Tips for beating the TAG2 final boss IF you gave up

[Captain Keen]

I've seen several people post that they gave up on fighting the Dark Lord. I almost gave up too, partly because I loathe bosses with health regen. It's my kryptonite. I was stuck in an endless loop where neither of us would die, and I was about to call it quits. After spending about 20 minutes on just the first two stages (out of 5), I changed up my strategy and beat him in 15 minutes. I'm a decent player but far from master or elite, so I hope this helps anyone who gave up on a tedious and repetitive final boss.

 

DISCLAIMER: I have no pride about it, I lowered my difficulty from UV to the lowest level. HOWEVER -- I don't think it did anything. I literally don't think it makes a difference. I already wasn't dying, and he'd regain the same amounts of health, so it didn't seem to make a difference. The health regen is what makes this battle so difficult aka time consuming, otherwise it's pretty standard stuff.

 

1) Most importantly, I decided to stick with ONE weapon: the chaingun. Unlike the Marauder, the Dark Lord can be hit with any weapon when he flashes green. Just a single bullet from the chaingun is enough to stagger him. As soon as that happens, hammer time him (really not an option but a necessity) and then turret gun him. After 2-3 times he'll go down in each round. Maybe 3-4 times in the final round. I stopped worrying about switching weapons like I do in the regular game and it freed me up to focus purely on the arena. I highly recommend this if you're stuck or annoyed. The chaingun is more than enough to do everything you need.

 

(BFG blasts meanwhile are basically meaningless for this battle.)

 

2) Always shoot the dogs. It's the easiest way to charge the hammer. The basic combat flow should be hit him when he's green, chaingun him, then back off, shoot the dogs, get the hammer back and rinse and repeat. Chainsaw fodder along the way to keep ammo up. That's the basic combat loop. It's all very predictable.

 

3) Be aggressive. The game is pretty vague, but basically go after him so you're almmmooosstttt in sword range. This greatly increases your odds of getting the green flashes. Hanging back will prolong the fight way too long. He flashes green way more if you're going directly at him but backing off at the last second.

 

4) In the later stages, his shield attack is the most annoying thing ever. You can get stuck on the phantom monsters in the arena, and even when dash dodging it's easy to get hit by him and he health regens a ton with each hit. What helped was circle strafing around the outer rim of the battlefield. Especially after you strike him, and you know the dog attacks and shield attacks are coming, just go in a circle along the outer edges. This makes it easier to keep an eye on him so you can dash strafe away from his attacks. It also keeps the phantom monsters always a little behind you so you're less likely to get stuck on them and then hit by the shield attack. Once you've done this, go back to being aggressive so you can get the green flash again. Rinse/repeat.

 

And that's it!

 

Like I said, I *LOATHE* health regen on bosses, and I didn't actually think I'd finish this fight. I planned to just watch it on YouTube. But after figuring this out, it became way less tedious and I pretty much powered through it quickly with little frustration. I still think it's a terrible, lazy, tedious final boss, but this at least helped me get through it so I could complete TAG2.

[jory64]

The "close but not too close" range for Davoth is definitely much more confusing to figure out than it is for Marauders.

 

Once I had him stunned with the hammer, I had a ton of success dropping both frag grenades and unloading on him with lock-on burst. This took off 50% of his health bar each time, at least on UV. I was able to beat several of his phases in two stuns this way.

[Duke of Pathoris]

Shotgun full-auto mode, spamming grenades and flame belch worked well enough for me.

[Captain Keen]

21 minutes ago, jory64 said:

The "close but not too close" range for Davoth is definitely much more confusing to figure out than it is for Marauders.

 

Yeah, it is vague. That's why I found going after him like you're about to bloodpunch him, but then backing off right before you do that, seemed to work the best. I was able to get the green flashes pretty regularly. It's confusing at first, no way around it.

 

21 minutes ago, jory64 said:

Once I had him stunned with the hammer, I had a ton of success dropping both frag grenades and unloading on him with lock-on burst.

 

Also sounds like a good strategy!

 

Of course, there are a bunch of different strategies you can use, but sticking to one weapon and keeping it simple seemed to work best for me. Then my full attention could be spent on the arena and dodging his attacks. Doing this (at least for me) meant that he only health regened once or twice in the last 3 rounds total. It just kept it simple.

 

I get the sense that a lot of people are getting screwed with the health regen constantly buffing him back up after you work to get his health low. If that's happening to you, I suggest sticking to one weapon and using a simple approach. If it's not happening for you, of course keep doing your thing! I've watched some players on YT take him down over half health by switching between weapons on the fly and grenading him with perfect timing. I couldn't quite get that timing down, so when I was doing that he was countering too much and healing, making it a frustrating and endless battle. Especially in the last round with the shield attack.

[Robo_Cola]

I said this in another related thread, but for me personally the "blood-fueled" rune made all the difference in this fight.  After you equip that rune, keep glory-killing the zombies coming in to charge both your hammer and speed-boost throughout all phases of the fight (I usually do this in a circle pattern too along the edge of the arena).  I probably did that for 80% of the fight while keeping distance from the Dark Lord unless I was getting ready to prepare my attack.

 

Once you get the speed-boost, then you can instigate the Dark Lord's attacks by getting up close.  With the boost it's much much easier to both avoid and instigate his attacks up close.  Don't be afraid to use your hammer a lot too, especially on that last phase.  Killing both the dogs recharges it immediately anyway.

[JXC]

I didn't use a chaingun; I used a ssg with a little mix of ballista.

[UnknDoomer]

One of the most annoying bosses I've ever seen / beaten. Done both games and DLC's on UV + all achievements, but switched to easiest difficult after some time waste on him. Actually difficult not much matter here, if not count last stage, compare to previous bosses / game in total. For health regen it has zero effect - he still can take up to 100% just by one hit. I've combined double barrel shotgun + hammer. Such combo can take up to ~ 50% of the boss hp per once.

 

Hints:

 

1. Don't waste hammer on the demons, including stage 3.

2. Usually he has green eyes after dogs/demons + shield + sword attack. Can be in different sequence, but in total you can attack him right after he do at least 2 attacks, not before. Use shift to avoid his shield / sword. Sword is major in case if he touches you - boss can get up to 100%. And yes, as @Captain Keen said, be close enough, otherwise he will not do such.

Edited March 21, 2021 by UnknDoomer

[Kristian Nebula]

I don't know if anyone else noticed it yet but you can block his shield charge attacks by turning on your own shield with your chaingun shield mod. Then take distance by dashing back or Ballista jump, wait for flash of green in optimal distance. when he flashes I stun him with ballista, switch to SSG once and drop a grenade before launching into hammer. I drop 2nd grenade right after hammering him and change for lock-on rockets and spam him with those until he wakes up. 2 times usually enough. After learning this tactic I didn't have trouble with him anymore and just did Ultra Nightmare that was considerably easier than TAG1 which took me ages to complete.

[Taurus Daggerknight]

Tried everything.... 

 

Really want to know why the f****ng hell he gets to heal if you shoot him on his non-winking attack. And not just heal, but heal up enough to basically negate anything you've done to him before.

 

Challenge I can take. This is just some cheap bull though, and at round four of the same thing over and over, it's emphatically not fun : \ . 

 

It's a shame, because this is the one part of the entirety of Eternal so far that I'm just flat out not able to get myself to play through. TAG 1 was difficult as all heck, but this isn't difficult; this is just irritating, plain and simple. 

[Captain Keen]

7 hours ago, Kristian Nebula said:

I don't know if anyone else noticed it yet but you can block his shield charge attacks by turning on your own shield with your chaingun shield mod.

 

Good catch!

 

1 hour ago, Taurus Daggerknight said:

Really want to know why the f****ng hell he gets to heal if you shoot him on his non-winking attack. And not just heal, but heal up enough to basically negate anything you've done to him before.

 

Yeah, it's incredibly annoying. This boss fight sucks. It's not a challenge, it's "cheap bull" as you put it.

 

1 hour ago, Taurus Daggerknight said:

this is just irritating, plain and simple. 

 

Yup. If you haven't beat him, I'd suggest trying a couple of the suggestions here to see what works for you. Once I figured out a plan, I was able to get through it pretty quickly. I NEVER plan to fight this boss again, though. It's 5 boring rounds where nothing really changes. He never takes off the armor. I had really been hoping it would be like an Unreal Tournament match with a god-tier bot, where he's like another player and can do what you can do.

[Taurus Daggerknight]

22 minutes ago, Captain Keen said:

 

I had really been hoping it would be like an Unreal Tournament match with a god-tier bot, where he's like another player and can do what you can do.

 

I had been hoping for something like this since the day they revealed the Marauder...

[Stoltzmann]

11 minutes ago, Taurus Daggerknight said:

 

I had been hoping for something like this since the day they revealed the Marauder...

 

You may like Dusk's final boss, he is 1:1 like a player exactly the same speed, the same weapons, the same hitbox etc. really feels like a PvP duel. 

[ArchCrusader]

I am in the "this fight isn't hard, it's just bs" crowd. The worst part is that he has 3 attacks out of 4 that don't make use of the green light, so I found myself screaming internally "would you PLEASE do the right attack so we can move on??" several times (I played it on UV for my first run - lost a single 1up in one of the later waves).

 

One thing to consider is that the chaingun's shield negates most attacks (and relative lifesteal, as far as I'm aware) - coupled with the fact that, as mentioned, you can stun him with just one tap, it makes for a perfect all around weapon for the fight (I mean, chaingun's shield is pretty much busted so there's that).

From what I've seen the rocket launcher lock-on yields the highest amount of damage during stuns.

 

Also worth mentioning: the spawned monsters are MUCH weaker than their "real" counterparts - you can deal with some of them just by holding down the chaingun fire (although it's way more efficient to clear them with the hammer).

 

6 hours ago, Stoltzmann said:

 

You may like Dusk's final boss, he is 1:1 like a player exactly the same speed, the same weapons, the same hitbox etc. really feels like a PvP duel. 

 

Yes, although technically he's at a MAJOR disadvantage not having any hitscan option (and thank goodness for that!) - stuff like shotgun and machineguns just have regular, "slow" moving projectiles.