The First Berserker: Khazan Boss Guide – All Bosses

The First Berserker: Khazan contains 16 main bosses. There is one boss at the end of each main quest, and there are 16 main quests total. Each of them unlocks a trophy/achievement for defeating the boss. This page contains video guides of each boss fight, which are done on Normal difficulty with no Spirits of Advocacy.

General Strategy & Tips

Choosing a Weapon

There are 3 different weapons:

• Dual Wield -Focuses on dealing pure damage and dodging. Benefits from having higher agility to help specific skills.
• Greatsword – Focuses on charged attacks and brink guarding. Benefits from having higher defense so you can survive more hits while charging attacks.
• Spear – Focuses on doing stamina damage and both brink guarding and dodging. Doesn’t specifically benefit from any type of other stats or equipment.

The weapon you choose and the build you choose will be completely up to you, but the guide highly recommends using the Spear as it’s considered the best overall weapon in the game with tons of useful skills and being an extremely quick weapon.

Spear Build – Gear

• Jar Headgear – Once you’ve collected at least 32 Jarlings, you’ll be able to buy the Smitten Jar which will increase Proficiency by 7 while also decreasing set requirements by 1, so you can still get full set bonuses while wearing it. When you collect 42 Jarlings, you can swap it out to the Stunned Jar which will increase Proficiency by 10. It’s not recommended to buy any of the previous Jars as they don’t decrease the set requirements, so the increase Proficiency stat isn’t worth it if you’re losing your set bonuses.
• Weapon/Armor Set – Fallen Lord – Extremely useful as it has good defense and boosts the damage of 2 of the best Spear skills, Moonlight Stance and Spiral Thrust. The only downside is you need Fallen Lord’s Claws to craft it. You can either find/buy them, which there are only 6 of, or you can grind the Viper boss who has a chance to drop 1 whenever he’s defeated. You can equip the Bard set to increase drop rate chances. You can also find armor pieces for the set in chests, dropped by certain enemies, or even sold by Duimuk sometimes. Make sure you visit Oksana to reroll any bad or not useful attributes.
• Ring/Necklace Set – Pilgrim – While this is technically set for the Dual Wield weapon, you can get both set bonuses still without the weapon while wearing the Jar headgear mentioned above.
• Phantom Ability – This one is entirely down to preference, but the best one to use would either be “Keshta the Unyielding” for increased stamina recovery, or “Adelhaide the Philanthropic” for a health recovery increase. You can also get health recovery increases from turning in Soulstones at Daphrona, so if you’ve been investing all of your Soulstones in that, then going with “Keshta the Unyielding” would be a better bet.

Best Attributes for Gear

Once you progress far enough, you can reroll the attributes on your gear in exchange for Lacrima by talking to Oksana. The rarity will affect how many random attributes you can have on a piece of gear.

• Common – 0
• Uncommon – 1
• Rare – 2
• Unique and above – 3

Because of this, you’ll want to try to have all of your gear be at least Unique so you can have 3 random attributes applied to your gear. Below you are the best random attributes to try and get. The best ones you should really try to aim for will be bold red, but feel free to experiment with different attributes according to your build and stats.

• Defense – Lets you take less damage, so it’s best to have Defense on all of your gear (except for your weapon since you can’t get Defense on a weapon).
• Attack DMG – Lets you deal more damage.
• Brutal Attack: DMG Increase – Lets you deal more damage with Brutal Attacks.
• Stamina DMG Increase – Increases your stamina damage.
• Swift Attack: DMG Increase – Increases the damage of your swift attacks.
• Swift Attack: Stamina DMG Increase – Increases the stamina damage of your swift attacks.
• Potent Blow: DMG Increase – Increases the damage of your potent attacks.
• Potent Blow: Stamina DMG Increase – Increases the stamina damage of your potent attacks.
• Received DMG Decrease – Decreases the damage you take.
• Stamina Recovery – Increase your stamina recovery rate.
• Max Stamina – Increases your maximum stamina. This one isn’t as important, but if you find yourself lacking Stamina you can get it on your gear.
• Max Health – Increases your maximum health. This one isn’t as important, but if you find yourself lacking in Stamina you can get it on your gear.

The attributes you want to try and avoid are the types below as they only apply under certain circumstances. While the buffs they give will be better than the flat increases, it usually isn’t worth it due to the conditions you need to be in for them to trigger.

• Unscathed – Requires you to be at 100% health.
• Critical – Requires you to be under 30% health.
• Confront – Requires you to be in a 1 on 1 fight. Good for boss fights but is limiting in the open world.
• Frontal – Requires you to attack/be attacked from the front.
• Rear – Requires you to attack/be attacked from the back.
• Composed – Requires your stamina to be over 50%
• Enraged – Requires your stamina to be under 50%

You’ll also want to frequently visit Oksana to upgrade the level of your gear by exchanging higher level gear so your set can last the entire game without its base stats falling behind.

Spear Build – Skills

There are 2 skill trees. The Spear skill tree which is abilities and upgrades to your Spear, and the Common skill tree which improves your overall ability. You get skill points as you use your weapon, and you can invest it through the menu. You can also take out skill points from skills if you decide to change your build around or your weapon in general. All the high priority skills will be bold red and should be gotten as soon as you possibly can. All the other skills are just for quality of life or make fights a bit easier.

Common Skills

• Resources Tab:
  • Enduring Spirit – Useful to help maintain your spirit whenever you get attacked, which will happen a lot.
  • Opportunistic Spirit – Useful to help maintain your spirit whenever you perform a brink dodge.
  • Berserk Spirit – Useful to help maintain your spirit whenever you attack, which you’ll be doing a lot.
  • Indomitable Spirit – Useful to help maintain your spirit whenever you brink guard.
• Reflection Tab:
  • Nothing here is used as Reflection is overall a pretty useless skill as even though you deal damage to the enemy when you use reflection, you also take damage.
• Brutal Attack Tab:
  • Brutal Attack: Reap – Recover a small amount of health when using a Brutal Attack from the front. Extremely useful to help maintain your health during boss fights.
  • Brutal Attack: Spirit – Recover spirit when using a Brutal Attack from the back. Not as important, but is nice to have to help maintain your spirit.
  • Brutal Attack: Absorb – Increase the amount of the Phantom Form Gauge you get from using Brutal Attacks. Useful if you like to use the Phantom Form a lot.
• Javelin Tab:
  • Everything skill in the tab is a useful quality of life upgrade in the open world, but not really during boss fights as you won’t really use the Javelin very much during bosses.
• Counterattack Tab:
  • Counterattack: Offense – This will increase the damage you deal with a Counterattack, which is extremely useful.
  • Counterattack: Expert – Increase the timing window for triggering a Counterattack, which is extremely useful.
  • Counterattack: Spirit – Recover spirit when using a Counterattack. Not as important, but is nice to have to help maintain your spirit.
• Phantom Form Tab:
  • Phantom Form: Death’s Denial – If your Phantom Form Gauge is full, whenever you die you’ll instead trigger Phantom Form, essentially saving you from dying. This is extremely useful to have as it can save you during the later boss fights specifically, though it costs 5 skill points to unlock, so while useful, try to prioritize the other skills first.
  • The rest of the skills aren’t as useful, especially if you aren’t using Phantom Form frequently. If you have extra skill points, you can feel free to invest.

Spear Skills

• Swift Attack Tab:
  • Moonlight – Turns the 3rd attack of your swift attack into a slash instead, however lets you continue down the skill tree.
  • Moonlight Stance– Extremely useful as the 3rd attack of your swift attack combo will trigger an afterimage that will deal extra damage after each of your attacks. You’ll want to fully upgrade this.
  • Moonlight Stance: Vitality – Increases your stamina regen during Moonlight Stance.
  • Moonlight Stance: Persistence – Increases the duration of Moonlight Stance whenever you brink guard or brink dodge.
  • Moonlight Step – When Moonlight Stance is active, you’ll be able to dodge again while you’re in the middle of a dodge, giving you more distance.
  • Moonlight Step: Intercept – Deals damage when performing a brink dodge with Moonlight Step.
  • Moonlight Step: Afterimage – Increases the invincibility frames Moonlight Step.
  • Full Moon – Does a modified charged potent attack when in Moonlight Stance. While not that useful, it gives you access to more of the skill tree, so you need to get it.
  • Crimson Strike – While in Moonlight Stance, increase the damage of Brutal Attacks.
  • Moonlight Stance: Wrath – Increase the damage of Full Moon and Crimson Strike in proportion to the remaining time of Moonlight Stance.
• Potent Blow Tab:
  • Shadow Cleave – Adds an additional hit to the 3rd attack of the potent blow combo.
  • Spiral Thrust – Charge your spear and thrust into the enemy. This consumes 1 spirit. You’ll want to fully upgrade this.
  • Spiral Thrust: Swirl – Lets you charge for longer Spiral Thrust to deal more damage, but consumes 2 spirits instead. You deal extra damage directly after using a brutal attack, or against exhausted enemies.
  • Spiral Thrust: Vortex – A fully charged Spiral Thrust will increase your range and deal guard penetration damage.
  • Fighting Spirit – Increase the amount of spirit gained from attacks. Useful to maintain your spirit.
  • DO NOT get Zero point. It can ruin your combos and get you stuck in the animation of the attack when you don’t want to.
• Chain Tab:
  • Chaser – Decreases the stamina cost of attacks when an enemy is exhausted.
  • Chaser: Devour – Recover 1 spirit whenever an enemy is exhausted. Useful to maintain your spirit.
  • Shadow Reversal – Lets you finish a combo with an attack that you reposition you behind the enemy if their stance was broken.
  • Shadow Reversal: Impact – Lets you break the stance of more enemies with Shadow Reversal.
  • Shadow Reversal: Penetrate – Shadow Reversal does guard penetration damage and more stamina damage.
  • Trance – An attack you can use to follow up any attack that costs spirit. This attack also costs spirit.
  • Trance: Spirit – Whenever striking an enemy with Trance, you’ll recover half of a spirit charge.
  • Trance: Resolve – Increase your attack damage for a short time after Trance strikes an enemy. You’ll want to fully upgrade this.
  • Trance: Liberation – Lets you use Trance after any attack instead of just attacks that consume spirit.
• Shrewd Tab:
  • Quick Slash – Lets you follow up a brink dodge with an attack that has invincibility frames.
  • Vital Strike – Lets you do a potent attack after dodging or while sprinting. Also lets you skip right to the second attack of either a swift or potent combo afterwards.
  • Vital Strike: Shatter – Vital Strike will deal more stamina damage if it strikes a weak point.
  • Agility – Decreases stamina usage of dodging. You’ll want to fully upgrade this.
• Guard Tab:
  • Breakdown – Increase stamina damage from a brink guard.
  • Endurance – Decrease stamina usage of guarding.
  • Phantom: Heatwave – Lets you spin your spear to automatically brink guard incoming attacks while dealing damage to the attacking enemy and buffs Moonlight Stance. This skill costs 1 spirit to use. This skill is EXTREMELY important to get as it’s basically a get out of jail free card if you feel like you can’t avoid an attack. The skill is best used by just spam using it until they stop attacking. You’ll want to fully upgrade this. It’s actually not recommended to get the other 2 Heatwave skills either, as they can screw up its main purpose, which is spamming it through a combo to make sure you don’t die.

You can obviously experiment with other skills and attacks from the skill tree, but these are the ones that are the most useful and work perfect with the chosen armor set bonuses.

Healing Items

There are several types of healing items in the game, which can help you have an easier time during boss fights.

• Netherworld Energy – These are your regular healing items that will recharge every time you rest at a Blade Nexus. You can upgrade how much health they recover by either using the “Adelhaide the Philanthropic” Phantom Ability, or by upgrading your Health Recovery with Soulstones at Daphrona.
• Willpower Orb – These will recover 50% of your health and consume 3 spirit when used. These are great as emergency healing items and you can hold up to 20 at once. Sadly they’re hard to come across, however you can buy 10 from the Bard at his last 2 locations.
• Tearstones – These items will recover a set amount of health and as well as give you Lacrima. While you might be tempted to just use these to get the Lacrima, these are way better used as emergency healing items where you can recover a small amount of health from attacks without having to use your other healing items that heal a lot more health.

Boss #1 – Yetuga

Boss #2 – Blade Phantom

Boss #3 – Viper

Boss #4 – Volbaino

Boss #5 – Aratra

Boss #6 – Rangkus

Boss #7 – Maluca

Boss #8 – Elamein

Boss #9 – Shactuka

Boss #10 – Trokka

Boss #11 – Bellerian

Boss #12 – Skalpel

Boss #13 – Princess Ilyna

Boss #14 – Hismar

Boss #15 – Reese

Boss #16 – Ozma

That’s all 16 bosses in the game.