Old Iron King Trivia Quiz

Answer: Iron Keep

It is possible to skip the Smelter Demon and proceed onward through Iron Keep, making Old Iron King the only 'mandatory' boss to make it to the very end of the area.

Memory of the Iron King is where Sir Alonne is fought. Interestingly, the player is experiencing the journey to Sir Alonne essentially from the Iron King's perspective as they enter this area. But they don't actually encounter the Iron King in any way here.

Answer: Strike

Surprisingly, for being a huge, bulky fire breathing demon, the Old Iron King's skin does not hold up too well against clubs, greathammers and the like. He has a 20% weakness to Thrusting, and he actually has a dead 0% resistance/weakness to all other forms of melee. Perhaps he should have better represented the 'Iron' in his title with a little bit of armor.

Answer: Fire

Before the fight begins, a cutscene plays showing the Old Iron King abruptly emerge from a sea of lava, then slowly advance towards the player. This cutscene should pretty loudly point out that using Fire against a being who can perpetually live under a sea of lava is probably not going to work too well. And indeed, Old Iron King has a ridiculously high 85% resistance towards Fire.

Answer: Manhunter O'Harrah

Manhunter O'Harrah is basically perfect for this fight, as an NPC without any melee weapons. There is not a point in time during this fight where the player will be able to maintain melee combat for more than a few seconds, so an NPC who can constantly shoot Old Iron King makes for the most consistent damage the player could hope for.

Unfortunately, O'Harrah is quite bad at dodging Old Iron King's attacks. It is pretty likely that he will, even on accident, knock her to an immediate death in the lava. As such, this is maybe not the best summon the player could have just due to a circumstance and the shortcomings of this game's AI.

Answer: Lucatiel of Mirrah

Lucatiel's summon sign appears in front of the boss room for the Smelter Demon, and she is intended to be available for this fight. However, strangely, Lucatiel's sign does not disappear when defeating Smelter Demon, it only fades when Old Iron King has been slain. Though it requires significant backtracking and extremely careful play, the player can summon Lucatiel, then guide her on the lengthy, perilous trek all the way to his boss room.

The evidence that From Software did not intend for this to be possible is that this is the only base game boss in the game which cannot advance Lucatiel's questline. Even if she fights and survives the fight against Old Iron King, it will not advance her questline at all. For reference, Lucatiel's questline does get advanced if she survives the Smelter Demon boss fight.

Further evidence that her availability was unintentional is that this is somewhat of a gimmick boss fight, and Lucatiel was plainly and simply not designed to handle it. She will, almost assuredly, get herself knocked into or even just walk or jump into the lava for an immediate death. Unlike Manhunter O'Harrah, Lucatiel does not have any projectiles, so she will need to use melee to damage Old Iron King. Old Iron King spends the entire fight sitting in the sea of lava which cannot be touched without instant death. Lucatiel's AI simply doesn't 'know' to avoid the lava, so even if Old Iron King never damages her, Lucatiel is prone to simply falling on her own accord into the lava.

Answer: Earth

Though this is complicated, the term is essentially meant to refer to the notion that Old Iron King is a great descendant of Lord Gwyn from "Dark Souls 1", and thus carries the blood of gods in him. "Ichor" is a Greek term depicting the very blood of the gods, while the 'Earth' aspect refers to how embedded within his terrain Old Iron King eventually would become.

It is unknown how the talking cat in Majula, of all things, knows this. But then again, there is clearly more to Sweet Shalquoir than meets the eye, and she does a number of surprising things like this throughout the game.

Answer: Smelter Demon

Per the game's lore, Smelter Demon was originally supposed to play the part of a 'champion', the Iron King's mightiest warrior. At first, things did go exactly this way. After quite some time, however, the soul-animated armor that makes up Smelter Demon developed a life and an ego of its own, and it overthrew Old Iron King violently by throwing him into the lava which surrounds the Iron Keep.

Answer: Yes

Iron King Hammer is unique for being a weapon that can possibly house two different elements. The player has complete creative freedom here, as they can pair Fire with Lightning, Dark or Magic, or they could double down on the Fire and give the weapon a Fire infusion.

Regardless of what they do, players are advised to pay attention to the various ways in which infusion changes the scaling properties of this weapon. For example, Magic scales with Intelligence, so players with low Intelligence scores may not want to infuse this weapon with Magic.

Answer: Blinding Bolt

Blinding Bolt is a spell requiring an egregious 65 in Faith to cast. It takes up one spell slot. When cast, the player gently sends a small flashing ball-like object in the air, and when it stops ascending, it will violently and randomly fire several lightning bolts everywhere around it.

This spell comes with plenty of casts and only takes up one slot, but the 65 it requires in Faith is untenable. As well, this spell is not without its flaws. For one, if the flashing ball comes into contact with literally anything before it can hover up high enough, it fizzles out and the rest of the spell is canceled entirely. Even if it does "survive" the initial cast, the damage output on this spell is extremely inconsistent and impossible to rely on due to its random nature.

In the end, players who want to use this spell would be better off wielding Heavenly Thunder, as that spell is a little more consistent and, notably, only requires a 17 in Faith to use.

Answer: Dragonslayer Greatbow

This is one of my personal favorite weapons in the game, and it's also by far the best Greatbow in the entire game, hands down. It requires a 15 in Strength and 20 in Dexterity, which are very modest prerequisites. It is a little bit sluggish compared to the Alonne Greatbow, which would be its closest competition, but it makes up for that by delivering some seriously hard hitting blows from afar.

This bow, by itself, completely trivializes any and every area in this game with the exception of the 'multiplayer' areas in the DLC, which it can still contribute towards at that.

It may not be quite as effective taking down bosses, but it will for sure help the player get there more effectively than almost anything.