Expedition: Equilibrious Beast Quiz

Answer: Libra

When fighting Equilibrious Beast, a standard large health bar with "Libra, Creature of the Night" will be shown.

Answer: Creature of the Night

Creature is essentially a synonym of Beast, and Tricephalos is already the Beast of the Night. Thus, Libra is the Creature of the Night despite having the word 'beast' in his expedition.

Answer: Madness

Libra can be afflicted with Madness and suffers from the same penalties as the player does. He is actually very easy to proc Madness against. What isn't so easy is actually acquiring a Madness tool, as it's impossible to begin an expedition with anything that can afflict Madness. Madness camps are also not guaranteed to appear, and there is only one melee weapon plus a couple of mediocre spells capable of inflicting Madness.

As such, it is very possible to enter this fight without being able to exploit Libra's biggest weakness.

Answer: Commander O'Neill

There are two things which distinguish O'Neill from the very similar looking (and sounding) Niall. The former wields Scarlet Rot and is aided by skeletal archers, while the latter wields Frostbite and is supported by two Banished Knights wielding melee weapons.

Answer: Deathrite Bird

The Deathrite Bird doesn't gain any new tricks coming over from "Elden Ring", but it is maybe one of few reused bosses that actually remains just as threatening in this game in spite of this. Deathrite Bird, just like in its original appearance, can quickly threaten loads and loads of damage with its various Ghostflame abilities.

While it is not a Malenia, it is just nimble enough to the point where players can't land hits on it completely for free.

Answer: Equilibrious Beast starts with a buff

If any player involved takes any deal for any reason, regardless of the specific deal chosen, Equilibrious Beast will begin the fight with an attack buff. This attack buff does not gain in power with deals taken, so if one player takes a deal, the others may as well take one at this point too if inclined.

All players involved can simply refuse to take any deal at all, which would deny this buff to Equilibrious Beast. Groups struggling with the fight may want to refrain from taking a deal for this reason.

Answer: Reduction to other stats

If the player, for example, is playing as The Raider, Scale-Bearing Merchant will offer him great Strength, as this is The Raider's highest stat. If the deal is accepted, it will shoot The Raider's Strength score into the stratosphere and max it out entirely, in return for a -20% application to his other stats.

Generally, this deal is not worth taking. On paper, increasing one's highest stat in exchange for lesser used stats may seem beneficial. However, the actual observable gain that inflating the strong stat yields is very minimal. Meanwhile, reducing one's Vigor and Stamina can hurt, and reduction to Mind can be seriously crippling for characters such as The Revenant who is trying to squeeze as much value out of limited FP as can be.

Combined with the fact that taking this deal provides a buff to Libra at the start of the fight, and it is scarcely a deal worth accepting.

Answer: Reduction to max Stamina

A reduction of 10% will be applied to the player's Stamina should they accept this deal. They will receive a +150 to their resistance on all ailments in return.

This deal is actually not that bad, and should be accepted by default if nothing else appealing is available and another player is already taking a deal, thus resulting in Equilibrious Beast already getting the buff.

The +150 resistance to Madness, in particular, can be quite useful as this is the main element at play here. That said, even resistances to other ailments can be situationally useful during this fight.

Answer: Reduction to max HP

The reduction to max HP is a really steep 20%, which will hurt regardless of the character the player is using. The benefit or, 'holding death at bay', is that the player will be immediately healed to full HP automatically if they ever fall under 20% of their HP, and this effect can occur once.

Simply put, this deal is horrible. Not only does taking it assure Equilibrious Beast starts the fight with a buff, but the huge reduction to one's max HP simply is not made up for with what the player is receiving. Worth noting is that, hilariously, 'holding death at bay' completely fails to work if the player is taken to 0% HP from their health being at above 20%; it specifically requires the player to fall between 1-20% of their health in order to work, and it only works once to boot.

If this is the best, most appealing deal the player has offered to them, they seriously should just balk at the offer regardless of the character they're playing. It isn't worth Equilibrious Beast getting a buff at the beginning of the fight, much less the horrendous 20% reduction to max HP.

Answer: Reduction to max HP

Compared to "I want to hold death at bay", the player actually gives up less max HP (10% vs 20%) in this deal. This deal can actually be worth it, especially if the player has picked up passives to further help their flask healing in the expedition. It could also be of use if the player struggled to reach churches during their run, and came into the fight without very many flasks.

Answer: Vyke's War Spear

The pool of weapons the game will randomly give to the player through this deal includes the Vyke's War Spear, Frenzied Finger Seal, Fingerprint Stone Shield, Miquellan Knight's Sword, Ordovis Greatsword and Halo Scythe.

Some of these options have varying values depending on the character. However, the Vyke's War Spear and Frenzied Finger Seal can be of use to anyone, as these options can inflict Madness, which is Equilibrious Beast's biggest weakness.

The Fingerprint Stone Shield, on top of technically being a wieldable albeit clunky source of Madness, is the best shield in the entire game. If playing as or with The Guardian, they would appreciate this drop, but it would be relatively low value for anyone else.

The Ordovis Greatsword would be an amazing pick up for The Wylder, as he specializes in Greatswords, and this is a pretty fantastic Greatsword. Anyone else, however, will see this as a mediocre at best offering.

The Halo's Scythe and Miquellan Knight's Sword are the duds of this deal, as no character in the game specializes with them, and while Equilibrious Beast is slightly weak to Holy, these weapons will produce tame and underwhelming results at best in exploiting it.

Clearly, there is a lot of luck behind this deal, and giving up a whopping two whole levels is a steep price to pay. Daring, adventurous players may enjoy this deal, but one could be forgiven if they never, ever wanted to accept it, for fear of giving up two level ups just to receive something with ho-hum value or worse.

Answer: Use a healing flask

Yes, the player does receive three level ups, which at first glance looks to be a drop dead perfect deal. However, every time they use a healing flask, they will forfeit a level up. It is possible to enter this fight with an absolute maximum of seven flasks, and the highest level in the game is fifteen. Therefore, in taking this deal, the player could potentially reduce their level all the way down to eight, barely over half the maximum.

As you might expect, this deal makes no sense whatsoever to accept if the player is already maximum level. It is only even remotely worth considering if the player is underleveled to begin with. However, this deal can also make the issue of being underleveled even worse in the long haul if the player finds themselves getting hit a lot, as they are straight up pacifying themselves every time they want to heal.

Typically, this deal is not worth it. If you are an absolute god at this game that can go without getting hit, sure, the deal could work out. That said, if you are that good at the game to begin with, you are probably not coming into this fight particularly underlevelled, and you probably don't need the level ups anyway out of natural skill. So, generally, this deal should go untaken.

Answer: The entire deal is instantly voided on death

Immediately on taking this deal, the player suffers steep 30% losses to Stamina, HP and FP. After two whole minutes have passed since the fight starts, indicated by the appearance of the boss health bar, these reductions turn into 20% gains to these stats which remain in perpetuity until death.

Both aspects of this deal, the stat reduction and eventual stat enhancement, will be immediately cancelled if the player takes a death. This is the risky aspect about this deal, as if the player dies at any point, it essentially turns the deal off.

Worth noting as well, specifically accepting this deal will also enhance the buff Equilibrious Beast usually gets for a player accepting a deal. This is what makes it controversial: a player could feed him a huge attack buff, while weakening themselves, die due to these elements, and have essentially set themselves and their teammates back for no gain.

This is another one of those deals meant for adventurous players, that you could be forgiven for avoiding like the plague.

Answer: The Guardian

The Equilibrious Beast is capable of straight up summoning evil, twisted versions of the entire Nightfarer roster at random, including The Guardian. These Nightfarers do come with predetermined loadouts that suit the character in question. For example, The Guardian, if chosen, will appear with two Fingerprint Stone Shields.

Answer: Crossed Legs

During his fight in either form, Equilibrious Beast will spend time meditating, involving him crossing his legs before casting something. This is reflected through either relic, as the player will generate Madness build up on themselves if they use the Crossed Legs emote.

The practical value of doing this is pretty questionable. Afflicting oneself with Madness deals a sizeable amount of damage and also diminishes a significant portion of the user's FP bar. In return, both relics offer a gradual FP regen that will eventually give the user more FP than they lost. Night of the Demon gives a large rune discount when buying from a merchant, and Dark Night of the Demon offers "Taking Damage Improves Attack Power" instead.

These relics are both very strange and extremely niche. The plainly beneficial aspect to both can be found in other relics, leaving the reason for use in either as tied to use of the Crossed Legs emote. Given that this game tends to be very time sensitive and/or fast paced, rarely will the player want to just sit in this emote for extended periods of time, especially for the admittedly questionable payoff it offers.