Mortal Shell 2 Boss Guide (All Main Bosses)

Mortal Shell 2 contains 11 Main Boss Fights. This Mortal Shell Boss Guide will walk you through the best tactics to defeat all main bosses in the game. They are listed in chronological order below. Please note that some bosses can be encountered in a different order depending on what area you visit first, this list is just what’s recommended but it doesn’t matter in what order you fight them.

There are many more minibosses present throughout the game, but these are almost always just versions of regular enemies with more health and sometimes one or two unique attacks. This guide only lists the main bosses that have trophies/achievements related to them and are required to be beaten to progress the story.

Boss #1 – Tar Golem

The Tar Golem is the first main boss, fought at the end of the tutorial section of the game. You are required to reduce the Tar Golem’s health to 0 to earn the trophy/achievement No, You Still Can’t Win .

The Tar Golem works like typical soulslike tutorial boss where you are intended to lose against it, and reducing it to 0 health will cause this to happen immediately regardless of your own current health. You only fight the Tar Golem once during a playthrough during the tutorial section, you don’t fight it again during New Game+, so you need to earn this trophy at the start of your playthrough. You can make a backup save beforehand (PS+ Cloud) to reload if needed, and if you feel you start doing poorly during the fight you can pause and quit to main menu, which will put you right before the Bone Gate when you reload the game.

It’s a relatively slow enemy, and you can reduce its health to zero by mostly taking it slow and chipping away at it. It will end the fight eventually if you take too long though, so you need to still actively keep attacking. The main thing to watch for are the big unblockable attacks, like when it jumps into the air and tries to smash the ground where you are standing. Always pay attention if it’s doing this attack, if you get hit by it directly it can instantly end the fight. The normal attacks you should aim to parry whenever possible, because you can get a large amount of damage into the boss if you stagger it and then perform a Riposte attack.

If you are struggling you can slightly reduce the damage you take by defeating the miniboss Tainted Vestige which is in the area just before the Disciple’s Grotto Beacon. Defeating it drops a Burnt Effigy which when equipped in your passive item slot reduces the Fire damage you receive, which is what the Tar Golem primarily does.

Boss #2 – Magdalena, the Lady of the Woods

Magdalena is the second main boss, fought at the end of the Glutted Mire overworld area.

Magdelena drives around in a wheelchair with a spikey roller on the front, so most of her attacks are unblockable and you don’t generally want to attack her from the front. Hitting the back of her chair works best, as it will also stun her (even without filling her stun bar) if you hit her directly in the back enough times. She will also constantly spray fire around the area, which lingers on the ground for a bit and damages you if you walk on it. Equipping the Burnt Effigy in your passive item slot can help in dealing with this, or if you are playing as Lazlo be sure to upgrade his Burn resistance in the top row third slot of his Shell skill tree.

Around half health she will summon a bunch of small baby enemies that will chase you around the arena until they are defeated. There is a limited amount and she only summons them once, so you should focus on getting rid of them first then return to focusing on her.

After her automatic stun at half health she gains two more attacks. The first is summoning a giant wasp swarm around herself for a short period. If you see this occur run outside of the area, as the wasps will constantly damage you will you are inside the area, and then linger for for a bit continually damaging you after. The other attack is that she will load a tracking projectile into her arm cannon, and fire it toward you. If you aren’t very close to her then back up a bit and wait for hit to shoot once to effectively dodge the projectile.

Boss #3 – The Lost Child

The Lost Child is the third main boss, fought at the end of the Sanguine Caverns overworld area.

The Lost Child is a large blob, being mostly a large mouth with two arms on the side. Most of its attacks are either bites or swipes with its arms. It will telegraph unblockable bite attacks, or if it jumps into the air to try and land on you. If it swipes its arms it will normally do a long windup, so you can dodge out of the way or use Harden against it. If it does a bite attack that isn’t unblockable then it will bite quickly three times in a row. If it jumps away from you it will start spewing goop out of the hole in its rear, which you can avoid by constantly dodging to the side until it stops.

Once it gets below half health it doesn’t gain any major new attacks, but will do some attacks like the arm swipes slightly faster and jump around more.

Boss #4 – The Nameless Captive

The Nameless Captive is the fourth main boss, fought at the end of the Prisoner’s Domain overworld area. You are required to parry every hit of one of the bosses attacks in the second phase of the fight for the trophy/achievement Peter’s Perfect Parry .

The Nameless Captive is a boss primarily designed around parrying, with all of its attacks being heavily telegraphed and mostly consistent speeds. In the first phase it will primarily either do a series of 4 swings back and fourth in a combo, with the third and fourth being slower, or a series of either 1 or 3 times where it smashes its head into the ground in front of you. You can parry all of these and focus on stunning it to deal damage.

Once you reach the automatic stun before the second phase, it will always do a very fast spin attack where it tries to hit you 7 times in a row. You can either run away to avoid this, or if you are confident parry it 7 times to get an immediate stun. After this it largely does the same attacks as before, with the exception of a new 7 hit head spin that you must parry for the Peter’s Perfect Parry trophy/achievement. You need to make sure that they have nothing on their stun meter if you are trying to earn this, so you can dodge the other attacks until the boss performs it. It will do 2 slower hits first, then speed up for 4 hits, then 1 more slower hit. If you manage to parry all of them you will earn Peter’s Perfect Parry trophy/achievement, and typically will stun the boss.

Boss #5 – Droeg, the Conquerer

Droeg is the fifth main boss, fought at the end of the Conquered Temple overworld area.

Droeg is a large slow boss, primarily attacking with stomps and the large bone club that they carry. Their attacks deal Frost damage, so equip Martyr’s Ash in your passive slot, or if you are playing as Eredrim make sure to upgrade their Frost resistance in the top row third slot of his Shell skill tree.

Most of the attacks you can either Parry or Harden against relatively easily. The wide swings can be dodge through or backed away from if you can’t parry them, and this boss is very slow to turn to you can parry one attack and then quickly dodge behind them to get in attacks while they finish a combo. This is most easily done when they do the three overheard attacks in a row, because if you get behind them they can’t turn around.

After half health, they will start doing an unblockable attack that is telegraphed by the boss holding their head. After a few seconds, a bunch of tracking projectiles will appear above them and start shooting toward you. You can try to dodge these, but an easy way to avoid them is to run to the left or ride side of the arena and hide behind either the large stone slab on the left, or the tree on the right. If you do this, be careful if the boss is too close to your cover during the attack, as the projectiles have a bit of splash damage on them and can hit you around the cover if they start from too close.

Boss #6 – Hexapod

Hexapod is the sixth main boss, fought at the end of the Withered Shoals overworld area.

Hexapod is a very unique boss, be most closely comparable to the snail enemies found throughout the rest of the area leading up to the boss room. They attack primarily by using the 8 appendages in front of their face, meaning they can effectively only attack forward, but can make large swinging attacks as well. Using Harden in this fight is highly recommended because if you don’t get hit by an attack you can hold in Harden until they do hit you just for some safety, because the attacks they perform are not telegraphed very well overall. If you have been using and upgraded the Triach Repeater it is very good against this boss, because you can just dodge away from the attacks and try to shoot it in the face when the appendages are moved away.

If you are playing primarily melee, then you well mostly have to try and just keep hitting the front of the boss. You can parry most of the bosses attacks with Harden, which will then allow you to hit the boss before the arms move back down. The unblockable attacks have very short telegraph times on them, but if you are very quick to react you can dodge to avoid them.

The main unique attack the boss will start performing during the second phase is homing shots that appear above it similar to the ones performed by Droeg, though far fewer. If you are nearby to one of the large skeletons in the boss area you can try getting behind it, but you can also just continue dodging to the side to avoid them.

Boss #7 – Sir Isaac, the Scholar-Prince

Sir Isaac is the seventh main boss, fought at the end of the Faded Citadel overworld area.

Sir Isaac can be very tough depending on how you play, especially in their second phase. The first phase can be quite easy, as they mostly do basic sword combos that are fairly easy to parry, which makes stunning them very easy especially if you can use the Infinite Seal. You can take the first phase slow and spend most of the time stunning them with parrying, the main thing to watch out for is if you are standing directly against them and trying to attack you from the front they will bash you with their shield, which is very quick and hard to guard against.

Once they reach the second phase they lose the shield and now attack with only swords, becoming much faster and doing much larger combos. They can be very weird to parry in this phase as most of the attacks hit twice in a row, which doesn’t always register as you parrying both so you can take a lot of damage even if it looks like you are parrying the attacks. Using Harden can be better because of this, because you can parry in the same manner as the Infinite Seal as long as you get the timing right, and gives some buffer in case you miss against an attack but then can deflect with the Harden and move away.

There are two ways you can make these phases much easier, if you using either Tiel or Sester Genessa and have them both upgraded. Tiel’s Shadow Clone ability in his tier 4 third skill causes you to leave behind clones when Shadow Dashing, so you can dodge to avoid an attack, then Sir Isaac will focus on the clone for the rest of his currently combo, allowing you to get behind him for a high damage attack. With Sester Genessa, you can upgrades her Faithful Doubles, primarily the entire first column. This will make the Doubles distract enemies and take more hits before disappearing, so you can effectively spam them at Isaac and they can deal a large amount of damage to him.

Boss #8 – Malborn Offspring

Malborn Offspring is the eighth main boss, fought first in The Unfound Path endgame area.

Currently this is one of the hardest bosses in the game, primarily because they have to full health bars instead of just a single health bar with two phases like every other boss. Almost all of their attacks are primarily fast multi hit sword combos, or grabs that will instantly kill you unless you are on one of the more heavily armored shells. If you have been playing the game primarily as parrying and are very good at it, then you can play this boss effectively the same. If you aren’t then you are 100% going to want to use Sester Genessa.

Sester Genessa’s main ability is Faithful Doubles, which summons clones that will attack the nearest enemy to them for a short period. You can use them to effectively cheese this boss as long as you have her at least Tier 3 and have enough SP to max out all three skills in the first column. This will allow you to just spam all 5 Doubles at the boss, which should cause him to stun himself due to the Stasis the first couple will inflict when he attacks them, then run in quickly and hit him a couple times to regain all of your Resolve. The Veteran’s Battle Axe is very good for this, as you can run and then heavy attack to do a two-hit spin attack, which should regain your Resolve. Back away and repeat once more. This should get him down to almost no health to trigger the second phase, but you want to make sure you have full Resolve.

When the second phase starts, move away from him, because the lightning that revives him will damage you if you are nearby. Once he starts standing up spam the 5 Doubles again, and repeat running in to attack him to regain Resolve and back away. If you die as Genessa you may be able to finish off the fight as the Stray Sester because they have a much faster dodge ability and if you have her at Tier 4 you can use the skill that makes a Stray Double protect from a fatal blow which will stun the boss every time it happens, but this won’t protect against grabs which the boss starts doing a lot of in this phase.

Boss #9 – The Monolith

The Monolith is the ninth main boss, fought second in The Unfound Path endgame area.

The Monolith is effectively a giant moving wall as an enemy. The main spot that you can damage it is the dangling bit in the center between the two halves of the wall, which is also where the boss will attack you from. The main aim for the fight is going to be to take the fight slowly, the boss does a ton of damage, and if you miss a Parry or dodge on certain attacks it will almost certainly kill you instantly if you aren’t using one of the heavy shells. Tiel is very good for this boss due to his Shadow Dodge and Clones, as the clones will distract the boss when it is doing the ground slams, so you don’t typically need to dodge more than once.

The boss has 3 distinct phases. The first phase it will smash the ball in its center once without moving, or twice when it will pull itself toward you. If it closes then it will slam flat down toward you twice, which you need to dodge backward away from. You can parry two ball slams, which is a safe way to damage it in the first phase.

After the forced stun when the second phase starts, it will now sometimes do a slam with the ball where there is a bunch in a row where it is pulling itself toward you. When it does this you are best just backing away, as the timing is very inconsistent so if you try to parry it has a very high chance of hitting you. When it slams flat on the ground it will now also possibly slam 3 times instead of 2, which occurs when it slams length wise instead of straight vertical. It will also sometimes close and start doing two laser attacks, one that is a single beam that will track you, and another that is a fan moving back and forth in front of it. For the single laser you can just dodge to one side, for the fan you can dodge through the laser without taking damage, both patterns you can get behind the boss and hit it a few times.

After the second forced stun it gains a couple more attacks. The first it will spread out flat on the ground and start spinning around the arena, which you should run away from. After it stops it will jump high in the air and try to land on top of you, which you should dodge through. The second new attack is a set of 4 arena spanning lasers that it will shoot out while spinning. When it starts this you should move as far away as you can, then continue dodging through the lasers moving in the same direction it is spinning. If you try and move the opposite direction you will likely not be able to dodge fast enough and will take damage. It will switch between both of these attacks a lot depending on how lucky you are, so this final phase can take a long time depending on how much the boss wants to cooperate or waste your time.

Boss #10 – Orrem, the Reclaimed

Orrem is the tenth main boss, fought third in The Unfound Path endgame area.

Orrem starts out with the exact same moveset as the Tar Golem from the start of the game, just with dealing Bloodcurse damage instead of Burn damage, so you can equip Bloodseed in the passive slot to help against this. Compared to the other bosses at this point you should be able to fairly easily dodge and circle around them, and the first phase is not particularly difficulty.

Once you run out their health bar, they turn into a completely different boss, walking around on all fours with a centipede coming out of their back. As of launch this boss seems quite buggy, as they will shift around on the ground and move around in weird ways, but they aren’t particularly difficulty still as long as you can continually dodge to either side of them. They will mostly do slams with either arm toward which side you are standing, and you can dodge under that arm and hit them in the leg. If you get into the loop correctly they will then spin around toward you while slamming again, and you can dodge under that arm and be back by the other leg. If they get far away from you, there are two attacks to watch out for. The first is a fast movement toward you, where the boss basically shoots forward at you without much of an animation as a warning, if you stick close to them they won’t typically do this. The other attack is the centipede head will shoot a bunch of projectiles at you, but you can dodge to one side while this is occurring and it shouldn’t cause much of a problem.

Boss #11 – Zmey, the Unbidden

Zemy is the final boss, fought last in The Unfound Path endgame area.

Zmey is a giant dragon wielding a sword, and has way more health than is really necessary, so whichever Shell you decide to do this with the fight ends up being more of a marathon to chip away at it without dying to one of its attacks. Before fighting the boss it is very highly recommended to obtain the Seedbearer’s Scripture item for resistance against the Cosmic damage that the boss deals. If you don’t have this equipped for the passive resistance to the Cosmic Disease effect then it is very likely the boss will wipe you in the second phase due to a wave attack that it does. Cosmic Disease is a unique damage-over-time effect that stays around far longer than any other effect in the game, and can’t be cleared with other items.

» Seedbearer’s Scripture Location

Once you have the Seedbearer’s Scripture, equip it in your Passive slot for the 80% Cosmic Disease resistance. This is generally more helpful than using it actively, because with the resistance you can take some Cosmic damage and only have the effect for a short period of time, instead of having 1 active use of it to clear the effect, but then are able to get it again later in the fight because of how long the fight will go.

Using Tiel is a very good option for this boss, due to the Shadow Dash and Clones like previous bosses. The boss is constantly distracted by the Clones during the fight, which allows you to get in some safe damage. The only thing to be aware of if you go this route is that the boss can sometimes get hung up on them, which causes some unblockable attack icons to not appear correctly.

Progress into the boss area, and the boss will typically do either one of two attacks that happen throughout the rest of the fight. The first is a downward sword slash with projects a Stasis damage area toward you, which can be dodge to either side. It will typically do this attack twice in a row. The other attack is that it will start breathing Cosmic damage fire toward you, coating an area on the ground. If it does this start sprinting forward and slightly to the side while dodging to get around the area.

When you get close to the boss you are going to spend most of your time standing between its legs hitting it. You can avoid a lot of attacks just staying here, and certain ones you can Harden during to avoid single attacks. The two ones you most actively need to avoid are a ground slam attack it will do which has an unblockable icon, which you can avoid by dodging backwards. The other is that it will stomp its feet 3 times in a row, leaving a Stasis area on the ground. If you are confident you can Harden parry the first hit of this and then dodge backwards out of the area. The boss will also try to do a series of 4 sword swings back and forth while backing away from you. A lot of the time the boss will get stuck and not actually move backward, and if you are standing between its legs you ignore the first 3 swings and then harden for the final swing, because this will sometimes hit you even standing directly beneath it. There is one more sword attack that it will sometimes do where it will plunge its sword directly into the ground leaving a Stasis area, but this generally won’t hit you if you are underneath the boss.

The final attack that the boss does throughout the fight is an extremely dangerous unblockable grab attack. It will do a short movement to the side and then stab forward with its tail, which you can avoid but dodging forward or to the right. If you get hit by this and aren’t at full health, then it is very likely you will instantly die, because the first two hits of the grab will knock you out of any lower armor Shell, and then final hit will kill the Harbinger instantly even from full health.

Once you reach the second phase of the fight, the boss stops doing Stasis damage attacks and does all Cosmic damage attacks, which is why you want to have the Seedbearer’s Scripture equipped in your Passive slot. As soon as the phase starts run away from the boss, as it will do a set of 4 wave attacks away from itself which will deal a lot of Cosmic Damage if you get hit by them. You can dodge through them and when this attack occurs throughout the rest of the this is what is recommended as you won’t have time to run away, but for the first set you can avoid it by just running away because of how long the boss takes to get the attack off.

The rest of the second phase is largely the same as the first, just with the addition of the wave attack. It will do all of the same previous attacks, just with them all now dealing Cosmic damage. It gains one new sword combo where it will slide around a bit while swinging it’s sword a couple times, but you can generally avoid this by ignoring the first attack and then Harden during the second because the boss pushes itself away and misses the third attack.

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