How to defeat every boss in Dawncaster

Hi, and welcome to "How to defeat every boss in Dawncaster" where we will defeat every boss in Dawncaster. I wrote this guide and received input from a number of users. Thanks to Violetmist, Joel, _coner, bonfar, TheWarden & Jon.

A general note for every single Dawncaster boss fight: Almost all of them have a mechanic that makes the fights “timed”. Bosses will escalate their damage or delete cards from your deck in various ways, meaning that you can’t simply turtle forever. You need to be scaling alongside them to be able to win.

Note that none of this applies to you if you’re playing a turn 1 combo build like Scorpio’s Ruin that’s designed to ignore all mechanics and do it’s own thing. These tips and hints apply to more conventional strategies.

Bosses that have revive mechanics like Empowered Hydra, Kaius or Rathael will always need to be Slain twice (or more times) to be killed.

Corrupted Tuskboar

Race against time vs. Anger. Just focus on killing him. He will outscale you. Alternatively, get two Evasion a turn.

Weeping Mother

Stun/Dazed immunity is great. Look at her sequence of cards as her Deadly Attack interrupts you. Make your turn 1 count as this is the only turn you will have without being Stunned.

The mini-game here is whether or not you open any graves. Each grave gives you a chance at a powerful card, but it gives each opponent 1 Anger per grave opened. Divine players with a Prayer card can sanctify the first grave to apply Burning to each opponent in the Canto (or anyone can sprinkle Holy Water on a grave to achieve the same effect).

Abomination

Vulnerable to afflictions, especially Burning, Brittle, Decay & Charmed (anything that kills via scaling). Watch out for his interrupt and dump your energy beforehand. Can cleanse Bleeding if that’s relevant to you. He has a multi-hit attack, meaning that he scales well with Anger from open graves.

The Pale Warden

You need to burst him before he drains your HP too many times. Evasion is nice, but wont win you the fight on its own. If you somehow can Mark him already, that's great too. He applies Vulnerable at the start of every turn, so that’s your ticking clock here.

His Entomb ability can only pin you if you have no energy, so look at what cards he will play next to keep an energy up.

The general vibe of this canto is that opponents put Spikemines into your deck and they have armour that stacks over time. You're both encourage to pass your turn and wait to defuse the mines or kill them quickly to prevent the armour getting out of control. Pick your poison.

There's a niche interaction here as the Spikemines are technically corruptions and will make you Corrupted as long as their in your deck.

If you can protect the Caravan enough, you'll get a discount on a card or even a free Tradepost, which can set you up for a great run.

Mudfang Breaker

Marked is incredible against this guy and the main boss too. Don't let this fight drag on too long. If you dont have Evasion, just face tank the hits and do as much damage as possible. Often worth passing a turn or two to have as much energy as possible to break through his armour and have enough energy left to deal real damage.

Mudfang Kingpin I (Mecha Kingpin)

He will flee the battle if you get him low enough, so he technically has less HP than it shows.

He doesn't do anything special. Keep the pressure up so that Improvised Plating doesn't stack too much armour.

If you have Headhunter, defeating him will trigger it despite him fleeing the battle, meaning you can get double Headhunter in this canto.

Mudfang Kingpin II

Spam a few surges or Blocks to get rid of his Burrowing. Dont be afraid to take mine damage, just kill him. Cloak and Dagger is phenomenal here as you can pass to cleanse the mines and then absorb the Deadly Attack with the free Evasion.

If you're struggling here, find the Merchant at the Talking Tree event and "Leave him behind". This will apply a turn 1 stun to every opponent in the rest of the Canto. The trade-off is you lose the Merchant, but can in turn gain the Illusionist at Brightcandle Inn in the next Canto.

Matriarch Daisy

Has a few nasty mechanics. She'll dispel a random Blessing of yours at the start of her turn. She will outscale you eventually with her persistent Anger gain and lifedrain. The pinning is brutal if you're running persistent cards you don’t want to play like Cloak and Dagger, so consider playing them out to free up your hand if you're about to get pinned.

Low damage/multi hit attacks are pretty bad here because of her damage debuff that scales with the amount of Afflictions you have. Dispels/blessing theft and armour are great. Otherwise having a diversity of Blessings often does the job.

Garvin Greaves

Bit of an RNG fight with his potion summoning. Can get any potion in the game, meaning he can become Impervious or cleanse Afflictions. Very strong against low damage multi-hit builds because of his Bleeding passive (applies Bleeding to you equal to the amount of times you damaged him in your last turn), so stuff like Knuckles can get totally blown out here.

Evasion stops most of his damage (besides potions). Bleeding Immunity also makes him pretty weak. Afflictions bypass his passive. Beware of his interrupt and dump your energy every turn if you can.

Starlit Urza

Almost unkillable vs. slow, high cost Basic Attack builds because of the Spirit mechanic regeneration. Piercing damage, Afflictions or multi-hit builds are key here. Besides being tanky he also does pretty crazy damage that is hard to block with Impervious or Evasion because it’s multi-hit. Honestly just a really tough fight. Don’t go to the grove with slower, heavy hitting builds like Greatbow.

Starcaller Sekatone

You can get a free turn on him if you have Dexterity as you can “Sneak up on the scene” and stun him turn 1. Really punishes slow build with his Twilight mechanic that gradually stacks. Try to play around Blood Offering by hitting him with a weak attack before using something more powerful. This is another fight where smaller multi-hit builds are favoured.

Spirit of Aethos

Huge maximum health and is constantly healing and building up Barrier. No chance whatsoever if you have a slow build as he’ll just outheal and then outscale you. Super weak to Blessing steals as you can grab his Barrier. He can really mess you up by copying any Affliction you put on him back on you, so be mindful of that.

Pro-tip: This is an incredible enemy to execute with Drain Vitality as his maximum HP is almost 1000 on Impossible. Also Darkness has a great matchup here with Fade to Black, which converts all of his Barrier into Darkness for you.

There is a deep pool of bosses here depending on which route you take. There’s a variety of damage types and challenges here that will test even strong builds. Remember that you can “Change the Music” at the Campfires to something more beneficial to you.

Countess Vesparin

Chain/Burning magic fight. Evasion does nothing here. She does a lot of damage very quickly and also has decent defenses. Bit of an RNG fight with how her Chain lines up. Don’t fight her with a slow build. I recommend bursting her. Ward helps with the burning. Something like Agile Seeker with Mystic Reflexes has a pretty good matchup here. Mazurka is good Music for this fight if you’re not Affliction based yourself.

Count Vesparin

The Mirror Image mechanic gets an upgrade in this fight, now it blocks everything, not just Basic Attacks. It’s basically just an RNG fest to see if you connect or not. Can be really brutal if you’re playing a stacking basic like Quarterstaff or Warmace. Multi-hit builds can be pretty good as they spread your damage out, also affliction builds get a lot of mileage here. Evasion and Impervious only go so far as the stacks will quickly be consumed by his Spectral Jab combined with Mirror Images.

Note that no music plays during this fight.

Thespian Ventorio

Bleeding immunity cuts this guy’s damage down by a lot. To be honest this isn’t a crazy hard fight. He doesn’t have great defensives if you just kill him relatively quickly as his barrier needs a lot of Bleeding to become meaningful. He heals per corruption in your deck however, so if you have some kind of Forbidden Fruit/Malignance build, this can be a bit rough. Mazurka is good to cleanse the Bleeding.

Semira

She has First Strike and can crit you turn 0, so you’ll need to go in to this fight with enough health to not instantly die. Perception is great here, otherwise if you can get Evasion going after the initial hit, you’re safe. However, she’s dependent on RNG to get the Ambush on Gilded Daggers so you might just get lucky. She can Interrupt you pretty freely, so this isn’t a great matchup for Channeling or high-energy cost builds. Mazurka to stop the Bleeding or the Waltz is great if you are confident you can block her Daggers.

Pro-tip: If you can delay this fight, you can potentially get some crazy rewards from Emporium Bounty. Her abiiity "Emporium Edge" increases the stacks on the Bountry each time it's played, which in turn upgrades the cards you see in the card rewards. Technically you can win the run right here if you find the right card with enough upgrades.

The minigame here are the Mutation stacks. Some opponents make it go up, some make it go down (the Chameleon). Higher stacks are good for Affliction or multi-hit builds, but bad for individual, larger attack builds as they don’t scale as well with the mutations.

Apex Stalker

Starts with Darkness equal to its health. This is a boon or a bane depending on your build. On-hit builds are going to suffer here as Darkness prevents on-hit effects. Affliction builds like burning can go right under it, so that’s neat. If you manage to remove the Darkness, the kitty gets stunned, so finish them quickly. If you take too long, you will get brutally burst here. Enough Evasion can completely lock this guy out of the fight, but otherwise this fight is about speed and avoiding being critically hit.

Primal Behemoth

Really strong against spam builds because of Stampede and Tough Shell. If you can somehow avoid the Stagger damage or make use of it like with Battle Mending or Aftershock, this fight becomes a lot easier. What trips most people up is his passive Tough Shell. Dispelling this is only so-so useful because your next instance of damage will reapply it at the last stack level +1. There’s no way to permanently reset the mechanic. Stealing the Blessing is pretty good though.

If you have an ability that gives you small amounts of Armour, avoid using it. He critically hits targets with Armour, so unless you can safely gain enough to block to full damage of the critical hit, don’t even bother applying it.

Piercing damage, Afflictions and few, but strong individual hits are the way to go here.

Empowered Hydra

You need to kill this guy multiple times to get rid of the heads. Each “kill” puts a head in your deck. They have an energy cost of four generic energy and need to be played to permanently remove the head. If you discard them before the end of turn, they will regrow and you’ll need to kill the Hydra one more time. Alternatively you can kill him a few times in quick succession before you draw the heads and not have to deal with that at all. Each “slay” you perform only gets rid of one head, so you’ll need an additional Deep Wound past 5 for each head to actually kill him, for instance.

This is both an Affliction based fight as well as a direct damage based fight. I’d recommend not going in to this fight with very high Mutation stacks if you can avoid it. Leave a Chamelon alive to fight just before the Hydra to bring the stacks all the way down to 0 if you don’t depend on them.

Ward and Dispels are pretty good here. Reaping damage permanently lowers his maximum HP, even after his revives. This goes for all opponents that have a revive mechanic, by the way.

If you beat him, you can either take a Suntree Twig or an upgraded card. You will need the Twig to access the secret pinnacle boss.

This Canto's mechanic is Noxious Fog. After every fight you add one stack to the fog, meaning you start each combat with one more stack of Poison. This is really beneficial to Frenzy builds as it triggers Frenzy for "free". It is reset every time you visit a campfire.

Noxlight Troll

Has large max HP, but a weakness to Burning. All his damage is via melee attacks, so you can pretty much blank this fight with enough Evasion. He does Regenerate quite a lot though, so you’ll need enough burst or Dispel to prevent that.

If he does connect, it’s pretty devastating. The double Dazzle from his Deadly Attack can be run ending, especially two turns in a row.

If you can steal his Anger, you can turn this fight pretty easily.

Hammerslime

Absolute run-ender boss fight on any difficulty. Funnily enough this fight is actually easiest on Impossible difficulty because he starts on an uneven health number, meaning that his health doubling passive won’t set in until you do something (this is slated to be changed).

Try your best to keep him at uneven health. You won’t be able to keep up with his healing. This is one of the few boss fights in the game I would recommend avoiding if your build is slow or unpredictable damage wise.

Bolgar

This fight is incredibly easy if you have the Inoculation talent (cleanses Poison). Otherwise buckle up and prepare to get exploded. Save a campfire to go to just before this fight to reset the Noxious Fog to 0.

Dispels and Ward are really good here. Evasion is alright too, but it won’t stop his Deadly Attack. Sometimes you get “lucky” and he’ll have his poison application attack queued up three times in turn one, basically giving you a damage-free turn 1. This will come back to bite you in the ass on his second turn however as he explodes you with his direct damage. Alternatively, he might have 3 attacks lined up without his poison applier. The worst case scenario is probably 2 Poison applications in to a Deadly Attack. Ouch.

Note that he also heals whenever you take Poison damage. You’ll need to burst him or negate his poison - this isn’t a fight for slow builds without good defensives.

This Canto's mini-game is Battle Momentum. It is increased by certain enemies and decreased by tearing down banners and defeating minibosses.

In general you want to keep Battle Momentum low as this reduces your opponents’ access to energy. It's a bit of a catch-22 sometimes, but a miniboss kill resets the banners to 0. Do NOT fight the Vicious Bolter enemy until the very end of the Canto if your build is dependent on Evasion or Armour. It will Mark you in to the next fight, meaning neither Evasion or Armour will work. Either avoid them completely or save them for post the final boss and fight both of them back-to-back. You can also avoid the Marking by playing fewer than 4 actions a turn when they have their Ranged Action lined up.

This is also a rough canto for Channeling builds with two bosses that can Interrupt.

Baelyle

Avoid starting this fight with less than half health because of Decapitate or with high Momentum. Builds that are all-in on a single Blessing are going to struggle against Abolish. Diversifying your Blessings and hoping that RNG saves you is one method. Marking him is great as is stealing his Anger. He is also all-in on melee attacks, so Evasion makes you immune to his damage if you can dodge the Abolish.

Forgemistress Halva

Get Momentum low for this one. She basically combos you out by changing together Swing Right’s. The more momentum, the more energy, the longer the chain. She can genuinely take more than half your health in a turn if you get unlucky. She Interrupts too, so perhaps avoid this fight as a channel build. Evasion is great here as she is all melee like Baelyle, but can’t Dispel.

General Ral-Dagar

NGL this guy just crushes slow builds that don’t have a variety of defenses. You need to prevent his Vulnerable and Brittle to stop being burst and his Bombardment will eat through your Impervious/Barrier/Armour very quickly. On top of that, he has top-notch defensives of of every kind + sustain. You need to go quickly in this fight as he will out-scale you.


One reprieve is that he puts Sabotages in your deck that will help you counteract his Blessings and Momentum. Always play the Sabotage as the first card of the turn if you can as it is most useful then. If you are reliant on Afflictions, prioritize getting them on early as his Ward will stop you later or time them around a Sabotage.

I’d recommend starting this fight with 0 Battle Momentum.

This Canto’s minigame revolves around your energy. You will be doubling your energy at the end of turn, but also taking damage for each point of energy. This is a great Canto for high-cost builds with cards like Unleash Arsenal if you can take a bit of punishment.

Yora & Nine

This is a fight with two forms that take damage separately. I would concentrate on taking one of them down and ignoring the other. They are somewhat resistant to end-of-turn Afflictions like Burning and Doom due to their ability to gain Impervious but just get rid of it with a direct attack and pass the turn if that’s your thing. Not really a hard fight overall, though if you take too long they can sometimes get you with Tantrum.

Ancient Colossus

A timed fight in the most literal sense. After X amount of turns, he blows up and does 100 damage. This can either be super scary or entirely irrelevant. If you have more than 100 HP you feel comfortable losing or have Barrier/Armour/Impervious, you can just pass turns until he explodes and absorb the hit.

This fight becomes tricky if you start to engage with him but are too slow to get him dead quickly. He gains Armour equal to his missing health each turn and then does damage equal to 1/3rd of his armour, so he becomes more deadly the lower he is. If you can Mark him, this fight becomes trivial. He is similar to General Ral-Dagar in the sense that he gives you the tools to fight him himself via Fracture. However, you can get super unlucky and never draw the Fracture. If you can’t Mark him or wait out the self-destruct, you can dodge his Deadly Attack via Evasion.

I’d try to wait until have 1 Fracture in hand and one in your deck. That way you will have two turns in a row without Armour, which should be enough to kill him at this point.

One

One of the most annoying fights in the game - but it’s actually a lot easier than it initially seems. Long-turn decks will suffer here the most, so probably avoid this Canto. One’s defensives are pretty decent, but he doesn’t actually do a lot of damage. A Dispel for the Barrier does wonders as does stun protection. If you have any kind of scaling (Anger, Zeal) a just a bit of sustain, you will eventually win. This fight can be tedious, but it isn’t hard.

Two tips:

1. Do NOT overkill the Pyrite Martyrs by much. You will start the following battle with burning equal to the overkill. Avoid them if you can’t manage that.

2. Do NOT wait to fight Firelighter Gelayn. You will most likely not defeat her or the Pyrite Lancer if they combine their auras. It’s worth skipping an Opportunity to prioritise killing her.

Now you get to choose between fighting the Avatar of the Pyre (Fire Chicken) or the Dawnbringer. If you fight the Dawnbringer, he can later help you fight Dante. The Dawnbringer fight is harder than Fire Chicken.

Pyrite Tithetaker

This guy scales off of your gold, so if you start this fight broke, you’re already winning. Dump your gold before this fight if you can (Merchant, Enchanter, Alchemist). If you have a slow build and a lot of gold, be careful of his Deadly Attack. He can easily one-shot you if you’ve managed to give him too many tithes. However, it’s just a melee attack, so a single point of Evasion will do the trick.

Firelighter Gelayn

This fight can be terrible if you are dependant on your Basic Attacks due to her Disarm. If you aren’t, this is probably going to be an easy fight. Just kill her in the first 3-4 turns before her scaling gets out of control. Beware the Burning. This is another fight where having both an Affliction cleanser and Blessing remover make it trivial.

Pyrite Lancer

This guy comes at you hard and fast. He has First Strike and starts to Pierce below half health. He scales quickly and punishes you for not bursting him, so watch out. Your defensives aren’t as meaningful here as you might think. Same as before, Dispel and cleanse or facetank and burst.

This is one of few unskippable minibosses.

Fire Chicken

Before you start this fight, make sure you get the Fire Resistance talent from the previous event (Truth -> Imperfection -> Darkness !!!remember: TIDDIES!!!, then “Save the Prisoners”). That cuts his damage down to a minimum.

Fire Chicken is an easy boss, you just need to time how you kill him because of the his revive. Your attacks will first put him into an egg which you then you need to kill again to finish him off. He is essentially immune to builds that rely entirely on Doom or Burning at the end of turn, as you’ll never be able to trigger them twice. Make sure you have some decent form of direct damage or a way to trigger these Afflictions multiple times in a turn to destroy the egg.

He’s also very rude in the sense that he can knock off your Enchantments. This is annoying, but not the end of the world. Just make sure to replay them when you draw them or they will be gone for the rest of the fight. Chicken doesn’t really scale very well if you have the Fire Resistance talent, so don’t rush it.

Dawnbringer Solspear

This is the alternate fight. Overall much harder than the Chicken as he has great defensives and scaling damage of which neither can be dispelled. If you are a single-big-hit build, this isn’t the fight for you as you’ll need to break through his Radiant Armour. Make sure you can throw something meaningless against the armor to break it first (a conjured basic or a Zap or similar is great for this). He also heals, gets Evasion, cleanses Afflictions and burns you, so you’ve got a lot to deal with here. You need to be going fast and hitting hard, multiple times. If your build can’t do that (Snares, Totems, Forgehammer, etc.), fight the Chicken.

If you beat him, spare him and he’ll help you fight Dante (and Mega Rathael, even) later.

Ambermines

Make your decision who want to recruit before coming here. You can either get Serena for Corrupted status or Viola for the Blessing of the White Rose and some easy heals (you can also recruit neither). Overall Serena has a much, much higher ceiling due to the free talents, but she can also severely screw you over by giving you a bad talent like Purity in a Corrupted build or Edict of Wrath in a non-Zeal build. YOLO.

Be aware that picking either will wipe the opposite card type from your deck (Corrupted vs. Divine).

Amber Overseer

This is a fight where you are in control of the opponent’s scaling, similar to the Wandering Slime. Instead of health however, it’s Anger. Every time you hit him, he gains 1 Anger and his Deadly Attack scales off of Anger both in damage and individual hits. After he reaches maximum Anger stacks (which depends on your difficulty setting), he deals a small amount of damage to you and loses them. Afflictions do not trigger this, so the easiest and safest way to kill him is not to hit him directly or to hit him so often that he loses his Anger before passing the turn.

If that is unavoidable, ramp up your damage before destroying him in one turn or keep track of his Deadly Attack. Without it, his damage isn’t very impressive. If you get him to a high amount of stacks and get hit by it, there’s a good chance you’ll get one-shot. You can also just skip this fight.

Lich

This is an optional bossfight you can take instead of squeezing through the narrow passage.

If you do fight him, he’s Ethereal, so his life is constantly resetting. He steals your Blessings, gets massive Barriers and will punish you for stacking HP by setting your life total to his. If you can deal with Blessings, this fight is really easy. If you’re rocking a slow build or are dedicated to a specific Blessing, you’re going to spend a long time here due to the HP reset and steals. He also applies slow.

It’s not a hard bossfight, can just take a while and has a lot of annoying mechanics all stacked on top of each other for very little reward.

I skip this fight 90% of the time and “squeeze through the corridor”...

Viola

I consider this easier than Serena, but it is still very tricky due to the amount of defensives she has. You’re going to be fighting Jinx’d, Piercing damage, Affliction cleansing, healing and a Charmed shield that prevents on-hit effects. She’s pretty weak to Piercing damage and high-damage Basic Attack builds (Basic Attacks can’t be Jinx’d), but she absolutely destroys Charmed builds (full immunity) and slower Affliction builds due to the constant Dispelling. Her damage isn’t crazy though, so if you can buckle down for a long fight like vs. One, you can sustain and slowly whittle her down. Not a hard fight, just a long one.

Pro-tip: you can one-shot her by reducing her maximum HP by 1 below her Charmed shield with a few tricks like Charged Wand or a single point of Decay. Siren’s Call can also one-shot her, as does 1 point of Drowning.

Serena

This fight gets me a lot still. The Dominated that is inflicted at the start of turn will severely mess up any kind of build that is desperate to play an exact sequence. You also can’t store up Blessings or Energy against her due to her theft and Interrupt. For many builds, this is an RNG fight. That being said, you can rig this in your favour. The best way to stop her is to be immune to Dominated. Then this fight becomes trivial. Alternatively having your key cards be reliable means you can play them out from under Dominated. You can also simply have a ton of cards in hand, which decreases the likelihood that she’ll make you play one of her Beguile’s. She bypasses Barrier, Evasion, Armour and also Impervious to some extent. Only Ward is truly effective here.

Don’t forget that you can just pass the turn if you don’t want to play what she’s forcing you to.

There is a little trick that you can do to essentially “one-shot” Serena btw.: If you apply a single stack of Dominated on her, her enchantment will instead Dominate her at the start of turn and she’ll be locked in a loop where she can only target herself. Just pass the turn over and over until she dies. Easy.

Cursed Kraken

This is another fight where I’d consider skipping it if you can’t reliably win. The combination of Submerge and Tentacles is enough to take down otherwise very strong builds. Can be a really bad fight for Blessing stacking builds because of Vile Eye. Imagine if you have 100 Barrier and it gets converted into Charmed or Burning - you’ll probably die. Beware stealing his Barrier as he can convert it. Evasion/Impervious aren’t great here because the Tentacles are multi-hit.

The best way to play around this is via your own afflictions (they bypass the Barrier from Submerge), to burst him, or to turtle on alternative turns where he has his Barrier up. Turtling can be tricky though as he adds afflictions to your deck, which slow you down. If you get really unlucky you’ll get Jinx’d or made super Vulnerable.

Again, like Hammerslime, this is an easy fight to avoid if you don’t want to take it.

Melchor the Cursed

This is one of the easiest boss battles in the game, IMO. He doesn’t do anything particularly scary or efficiently. The most annoying part about him is that he can add permanent Sins to your deck via Wretched Glare, but considering he has no defensives of his own, just hit him hard before he can stack up enough Afflictions. He’s also all about melee attacks, so Evasion does a lot here.

Not much to say here. Just do your gameplan, no need to plan around this fight.

The biggest challenge here aren’t the bosses, but the Anima mechanic. There are a few ways to make it work:

1. Just don’t get hit. Easy lol

2. Have cards that “reap”. This undoes Anima drain

3. Have massive maximum HP so you don’t mind losing a bit

Every opponent gets more HP per stack of Anima + the final boss has a card that does extra damage for each point of Anima. Keep Anima low and you’ll be fine.

But yeah this Canto is ♥♥♥♥♥♥ in the head, good luck.

Marrow Paladin

Super tanky and really good against multi-hit builds because of Marrow Plating. Individual big-hit builds or diversified Afflictions builds are key here. He’s got good sustain and defense as well, but nothing that you can’t burst. Watch out for him converting Afflictions into Zeal, as it will make his Annuling Strike scale like crazy. You can easily get one-shot by this or lose so much maximum HP that your run is over even if you win. Note that Evasion can’t block Annuling Strike as it is a divine action, not a melee action.

On the flipside, you can get him to kill himself if you stacks up too much Zeal and you can eat a hit or two with an Impervious or similar.

Lastly, this guy removes your Enchantments, so be warned if you are heavily dependant on one.

Marrow Amalgamation

This fight is all about Bleeding and getting needled. If you can make yourself immune to Bleeding, it is comically easy. If you are a spam build, get ready to die.

First off, this guys is Undead, so he can’t be Stunned. Secondly, he gets Armour every single turn. Mark him if you can.

The optimal way to kill this guy is with individual, strong hits. That way you can break his armour every turn and not get punished by Shredded too much (applies Bleeding per action played).

It’s hard to block his attacks with Evasion or Impervious because they hit so often. Armour and Barrier are better. If he can’t connect, he can’t trigger your Bleeding and you’ll be fine.

Matron of Misery

If your Anima has gotten kinda high, this is probably the end of the road for you. Both her Barrier and damage scale directly off of Anima, so not only will she make herself nearly unkillable, she’ll hit you for 100+ damage and Lifedrain. If you managed to keep the Anima low, this fight is fine, just a pretty generic fight with a bit of damage and defenses you have to deal with, but even then she will continuously sap your max HP and boost her abilities, so don’t take too long.

If you can steal her massive Barrier, you can turn her strengths back against her, but that can be tricky to setup properly.

Anyhow, just keep the Anima low beforehand lmao good luuuuuuuuuuuuuck

Lots of decisions to be made here regarding bosses. You can either fight Hildune, Maki or Boulderback in the Frozen Cave, with Kaius being an optional fight beforehand (though not fighting him will lose you Maki’s help). Afterwards you must fight Gorn. The biggest payoff is fighting Kaius+Hildune for 90% of builds. Only consider fighting Maki if you’re playing a Hunter that can benefit from the Totems (which, to be fair, is most of them).

Kaius

If you’re a Magic user, I’d recommend skipping this fight or going to a different Canto. His Silence can be applied multiple turns in a row and will end you. You can play around it a bit by holding back, but if you’re too slow, his multi-hit attack might blow you out.

He revives after being killed for the first time, so be ready for that. He also Freezes you equal to his remaining health, so you won’t be able to continue damaging him in most builds. If you can Cleanse the Frozen and kill him again that same turn, otherwise leave him at half health and protect yourself or pray that he doesn’t play Glacial Rampage.

Hildune

She does no direct damage, just Freezes and Jinxes you out. If you can grab the Frozen Heart as a Warrior beforehand, this is an easy fight. She’s Undead, so no Stuns or Bleeding, but she takes a while to ramp up and even then her damage isn’t that exciting. It’s mainly the Afflictions that will slowly get to you as Frozen does not automatically cleanse in this fight. Watch out for her Darkness shield at the start of the fight. This will prevent any initial on-hit effects.

If you can dispel the Frozen or outheal the ghouls, this is easy. Otherwise you’ve got a bit of a race going on. Stack your Anger/Afflictions faster than she can stack Frozen.

Not really a hard fight, just a bit grindy.

Maki

This is the alternate fight if you side with Hildune. Lots of RNG regarding what kind of arrows she will fire. If you get really unlucky, you might get hit by the Stun and dispel arrows multiple turns in a row. She’s got pretty good healing - don’t let her sit at low health too often as she heals better when close to death. She also scales over time, making her arrow spam more deadly.

Not a hard fight though. Just play your deck and get her dead in the first few turns.

Boulderback

This is the OG Thornwind miniboss from many DLCs ago. Has now been relegated. The only thing you need to watch out for his the 1 Reflect he gets, so do NOT swing at him with a massive hit as your first attack. You’ll otk yourself. Poke him once, then swing. Easy enough.

Gorn

This fight becomes a lot easier if you have Maki on your side. She’ll provide critical strikes and Arcane Arrows to cleanse his Regenerate. His gimmick is that after 6 cards played, he applies Frozen equal to his remaining health. Concentrate your first 5 cards on damage, then buff yourself past card 5 so that you can hit harder that turn after. He can wreck builds that are reliant on a single card as he buries them, so be sure to be diversified at this point or cross your fingers, whatever works for you.

If you can cleanse the Frozen, just keep on swinging past 5 cards. At this point in the run, this fight should be easy.

This Canto’s subgame revolves around three Statues. One gives you immunity to Poison, one to Dazed and one converts a random Affliction into Zeal at the start of turn. You want the Poison one for both bosses. Make sure that you do NOT have the Zeal one going during either fight, especially Arachnid Progenitor. He inflicts huge amounts of Infected that will be converted into Zeal, probably killing you. You can reshuffle them by visiting them and skipping the dialogue or by smashing them if you are a Warrior with 3 points of Strength.

Niche tip: don’t go to this Canto as a Scavenge Rogue or a Shurikan Seeker. There are tons of mechanics here that are built around punishing you for discarding.

Crypt Broodmother

This is a “swarm” fight where the less you do to stop the spider swarm, the more of them there are. She will break your kneecaps if you are too slow. Her protection is even better than most as it completely prevents damage from going through until dealt with. She’s very strong against single-hit builds with small decks as the amount of spiders will quickly outnumber your actual cards whilst your big hitters will get absorbed by her eggs.

She’s weak to Afflictions, Piercing and multi-hit builds. Having “tutor” style cards like Clarity are great to fish out key cards you need whilst bypassing the spiders. In a way this fight is very similar to the Dawnbringer (shield that needs to be broken, healing, fast scaling) and the same strategies apply.

Arachnid Progenitor

The first few times I fought this guy I pooped my pants when he played Silken Noose. You have your health set to 10% and he Stuns himself (meaning he won’t continue hitting you). This is super dangerous if you have Zeal or Stagger on you as that can consume the remaining 10% of your health (which is why we don’t fight the spider with the Zeal statue).

After playing this fight many times, it’s actually very simple. He’s immune to everything but Ranged damage every second turn, so spend those turns building up defenses and future damage if you can’t connect. Then, when he Silken Nooses, unload your arsenal and heal back up (it gives you lifedrain!). Funnily enough the missing health and healing fuels a lot of synergies (Caduceus, Lionheart, Body of Steel, Vanquish) to the point that I feel like this ability is almost suicidal for the Progenitor.

What’s a lot more scary are his other abilities that simply hit hard and apply a ton of Infect. Do not discard anything if you can help it with Infect. Plan your turn so you can get your cards-in-hand down to a minimum.

But yeah that’s about it, he’s just a big meat bag. He doesn’t scale, he’s not a particular counter to anything that wouldn’t have already been countered by this point, he’s just big.

This Canto has a triple boss fight against the same boss that gets increasingly more difficult, plus two minibosses and a mob that I refer to as a mini-miniboss.

This Cantos mechanic revolves around Spores. Each one does something different that’s annoying. If you can, try to fight all the Statues of Ilthar first so you have to deal with the least amount of spores. If you fight the trash mobs first, you will be fighting both Ilthar and the Spore debuffs simultaneously. I find the three Ilthar statue fights by far the easiest of the Canto 8 bosses.

A random upside of the Obsidian Gardens is that it lets you choose any Canto 9 final bossfight if you want to remain flexible.


Mini-miniboss - the Blackroot Giant

The reason I consider him a mini-miniboss is that he only appears once, you must fight him and has a deadly attack that can one-shot you. He scales off his health via Rootslam. He’s basically a swamp frog on steroids. You can Evade the Rootslam, just beware when he has it lined up.

Fungimancer

This fight can be over very quickly due to how squishy Fungimancer is. It can also be over very quickly if he buries your key cards and you’re stucking drawing Pustules. Easy fight if you’re a firecast build though.

Burst, burst, burst. All about speed with this little guy. Don’t let me him feast on your deck!!!

Venus Mantrap

A bit scarier than the Fungimancer due to the large health pool, scaling damage and healing, discard and dispels. You can get really unlucky and discard your key cards turn after turn.

This fight is under time pressure, but it’s not very tight. If you can’t get him down in the first 6 or so turns he’ll outscale you, but if you’ve gotten this far, that should be doable. He’s pretty weak to decks that apply consistent pressure with generic cards like Basic Attacks, but is pretty godly against builds that desperately need to set up their damage with Blessings or key cards/persistant cards like Bloodhunt.

Statue of Ilthar I

Every statue has the same Immunity subgame. Two immunities are always active simultaneously (Melee & Ranged or Divine & Magic) and are swapped. How the swap works depends on which Statue you are fighting. The first one swaps them manually with Vile Warding.

Hit him on turns where he isn’t immune to your main type of damage. He scales by hitting you, but the scaling is slow. When the immunity fades = swing, otherwise play defensives and wait.

Every version of the Statue is weak to dispels due to Anger stacking. Dump your energy each turn to prevent him gaining Anger with Siphon Hatred.

Statue of Ilthar II

This one swaps his immunities manually as well. It’s now harder to prevent the Anger gain because he’s playing both Siphon Hatred (which encourages playing a lot of cards) and Agony (which discourages playing lots of cards). Pick your poison.

Burst him or have enough defensives to take a few Wingshards to the face as you ramp up. It’s a range attack though so don’t rely on Evasion.

Statue of Ilthar III

In a weird way this is the easiest of the fights because he automatically swaps his ward at the start of each turn, meaning you know exactly when to attack. The other statues often lock you out multiple turns in a row.

He’s now locking you down with Dazed and lifedraining along with stacking Anger. This fight is really easy to time, just get on him every second turn with your main damage type. A Dispel for his Anger or the Dazed and this fight is easy peezy.

The OG final Canto. Similarly to the Obsidian Gardens, this one’s got three mandatory bossfights. It technically has no miniboss, but you have the option of fighting both at least one Summoned Balor as well as the Elusive Dreadlord, which I will both include here.

The gimmick here is that each boss initially puts a debuff on you in every combat (the Seals at the top left of the screen). Whenever one of them dies, the Seal is converted into a buff instead, so the Canto actually gets easier the longer you are in it. Prioritise defeating the three bosses before fighting any other mob if possible. I prioritise the Fire and Blood one over the Affliction one.

There are three stained glass windows you can click on that will each give you a different set of Blessings for the next fight (and the next fight only). I like to keep all of these floating around and then take them all before fighting either Dante or a Balor, depending on where I think I will struggle more.

Elusive Dreadlord

If you don’t manage to Slay him, you have to fight him twice. The second time round he will actually die. He punishes builds that have hard hitting individual attacks a bit (like Forgehammer) with his Dominate. You want to throw something small into this, then hit him hard after. More of a tricky fight than a hard one though. Watch out for the Weakness if you’re trying to crit.

Summoned Balor

Has the highest HP in the game outside of the pinnacle bosses. Hugely tanky and you only have X amount of turns to defeat him (scales with difficulty). Has a ton of ward each turn, so you will struggle as an affliction build. Has decent damage, however his scariest move is Abyssal Contempt. If you are a Blessing stacker, this can easily one-shot you. How? Let’s say you have 200 Barrier. Balor casts Contempt and converts it into Charmed. You are instantly slain. Alternatively it gets turn into Brittle and he hits you with Onslaught. Or Burning, or Doom. Even Weakness or Frozen can lock out your damage for long enough to stop you from killing him.
I would personally skip this fight if you can’t kill him turn 1 with a Blessing heavy build or have Ward. The RNG might just not be in your favour.

High Priest of Chaos

The weakest of the Priests IMO. Puts some random afflictions on you. Who cares, just play your gameplan. He’s like Melchor v2, but weaker because you’re stronger now.

High Priest of Agony

This one is really scary if he plays his best cards in the right order. If you are a healing build and get hit by Flay, your run might just be over. Be very mindful of Pain Mirror. Play something low damage into this if you can.

If you can block his melee attacks (and therefore his debuffs), this fight is easy.

High Priest of Hatred

Extremely annoying if you’re playing a build that has a key card memorized as his Seal of Hatred will be removing it from combat until you kill him. On the flipside, he will bury your Firecast cards for you, so if you’re playing Torch Arcanist or Sunlance Knight, kill this Priest last. Seal of Hatred is a straight buff for you.

On top of the Seal he will also bury via Fury’s Blaze, so you’re in for a bad time if you are a combo deck with key one-off cards or a small deck. I try to kill this priest first.

His damage is a combination of multi-hits with Anger and burning. Both are sort of whatever, it’s the burying that will really get to you.

Really tough fight for slow builds due to his Twisted Edict and revive mechanic. Edict forces you to choose a permanent debuff (a "Judgement" at the start of each of his turns. If you have Impervious or a lot of Armour/Barrier, try to choose the one that does damage to you equal to your health. Your defenses will prevent it. As a Firecast build, pick the Bury one (buffs you the same way the Seal of Hatred does).

Otherwise just pick whatever is least detrimental in the moment. As a piercing/Deep Wound/Combo build, take the 50% damage one. If you don’t care about Blessings, take Binding Judgement. Be flexible and know how close you are to winning as this will influence your choice of Judgement.

When he dies, he is revived and receives Barrier equal to his max HP and Regenerate equal to the overkill, so be mindful of how hard you hit him. A mass Dispel like Dispel Magic will blow him out or alternatively a small amount of piercing damage if you were careful. If you slay him, he will revive with 1 HP, so you’ll need to get one more point of damage in.

If you execute this guy with the card "Helios", you will unlock a special bossfight. Good luck.

She’s all about Afflictions. If you have lots of Ward, Purity or Mageslayer (and Inoculation to some degree), this fight is pretty free, otherwise get ready to rumble.

Lots of nasty effects here. She removes your Enchantments and Artifacts for the rest of the fight, fills your deck with junk, gains Potency, has Lifedrain, Barrier, slows you and then also scales off of how much energy you spend. If you don’t kill her quickly, you will lose. There’s no real potential to fight a long game here as she scales on so many different fronts and debuffs you equally.

Too many mechanics = kill her turn 1 or 2.

I’d only choose this fight if you know exactly what you’re getting in to.

Pretty unique fight as you first need to heal him to full before killing him again. Initially your direct damage will push his health upwards until he hits max health, at which point his health starts behaving normally again. He has an incredibly strong healing ability in Underworld Shell, which initially helps you fill up HP, but then later becomes a huge pain in the ass. Afflictions bypass the healing, so a Doom/Burning/Poison build can go straight to 0, but beware the Underworld Shell ward. Note: From Beyond also prevents “damage dealt” style effects, so you can’t lifedrain or similar until he actually starts to lose health.

The Entity scales in multiple ways. Partially via Lifeslicing Slam, which scales if it can connect. The more annoying part of his kit are the Insanities that he adds to your deck. If the Unsettling Presence stacks up too high, you will get bricked/locked and die. He’ll also work away at your maximum health with Reaping via Void Lashings, which scales with cards in your hand (like Insanities - ouch, the synergy!).

Oh he’s also randomly immune to Stunned, so forget locking him out.

Absolutely brutal fight. Once again, only go here if you have built for it. This isn’t a (somewhat) fair fight like our next boss, Dante.

Torso man. The OG boss. Reworked once before, now much more potent. He has an additional ability on Hard & Impossible that sees him regain 50% of his missing health at the start of his turn. This makes builds that do gradual damage over time completely ineffectual. You need to burst him, negate the healing, combo him or outscale it, but don’t sit around not hitting him either as he’ll start to overheal and mess you up with Abyssal Anchor.

He’s got a Blessing debuff and will punish you hard if you have been stacking Enchantments. His Ward will also give Afflictions builds a hard time. If the fight goes on too long, you will eventually get (nearly) stun-locked via Fear and die, so get in there. He also Buries your cards. And scales off of being at low health. I think he also ties your shoelaces together and spits in your shampoo.

So this all sounds pretty bad, but If you’ve built your deck intelligently (dispels for Blessings & Afflictions and a way to scale), check what debuffs he’s applied, get a bit lucky with what he buries and what he doesn’t, you’ll be fine.

If you can, go into this fight with every stained glass event from the previous Canto (you get some Barrier, Anger and either Rally or Regeneration, I believe). If you spared the Dawnbringer, he’ll join the fight and give you genuinely helpful cards.

The OG pinnacle boss. Unlocked by finishing a run on Hard or Impossible.

This fight becomes super easy if you have Mageslayer as almost all of his strength lies in Afflictions. Alternatively, Purity is also crazy strong.

There are three main things to watch out for here:

1. He gains Armour equal to the damage he takes. This can really mess up certain builds that rely on on-hit effects. Marking him will stop this entirely.

2. Watch out for Dark Reflections. Play something low damage in to this to pop it

3. Whenever you cycle through your deck, your next played card (or the card that caused you to overdraw your current deck) will be destroyed and changed into a random Sin. You can choose to simply pass the turn here if you aren’t willing to lose anything. Otherwise throw something unimportant into the Vile Decay like a conjured card. You can also get around this by playing an enchantment or equipment spell, as they will still be imbued despite technically being destroyed.

Otherwise just swing and kill him before he applies too many Afflictions or spanks you to death. If you’re playing Deep Wounds, you’ll need 10 Wounds rather than 5. He also cleanses 1 every turn. He doesn't dispel anything, so stack your Blessings!

This fight can be done over multiple runs. You can currently reset it by going into the Sunforge and hitting the “reset boss health”. This will also reset it in the campaign. If you choose to NOT fight the Spine after being the previous boss, your run will count as a victory and give you your difficulty Banner if you had it selected pre-run + tick off your class win for that difficulty in the archive.

These bosses are part of the Infernal Invasions DLCs. They will “invade” a Canto randomly and be added to the monster roster for that Canto. They tend to be really, really difficult and scale with whatever special mechanic their specific Invasion brings to the Canto.

If you can, fight them without their respective trash mob’s auras, though clearing all the trash mobs tends to increase the stacks of the Invasions’ respective special area enchantment, which in turn makes the bosses stronger, so it’s another rock-and-a-hard-place type situation.

The Abyssal Legion

The Abyssal Legion tracks how much total damage has been dealt to enemies. They gain Anger equal to that amount /100 at the start of combat. This is called “Abyssal Corruption”.

General good pratice here is being able to Dispel the Anger stacks or even better, outright steal them. That will quickly turn all of these fights in your favour.

Lord Talac

Pretty funny fight. He locks your cards away in boxes that you need to pay to reopen. His Gleeful Magic gives both you and him a random enchantment for the rest of the fight. This is a total YOLO ability and can sometimes give you exactly what you need, or condemn you. Evasion stops all of his damage, but bear in mind that one of his attacks is multi-hit, so you’ll need to dodge it twice.

He wil let you choose a Bargain at the start of turn that either empowers him or screws you over. Decide which of the two your build deal with better.

Note that the locked cards remain locked into the next fights. You will have to either pay to unlock them or remove them/transmute them away.

Executioner Xharax

This guy has a lot to deal with. Affliction cleansing, multiple Slay effects, a fade-away kill mechanic and healing prevention.

If you take his hits, he’ll power up his Dark Justice and slay you. If you dodge his blows, he’ll apply Deep Wounds and slay you. Crazy. Treat this as every other tightly timed fight and play your game. Just pay attention to the Spiteful Defeat at the end as it will take at least half your life on the way out.

Court of Pestilence

These guys are all about Poison, Infected and Decay. They will rot you out of the game. Once again, target the trash mobs first. The fewer trash mobs, the lower the Court Presence, the weaker the mobs (also their auras disappear).

The mechanic here is Rot, which boosts certain mobs’ abilities. Higher Rot = stronger mobs. Rot is increased via certain events and also every single time an Affliction is afflicted. This can also summon Phox, Queen of Decay as the final boss rather than Dante.

Carrion Castellan

This guy is pretty brutal against builds that love their upgrades because of the Rust mechanic that removes all upgrades of the last attack that hit him. However, you can play this to your advantage, as Rust also then transfer the upgrades to the next attack that hits him. This was you can do silly things like smack him with a big Forgehammer and then “withdraw” the upgrades to a different card.

He’s pretty strong against multi-hit builds because of Chitin Shell which applies 1 Bleeding per attack that hits him, so something like Knuckles can get blown out here (similar to the Garvin Greaves fight). Marked prevents him from gaining Armour, so that’s a big win here.

Castellan himself has a multi-hit attack that trigger the Bleeding repeatedly, plus a Piercing attack you can not prevent, so don’t dawdle.

Affliction builds and builds that don’t care about upgrades are favoured here. If you can make yourself immune to Bleeding, this fight is trivial.

Blight Baron

This guy gets tankier the more Rot you’ve generated throughout the Canto. He heals and gains Armour based on percentages of Rot, so either keep the Rot low or Mark him.

He will try to kill you with Decay. Either with his Pestilent Decree, which names a card each turn that is “banned”, meaning that playing it will induce Decay, or simply by pummeling you with his sceptre.

If you have Ward or huge amounts of maximum HP, this isn’t very meaningful, but if not, be really careful here. Losing max HP is often way worse than just taking damage as you can’t heal it back outside of Reaping cards.

Eldritch Horrors

The third of the Invasions. This one I personally find the hardest to deal with due to Agnosiophobia. Whenever you visit an Opportunity, this goes up by one. Each stack adds another Insanity to your discard pile at the start of combat. Insanities stick in your hand, cost a ton of energy to get rid of and are generally obnoxious. Discard/wheel decks like Scavenge Rogue or certain Seeker builds don’t really mind these or can even abuse them in their favour. Massive decks like Forbidden Fruits don’t mind as much either. For every other build, they will clog up your hand and end your run. You can decrease the Agnosiophobia by visiting a campfire. Certain enemies can however also increase Agnosiophobia outside of Opportunities.

My recommendation is to skip every single Opportunity during this Invasion. They aren’t worth the Insanities.

Besides Agnosiophobia, you’re also dealing with the Eldritch Ritual. It goes up whenever you draw or play an Insanity. This summons the Outerworldly Entity as the final boss rather than Dante.

Doom Caller

If you’re playing a spam build like Mantras, Knuckles, Hidden Flurry or a Figmented build, you are toast. His Many Eyes enchantment will prevent him from taking damage from a card with the same name more than once per turn.

If the Eldritch Ritual is far progressed, he can one-shot you with Dark Chant, which applies Doom equal to the stacks. His Cackling Voices is a huge RNG ability that applies 1 to 40 Fear, meaning it can get you in 3 casts or in 100. Kinda weird.

This fight is all about being able to seal the deal very, very quickly. This guy will drag you down and heal himself back to full health over and over if you can’t end it fast.

Eldritch Overseer

This guy can’t be Stunned or Jinx’d so no lockouts. He also has an immunity that prevents him from taking any damage from cards that cost 0 energy in your first turn, then 1 in your second turn, etc., so time your cards correctly.

You get to choose a Corrupted Revelation to be played against you at the start of your turn, similar to Lord Talac’s Bargains. They start out pretty weak (1 Frozen, 1 Doom, etc.), but ramp up quickly.

He can essentially make himself immune to Afflictions via Asylum, which gives him 1 Ward per Corruption in your deck (Hint: Insanities count as Corruptions).

You’ve got to kill him quickly whilst also playing around his immunities. Easier said than done, but that’s the gameplan here.

The second pinnacle boss in the game and much harder than the Spine. Requires a sequence of actions to unlock.

• Play on Hard or Impossible
  
  
• Get the Suntree Twig from the Empowered Hydra in the Emberwyld Heights
  
  
• Bury it, converting it into Helios
  
  
• Slay Rathael, Fallen Seraph with Helios

All of your followers will join you for this fight. Each one has a specific special buff they will grant you. Some of them can be abused (like the Blacksmith’s) and some are total RNG (like the Collector’s).

I won’t go into immense detail on this fight as only some specific builds can kill him and it’s not much of a “generalist” fight, but there are a handful of things to look out for:

• He revives himself at half max HP if he has applied Divinity to himself
  
  
• He can cleanse Hexes & Deep Wounds
  
  
• He needs 10 Deep Wounds to be slain (technically 11 to slay him again after reviving)
  
  
• He will attempt to one-shot you every X cards you play with Condemnation
  
  
• He punishes you for playing a long game via Oppression, constantly shrinking your hand size.
  
  
• He also buries your cards
  
  
• The fight ends instantly if your Burning is higher than your Health

How you go about working around these is up to you, but in general

• Impervious is incredible to stop Condemnation
  
  
• Slaying him is super strong, however you will have to do it twice in one turn, so something like Time’s Up won’t work unless you get lucky and he doesn’t reapply Divinity
  
  
• Whilst he can gain Ward, he is not immune to Stuns, so you can lock him down
  
  
• The Blacksmith gives you armour for playing Basic Attacks, so builds like Hidden Flurry are naturally protected

Good luck.