Dark Souls III: Demon Prince Boss Fight

Demon Prince is the first real boss you will face in The Ringed City DLC, after braving through some very annoying areas. More specifically, he is the boss you need to get past to move out of the first area, The Dreg Heap, and into the actual Ringed City area.

Despite him being the first actual boss, the way to him can feel as taxing as a boss fight, with those large angel-like creatures being complete menaces from above.

In case you didn't already know, you need to locate the summoners that keep making the angels respawn. If you kill the summoners, neither they, nor their corresponding angels will spawn anymore, making the Dreg Heap much easier to explore. It's easier said than done, though, with the summoners being hidden away and hard to find.

Anyway, let's get back on the topic of the Demon Prince boss. Afterall, this video isn't called Dreg Heap Wildlife Safari and I'm not wearing a pith helmet ;-)

I chose to summon Slave Knight Gael for this fight, because he had previously proved highly useful for helping me kill Sister Friede in the Ashes of Ariandel DLC. Unfortunately, I didn't get that fight on video, because I have a very naughty cat who thought my controller was a chew toy just when I was about to start the fight, so I got distracted and didn't get recording started, which I didn't realize until after she was down.

I have completed all of the Souls games almost without ever using summoned phantoms. It being several years since I played Dark Souls II, I was actually about halfway through Dark Souls III before I even remembered and realized that it was an option. I had read something about it, but I could never find those summoning symbols, so I figured there were some sort of prerequisite that I didn't know about and just made do without them.

And yes, there is a prerequisite. It's called Ember. If you don't have it restored, you can't summon. You get a free restore whenever you kill a boss, but you can also find and buy consumable Embers throughout the game. Using one of those restores your Ember, giving you more health and making summoning available. You probably already knew, but silly me for fighting through half the game before realizing that.

Anyway, when you first start the boss fight by jumping down a very large hole, you will be face to face with two large and quite hostile demons: The Demon in Pain and The Demon from Below.

They have separate health bars, and you should try to focus one of them down as fast as possible, so you'll only have to deal with one of them at a time. Despite you facing off against two bosses at the same time, phase one actually isn't all that hard, as both demons leave wide openings for attack as well as being fairly easy to dodge.

Before summoning Slave Knight Gael for my final attempt, I had easily gotten through phase one on my own and only struggled a bit in phase two. And after those horrible angels terrorizing me on my way here, I was in no mood for more enemies being reluctant to die when I needed them to, so I decided to call in the cavalry in the form of Slave Knight Gael. At this time, I was actually not aware that Gael would give me quite a bit of trouble later, but more on that in another video.

Throughout phase one, one of the demons will be on fire and the other will not be. They usually swap being ablaze several times during the fight. When the demon you're focusing on is on fire, you mostly need to be mindful of its regular attacks and it's usually best to stay behind it or beneath it.

If it's not on fire, it will often spew some sort of poison cloud and also raise itself up on its hind legs and then try to slam down on you. Staying in front of it will make it easier to see when this is about to happen, and after it does either there is a nice and large open window for laying some pain on it in return, so make sure to take advantage of that.

Once you have killed both demons, the last one standing will do a lot of huffing and puffing and make a show of himself before finally turning into Demon Prince, a larger and much nastier demon that you will have to dispose of in phase two of the fight.

He does a lot of fire damage, so the Black Knight Shield is great for this fight. Apparently, all the demons are weak to the Black Knight weapons as well, but I hadn't managed to muster up the willpower to grind black knights for longer than it took to obtain the shield (which is immensely helpful against other bosses as well), so I just used my usual twinblades.

I believe that the version of the Demon Prince boss you face in phase two is different depending on which of the first two demons you leave for last and let him spawn from, but I'm not exactly sure what the difference is as I've only killed him once and in my previous attempts I didn't really pay attention to which demon died last. For what it's worth, the fight in this video is based on the Demon in Pain being killed last, but I don't know if that's good or bad.

Phase two of the fight can be a bit chaotic with a lot going on, especially a lot of area of effect fire attacks. Holding up your Black Knight shield while running towards the boss can help mitigate a lot of the fire damage, but remember to watch your stamina.

Having Slave Knight Gael present to help distract the boss from what appears to be his sole purpose in life (to ruin your day, just like everybody else in this game) helps a lot, but don't stay out of the fight too long or Gael will die, as you will see him doing in this video as well.

Once you're done with the Demon that is now Formerly Known as Prince, remember to light the bonfire, and then you need to pick up the Small Envoy Banner in the corridor behind him. Move out to the terrace, display the banner and you will get a free flight to The Ringed City, courtesy of some weird winged creatures that for some reason don't just drop you mid-air, which would be nothing less than what I'd expect from this game. I guess there are nice monsters in Dark Souls too ;-)

Although, once facing the horrors that await in the Ringed City, describing anyone who transports you there as being "nice" is probably playing it a bit too fast and loose with the word ;-)