Ebrietas, Daughter of the Cosmos, is probably the toughest boss you’ll face in Bloodborne. She can body slam you and take away 80% of your health, she can spew blood at you, and to make matters worse, she looks like a giant ugly slug. But here’s some good news: Ebrietas takes a lot of extra damage if you use bolt against her. Before you enter the fight, either bring in Bolt Paper with you, or imbue one of your weapons with a Bolt Blood Gemstone. The Tonitrus is an okay choice, but only if you’ve leveled it to at least +7 or +8.
While she’s rather slow in movement, she does have a good number of attacks that can reach you from a distance and deal a ton of damage to you. During her first phase, she’ll usually dish out a combo that involves her swiping her right tentacle, the left tentacle, and then doing a head slam on the ground right in front of her. This combo is relatively easy to dodge as you only have to sidestep left or right in order to keep out of harm’s way. If you’re not comfortable with sticking close to her, a good opportunity for you to attack is right after she does the head slam. You’ll have a window of about 2 seconds to rush in and hit her with all you’ve got. You can get about 2 or 3 hits in before you should start backing away again.
You’ll also need to be extra wary of her tentacles as she could grab you and chew you up, taking away your entire health bar. Yes, it’s essentially a one-hit KO attack. So dodge those tentacles like your life depends on it.
Should you choose to keep a safe distance from her during the fight, another attack you should watch out for is her blood spew. She’ll occasionally spit blood at you that causes frenzy, and you do not want that in your life. If your frenzy meter fills up, you’ll take massive damage, so you’ll want to consume a Sedative immediately if the blood hits you. The blood is pretty easy to dodge though; sidestepping in a particular direction should keep you safe from that attack.
Ebrietas has one more long ranged attack that can take out a lot of your health. When you’re a good distance away from her, she can execute a head-butt attack that propels her straight towards you from all the way across the arena. Again, this is easily avoided by dodge rolling to the side, but you have to pay close attention to her movements, as this is a very fast attack.
If you’re planning on keeping your distance from Ebrietas for the duration of this fight, and only take safe hits when you can, these are the moves that you’ll need to watch out for. She does have a second phase where she adds a few attacks to her move set, but we’ll get to that in a bit. Keeping your distance is a viable strategy, but that will make this a rather protracted fight, and it isn’t always easy to avoid all of her long ranged attacks either.
On the other hand, if you’re the kind of player who likes to get up close and personal, you won’t have it easy either. While you won’t have to deal with Ebrietas’ blood spewing, you’ll still have to dodge her tentacles and head slam attack. By sticking close to her side, you’ll have plenty of opportunities to attack her. If you use Bolt Paper on the heavy form of Ludwig’s Holy Sword, for instance, you’ll be able to deal about 2000 points worth of damage with each combo. However, the challenge here lies in staying at the side and avoiding her body slams. Ebrietas will continuously try to turn towards you so that she can body slam you, and you need to dodge this while still finding time to attack. The safest way to execute the up close and personal strategy is to hit her twice, and then continue running around her side. You want to make sure you always have enough stamina to quickstep your way out of her reach if things go south.
If you’re fast enough, you might be able to get directly behind her, in between her slug tail thingies. If you do manage to pull that off, you’ll be able to get off a full combo before she dislodges you by flying above the ground.
After you’ve taken off about 50% of her health, Ebrietas will gain two new attacks to make things even more difficult for you. The first one involves her generating an aura around her that drains your HP slowly. When this happens, you can get a few good hits in as she’ll be vulnerable and you’ll have a bit of time to attack before you have to pull out and start healing.
Her second, more troublesome, attack has her conjuring lasers out of the sky and shooting you with them. Whenever Ebrietas pauses and looks up to the sky, remove the target lock and start sprinting in any direction. The lasers come in three volleys and if just one volley hits you, the other two will be sure to follow, and you’ll be dead in seconds. Don’t try to get any hits in when she starts looking towards the sky, as you won’t have enough time to start running from those lasers.
When the lasers do stop, she’ll eventually return to her normal attack pattern where she swipes with her tentacles and charging head slam if you’re too far away. Once you’ve finished dodging the lasers, you can continue your initial strategy of either staying away and only attacking when it’s safe, or stick to her side and wail at her while dodging the body slams.
Her attack patterns are easy to study but what makes this fight so difficult is the amount of damage she can deal to you with one hit, and her large health bar. With Ebrietas, you’ll want to play as safely as you can as the fight will probably force you to consume all your Blood Vials before it’s over. If you’ve completed the NPC quest line for Eileen the Crow and obtained the Hunter rune, I’d suggest equipping it before the fight. The Hunter rune boosts your stamina recovery rate and allows you to get some extra hits in before having to dodge.
Don’t worry about dying too many times to Ebrietas. Use your first couple of attempts to get used to her movements before you take her on for real. This fight requires a lot of patience, tons of sidestepping, and a bit of luck to get through. Keep at it; you’ll take that old slug down eventually. Good luck!
For more guides, tips, tricks, or advice feel free to check out Twinfinite’s Bloodborne wiki.