(Freja and Prowling Magus coming soon, but I wanted to write this one first)

Executioner's Chariot

Difficulty: 9.0

Status: Optional (required to enter the Brotherhood of Blood)

Expected Deaths: 5+

Frustration: Low

Epicness factor: Legendary

Attacks:

Stage 1:

Roadkill Attack (): This one isn't very poetic, he just runs your ass over with his chariot, resulting in infinite agony.

Stage 2:

Hoof Stomp: The Horse brings his hoofs up and smashes down on the player, clipping through and ignoring shields more often than not.

Side Sweep: The Horse brings his head around and smashes you in the side, very painful and hard to block or dodge.

Kick (): If you get behind him, or around his back haunches, he will swing around and kick you in face, knocking you off your feet and leveling the average lifebar.

Charge: The horse tucks his head down and runs forward at very high speed, the effect reminiscent of Smough's Hammer rusher. If you do manage to block this, you are almost certain to be guard broken and subject to follow up attacks.

Dark Flame (): The horse stops short of you and dragon-breathes huge columns of black fire that will turn your body into a rice crispy faster than shit. Unblockable as it is pure dark/fire damage.

Jesus almighty above in heaven this is a fun boss fight. Not just a fun bossfight for Dark Souls 2, not just for Souls, but period, this boss is phenomenal, the only problem is the goddamned BDSM squad on the way to his boss room (it is heavily recommended you encounter him in NG, when the BDSM squad can be one-shoted by a single backstab and aren't goddamn red phantoms)

First of all you should know this is a unique fight with no dominant strategy to fight him, so here is an outline of what you will encounter and some options:

The fight takes place in a crescent arena: with a bottomless pit of death on the far right and far left. The room has roughly ten skelingtons, five in one half, five in the other, with two necromancers resurrecting them.

The chariot goes through every so often, roughly ten seconds as he circuits around. You do not want to get run over, so you have to hide in one of the many side pockets to avoid him, letting him pass before looping around the left side of the crescent in order to get to a lever and drop the gate.

This would be easy if not for the skelingtons: which can be a huge problem if they gang up on you (which they do). The best way to deal with them is to hide in a pocket, blocking with a shield and keeping them in the ally, letting the chariot run them over before running to the next pocket.

It is highly advised you find the first necromancer on the left side of the passage in one of the pockets, kill the fuck out of him, then kill the skelingtons, clearing the way forward.

Rinse and repeat with the next necromancer, on the right side of the passage just before the gate, dispatching all the skelingtons before taking on the chariot.

There are two ways to go about this:

Option A). Shoot at the chariot as it passes until he runs out of life, causing him to crash in the pit, dispatching the executioner, who will be hanging onto the edge for dear life and will likewise drop into oblivion with one hit (I've never done it myself, so I may be wrong)

This is the safest option, but will cost you an enormous amount of ammunition, so it's up to you.

Option B). Drop the gate at the end, which will crash the chariot and kill the executioner. The Twist? You fight the fucking two headed zombie pony from hell. I am not making this shit up.

It is, again, a fun as fuck fight, but will demand a lot of adaptability and skill because he is very strong, very fast, and is spazy as fuck: you never know what he will do and when he will do it, and since he cannot be stunlocked, it is easy to be caught off guard in the middle of an attack and take heavy damage.

He has an attack able to reach in front of, next to, or behind him, leaving him no blindspots: you have to be wary of an attack at all times and be ready to dodge or run for it at any time.

Be prepared to exchange blows: taking and dealing heavy damage back and forth until you win/get stomped for the 50th time. For this reason, you must be very stingy with your healing items so they are available when you need them. The Horse has low health (for a boss), but deals so much damage in such rapid succession the fight will get very brutal very fast.

His dark flame is by far his worst attack: if you are near him, run towards him to get behind it and counter attack, if you are far away, run as fast as you can until you are out of range.

That's really it. The fight, as you can tell, has a lot of elements at play and gets very chaotic. Death will happen.

A lot. But you will enjoy the experience so much it will hardly matter, so best of luck and may the flames guide thee to victory :3