"Dark Souls 2" - Crown of the Iron King Quiz

Answer: Forest of Fallen Giants

Inside of a small cave home to three Flame Salamanders is where the key can be found. The first time the player passes the cave, they will be incredibly underleveled and will likely struggle mightily to retrieve it. Given that the key does nothing but unlock an end game DLC, it's reasonable for the enemies guarding it to be tough.

Answer: Ashen Idols

Ashen Idols are incredibly annoying enemies whose presence will heal and buff nearby enemies. They cannot be harmed other than using a Smelter Wedge to destroy them. They fortunately do not respawn and will drop a Soul of Nadalia when destroyed.

Answer: Twelve

Ten can be found from destroying Ashen Idols. Defeating Fume Knight grants access to another, and Sir Alonne stands in the way of the last.

Answer: Chaos Storm

Like Chaos Storm, Outcry involves the caster kneeling on the ground before an assortment of Darkfire pillars emerge from the ground. Outcry is much, much stronger than Chaos Storm, and this is reflected in it taking up two spell slots as opposed to Chaos Storm's one.

Answer: 25

25 unfortunately is the lowest in the entire game by a mile. As well, the balanced B in both Lightning and Dark and the minor boost to Faith by equipping it do not come close to properly compensating. Sadly, the Chime of Screams is easily the worst Chime in the entire game. For all the effort needed to earn it, that's a shame.

Answer: He will flee

At half health, Maldron will drop whatever he is doing and begin to dash down this structure's staircase. This involves him sprinting past roughly a dozen knights and into an area where a nearby Ashen Idol is spreading a damage-over-time effect that also afflicts nearby combatants with Curse build up. Of course, none of the enemies or damaging effects of the Ashen Idol are at all hostile towards Maldron, so the player will need to brave the trek past all of this if they want to finish him off. Alternatively, the player could use a Seed of Giants, which will cause the enemies to now aggro towards Maldron, as well as enable the Ashen Idol to damage him.

This will lead to a very quick death for him due to him being outnumbered and at half health. Additionally, if the player is able to summon a friend, the friend could stand guard at the staircase and deny Maldron the ability to flee.

Answer: Scorching Iron Scepter

The Scorching Iron Scepter is essentially this tower's electric company. Bringing it to the tower and inserting it in the heart of a large series of contraptions activates every elevator in the entire DLC, granting access to all three boss fights as well as the Iron Passage and Memory of the Iron King.

Simply put, if the player wants to actually play the DLC, they will eventually have to get this item.

Answer: Smelter Demon

This time, the Smelter Demon is blue, oozes Magic, and attacks with Magic instead of Fire. Here, it has been properly scaled for end game, so it hits like a truck and has a large healthpool. It wouldn't be a stretch to suggest this boss is arguably the hardest boss in the entire game.

Answer: 70

At 70 Strength, the Smelter Hammer has the highest stat requirement out of any melee weapon in all of From Software history, up to and including "Elden Ring." As far as weapons period, only the aforementioned game has something with an identical stat requirement, as the Rennala's Full Moon spell matches it with a prerequisite of 70 Intelligence.

Interestingly, in order to powerstance a weapon, the player must have 1.5x that weapon's Strength and Dexterity requirements. Because the highest a stat can go is 99 and 70 x 1.5 = 105, this should make the Smelter Hammer impossible to powerstance. However, the weapon can indeed be powerstanced at exactly 99 Strength... if you can also handle two weapons with a whopping 35 pounds of equipment load. Alternatively, in order to two hand the Smelter Hammer, a still high but much more manageable 47 Strength would be required.

At 510 Base Power, the Smelter Hammer has the single highest Base Power out of every weapon in this game. Unsurprisingly, however, it has the slowest attack speed of any Great Hammer weapon in the game, so caution must be exercised in wielding it.

Answer: Heal the boss

Ashen Idols will greatly heal Fume Knight to the point where the player simply won't be able to kill him without dragging him out of their range. With all four left alive, this is easier said than done and will essentially pigeonhole the player into fighting him at the dead center of the boss room at all times. By having Smelter Wedges on hand, this can fortunately be rendered a non problem.

Answer: Raime

Specifically, he is identified as Raime the Rebel Swordsman, or mostly just Raime. His name is never actually spoken out loud, so whether it's pronounced "Ray-me", "Rai-mee" or something else entirely is unknown.

Answer: Velstadt's Helm

This has very obvious lore inspiration. In the game's lore, Raime rebelled against King Vendrick and Drangleic, out of necessity as he believed Nashandra was a large threat and nobody else listened to him. In doing so, Raime dueled Velstadt, the King's right hand man, and lost, being exiled from Drangleic as a result.

As such, Raime would almost definitely harbor some animosity towards Velstadt, and this is reflected by this unique mechanic.

Answer: Carhillion of the Fold

Carhillion's summon sign will appear in front of Fume Knight's boss door if the player has gotten him to move from No Man's Wharf into Majula.

There is absolutely zero lore reasoning whatsoever that explains why Carhillion is even here. In interacting with him and exhausting every possible piece of his dialogue, he never even vaguely mentions an interest in the Iron Keep, Brume Tower, or anything at all to do with Fume Knight or Drangleic royalty in anyway. As such, his summon sign here is completely random, as if the developers at From Software chose his name out of a hat or something.

Answer: Ashen Mist Heart

The Ashen Mist Heart is obtained from either talking to or defeating the Ancient Dragon at the Dragon Shrine. Without it, accessing the Memory of the Iron King is impossible, preventing the player from finishing the Soul of Nadalia or crossing swords with Sir Alonne.

Answer: Infinite

Uniquely, this particular memory does not impose a time limit whatsoever. As such, the player can, and definitely should, take their time and slowly advance to the boss.

Answer: Unique death animation

If he is defeated in no-hit fashion, Sir Alonne's death animation involves him doing seppuku or, stabbing himself with his own katana. His death animation otherwise simply involves him slumping and falling to the ground in defeat.

It is worth noting that, if the player summons help, the help can get hit all they want and it will not impact this animation. Only if the host themselves is hit, will it ruin the chance to see it. As well, the host can enter the boss room and not be at full health, it only matters if they take damage from Sir Alonne himself. Finally, if a greatshield is used to deflect an attack from Sir Alonne, and said attack is 100% absorbed by the shield, this does not count as being hit.

Answer: Healing

If the player heals using an Estus Flask, Life Gem or another consumable, these two will either lunge with their weapons at the player, or perform a fast jumping attack, depending on how far away they are. The manner in which it is done is designed to deny the player the ability to heal, either forcing damage back into them instantly after doing so and essentially rendering the limited resource wasted, or by interrupting the healing entirely.

As such, the player will need to restrict themselves from healing until either of these bosses misses with an attack, or engages in animation that they wouldn't be able to recover from in time to deny the player the ability to heal.

Answer: Magic

This is literally the Smelter Sword with the same exact stats, only changing out Fire for Magic. Even the weapon art is the same exact thing just, again, Magic instead of Fire.

Answer: S scaling in something

The Ultra Greatsword attains an S in Strength, the Fume Sword gets an S in Dexterity. This generally means that this soul provides consistently great value for all builds, as by this point in the game, even a dedicated spellcaster could get the stats to at least use the Fume Sword.

The S Scaling greatly benefits both weapons, making it so that even simply meeting the bare minimum to use them breeds great value for the investment.

Answer: Damage output in exchange for some health

The animation is the user seppuku-ing and imbuing the weapon with a black and red aura. For thirty seconds, this sword will now do absurd amounts of damage, and will almost assuredly end any fight very quickly.