Dark Souls 2 Enemies Guide - Part 4

Marching ever onwards and never giving up, here is a list of all the enemies in Dark Souls 2 that you can expect to encounter from The Gutter, all the way up to the King's Passage. Good luck, chosen undead; your journey nears its end!

Dark Souls 2: Enemies in The Gutter


Swollen Mongrel
Possibly mutated from the Undead Dogs you will have found in the game earlier, the Swollen Mongrels want you for dinner. They only really have a couple of attacks including a bite and a swipe with their claws, so predicting what they will do in melee combat will be fairly easy. Your best bet though is to just pick them off from range. If you have a decent bow, by the time they make it to your position you’re more than likely to have shot them down, making ranged combat a safer option.

Corrosive Ant Queen
Luckily this huge enemy doesn’t actually attack you; it would probably be quite a difficult opponent to fight considering the tight space you find her in. What she does however is release a gas that will pretty much break all of the equipment you have on you at the time. The gas heals poison too though, so if you are suffering from poison, unequip everything and stand in the cloud until you’re healed.

A number of enemies already encountered earlier also feature in The Gutter such as; Undead Citizen (Part 1), Captive Undead (Part 3), Undead Laborer (Part 3) and the Poison Horn Beetle (Part 3).

Dark Souls 2: Enemies in Black Gulch

Poison Statues
First and foremost, it would be remiss to ignore one of the most annoying things about Black Gulch – the evil poison statues (yes, you read that correctly). While they aren’t technically an enemy the sheer amount of them can be a nightmare if you don’t know what you are getting into, added to the fact that you cannot lock onto them. They are easy to notice (which is some sort of reprieve), but just take careful note of which way the statue is facing and break it from an angle where it can’t spit its poison at you.

Darksucker
Anyone familiar to the Zelda games may see a resemblance of the dreaded Wallmaster in the Darksucker’s features. Spawned by walking close to the tar pits dotted around Black Gulch, they can be a real pain. DO NOT stand still at any time while fighting them as they can actually eat you. Aside from that though, use the tried and true tactic of dealing with them one at a time and you should come away relatively unscathed. They are also very weak to fire damage so burn them away to your hearts content (you can aim a well placed fire arrow into their tar pit which will burn them inside of it if they haven’t already jumped out).

Cragslipper
The Cragslippers are basically glorified worms that cannot leave the hole which they peek out of. To easily dispatch of them simply walk up to where they are, and then retreat once they have come out of their hole. Their high HP makes the process painstaking if your character doesn’t have a decent ranged combat, but you can simply just hit them with arrows or magic until they are dead, with them powerless to do anything about it because their attack range is so limited. 

Great Giant Warrior
If you value your life in Dark Souls 2 you will not want to rush into these guys head on – you’ll more than likely get demolished. There are only two of them, but they are huge, they hit very hard and have a very large amount of HP. You’ll find them in one of the caves below the Black Gulch which you have to drop down to access and to make your life a hell of a lot easier you’ll want to use your environment to your advantage as much as possible. Ready your ranged weapon and proceed to where they reside, once you have their attention (you’ll hear them thudding towards you) retreat back to the entrance of the cave ready to unload arrows or magic into them. Luckily they will get to a certain point and then start retreating themselves back to their original spawn point. This is the time to attack as they will be conflicted between going back to spawn and killing the nuisance that is causing them damage. Like the worms if your ranged combat isn’t really up to scratch, this can be quite annoying and time consuming, but it’s better than the alternative of getting squashed like a bug. 

The video below demonstrates how to deal with these troublesome foes:

Dark Souls 2: Enemies in Shrine of Winter

Plague Hollow
You probably will have encountered them earlier in the game while un-petrifying Rosabeth of Melfia to access the Shaded Woods, but they are really the only enemy here. You’ll more than likely recognise them for their appearance rather than their name as they are in short, quite disgusting creatures. Anyway, by now you should be slaughtering them with minimal fuss, just make sure to not drag so many of them so they turn into a horde and become problematic.

Flexile Sentry
Whether or not this was intended as a mini-boss or not is unclear. He’ll be a familiar enemy as he is the boss you face on the ship in No-Mans Wharf. Either way, check out the first part of our boss guide (boss number 5) to see how to take him down. 

Dark Souls 2: Enemies in Drangleic Castle

Castle Knight
You’ve just entered the castle of a fallen kingdom; you had to be expecting to fight a knight, right? Either way, taking them down isn’t too much of a pain. They come equipped with a greatshield for defence and either a greatsword or halberd for attack. They have decent armour, but at this point in the game you can probably overpower them quite easily.

Drangleic Castle also features our favourite Royal Swordsmen (Part 1) and the Mastadon Knights (Part 2).

Ruin Sentinel
After the brutal fight early on in the game, it’s to be expected you’ve had more than enough of these guys. Unfortunately in Drangleic Castle there is a room that contains a whole bunch of them, which can turn catastrophic if you manage to unlock all of their chambers at once. Part 1 of our Dark Souls 2 Boss Guide (boss number 6) covers these infuriating foes. Good luck, soldier.

Dark Souls 2: Enemies in King’s Passage


Horse Knight Statue
When roaming around the King’s Passage, keep a keen eye on the statues you see, in particular the ones with heads – these are the Horse Knight Statues. They are also no joke as even though they are technically statues and they have good armour, they are practically like ninjas in the way they attack you. Jump kicks, sharp turns, flinging their twinblades everywhere, it can be difficult to predict just what they are going to do. The best tactic of fighting them is before you even get to engaging them, destroy their statue. When active their eyes will glow red, so you’ll know they are coming for you. 

If you enjoyed reading this article, here are a few more that you may also like: