Not so competent player needs competent help.

Hi. New guy on forum here.

I recently started playing Dark Souls and clawed my way through NG (with some help for some of the rougher bosses).
Hungry for more, I immediately started NG+ and found I pretty much sailed through it with my upgraded gear and somewhat improved skills.
Until I ran my head against the brick wall deathfest that is The Four Kings.
Any input on how to improve my chances against them would be greatly appreciated.

This is the setup that has so far brought me closest to beating them:
Nameless Undead

I normally wear heavy armor and use some sorcery but felt like I needed to change my approach to this fight as my normal style seemed utterly inefficient.
I'm mostly considering reinforcing my flame (left hand is basic for Power Within, righ hand is +14), or upping vitality.
Would you recommend either one? Or something else? Maybe some item I'm unfamiliar with?
I absolutely suck at two-handing weapons, so I would prefer to increase my damage output while still hiding behind my shield :|.

This seems like a very nice crowd in here, so I hope for some useful hints. Cheers
(By the way - am I putting this in the right forum? I pretty much never post online and am unfamiliar with common protocol :oops: )

Welcome to the forums! Your in the right place.

Honestly your health is very low. You should put maybe the next 10 points into thtat or use the MoM to give you a boost. If you can get a summon or 2 that would also help your chances. You can ask for help in the player help section. The kings on NG+ are regarded as one of the hardest bosses.

ricarards rapier buffed with fire 2hr2 destroys the kings just roll out after every attack and heal as quickly as possible get up close and personal with them to left hand side you should miss most of there hits

Also the darkmoon blade or sunlight blade buffs absolutely destroy them on fast weapons.

Thanks for the quick replies guys.
I figured my health might be a bit low. So far being careful and patient and not getting hit much has worked fine for me. However, in this fight I feel so pressed for time I usually end up making a mistake leading to one clean hit and I'm dead. Or I have to roll out of an AOE and get one up the backside from another King. Oh well.
I went in with my only fire resin on my fully upgraded normal Iaito hoping that would make the difference. Got a homing soulmass, AOE and a bearhug right on top of each other. I think got off one hit. Never noticed wether the damage was decent. :roll:
I guess I'll go buy some more somewhere and try with a faster weapon and more health.

If the magic damage is a problem try the crest shield, its has 80/85% magic block.

Welcome to the forum Bingo! I had trouble with 4 Kings in my New Game + as well. I would recommend upgrading your Pyro glove to +15 then upgrade it to +5 with the trainer in Blighttown, it will help boost your Pyromancy quite a bit. Also you could switch your Covetous Silver Serpent ring with either Bellowing Dragoncrest (for increased damage with Pyromancy) or Lingering Dragoncrest (for longer Power Within casts). Both can be bought off of Griggs (he's the guy at Firelink who sells sorceries). 4 Kings special attacks are mostly magic based so if you have a Crest shield I would equip that instead (80% magic def, 100% physical def). Try to stay close to whichever king you are working on, if you are close enough to him the others that spawn wont be able to hit you, just make sure you dodge the grab move, that can 1-shot you. Hope this helps!

ive said it before and ill say it again your dex is soo high if you use recards rapier+15 with charcoal resin the 2hr2 will destroy this boss

billy_bayonet wrote:ricarards rapier buffed with fire 2hr2 destroys the kings just roll out after every attack and heal as quickly as possible get up close and personal with them to left hand side you should miss most of there hits

Good tactic. I use it very often. Under his right arm (the one with the giant sword) is the best spot to always aim your dodges indeed.

Btw; if you see purple coming out of 4Kings; ROLL AWAY!

I had a little trouble with The Four Kings.
I use Havels Armour and shield. So far, so good.
They barely scratch me, but my stamina goes down quickly ha ha.
I'm big on playing with fire and works against The Four Kings

What SL are you?
Do you summon others to help you?

Have you tried using Iron Flesh, 2 handing your highest dps weapon and tanking them while dealing as much damage as you can? Worked for me, just don't cast iron flesh until your close, the slow walk is excruciating

Bosses are easier if there are LESS helpers. Otherwise, their HP will increase by a good amount. That not only includes the Four Kings maximum HP, but also each individual King Aberration. You don't notice, since killing one Four King decreases the same amount of HP for the maximum usually whether you do it with one, two, or three people.

Also, the ghost is easy to kill with Fire, they seem. Probably lightning would work too, since they are that of dark. Staying very close to their body, and getting hit by the sword when RIGHT beside them gives minimum hp damage when hit, unlike getting hit at a farther distance by the actual blade.

Food for thought; Happy plaguing!

EDIT: I jsut looked up from a ninja post, DON'T use Iron Flesh with melee weapons, only with range. Why? Because Kings have a far greater fighting range with their attacks than any weapon a player can have. Good luck trying to reach a king, when one, two, three, and then possibly four, hit you in Iron Flesh. it does not make you immortal, and it makes you slow as hell. Poise does not matter much, when you just put yourself in a route of more suffering.

Use Iron Flesh with ranged weapons and a good shield... a very good shield. A Greatshield, Balder Shield, or just a high amount of stamina would be recommended when using Iron Flesh.

the npc summon is usually useless and as acidic said summoning her makes the kings stronger and you don't get enough help out of her usually to make it worth while. also the balder shield might not be good here as it only blocks 20% of magic damage making it basically non-existant against the kings attacks...

One question, why are you not buffing? And using a pure physical weapon?
Get the painting guardian sword, crystal magic weapon and the tin crystallization catalyst. PGS with the buff has a very high dps out put(even more so with pw) especially when two handing. And with your intelligence you can use the powerful crystal homing soul mass. Which does a lot of damage when all 5 hit. And more then likely all will hit since the 4kings dont move the quick when up close.

try it. http://tinyurl.com/c4ue26a

I'd finish upgrading your Pyro Glove to Ascended +5, equip the Bellowing Dragoncrest Ring and the Crown of Dusk.

On the other hand, with the same crown and ring and a 50 Int, CSS and HCSM will annihilate the Kings. In that scenario, definitely summon Beatrice as a distraction. Their increased HP won't matter.

honestly making it through ng+(mostly) with 20vit(and rofap) is pretty good, and welcome to the forums. i would suggest upping your vit to 30. then if it suits you(it sounds like it does cause you already have the 15+ iaito)

i say do it like this. make use of your int. i would suggest not using power within.
http://tinyurl.com/6nepskq

Thanks again guys.

Let's see. Some notes.
I don't actually use the Silver Serpent in this fight, but the Covenant of Artorias wasn't on the list in the planner.
My first take was to go great magic weapon, homing soul mass and soul spear on them. That didn't go so well as the spells did hardly any damage. Unfortunately I don't have the crystal spells, and as I want to meet Kaathe I can't place the lordvessel in order to go get them either. Thus my recent int-levelling isn't doing me much good here I guess.
I'm using pyromancy simply because that lets me use all my stamina blocking and rolling. When I run out of spells, I'll switch to my iaito or rapier and charcoal it (I stocked up on resins).

I didn't get to play much yesterday, but I did put two points in vit and switched to Mask of the Mother. That actually helped a lot, as I no longer get one-shotted if at full healt. So now I can fairly reliably take down just about two kings.
So my feeling went from "hopeless" to "I'll get them eventually", which is nice.

I can't summon Beatrice, and my attempts at getting other help has so far given me one "summoning failed" and one invasion. The area seems quite deserted when I play, so I'll stick to soloing for now.

Thanks again for all input.

Bosses can get more health when you have summons and the 4 kings are the one boss that is all about DPS. So dont summon help, theyre easier on your own. Seems like your improving, so dont worry, you'll get them eventually!

it is a lot of fun to co op 4 kings in ng+ or above. its probably the only boss fight where when i co op people actually die. despite that i think 4 kings is not as hard as people think(i think a lot of us would agree). its easy to feel rushed, but just dont even think about the other kings popping up. concentrate on dodging and learning their attacks. once you get used to what their attacks are(there arent too many) they will actually become really easy to dodge. the hardest to dodge in my opinion is that grab move they do, and for that tracking magic spell they use my trick is to just block it with a dark hand(crest works too).

Hah. The Abyss is clean. Again. For now.
After four days without playing, I sat down again and beat them in three tries.
Once I finally learned to pay proper attention to what they were doing and got the feel and rhythm right, they weren´t that hard. I even had to wait for what felt like an eternity for the last one to spawn.
Now I´m somewhat annoyed that I let them kill me so many times. I´ll have my revenge in NG++ I guess

Iato should be fast enough, you could try buffing with CMW. Also, boost your Vit. It's really low, so at least you have the ring of fap. You also have no poise, so try maybe the Wolf Ring? The kings deal magic damage with each swing, so you might want to up Mresist with havels or the full Painting guardian set if you want to stay mobile.

The most useful tip about the 4 kings I can give is to keep less than arm's length from each one. Their swings will hit you with the hilt and do chip damage. Sorcery really helps, too. SS and CHSM make the fight easy on NG. Idk about NG+, I've never fought them with sorcery outside of NG.

Damage in the 400's is not likely enough to put them down even with a fast weapon like the furysword. My FH toon is at 125 right now, so I think it's in the summoning range of 10+10% if you want help.

Edit: Damn, didn't read the whole way through, my offer of help is void now I guess hahaha

It is. For now, at least. Still, the offer to help is much appreciated