Late in Elden Ring Items, players will be able to face off resistance to the optional boss Commander Niall after Fort Sol inside the northern portion of Mountaintops from the Giants. While the enemy, in the beginning, appears to be a reskin of Commander O'Neil, this endgame encounter seems to elevate the design and style beyond being another illustration of an overused repeat boss like Erdtree Burial Watchdogs.
The way in which Commander Niall sticks out among the endgame bosses originates from the method that he demands reinforcements, much like how the gamer can turn to help from Spirit Ashes. This compounds perfectly with the method in which the boss and his awesome Spirit Ash helpers also incentivize players to work with more unique items from buy elden ring items that they can otherwise overlook.
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Commander Niall Shows Off Top Tier Spirit Ashes in Elden Ring
Similar to the original combat Commander O'Neil, the veteran Commander Niall starts your struggle by summoning two spirit companions that could quickly outnumber the gamer. While these spirit companions could easily turn this into considered one of Elden Ring's frustrating double fights, any additional targets to address are expertly integrated directly into your boss' two phases. This is because Commander Niall specifically changes his attack patterns depending on whether the spirits are already defeated, or if you are still handling them both.
The two phases of Commander Niall's fight are separated by how well the participant is able to handle these spirits along with the boss himself. In a unique twist from multiphase bosses, Commander Niall's second phase has two possible triggers to activate. There's the normal transition between phases for the mid-health threshold, much like bosses like Elden Ring's Fire Giant or Maliketh. Alternatively, players can activate a phase shift by killing each Commander Niall's spirit summons, which could start the transition irrespective of health.
This design then gives players two options when jumping to the Commander Niall encounter, by either killing the spirit summons immediately or seeking to drain the boss down while avoiding the additional enemies. The result either evens out your numbers quickly, by subtracting down Commander Niall's spirit summons immediately or making the next phase shorter for the cost of a more difficult start toward the fight. However, just like Commander Niall showcases the power of Elden Ring's Spirit Ash, your dream highlights the strength in the more obscure item Bewitching Branches inside the first phase.
Elden Ring Players Can Use the Bewitching Branch to Counter Commander Niall's Spirit Summons
While may well be immediately obvious for first-time players making their way through Elden Ring blind, we have a unique item that's the ability to mitigate some of the difficulty obtained in Commander Niall's first phase. The specific item is named the Bewitching Branch, and it has the opportunity to turn enemies against the other person instead of only fighting the gamer. Not only can this help to keep one of the spirits summons from attacking the gamer during the first phase, but it also turns certainly one of Commander Niall's own allies against himself and suddenly makes your struggle two against two.
Interestingly, this is simply not actually the very first time that an item just like the Bewitching Branch has sprouted in a FromSoftware game, but it's one of the few times that this item continues to be useful in the boss fight. Fans of Bloodborne, for instance, might recall the Shaman Bone Blade, which shined from the DLC to be a method for getting the powerful Rakuyo weapon through the two giant sharks in Fishing Hamlet. Still, for beginners, the utility of the Bewitching Branches against Commander Niall just goes to show great and bad experimenting with different builds and methods whenever facing off against an allegedly insurmountable encounter.
