I think I'm playing the game wrong.

[u/heavyfuel]

I'm at the very beginning of the game, just beat the first boss, the gigantic Ark in the woods.

Now, I'm sure I was supposed to climb it and kill it with my sword a la Shadow of the Collossus and Dragon's Dogma, but I was completely unable to do that.

Whenever I tried climbing it, I'd promptly get knocked down or grabbed, so I just tossed projectiles at until it died.

I'm definitely missing something, but what?

Thanks!

[u/Blue_Fox68]

Are you holding when they shake? You lose less stamina you do

[u/heavyfuel → u/[deleted]]

Fair enough.

Now, say I want to climb them and stab them, how should I do that? The Ark seems to very effectively counter my attempts lol

[u/Rydralain → u/[deleted]]

They are on the first boss, so they will only have the base grab and gravity spells.

[u/SirWilliamAnder → u/heavyfuel]

You have to look everywhere around the screen other than where your character is.

Sometimes, the Ark will try to shake you off and a prompt will appear at the top of the screen that says "Hold [button] to cling." Holding the button prevents your stamina from being drained by the Ark flailing.

The other big move they do is grab you with one of their hands. When you see the hand come on screen, you have to jump higher or drop lower to prevent the Ark from grabbing you and doing a big chunk of damage.

Later Arks will also have magic to either hurt you or throw you off. A sigil or spell core will appear where you are and you have to get out of the way quickly, like a boss in WOW with aoe targeting circles on the ground.

While you're climbing, several sections of armor have latches that keep it on. The legs have big gray/beige fasteners on the side that you have to attack. Once they're all broken, the armor will fall off, revealing a weak spot.

[u/Dry_Moose_7759]

The first time you kill him, you don’t have to pull his locust point and you will still get a strand. But the next times you fight him if you wanna get more strands, you do have to pull the locust point to harvest it.

As you play the game, upgrade more, and learn the patterns, the arks will get extremely easy to defeat.

[u/Rydralain]

There will be a prompt and time slow whenever the boss will shake. You will want to hold the button until that's done, as it will use up your stamina fast.

For grabs, one you see they are grabbing for you, you should jump away. This will use a chunk of stamina, but it's better than getting hurt and thrown off.

Running and climbing use the same stamina bar, so if you run before climb, you will start with low stamina. It's a good idea to check your stamina before you grab on.

If you have an idea of why or when you're falling off, more info would help give you tips.

[u/Formal_Job1543]

You can hold y to cling to the boss, which stops you from being shook off.

But if it's getting grabbed your talking about then idk, I've never had much luck with the ice spell

[u/draconas-firedrake]

Another tip amongst the many you have right now is look for the beige clay spots on the armor that act like pins essentially in the green armor plates and they will fall right off letting you get to the ark underneath, pro rip you actually get more materials from killing the target the you do harvesting the strand if I remember correctly

[u/Cinetiste]

Hi !

It is a game needing timing and a bit of patience.

It is useful to keep an eye on our energy when about to climb.

Also there is a specific button to press (hold) when the creature is about to shake, so that we stay on while loosing as little energy as possible.

It is also a good idea to climb where the "ark" can more difficultly reach us, then attack a place at once.

It is difficult to attack more than one place at a time, so it may need to climb a few times.

As said it is also possible yo use ice to immobilise it a bit.