Hope its helpful to watch my process like this. In this fight I allowed myself to watch no-hit runs to speed the learning process along. I wanted to demonstrate some of the tools that can assist you in your own runs so that you don't feel you need to brute force a boss to get through it. YOU DON'T NEED TO USE A GUIDE. But it can help for sure. Thanks to all the runners that let me react to their footage. Please give them a look if you need help in your own runs. They're a really under-appreciated resource in the community. Next is Mind Over Malenia. I've only fought her once at level 1 and relied on frost pots to stun her out of waterfowl. This time I'll learn how to dodge it for real. Open to suggestions for weapon set-up. Please no beast claws 🥲
Great video. I have a mind to be cheap and suggest any katana with the deflecting tear for the Sekiro appeal, but allowing her to heal off your deflects might be incredibly counterproductive at SL1. I also agree with using a LGS instead, or perhaps any weapon in that same class like a curved sword because I am curious as to how people beat her with smaller, faster weapons.
Maliketh was the first boss I ever sat down to properly learn. I did a holy dmg only run, which mean I did like 100 dmg per swing with my Coded Sword, so I had to learn this boss. And that though me a lot on how to approach these bosses and how much you can optimize them and find ways to deal with attacks and punish opportunities, when before the boss and the challenge it presents seemed insourmountable
Maliketh destroyed me on my first two challenge runs. Enough to make me face roll him at range. Really satisfying to force myself to learn him properly. Good doggie 🐶
It's nice that you try to keep things fresh in these runs, even if your initial attempt didn't work out Seeing someone keeping a chill attitude throughout something like this is great. Love the vibes.
Oddly enough, among the harder bosses, Maliketh was my most intuitive fight during my first playthrough. In his first phase, I learned early on that he only does the quick double-swipe if he does an abrupt pause in the middle of a combo. I learned quickly that if you roll into his sword swipe in the second phase, the overhead slam will wiff and you are safe to punish him as he's doing it; I learned quickly that you can roll back into him after he does the sword stab into AOE attack; I learned fast that if you run behind him when he pogos onto his sword, you can be where he will land and punish him as he does so, and so on. That first attempt still took 40-ish minutes, but I didn't think he was overly hard or unintuitive or anything, which is why I was so surprised when I learned that's exactly what people thought of him.
It's so interesting how some people find some bosses so much harder than others. Maliketh gave me a ton of trouble in my last runs but was really manageable in this one. I found Gaius really fine and was surprised by the outcry against him but the sunflower... hoo boy.
I have an ENORMOUS amount of experience with this fight. I've done Maliketh hitless well over 100x with all sorts of crazy restrictions. The fight is all positioning in both phases which is why I love it so much. He's my favorite boss, ever. You did a good job learning him. If I were to give you and anyone else who reads this a piece of advice though it would be this... Don't train at RL1. Generally when I'm training, i have a character with 60 vigor, and base level stamina and a +0 weapon (or no weapon fists only) then a REALLY high DPS weapon in my off hand. Doing this allows me to take a lot of hits while learning and experimenting without constant resets. Base level stamina forces me to learn what I can and cannot do with that limitation and the high DPS off hand allows me to quickly burn phase one once I've learned it so I can focus on P2. When I can consistently avoid and return damage and dance with the boss without taking hits for long periods I switch to my RL1 character. Also, using a shield in the very beginning can help speed things up as well. For example just standing in front of Beast Clergyman and blocking you would have found out how to bait his finisher (ground slam) much earlier. Of course this only applies to console players like myself but it drastically accelerates the learning process. Anyway, hope this helps someone and that unsolicited advice doesn't come off as rude or condescending. We're all in this together so just trying to share what I've learned.
Cool that you feature other runners as well! I like to experiment with ErTool if the boss is very difficult, like for when I learned pre nerf consort, bayle, messmer and malenia for wl0 rl1 sb0 restrictions so that can help players wanting to optimise fights
I play on ps5 so no go for me but I'd definitely use some tools or mods to save me running around getting talismans or early access to the dlc. The set-up phase of a new run is definitely getting a bit old. I'd also consider that mod I've seen people use to start each death at low health for red-feather branch sword. I hate taking that extra 30 seconds spamming bloody slash before another attempt.
@@GredGlintstone yeah thats mainly why I got ertool, its external so no need to even mod the gamefiles. Rune arcing and spamming seppuku gets old on really difficult bosses with alot of restrictions. have the game on console as well but when i challenge run I prefer pc since I can play on 100+ fps with KBM (im a kbm type of guy)
@@NorsnameMan Oh yeah, rune arcs. My god. Would love to get a proper PC and maybe stream on the channel one day but we're pretty far from that dream. Right now all my footage is taken from PS5 media centre 😅
how long are your play sessions usually? taking breaks is important too! also gg on peak boss. destined death is one the most genius boss mechanics fromsoft has made
Usually about 3 hours with a dinner break in between. I might go longer if I feel like I’m real close or less if I’m real tired but that’s about the standard for these recordings.
![How I Learn a Boss at Level 1: Mind Over Maliketh [Elden Ring]](/img/logo.svg){kind=logo}
