I consider myself a soul-like mid-level player. As for Elden Ring, I'm one of those stubborn people who doesn't use Spirit Ash or Summoning, and that self-destructive streak has continued throughout Shadow of the Elder Tree. I prefer two-handed swords. I don't (usually) carry a shield. Likes a well-timed dodge roll-in.

After defeating most of the DLC bosses with my humble and honest work ethic, that last boss proceeded to grab me by the neck and after about 13-15 hours of trial and error over two days, gave me the mother of all divine whirlwinds. As you can probably tell from the headline, we are about to enter spoiler territory.

"Made" by the promised consort Laadaan, I changed my build to a Great Shield to deal with his faster than light nonsense attacks. Many of the attacks were nearly impossible to dodge, I figured. Nevertheless, if you recall Marenia's waterfowl dance, that one requires a super-special series of inputs. It's a special kind of hell.

After spending 10 hours banging my head against that wall, I figured out that I could drop Scarlet Eonia at the start of both phases. There was about a 20% chance of being killed straight after the jump in phase 1, and it didn't always connect while using the orbital laser in phase 2, but it was possible. It felt cheap, but at least it was thematically appropriate considering that the first ladderoon was ruined by it and Sunday was gone. It succeeded, and I went on to write an article you might have read.

Obviously, it took less than a week for me to embarrass myself. Like Gwyn, Lord of Cinder in Dark Souls 1, some absolute monster parried Promiscuous Consort Radahn to death. I don't have my clown makeup on right now, but it's in the mailbox and I'll be donning my big ridiculous shoes and curly red wig as soon as I can.

There are at least a couple of redeeming aspects to my and the gamers' credit. First, the OP claims that it took me about 15 hours to learn how to parry Radahn until he was snotty, which is about the same amount of time it took me to learn how to do his first phase in my sleep, realize that the Great Shield is useful, and build my dumb Scarlet Eonia strategy in theory. It took about the same amount of time it took.

The other thing is that what I pointed out before the Shadow of the Elder Tree strategy, that the bosses in Shadow of the Elder Tree are so difficult that they make players tailor-make for pointless builds, applies here as well This is what I pointed out before the "Shadow of the Elder Tree" attack, which is also true here. After all, strength builds rarely parry. They smash them.

Still, this is very cathartic. I especially love how Radahn, the promised soon-to-be-god queen, stomps her little feet with each parry as if to say, "I'm not on the ground. The architect of my nightmares has become a petulant child.

Parry Window maestro Zane_Alcatraz introduced this cheep Laddern anti-laddern build in the comments:

Considering I spent most of the day on it, the promised consort laddern is still not an easy win. It will be interesting to see if he gets a nerf in the future - FromSoftware has already stepped in to boost the power of the early-game "scud tree shards". Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to tuck into this humble pie.