I think its really noticable how overly difficult calvus is compared to the other bosses in the game

I get what they were going for, but for most its not fun and is just insanely difficult. The mechanics are too punishing considering they are never directly explained, since one of his attacks can insta-kill you and is borderline impossible to avoid without taking a hit .

Other boss mechanics are really fine,

Argo on his third phase draws you in for a large rapid aoe attack and can teleport to take hits in his first phase if your zoning too much

Eilus will counter with a rain of thunder arrows and use lightning if you fail to attack him on the pillars or stay too far away for his other attacks to reach

The lady in the field who’s name escapes me, since she’s mainly melee will teleport in her second phase with a downward kick to avoid zoners just mopping the floor with her

Cernyxs gimmick is that while he has low health, his attacks are relentless and aoe obscure him to make it less easy to just get a huge amount of damage off

You want to know what makes all of these bosses fine? The bosses don’t immediately kill you if you don’t decide to adhere to the mechanic. They deal damage you could avoid, but your not forced to cheese it and be perfect.

Calvus does not do that, if you fail to adhere to his interupt mechanic, he will deal at minimum 500 damage since dodging the first blast is near impossible, and at most 1500 damage very quickly.
The thing about these mechanics is that the best way to avoid the unneccesary damage is to adhere to the mechanic, interupting calvus will more often than not still punish you by forcing you to take unavoidable damage. This is because unless you use the fastest possible attacks, you’ll be left unable to move or act, especially with magic.

Since calvus can use this move repeatedly (meaning he used the potentially instakill move 3 times, aka 9 hits, atleast 3 of which are near unavoidable), it just makes you take nearly unavoidable damage. Especially when he can get himself wedged in a spot you can’t reach without using magic, which means you’ll take the hit no matter what because magic has huge end lag.

Vetex if your reading this, as unlikely as it is. Don’t take this personally, but your not fromsoft. This ain’t darksouls. The expectation of perfection requires the systems involves to function perfectly so that success is entirely dependant on player skill.

You can’t design a boss that demands near perfection, when half the systems in the game are unfinished (no potions, many weapons have unimplemented skills, no spirit weapons, everything wrong with berserker), and theres a good 20% chance the boss will wedge himself somewhere and spam his instakill explosion attack where you cant reach him.

Ps.
you gotta tone things down a bit. Hardwalling players especially considering raveanna is locked out until you finish is really discouraging to most players and are just gonna make them play something else. I understand its your vision, the thing about a singular vision is that it can be very limited and you wouldn’t notice.

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parry

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currently i would say he is a bit strong however, he is for sure not “insanely” difficult, he has enough counterplay for the average player to defeat him after a few attempts if they pay attention and figure out said counterplay.

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and this.

Parrrying brings this down to 50 per hit. Dodging may be near impossible, but I’m sure it’s at least still possible

yes but heres the thing, you gotta continually do atleast 3 consecutive perfect parries, after the endlag, and even then you still take damage no matter what. Screwing that up lands you for most atleast a third of your health.

Yeah, parrying definitely helps a lot. I do think he does deal WAY too much damage for a single hit, if you don’t know where calvus is he can easily oneshot you with that move, it should deal enough damage to punish you for not paying attention, but not wipe you out.

If I’m not mistaken parrying the first hit should also parry the follow-up ones (can’t confirm yet tho)

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I don’t think so, it just has a similar rhythm which makes it easy to parry.

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that is exactly my point, for an optional superboss. sure be as difficult as you want

this is a story boss, you are hardwalled and cant even go into ravaeena to grind as you are instakilled as soon as you do. I don’t think nearly as many people would complain about eilus or celvus if they were optional.

Id tone down eilus and calvus for the first fight, but raise their mirage fights to the state they are currently, i think thats fair.

or tone them down, and make optional bosses that are much more difficult. I don’t mind difficulty for the sake of difficulty, but this worsens the experience of playing since its a hardwall difficulty spike ontop of repeated level walls.

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Calvus definitely took a lot of trial and error for me, but I don’t think the attack you have a big problem with here is that bad to deal with.

I learned extremely quickly that “oh, I have to punish this with an attack!” And shortly thereafter also came upon the problem you encountered, that being unable to avoid damage in some cases. I just went to the most obvious solution, which was that if there was an offensive option I had to deal with somehow, then the defensive options provided to me also should be enough.
In most cases, I:
–Tried to make some distance before shooting a projectile to interrupt the charge.
–As my endlag wears off, dash forwards and block, with good enough timing, get a parry to reduce the initial damage even further. This becomes easier the farther away you are from the boss, as your projectile’s travel time increases.

This seems like a pretty solid way to handle it, and seemed relatively intuitive at the time, but I can understand that I might have gone through some mental gymnastics to reach it. That said, this still doesn’t seem like the Definitive Killer And Bad Mechanic you make it out to be.

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and you do have a point but i think in general this should be toned back so many players who are running into issues with just getting past this point can continue with the story

i think between players giving up on the game because it seems impossible, and just toning it down so more people can continue with the story, id rather they just tone it down and provide a way to fight a more difficult version.

It is a massive difficulty spike.

just don’t let him charge his one shot move, go hit him that Rama X wannabe

That’s true. This style of boss where you just run in repeatedly in order to learn might not be everyone’s cup of tea, especially with how streamlined the story missions tend to be.

I think the boss design as it is is a good idea, but maybe offer something in the way of tips or advice to make the fight easier if the player doesn’t catch on after X amount of restarts, or simply reduce the stats of the boss if it takes too long to beat.
and yeah you have a point, difficulty spike is an understatement, the man uses what I can only assume to be mcdonalds aether lightning

it doesnt however the parry brings it down to ~35 while the 2 blocks after do 50

calvus doesnt need to be easier
other bosses need to be harder

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If you stay in the air when he gets hit the explosion wont hit you

Honestly after a while of fighting him, I never get the 500 Death Pillars as much or none of them at all. IMO you also don’t need perfect parrying to fight him. I think the second phase blast barrage is more annoying than his death pillars

Despite all this, I do think bosses need some tuning, specifically Carina. I’d say she needs some buffs to make her not forgettable, along with setting an expectation for Calvus

Actually, after watching a couple king calvus guides, I think I probably understand how to beat him. Also I got him glitched somehow so ez

Carina was just annoying because she kept flying around.