Elana, the Squalid Queen Trivia Quiz

Answer: Shulva, Sanctum City

Elana is the first of two 'mandatory' bosses which must be slain to reach the end of the DLC pack Shulva is tied to. It is an incredibly lengthy trek just to get to her, as the player passes by a multitude of shortcuts and checkpoints along the way.

Answer: No

The reason for this almost definitely is because Elana is a DLC boss, while Benhart's questline is in the base game. While not really relevant anymore, back in the day Elana was released, she cost extra money to access as being part of a DLC pack. Therefore, one could argue that it isn't fair that a base game questline could potentially require DLC content for extra payment just to finish it, and this is likely why Elana's fight does not count towards Benhart's questline. Even if the player keeps him alive until the end, it simply won't do anything.

Benhart's questline can be started and easily completed in the base game, and even if this boss did count towards his questline, it would become by very far the hardest boss to actually keep Benhart alive for.

Answer: Magic

For some reason, Elana has weird values for both weaknesses and resistances. In this case, she is exactly 16% weak to Magic. She is the only boss in the entire game to actually be weak to Magic, so even at just 16%, Sorcery builds should have a good time here.

Personally, I was able to come to this fight with a Moonlight Greatsword, spamming Crystal Soul Spear with a torqued up Staff of Wisdom on one of my playthroughs, and I once aimed to speed run this fight, challenging myself to see how fast I could beat it. The absolute fastest I was capable of was 37 seconds, which is not world record territory, but is certainly much faster than you'd imagine an end game DLC boss could be killed. Incidentally, I found seven total runs (though I'm sure there are more) that were faster than my run. What weapons did they use? A Moonlight Greatsword, spamming Crystal Soul Spear off a maxed out Staff of Wisdom. Every single time.

As such, Magic is definitely the way to go here.

Answer: 51%

A specific value of exactly 51% means Elana will just barely do more than cut the damage taken by Dark in half. Why 51% exactly was chosen is difficult to say. Neither her 16% weakness to Magic nor 51% resistance to Dark seem to have any lore based reason for their exact values.

The only thing that can be assumed is that, for whatever reason, From Software decided 50% would be too low of a Dark resistance, and that 15% would be too low of a Magic weakness. Apparently adding 1 to these figures made them pass the quality control test.

Answer: Affinity

Affinity is a Hex which operates similar to Homing (Crystal) Soulmass, only being Dark instead of Magic. When cast, it spawns several tiny dark orbs over the user's head. After some time, these orbs will fire towards the closest enemy, slowly traveling one after the other until they've all been deployed.

In the hands of the player, Affinity is an amazing combo tool that can be chained with almost any melee maneuver or alternate spell in the game. It also functions as an excellent defensive utility in PvE and PvP. In PvE, it will stagger most non-boss enemies when they approach the player, which can be useful in some areas. In PvP, it acts as a protective ward, as if another player eats the whole Affinity cast, they will almost definitely end up dead, which will prompt caution from them if the player casts it.

In Elana's hands, it works in the exact same way, only it is even stronger. The player will absolutely take a death if they get hit by the bulk of her Affinity. It also has longer range than the player version, so it's more difficult to escape it, typically requiring the player to dodge the orbs when they are deployed.

Other than Affinity, Elana can cast Dark Hail, an inaccessibly powered up version of Dark Orb and Dark Storm. Note that Dark Storm has a similar animation and effect to Scraps of Life, but is not the same thing.

Answer: Flame Swathe

Elana's version of Flame Swathe, like Dark Orb, is slightly better than the one the player can access. She is capable of spawning two Flame Swathes at once, on the left and right side of the player, which the player themselves cannot do.

The player's version of Flame Swathe is deadly, so it's not surprising to find Elana's is too. In fact, one could find themselves getting 'double tapped'- going from full health right to being dead in an instant because both Flame Swathes hit at the exact same time.

Answer: Velstadt, the Royal Aegis

In terms of game lore, it is unknown if this is the actual Velstadt, or if it's just a really elaborate fake Elana was able to conjure. His armor is of a noticeably shinier gold than the Velstadt the player encountered earlier, so this much is definitely in question.

In addition to Velstadt, Elana can potentially summon a small squad of skeletons, or a group of tiny pigs. She is slightly likelier to summon Velstadt than the skeletons, who are in turn likelier to be chosen than the pigs.

Answer: Nashandra

Nashandra is also a Fragment of a Manus, in addition to Alsanna and Nadalia. Of course, there are no real world parallels to compare to a raging demonic dark entity exploding and spawning sentient, intelligent women from the fragments of his body. But it's fair to say, since these women can all bleed, and they all came from the same source, they are related by blood. Manus is known as the "Father" of the Abyss, after all.

Answer: St Yorgh

For unknown reasons which may have been out of a simple desire to plunder the city, St. Yorgh traveled to Shulva and eventually killed the Sunken King, of whom Elana was wed to. He made it all the way into the Dragon's Sanctum, but was in turn killed by Sinh the Slumbering Dragon. When fighting Sinh, the player can see Yorgh's Spear lodged into Sinh's neck as evidence of their conflict. It was through this fight that Shulva was destroyed, as the mighty dragon would go on to essentially flush the whole thing out full of deadly poisoned and killed all of its inhabitants.

When entering her boss room for the first time, Elana's back will be to the player. When they get close, she will turn around and either say "Huh! You were not deserving of the mire" or "You shall rot forever..." And while those lines might seem directed at the player, they were more than likely directed at Elana's city, Shulva. As the player themselves never suffered any 'mire' and Sinh's awakening flooded the city full of poison, the first line simply makes no sense to say directly to the player.

Answer: 28

At 28 Faith, this weapon has the highest Faith prerequisite in the entire game for a melee weapon. Yet, it does not deal anything other than Physical damage, so this investment of Faith sadly almost goes entirely to waste.

On one hand, the Wrathful Axe is only tied with the Blue Knight's Halberd for highest base damage of all halberds, beating out everything else by a country mile. It also has a unique effect; by two-handing the weapon and using a charged attack, the player can use the Wrathful axe to cast Darkstorm in the same way Elana can, albeit much, much weaker.

On the other hand, that 28 in Faith for a requirement is really, really bad when it gives little value in return. In the end, although the Wrathful Axe is undoubtedly really cool and in and of itself isn't the worst weapon by any means, it is embarrassed in practical performance by the Blue Knight's Halberd. The BKH has the same or better raw stats in every possible way, is available early in the game compared to needing to go to the DLC to get this, and it even has better scaling too.

Unfortunately, Elana's cosmetic clothing set is not available in this game, so it isn't really possible to properly cosplay as her without PC mods.