Thursday 25 July 2013

Dark souls boss profiles: Pinwheel


Pinwheel
HP: 1326
Skills: Clone, Fireball
Souls: 6000

Difficulty: 0.5/5
Times died on 1st playthrough: None



Its actually recommended by many sites to kill Pinwheel early in the game, because he is so pathetically weak. The reason why Pinwheel is stated so late in my boss profiles is because I would rather stay the hell away from the catacombs until late game. The boss may be easy, but the stage itself is terrifying, with skeletons littered everywhere. Its highly recommended that you do not attempt the catacombs until at least this late in the game when you forge yourself a GOOD divine weapon....or you can just brute force your way through, though that is going to be a little difficult. When you finally go through the hellish Undead Catacombs, you face its mastermind, the Pinwheel. He is the boss of Undead Catacombs.


Looks like a good boss fight, but it really isn't.

Pinwheel holds the title "Nominee for weakest boss of all time", because he is so, so SOOOO easy to kill. His damage is pathetic, he only has 1326 HP, and at this point of the game you can practically down him with one full stamina bar of normal attacks. The difficulty isn't 0/5 because he can at least do SOME damage to you, but in all seriousness, he is a joke. He might be slightly harder early on, but as I said you shouldn't be tackling the Undead Catacombs until you are strong, and when you are strong enough for the Catacombs, Pinwheel is probably as threatening as a regular knight from Undead Parish.


Clone - He makes clones of himself, end of story. Similar to Fool's Idol in Demons' Souls. He starts off with only one clone, then slowly expands that amount. Hitting the clones does NOT damage the real Pinwheel, and they all have their own health bars.

Fireball - His only offensive skill. He shoots a ball of energy at you, dealing minor-medium damage depending on your armor. The clones shoot these as well.


With only one attack and one non-damaging ability, there is really not much reason to fail here. I have not died to this boss EVER in ALL of my playthroughs. You will only take damage when you fall into the pit he is in, to trigger the boss cut scene. The best way to kill him is to do so after the cut scene finishes. At the beginning of the fight he will taunt you, jumping into the air slowly and raising his "arms" for a few seconds. During this animation, run up to him, hit him until you run out of stamina. He will flinch, so you WILL get the full brunt of your damage. If he dies, congrats, you just won. If he DOESN'T die, you may be a little too weak to proceed....


If you somehow didn't kill him with your first barrage of strikes, he will begin retaliating. He will start to clone himself, though he'll only have 1 clone at the start. The clone takes damage to its own health bar, so its actually really easy to spot them out. If you hit the Pinwheel an its health bar doesn't go down, you've got the clone, switch immediately. The fireball is a slow, straightforward projectile that doesn't do much damage. Its easily blocked and dodged, though since all clones cast it together at the same time as the Pinwheel, it might get sticky if you are assaulted by multiple fireballs at once.


He sucks.

Still though, its IMPOSSIBLE for you to drag the fight so long that there will be more than 2 Pinwheels around. If you ARE having trouble (highly doubt it), the real Pinwheel has a different aura around him when he clones himself (I think the clones do not have auras when they perform the clone spell). Hit that one and you should be good.


He gives 6000 souls upon his defeat, which is pathetic for a boss, but kind of worth it considering that you killed him with almost no effort. I was hoping that they'd buff him with the "Artorias Of The Abyss" expansion, but alas, they left him in his current saddening state. Truthfully the easiest f**king boss in the game, nothing to see here folks. 

Next time, we fight the real deal.


Peace.