies would be so much more enjoyable in my opinion. I find myself at the moment losing interest in NG+ quickly. Because if you've beaten the game you probably have a pretty good grasp of all the bosses and enemies, so NG+ is just the same thing. . . except longer drawn out boss fights.

Here you go, forget what part he talks about it at, but he also gives some facts about other things in here. It's on a whole an interesting lot of information.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXB_2QXhAwQ