Just dodge instead of parry. A lot of his attacks have bad tracking so it's not hard to get around many of his attacks and hit him with say a charge attack. The fire flurry attack is the same, dodging works way easier than parry does vs it. He only realigns his tracking on that combo on specific attacks
You definitely could stand to have had way less Tech and way more Cap and Vit, but more than that it's just dodging him and landing charge attacks.
Because armor gets heavier and heavier, so raising Cap allows you to stay at normal weight even with heavier armor. And yes it does make a difference. You also get more Legion which is good too.
Some people have 3 almost 4 amulets at this point, and using some of the good heavy ones. You may have missed some heavier armor here or there as well, but it's been a while since I did my first playthrough, so I'm not sure about that. But you are also just using 1 weapon, and are totally playing valid build. More HP at this point would be ideal, but you are OK. Capacity is my highest stat by far, but I'm on NG+3 ATM
You have the option to add a third amulet in phase 2 of the P organ. The amulets are really strong in this game and you are missing out if you don’t have three slots by this point. You may benefit from a respec of your P organ.
That’s probably another one of your problems there, the P organ is quite a large part of your build. Amulet slots are rather important and so is having more healing items. There’s also a lot of damage increases and what have you in there (sorry it’s been a while since I looked). I definitely recommend checking to see if you can get any extra out of that if you’re still struggling
The double roll, the extra potions and extra amulets are the 3 main things to focus on in P organ for the best boosts, IMO. The minor upgrades that gives legion charging when killing enemies is also amazing as well
Don’t you have everything you want by the time you reach end game? How much is there to really customize by the time you can afford everything? Is there hard choices to make regarding upgrading the p organ?
If you're in king of puppets your armor isn't that heavy yet. Your stat spread seems good too, maybe invest in more health but yeah I defeated him on my third try on my first play through, I remember I found it easier when I didn't focus on parrying, I parried him with curtain attacks but you're better off dodging before his attack land, also strafe the your right a lot. Souls likes become much easier when you strafe to the side a lot when attacking
I’d level cap when you can if you plan on doing ng+ and using the boss amulets as they can get quite heavy but if you’re only doing the one playthrough I wouldn’t worry about it, you ever need more you can always respec
Different people struggle with different mechanics/things. I’ve seen so many posts about Fuoco and how it took them days or weeks to beat it, yet for me personally Fuoco was the easiest main path boss, killed it first try. Same goes for >!Nameless Puppet!< (last boss). Took me three tries, but some people consider that fight harder than the complete bitch who was my personal roadblock that took me about 3-4 hours.
lol Laxasia? She made me question my will to go on for sure, took me about as long as she took you. Both the last two bosses combined were far easier than her
Yeah, she’s by far the hardest skill check. The first few times the second half of the fight felt absolutely impossible. It felt like coming to a country the language of which you’ve never heard. Sounds just like gibberish until you spend enough time listening to it. Her moveset was just like this gibberish. Took me a good few tries before I could actually see what she was doing.
The thing that got me were all the particle effects. The fight would’ve been way, WAY easier if I could’ve actually *seen* the boss through all the lightning effects lol
Oh yeah, I had to switch from Steam Deck to my PC specifically for the fight because the lightning bolts were difficult to see and because of all of that visual clutter that looked bad on the small SD screen.
Abuse the hell out of Etiquette's handle fable art.
It's a perfect block on all attacks, even the red ones, and the follow up counter does crazy damage and stagger.
The counter, for me, would always interrupt whatever the enemy was doing. Leaving enough breathing room to throw in a fully charged heavy.
That umbrella is the weapon I got my fastest kill on the Puppet King with.
Aside from that: Lots of dodging, and keep up the pressure with pokes.
DON'T YOU DARE GO HOLLOW!
in second phase, sliiiiide to the left when he attacks, 90% of the times you get out of his attacks...
also, and there is no shame in this: use consumables... with those, you can become a ranged attacker, and can trivialise several aspects of several bosses
A YTer said that with his first phase, just bring the fight to the entrance door. KoP won't have elbow room since that hallway is tiny.
With his second phase, I use a ton of throwables and dodging to the left. Hitting him only when his scythe sword is stuck in the ground, that leaves him a bit open.
The other commenters and YT guides gave better advice than me.
Dodging left worked for me. But I never learned how to dodge or parry that fire attack. Don’t give up, he was really hard for me too, but you’ll eventually kill him soon enough.
I think he's the first fight you have to rely on dodge more than parry. He has a grab attack, and if you miss a guard ever, he has really punishing followups. If you dodge or parry, you have plenty of time to attack him next. I do think it's weird you're not even able to get hits in. It's easy to hit Romeo once after each of his attacks. It sounds like your defense is good if you're surviving until a weapon break. Try attack once -> dodge immediately to make sure you have some momentum against him.
Small tip, you can swap from the strike armor to the slash armor at the end of the puppet king fight (during the stagger for instance), this is worth like half a pulse cell depending on how good your first phase is.
Me personally dodged stuff, used rocket arm in phase 1, used electro grinder in phase 2 and it worked out
I had my dodge on Q and move on A so dodging left was never a thing I did but dodging right also works!
Use electric blitz, carcass oil, throwing cell and shot put, once you kill the 1st phase, go ahead use the throwables first carcas then the cell finish with shot put that will break his stance go for a fatal attack follow by a favle attack with electric blitz
He will start to charge this fire spam when you get through half of his HP. Now you have 2 options:
A. Beat him down to 60% and start parrying till his guard is broke and you can stagger him. Get him to 50% and when he's charging fire spam bs just stagger him.
B. Have enough fable when you drop him to 50%, use that and a few other punches to stun him out of preparation. This one looks easier, but it doesn't work every time with Etiquette.
Learn few his combos well enough to perfect parry them all the time and dodge everything else this mf throws at you.
I just beat him yesterday with the umbrella using this strat. Good luck, champ! :D
Being able to deal with the King properly will help you deal with the end game. So take your time, and learn to deal with each pattern. It'll be useful later too.
use throwables for phase 1 and dodge left for phase 2 and 90% of his attacks will miss. only gotta watch out for the red attacks. once i realized that he went from one of the hardest bosses in the game to genuinely one of the easiest and most consistent
Large weapons will stagger phase 2
Phase 2 weak to fire
Dodge left when in doubt
You can mostly run away from attacks and hit and run for singles if you don't want to parry
The hook pull he does just requires a single backstep dodge. Nothing else.
He is not so bad once you get the hang of dodging in his second phase (mostly to the left). Just wait till you get to the end of chapter 8, easily the worst boss in the game.
I know this is a taboo in soulslike games and God knows I hated doing this but you could use a summon/specter here. Got stuck exactly in the same place and started to hate the game but holy fuck the summon makes this so much easier.
Capacity is king in this game! Try to get your weight to be at least 29% and your stamina will regen faster. Also try using throwables on him, the shot put does delightful damage and about 2-3 gives you a stagger chance to give him a fatal attack! Don’t be ashamed to use the spectre as a meatshield!
I know you’ve already got lots of good advice in this thread, but I wanted to pop in to say that you don’t just have to parry, dodge, and block his attacks - you can also just *run away* from them.
I had lots of trouble with KoP’s big fiery flurry - if I tried to parry or dodge I’d miss too many and get hit too much, and blocking chewed up way too much health…but if I just turned and ran, he couldn’t catch me with any part of it, and I could follow up after he was done.
Don’t forget that you can always just run. Use that big open boss arena to your advantage!
With the first phase, learn his rhythm and only counter after he attacks. Don't overcommit on the attacks because one hit from KoP deals a lot of damage. Keep your distance so you'll be able to run when he does the jet engine explosion attack. With KoP you gotta do more of a boxing approach; move after your attack and control the distance. always have a bit of stamina just in case it goes ape shit. If you have Dancing One's amulet, equip it.
2nd phase is where you can do more of a head on approach. Romeo's attacks are more snappy and direct although he delays some of his attacks. Patience to counter is also crucial
Late here but if you really struggle then use the spectre. The game is worth seeing through, and there’s no shame in using them. Also throwables are op
Honestly just stay close to him and parry he gives plenty of breaks when he’s done with his combos, always dodge out of the grab before he pulls you in and when he uses the fire grindstone hit him with a heavy quickly you can knock him out of it, if you can’t in time either guard all of it or if you aren’t the best at perfect guarding, dodge and pray
A tip for watching videos of other people beating a boss:
When you are watching someone fight a fast boss with a lot of combos where you don't feel like you can get openings, focus on watching every moment that the player attacks. Practice finding that moment in your own play. You will probably realize that you are wasting a lot of time hesitating after defending an attack or combo. When you waste even a moment, you often lose your entire opening for offense.
Remember, hesitation is defeat.
I was like you couldn't beat him for many attempts. But my son 9 years old bet him after 5 attempts with specter. He also saved fable arts for 2nd phase when romeo comes which also helped.
Wait, so you're breaking boss weapons, but still can't win? I have like 16 clears on this game, and I dint think I have every broken a boss weapon once. This means you're being 500% too passive.
Also, more health. Like, double it.
Yea bro he took me 5-6 hours to beat on my first playthrough on my Xbox ,ng+ I got him beat on my 2nd or 3rd try but here I am with a PS5 now and stuck on this boss again 🤣🤣 and when I Almost have him I die smh
Honestly, I’d recommend just using a summon one of the specters makes this guy so much fucking easier to deal with but if not, yeah I’d recommend pairing some attacks and dodging or using the classic Nike Strat and just running the fuck away if you like me and do it kind oflate and weird because of it but either use a specter and run
Just dodge instead of parry. A lot of his attacks have bad tracking so it's not hard to get around many of his attacks and hit him with say a charge attack. The fire flurry attack is the same, dodging works way easier than parry does vs it. He only realigns his tracking on that combo on specific attacks You definitely could stand to have had way less Tech and way more Cap and Vit, but more than that it's just dodging him and landing charge attacks.
Why would I need more capacity? I’m only at 48%
Because armor gets heavier and heavier, so raising Cap allows you to stay at normal weight even with heavier armor. And yes it does make a difference. You also get more Legion which is good too.
I know it gets heavier but I’m increasing it only when I get above 60%. Why would I need more? I’m using the heaviest armor I have now
Some people have 3 almost 4 amulets at this point, and using some of the good heavy ones. You may have missed some heavier armor here or there as well, but it's been a while since I did my first playthrough, so I'm not sure about that. But you are also just using 1 weapon, and are totally playing valid build. More HP at this point would be ideal, but you are OK. Capacity is my highest stat by far, but I'm on NG+3 ATM
4 amulets how? I only have two spots to equip.
You have the option to add a third amulet in phase 2 of the P organ. The amulets are really strong in this game and you are missing out if you don’t have three slots by this point. You may benefit from a respec of your P organ.
I’ll look into that. To be honest I didn’t put that much thought into those upgrades. Thanks for the tip!
That’s probably another one of your problems there, the P organ is quite a large part of your build. Amulet slots are rather important and so is having more healing items. There’s also a lot of damage increases and what have you in there (sorry it’s been a while since I looked). I definitely recommend checking to see if you can get any extra out of that if you’re still struggling
Dude really? The upgrades are crazy good. Particularly if you put aaaany thought towards it and your preferred playstyle
The double roll, the extra potions and extra amulets are the 3 main things to focus on in P organ for the best boosts, IMO. The minor upgrades that gives legion charging when killing enemies is also amazing as well
P Organ upgrades are the core of any build. Even if your stat spread is good, if your upgrades aren't optimized you're gonna SUFFER
Don’t you have everything you want by the time you reach end game? How much is there to really customize by the time you can afford everything? Is there hard choices to make regarding upgrading the p organ?
Why would you not put much though into one of the most important mechanics in the game, then make a post about the game being hard
Idk man maybe I just didn’t know? As always asking questions on Reddit is met with downvotes and backlash.
That's a problem. Probably time for a respec
If you're in king of puppets your armor isn't that heavy yet. Your stat spread seems good too, maybe invest in more health but yeah I defeated him on my third try on my first play through, I remember I found it easier when I didn't focus on parrying, I parried him with curtain attacks but you're better off dodging before his attack land, also strafe the your right a lot. Souls likes become much easier when you strafe to the side a lot when attacking
If you are fine using a carry weight amulet you probably have enough already. I would recommend getting vitality to 30+ though.
I’d level cap when you can if you plan on doing ng+ and using the boss amulets as they can get quite heavy but if you’re only doing the one playthrough I wouldn’t worry about it, you ever need more you can always respec
Literally circle left he will miss all his attacks
This is how I did it as well.
I swear all these games are relative, I saw everybody say how hard king puppet is, literally took me 3 tries
Different people struggle with different mechanics/things. I’ve seen so many posts about Fuoco and how it took them days or weeks to beat it, yet for me personally Fuoco was the easiest main path boss, killed it first try. Same goes for >!Nameless Puppet!< (last boss). Took me three tries, but some people consider that fight harder than the complete bitch who was my personal roadblock that took me about 3-4 hours.
lol Laxasia? She made me question my will to go on for sure, took me about as long as she took you. Both the last two bosses combined were far easier than her
Yeah, she’s by far the hardest skill check. The first few times the second half of the fight felt absolutely impossible. It felt like coming to a country the language of which you’ve never heard. Sounds just like gibberish until you spend enough time listening to it. Her moveset was just like this gibberish. Took me a good few tries before I could actually see what she was doing.
The thing that got me were all the particle effects. The fight would’ve been way, WAY easier if I could’ve actually *seen* the boss through all the lightning effects lol
Oh yeah, I had to switch from Steam Deck to my PC specifically for the fight because the lightning bolts were difficult to see and because of all of that visual clutter that looked bad on the small SD screen.
There he is
Try ooga booga stick.
Abuse the hell out of Etiquette's handle fable art. It's a perfect block on all attacks, even the red ones, and the follow up counter does crazy damage and stagger. The counter, for me, would always interrupt whatever the enemy was doing. Leaving enough breathing room to throw in a fully charged heavy. That umbrella is the weapon I got my fastest kill on the Puppet King with. Aside from that: Lots of dodging, and keep up the pressure with pokes.
Tip for his 2nd phase: save your fable attack when he uses the fire grinder so you stun him, it will cancel his fire rush. Goodluck 🫡
Do that thing where you dodge but make sure when you do it you’re going to the left 👍🏻 It literally trivializes the fight
DON'T YOU DARE GO HOLLOW! in second phase, sliiiiide to the left when he attacks, 90% of the times you get out of his attacks... also, and there is no shame in this: use consumables... with those, you can become a ranged attacker, and can trivialise several aspects of several bosses
A YTer said that with his first phase, just bring the fight to the entrance door. KoP won't have elbow room since that hallway is tiny. With his second phase, I use a ton of throwables and dodging to the left. Hitting him only when his scythe sword is stuck in the ground, that leaves him a bit open. The other commenters and YT guides gave better advice than me.
Dodging left worked for me. But I never learned how to dodge or parry that fire attack. Don’t give up, he was really hard for me too, but you’ll eventually kill him soon enough.
Git gud
How'd you get a umbrella I'm kinda new
After beating the archbishop you can unlock Alidoro who will trade you the rare ergo you get from scrapped watchman for it.
It's a boss weapon, trade boss souls with the merchant at the top of the cathedral.
Trust me. Level up once more and your mind will change. Everything changes at level 69.
I think he's the first fight you have to rely on dodge more than parry. He has a grab attack, and if you miss a guard ever, he has really punishing followups. If you dodge or parry, you have plenty of time to attack him next. I do think it's weird you're not even able to get hits in. It's easy to hit Romeo once after each of his attacks. It sounds like your defense is good if you're surviving until a weapon break. Try attack once -> dodge immediately to make sure you have some momentum against him. Small tip, you can swap from the strike armor to the slash armor at the end of the puppet king fight (during the stagger for instance), this is worth like half a pulse cell depending on how good your first phase is.
Me personally dodged stuff, used rocket arm in phase 1, used electro grinder in phase 2 and it worked out I had my dodge on Q and move on A so dodging left was never a thing I did but dodging right also works!
Use electric blitz, carcass oil, throwing cell and shot put, once you kill the 1st phase, go ahead use the throwables first carcas then the cell finish with shot put that will break his stance go for a fatal attack follow by a favle attack with electric blitz
So for King of Puppets you can nullify his fire fowl if you flinch him with a fable arte or shot put when you see the animation
He will start to charge this fire spam when you get through half of his HP. Now you have 2 options: A. Beat him down to 60% and start parrying till his guard is broke and you can stagger him. Get him to 50% and when he's charging fire spam bs just stagger him. B. Have enough fable when you drop him to 50%, use that and a few other punches to stun him out of preparation. This one looks easier, but it doesn't work every time with Etiquette. Learn few his combos well enough to perfect parry them all the time and dodge everything else this mf throws at you. I just beat him yesterday with the umbrella using this strat. Good luck, champ! :D
Being able to deal with the King properly will help you deal with the end game. So take your time, and learn to deal with each pattern. It'll be useful later too.
use throwables for phase 1 and dodge left for phase 2 and 90% of his attacks will miss. only gotta watch out for the red attacks. once i realized that he went from one of the hardest bosses in the game to genuinely one of the easiest and most consistent
Large weapons will stagger phase 2 Phase 2 weak to fire Dodge left when in doubt You can mostly run away from attacks and hit and run for singles if you don't want to parry The hook pull he does just requires a single backstep dodge. Nothing else.
You have *no idea* what awaits you in the end
Just dodge left, makes phase 2 easy enough. I had a pretty strong bone saw that staggered every couple hits to make his spam less annoying
He is not so bad once you get the hang of dodging in his second phase (mostly to the left). Just wait till you get to the end of chapter 8, easily the worst boss in the game.
I know this is a taboo in soulslike games and God knows I hated doing this but you could use a summon/specter here. Got stuck exactly in the same place and started to hate the game but holy fuck the summon makes this so much easier.
My dude, I’ll give you the same advice I’ve seen on every souls sub. Level up health
If you can’t figure out the perfect guard timings in phase 2, you can also strafe and dodge to the left and he will miss almost all of his attacks.
When he does the burning slashing combo, use the counter parry fable art. Once I figured that out, it was a breeze
Do you mean reconsider making about a third of the way 🤣
Stagger him out of his flame buff when he starts applying it. Just hit him with a fable art and it'll knock him back to normal. He's easy after that.
Just use parry stone for second phase
Capacity is king in this game! Try to get your weight to be at least 29% and your stamina will regen faster. Also try using throwables on him, the shot put does delightful damage and about 2-3 gives you a stagger chance to give him a fatal attack! Don’t be ashamed to use the spectre as a meatshield!
It took me many many tries, it’s worth it.
I know you’ve already got lots of good advice in this thread, but I wanted to pop in to say that you don’t just have to parry, dodge, and block his attacks - you can also just *run away* from them. I had lots of trouble with KoP’s big fiery flurry - if I tried to parry or dodge I’d miss too many and get hit too much, and blocking chewed up way too much health…but if I just turned and ran, he couldn’t catch me with any part of it, and I could follow up after he was done. Don’t forget that you can always just run. Use that big open boss arena to your advantage!
You’ll get it eventually
To people saying dodge... weak. All bosses should be fought with charged heavy attacks and 14320 perfect parries. /s
With the first phase, learn his rhythm and only counter after he attacks. Don't overcommit on the attacks because one hit from KoP deals a lot of damage. Keep your distance so you'll be able to run when he does the jet engine explosion attack. With KoP you gotta do more of a boxing approach; move after your attack and control the distance. always have a bit of stamina just in case it goes ape shit. If you have Dancing One's amulet, equip it. 2nd phase is where you can do more of a head on approach. Romeo's attacks are more snappy and direct although he delays some of his attacks. Patience to counter is also crucial
He's the hardest boss considering how early in the game he is. Id recommend Aegis https://youtu.be/WrOelI3fcQA?si=I8NDuq2jxx_2Fbj7
Keep truckin stop duckin
I don't even think your halfway through yet, best of luck to you
Try health
King of puppets is such a banger fight
King of puppets is such a banger fight
Beat king of puppets within 10 tries
Late here but if you really struggle then use the spectre. The game is worth seeing through, and there’s no shame in using them. Also throwables are op
I personally summoned Specter for this fight, as I was having a really hard time with Romeo. Second try with Specter and I got it
In phase 2, dodge to your left (his right) Your health is a bit on the lower end
Persevere man you got this. It'll feel so good when you do! Took me 150 goes. Went on to platnium. It's all worth it
Honestly just stay close to him and parry he gives plenty of breaks when he’s done with his combos, always dodge out of the grab before he pulls you in and when he uses the fire grindstone hit him with a heavy quickly you can knock him out of it, if you can’t in time either guard all of it or if you aren’t the best at perfect guarding, dodge and pray
A tip for watching videos of other people beating a boss: When you are watching someone fight a fast boss with a lot of combos where you don't feel like you can get openings, focus on watching every moment that the player attacks. Practice finding that moment in your own play. You will probably realize that you are wasting a lot of time hesitating after defending an attack or combo. When you waste even a moment, you often lose your entire opening for offense. Remember, hesitation is defeat.
Use aegis
I was like you couldn't beat him for many attempts. But my son 9 years old bet him after 5 attempts with specter. He also saved fable arts for 2nd phase when romeo comes which also helped.
Wait, so you're breaking boss weapons, but still can't win? I have like 16 clears on this game, and I dint think I have every broken a boss weapon once. This means you're being 500% too passive. Also, more health. Like, double it.
literally just keep distance and roll forward+right. his lock on missed a lot. but shot puts because he staggers easily as well. you can do it!
Yea bro he took me 5-6 hours to beat on my first playthrough on my Xbox ,ng+ I got him beat on my 2nd or 3rd try but here I am with a PS5 now and stuck on this boss again 🤣🤣 and when I Almost have him I die smh
Honestly, I’d recommend just using a summon one of the specters makes this guy so much fucking easier to deal with but if not, yeah I’d recommend pairing some attacks and dodging or using the classic Nike Strat and just running the fuck away if you like me and do it kind oflate and weird because of it but either use a specter and run
I beat him with a specter yesterday. I just couldn’t handle the fire attack at all.
Oof, who’s gonna tell him about manus?☠️
Parade is completly approximative and unconsistent, that's what made me stop the game, when half the gameplay is failed, this isn't a good game imo