Dark Souls Archthrones Necromancer Obediah Boss Fight Guide

The Archthrone of the High Lord is one of the newer areas introduced to the base game of Dark Souls 3 by the Dark Souls Archthrones mod. While expansive, it features only three (technically two) bosses. Among these bosses, the most formidable is Necromancer Obediah.

Challenging this boss involves navigating through certain obstacles, and defeating it presents a separate challenge altogether. If you're seeking assistance, look no further. We'll guide you on locating the boss and defeating Necromancer Obediah in Dark Souls Archthrones.

Dark Souls Archthrones Necromancer Obediah Boss Fight Overview

Necromancer Obediah is what we would consider the main boss of the Archthrone of the High Lord, as the Chaos Amalgamate boss is significantly weaker than him, and the Carthus Sandworm is essentially just a mini-boss taken directly from Dark Souls 3. To find him, players will need to find five bells that are scattered around the Carthus of the Sands desert, and once all are rung, you can challenge Obediah in the main chamber of the High Lord's Temple.

Obediah is a single-phase fight, but he uses a wide variety of moves that include dark magic, sword combos, and even summoning skeletons to fight you. So let's break down each of his attacks below before we delve straight into the details of the fight and what you should watch out for to have the best chance of defeating him.

Necromancer Obediah Main Phase Attacks

• Blade Rush: Obediah will swing his large greatsword towards you up to three times in succession but with slight delays between each swing, making it hard to predict. 
• Blade Slam: Obediah will slam his weapon onto the ground causing a burst of damage around it. 
• Heavy Blade Combo: Obediah will raise his blade horizontally, then follow it up with a thrust, a shoulder bash, and finally a downward thrust, all quite slow but heavy-hitting. 
• Unseen Strike: Obediah will turn invisible as he rushes towards you and performs a double strike with his blade. 
• Dark Wave: Obediah uses his dark energy and imbues his blade with it, then swings his blade around his body resulting in a dark wave forming in front of him that then ripples forward for a short distance as well as causing a short burst of dark energy around his body. 
• Dark Slash Combo: After imbuing his blade with dark magic, Obediah unleashes a powerful three-hit combo that ends with a short burst of energy around his body. 
• Dark Fireball: Obediah throws a ball of dark energy towards you similar to a fireball. 
• Dark Trail: Obediah throws a ball of dark magic on the ground, which then begins trailing toward you with some light tracking to target you specifically. 
• Dark Explosion: Obediah channels dark magic around his body and unleashes it all as a massive explosion of dark magic. 
• Dark Typhoon: Blade channeled with Dark magic, Obediah begins spinning with the blade in hand, forming a typhoon of dark damage that can easily one-shot you if you get caught in it. 
• Dark Resurrection: Obediah will raise his hands, channeled with dark energy, then quickly cross them, raising any of the skeletons in the arena from the dead to fight for him and ambush you.

Necromancer Obediah Boss Fight Tips

As you can see, Obediah has quite a wide array of moves to choose from when it comes to dealing with the Emissary. However, the fight itself is not complicated technically to get right; it's only hard to do mechanically. This is because the best way to fight Obediah is straightforward and requires no special treatment, simply attack during his cooldowns and be mindful of his Dark Magic attacks, but of course, this is easier said than done.

Before the fight against Obediah himself, when it comes to dealing with those pesky skeletons he summons, we suggest focusing on clearing the room first and avoiding getting close to Obediah as he will be fairly passive when they are active, but if you wander close to him, he'll aggro towards you. Once you fight for yourself and Obediah, there are a few things to consider.

The first is that Obediah can be parried, so any of his regular melee attacks with his blade can be parried and riposted if you know what to do. If not, then we suggest instead that you focus on learning his attack timings and know when to dodge or block his attacks. Some attacks happen extremely quickly with almost no wind-up, like the Blade rush, blade slam, or dark wave, so be prepared to take some damage in this fight unless you're aiming to do it hitless.

Now, most of Obediah's dark attacks deal AoE damage around him, so your regular melee distance during his normal attacks won't do as you'll easily get caught up in it. So the ideal strategy is to maintain a medium distance from the boss, as this allows you to bait out melee attacks (forcing him to run at you) or baiting out the Dark attacks (which you can now see coming far more easily than if you're right in his face.)

So the formula for this fight is quite simple, stay at medium range, and when Obediah uses a melee attack, dodge in close and counter, if it's a Dark Attack, be safe and just dodge it, but if you have a window to close in, such as him using a Dark Trail or Dark Fireball, then feel free to close in and deal some damage. But as you can see, this fight is more about mechanically being able to react to the boss's moves and isn't technically too difficult.

So all in all, as long as you're prepared for a little bit of practice and a handful of deaths until you can master the boss's move set and timings, you should be all set when it comes to defeating Necromancer Obediah. And now that you have this guide outlining his moves as well as things to watch out for, you should be all set to conquer this Archthrone's most difficult boss.