The Duke's Dear Freja |
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| HP | 4,220 | 6,752 (NG+) |
| Weakness | Strike, Fire, Bleed |
| Weakness (small spiders) | Torchlight, Fire, Bleed |
| Resistance | Magic, Lightning, Dark |
| Immune | Poison |
| Respawn | NO |
The Duke's Dear Freja is a Boss in Dark Souls 2 (DKS2). Within Brightstone Cove Tseldora, Duke's Dear Freja, a monstrous two-headed spider, guards the Writhing Ruin. Her formidable shell boasts high resistance, rendering the heads as the sole vulnerable targets. During the battle, it's feasible to sever a head, inducing a brief stagger before she retaliates with a leg stomp. Bosses are unique and challenging Enemies that drop Boss Souls capable of being transformed into powerful Weapons, Spells, and Items for the player.
The Duke's Dear Freja Information in Dark Souls 2
Duke's Dear Freja is a boss in Dark Souls 2. Found in Brightstone Cove Tseldora, her shell proves to be highly resistant to damage, leaving the heads as the only vulnerable points for attack. It is possible to cut a head off during the fight, causing her to be staggered for a few seconds before she does a leg stomp.
There are smaller spiders that are constantly spawning in the room while the boss is alive. Each of these smaller spiders has ~200hp. These smaller spiders can be killed off at the beginning of battle and will not re spawn for a short time, allowing easier combat with the boss.
Some Notes
- If a substantial amount of hits are done to one head during a short period of time, the head will fall off and will be untargetable for the rest of the fight.
- You will need a weapon with a fairly high damage output for this fight. If your weapon is too weak, you might actually decapitate both of her heads and leave her alive/invincible at the same time, resulting in you having to restart the boss battle. However, if both heads are decapitated, an armor-piercing weapon can sometimes deal damage to the boss from the positions where the heads were prior to being chopped off.
- Walking against Freja's legs will slow you down for a split second. Try to avoid this while moving underneath her, especially when you're being chased by small spiders
- Some weapons can attack around/through Freja's blocks.
- In an early encounter of a subsequent Cycle: If caused enough damage (33%) to it, its HP-bar will disappear, and any more damage attempted to cause to it, will not count, and it will retreat only after about 35s.
- NG+ any damage you do to her outside the boss room will carry over to the encounter in the boss room
- A monstrous two-headed spider which serves as the Keeper of the Writhing Ruin. Apparently Duke Tseldora's pet and more than likely the progenitor of the swarms of Parasite Spiders which overran and destroyed Brightstone Cove. But What could the Duke have wanted with such an abomination, and what madness could have possessed him to allow the destruction of his own domain...?
Dark Souls 2 The Duke's Dear Freja Location
- Area boss of Brightstone Cove Tseldora. Accessed by going through the whole map.
The Duke's Dear Freja Drops in DKS2
- Soul of the Duke's Dear Freja
- Old Paledrake Soul (NG+)
- Souls: 42,000 (Standard Game) 84,000 (NG+)
DKS2 The Duke's Dear Freja Encounters
| Locations | Description |
|---|---|
| Brightstone Cove Tseldora | Primary (end of level) boss fight |
| Brightstone Cove Tseldora (first bonfire) |
Early surprise boss fight on New Game Plus. She will attack the player after climbing over a cliff for a minute or so before fleeing. She appears right before entering the spider doors that leads to the church containing the Prowling Magus. Once she appears a boss health bar will pop up at the bottom of the screen. She'll only stay at the cliff for 30-40 seconds, or until you run away, but it's still a chance to kill her early. Damage done during this encounter also carries over to the primary boss battle at the end of the level. (does not occur if you burnt Bonfire Ascetic instead of actual NG+?) Note : I'm in NG and I encountered her (Possibly a rare encounter in NG??) |
The Duke's Dear Freja Attacks in Dark Souls 2
Souls Awarded
| Bonfire Intensity | Souls Awarded |
| 1 | 42,000 |
| 2 | 84,000 |
| 3 | 105,000 |
| 4 | 115,500 |
| 5 | 126,000 |
| 6 | 136,500 |
| 7 | 147,000 |
| 8 | 168,000 |
- No changes to souls awarded beyond Bonfire Intensity 8.
NPC Summons
Ashen Knight Boyd is available as a summon for this fight. His summon sign is located on the ground floor of the spider-infested area, behind a few columns against the opposite wall from the fog gate.
Manhunter O'Harrah (SotFS only) can be summoned in the room with all the poisonous spiders hanging from the ceiling, on the left, and is very effective. (When I had him and Boyd I got to about 2 hits off, but was killed.)
Bashful Ray can also be summoned earlier in the level, in the room with double doors next to Weaponsmith Ornifex's workshop. Unlike other times, Ray is summoned as a Phantom rather than a Shade, and so can be brought all the way to the boss room to help form a team of four. His attacks are quick and lethal, very handy for all the minion spiders as well as getting through the boss itself. He has a number of pyromancies including Firestorm (does very little to the boss) and Fireball (very effective if hits the head).
Strategies
The best way to fight the spider solo is to bait out the beam attack then sprint to its other head and attack it. Make sure not to get hit by the web it shoots out because this is a death sentence. When she starts to use her Leg Stomp, it's best to stay right up on her legs so that you can immediately run up on her head when she finishes.
Easy Mode with Torch (SotFS only)
If you equip a torch in the fight, all the small spiders will NOT attack you, just like all other spiders in this level. This allows you to just focus on the boss, see below for details.
Solo/Melee
Entering the fight, immediately run right towards the back, circling the arena to avoid Freja's legs. This should group up the spiders, making it easier to take them out. Guiding the spiders away from Freja, take them all out as quickly as possible. Once the spiders are finished, run over to Freja and whack her face. Whenever it looks like she's about to attack, roll to the left/right but keep close by the side of her face. Ensuring you keep next to her face at all times and kill any respawning spiders, she's a pretty easy boss. If she does her beam attack, sprint in the direction of the beam to avoid getting hit. Without the spiders, Freja is easy to kill, taking only a bit of patience and overcoming arachnaphobia to defeat her.
Solo/Melee alternative
Stay to the side of the boss in medium range (far enough so the legs wont hit you) picking up the spiders 1 by 1 strafing as you do, and as soon as the spiders are gone go as close as you can to the boss head when it starts to attack, quickly run to the other head and hit it, repeat till the boss is dead. I did this with a 69% weight and a halberd, worked flawlessly.
Sorcery/Lightning Spears/Pyromancy
Enter the fight, and sprint straight around her (you can go under her legs and still avoid getting hit), and put a bit of distance between the second head and the spiders. You can cast 1 or 2 spells (depending on cast speed) safely before she recovers from her initial attack. The rest of the battle consists of keeping your distance and baiting attacks. When she uses her stomp or acid attacks, dodge back once or twice and you will be safe (depends on encumbrance). When she uses the lunge attack, dodge a couple of times to the side, and attack her other head after she has finished the attack (otherwise you might miss). When she uses the beam attack, run in the direction of her attack, but run towards the side of her head, this should give pyro's enough time for a fire storm, depending on how quickly you get there, her head should push you to safety if you cast next to her. If you keep moving in one direction (counter-clockwise works best for evading the beam attacks) not even the spiders will give you much trouble. (I defeated Freja on NG+ in 4 mins using this strategy and Soul Spears, the spider's didn't even get close enough to attack me).
If you have the ability to summon a phantom, the boss battle becomes much easier allowing the two to three players to beat on each head.
Despite the best way normally being eliminating the small spiders, the area is quite large and they move rather slowly, making avoiding them an easy task, so it is not necessary to take them out to focus on the big spider.
After entering through the fog gate as a Magic User, IMMEDIATELY use AOE spells like heavenly thunder or chaos storm to take out the small spiders in one go. Making the remainder of the fight much easier.
Video Strategies
NightHawk: Duke's Dear Freja: Ranged, Sword & Board and Power Stance
Melee(dual wield/power stance)
(miracles/spells)
Melee Co-op (Drangleic Sword+2, no buffs)
The Duke's Dear Freja Glitches in DKS2
- When decapitating one of the heads, the head that has been decapitated can still be targeted, causing spawned NPC to target this while causing no damage (Xbox 360)
Dark Souls 2 The Duke's Dear Freja Hints
- It's possible to glitch the fog gate when you get hit/grabbed by the little spiders before the gate. Make sure to clean the room before you take on the boss.
- the beam attack is unblockable by both your shield and environment and will do large damage, however it will never pass through the bosses own legs, so you can use that as a guide for where the safe zone starts.
- Avoid using the pyromancy "Warmth". If the boss gets close, it will be healed, and after the heads are destroyed, it will still have hp remaining, meaning you can't kill it.
- Using the Black Knight Halberd can be a good tip, using the one handed light/ fast (RB/R1) attack is perfect. (i've used this one for my NG+).
- Melee Weapons with a good amount of reach are a necessity if you don't want to stand immediately in front of her face and punch with a Caestus.
- Using a Lit Torch during the encounter renders the other spiders useless and you can focus solely on the boss. Just don't let it go out.(SOFTS ONLY!)
Trivia
- If you decapitate one of her heads, You can kick it around like a football. This is somewhat advised, as the spider minions will not go near the head, but it also means that Freja only has 1 weakpoint instead of 2.
- You can kick the head into the stairwell where Vengarl's body is and use it to block him from hitting you.
- This boss is modeled after both Armored Spider from Demon's Souls and Seath The Scaleless from Dark Souls.
- Interestingly, unlike the other Old Ones, the "Great Soul Embraced" message does not appear after killing Freja. Instead it appears when interacting with the Dragon caught in her web, suggesting the great soul may actually belong to it.
- Oddly, this isn't the case if you burned Bonfire Ascetic, the message appears if you killed Freja in the same playthrough but with Bonfire Ascetic.
- All Great Souls - including Freja's - are optional to open the Shrine of Winter, provided the soul memory requirement for that playthrough is reached. [Edited]
- The icon of her soul is different than that of the other great souls. It is the icon of a typical boss souls.
- After Freja is defeated, Manscorpion Tark alludes to Seathe the Scaleless in a remark: "What skill. You've defeated my master. But our master never dies, only changes form, so that he may seethe for all eternity."
*If you use a torch while fighting her, the small spiders will not attack you, making the fight much easier. (SotFS ONLY)
AnonymousYeah thanks for that cutscene where a horde of spiders rushes past the camera and my character, and then rushes directly into the camera again. *******.
- Anonymous
I’ll never forget the first time I fought this boss playing with my friends. We were on the way to the boss room and my friend looked at all the spider webs and enemies and said, “Yeah.. I bet the boss is gonna be some big spider that shoots lasers out of its ass, lmao…” And sure enough….
I burned the bonfire ascetic at the royal army campsite bonfire but her ng+ cliff encounter isn't triggering. Is there something else I need to do?
- Anonymous
lost 74k souls because i unequipped the torch after the fight after i went to get the brightstone key; thanks dark souls
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
a pretty fool proof strategy i just figured out on my first playthrough is hug her first then hit her one head, circle around right away, hit her other head, circle around right away, rinse and repeat. this way i was almost never hit. also equip the torch, it is very worth it i realized.
- Anonymous
Alguém poderia me ajudar? Eu matei ela, mas não peguei a grande alma, só a comum, e agora tem um cristal estranho no campo de batalha dela, mas não acontece nada ao interagir com ele, alguém sabe como eu faço pra pegar essa great soul?
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
Grab the 3 summons from around the area and let them do the work . The boss won't manage to kill one , as long as you have about 3 flasks you can just cheese it . Watch for little guys , got this boss 2nd try / first try with all summons . Can also apply fire to your weapon and sneak in extra hits when she's busy .
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
So Bashful Ray is only in SotFS? May want to add that to his description.
- Anonymous
Using the torch in sotfs makes the fight very easy, especially with no summons. Spiders won’t attack you, and the boss is fairly slow
- Anonymous
I suggest you to not use the summons if you are playing melee, just use a torch (to ignore the small spiders) and solo her. Her health points increase a lot and she will still try to attack you with summons... so it's easier to face her alone because she will die faster and it's easier to predict attacks if you're the only target.
- Anonymous
I like how the only damage you can do is when you hit its face.
- Anonymous
WHY THE **** DOES THIS GAME TRY TO OVERWHELM YOU WITH NUMBERS EVERY TIME? 20 RESPAWNING SPIDERS CHASING YOUR ASS AROUND. THE ONE TIME YOU GET A CHANCE TO HIT THE BIG ONE THEY STAGGER YOU AND THEN THE BIG ONE 1 SHOTS YOU
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
The ps3 version of this game is the dark souls of dark souls 2 with how much they babied the later releases with added npc summons and torch against spider mechanic
- Anonymous
the small spider in the arena dont stay away while i hold the torch...
possibly this means it only happens on the ps4 version of SoTFS, so people with the ps3 version might be confused when it doesnt work
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
Some of the most egregiously awful attack hitboxes I've seen in this game, which is saying a lot.
Lost to this cancer 3 times with all the available summons for her
Then proceeded to kill her in the first solo attempt after deciding not to waste Human Effigies
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
Has to be one of the worst boss runs in the game. So much incentive to kill her first try.
- Anonymous
If you're going to summon Jugo at the first encounter on NG+, do it after you kill / chase her off or he'll just chase her over the edge and die.
- Anonymous
None of the small spiders seemed to attack me during this fight making it much easier than it otherwise would have been.
- Anonymous
Strolled in and beat her first try. Switched to silver covetous ring right after she died cause im greedy for souls. Got jumped and shanked by mini spiders AFTER she had been killed. Logged off the game and went for a run in the rain while wearing all rusty plate armor. Arrived home and cooked green blossom sandwiches for the family. Broke thousands of rocks to get over the trauma of being ganked post boss fight. Went to sleep for ninety years and woke up for work. Brushed my teeth with barb wire and then I saw it in the mirror. The spider gank squad had been following me all the way. Since I first went for the run in the rain, they been gankin'. Gank squad don't quit comin' even after you logged out.
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
So I'm assuming becuase there is no mention of poison or toxic here that I can definitely afflict laser spider with both?
"if you don't want to stand immediately in front of her face and punch with a Caestus." I literally beat this thing on my first try with my unarmed character using caestuses,granted i was massivley overleveled for the area and had a ridiculous damage output thanks to the vanquishers seal lol
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
For some reason in NG+ when I was walking towards the group of peasants near that cliff face Freyja jumped up from the pit, and just sat there spitting acid and stomping, there was even a health bar, after a little while she dropped back into the pit and everything proceeded as normal. Is this random or is it a scripted event in NG+ and beyond?
- Anonymous
i am doing a run in which i must take all the NPC phantoms with me and make them survive for the entire bossfight
The drop after the spider chapel to freja killed my phantom way more than the boss itself (i did it 1st try). Enemies almost started despawning
- Anonymous
does duke's dear freja has some secret encounter???... i just encounter him/her before the door leading to prowling magus and concregation, i was really really shocked...
- Anonymous
Got ambushed on NG, didn’t need to beat the game to encounter Freja there
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
I'm on my first run, i killed Freja. Now i use bonfire ascetic to kill her again on NG+ but she hasn't respawn. Is that a glitch, does someone have an answer ?
- Anonymous
All my playthrough, my Fire Longsword has been waiting for this triumphant moment in spider boss killing.
- Anonymous
Can't believe this is Seath. You looked wayyy better as a dragon.
- Anonymous
can confirm it appears weak to fire, resistant to lighting and a lesser resistance to dark damage. physical damage may also be effective but its easy to cast it to death
- Anonymous
I love spiders. And this one has two heads, even better! (You probably think I'm crazy) That NG+ Surprise was extremely fun and interesting and made me like DS2 even more.
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
Whoever decided that you can't attack its heads from an angle has earned electric jail
- Anonymous
Damn that ng+ ambush scared me although ds2 gets a lot of hate because it’s not as good as dark souls one at least ng+ feels like a new adventure unlike the other two souls games
- Anonymous
Absolutely braindead boss in Scholar with a Torch, even on NG+ cycles. You just hit one head a couple times, move aside before she attacks, and repeat on the opposite head. You don't even need to try very hard to avoid her attacks; they're all so slow and predictable. Just don't be in front of the head you just hit. Roll if you can't see her legs. I've had a harder time breaking inanimate pots.
- Anonymous
Annoying boss, got one shot right as I killed it. I was being a greedy *****er I will admit, but still annoying.
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
Which one deal more damage to her/him physical weapons or fire infused weapons?
- Anonymous
This boss fight is worse than having your*****slammed shut in a car door
- Anonymous
Fexelea- thanks for the info about what she is weak to and nearly immune to. This is why we pay you the big bucks. /s
- Anonymous
"If you hold a torch, the spiders don't attack you" - this is true ONLY to SOTFS edition.
- Anonymous
"What could the Duke have wanted with her and why would he allow his kingdoms destruction" description makes me wonder if this was one of the abyss-given-form wives referenced who saught out powerful monarchs, turned into a giant spider
- Anonymous
Absolute cakewalk of a boss in sotfs with a torch, just untarget the boss and run to the right when she does the lazor thing and the other attacks are incredibly easy to roll from. A good advice is to never expend all your stamina punishing it, there's no rush and staying able to dodge her attacks is way more important.
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
The torch thing is a lie. A lit torch only keeps spiders from attacking you for only a few seconds. Thanks for the false security.
- Anonymous
just hug one head and keep to the right side
if she stomps just hug her side
ggez
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
torches don't keep the spiders away. ended up having a nice well lit view while a dozen swarmed and trapped me in a corner while i looked for the summon sign.
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
43 intelligence, soul arrow x2 and great soul arrow + one dusk herb makes the boss fight super trivial solo, she only used her beam attck on me but it only did about a third of my health at 20 vigor easy fight
- Anonymous
Torch keeps the spiders at bay, interesting. I wonder if it's like in no man's warf, where the spell cast light came in handy.
- Anonymous
easiest way to kill it is to combine all the helper you get from the level (being human) and you can get up to 3 NPC to fight this boss for you.
- Anonymous
after I killed Freja and got the great soul but I couldn't find the great soul from the dragon. Is anyone here experienced the same issue as mine?
- Anonymous
As we all know this is boss is actually Seath the Scaleless (if you don't believe then look it up). And just like Seath, we have to spend forever circling the boss. With Seath is was for the Moonlight Ganksword, for this it's because you chopped off one head and now the only weak spot is on her other head.
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
If I did a certain ammount of damage to her outside the boss fight then killed her and then used an ascetic does the damage still carry on?
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
You can enter the dragon memory through the stone pillar AFTER you have got the Ashen Mist Heart from the Ancient Dragon in the Dragon Shrine. Whooop!
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
what does "NG+ any damage you do to her outside the boss room will carry over to the encounter in the boss room" mean????
- Anonymous
I was wondering how to get there before brightstone cove tseldora (first bonfire)
- Anonymous
After I lit the "Primal Bonfire", returned to "Majula" and then came back in the boss room, there was wierd stone spire of some sort. When you get near it and examine it will say "Allas, nothing happend". So what is the use of this stone spire?
- Anonymous
so i killed this boss and i did not get a great boss soul...
- Anonymous
After the boss is defeated, DON'T pick up its soul before "Victory Achieved" text goes away. You may end up picking it up and not recieving. Sadly, thats what happened to me. (Sorry for double posting, I didn't noticed I was writing it as a comment.)
- Anonymous
Fighting the boss with Alva's armor set, the Bastard Sword +2, a Heavy Crossbow +3 and pyromancy alongside Ashen Knight Boyd.
- Anonymous
Equipping the blue quartz ring +3, dispel ring +1 and wearing some +5 robes with high magic resist will make the beam do significantly less damage, making it less of a threat and more of an annoyance. If you kill her soley with ranged attacks, then this fight becomes trivial, since she won't use any other attacks and you don't need to get near her legs, leaving you only to having to kill the spiders and avoiding the beam if you can, but making it not a big deal if you don't.
I wanted to add the magic resistance idea to the notes, but the page appears to be locked to editing?
I battled Freja on NG with an aditional bonfire ascetic (so it's equal to NG+) using a maxxed out Longsword +10 with Fire (physical: 157+60; fire: 157+34) vs. a maxxed out Ruler's Sword +5 (physical: 230+103). The first seemed to hit for at least an equal amount of damage though the pure physical damage is obviously much lower. My explanation for this is that the fire damage has an effect on Freja.
- Anonymous
so iv killed this boss carryed on and decided to farm some enemys and came back to this bosses room and found a weird crystel growing where i picked upthe boss soul what dos this thing do?
Just got done playing soccer w her head after beating her. But I did almost fall off the edge of that cliff kicking the head.
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