The Rotten Quiz | Demon's Souls/Dark Souls

Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts

1. Where does the boss fight with The Rotten take place?

Answer: Black Gulch

Deep in the heart of the Black Gulch is where The Rotten can be found. Like all Great One bosses, there is an introductory cutscene when entering the boss fight for the first time.

2. As a Great One boss, The Rotten guards a Primal Bonfire like its peers. Much like Old Iron King and unlike The Lost Sinner and The Duke's Dear Freja however, there is more than just a Primal Bonfire to get to after dealing with The Rotten. Access to which DLC pack is gained from defeating The Rotten?

Answer: Crown of the Sunken King

"Crown of the Sunken King", including the entirety of Shulva as well as the Cave of the Dead, can be accessed once the player collects the Dragon Talon, then defeats The Rotten.

3. There are three NPCs the player can summon for help against The Rotten. Who is one of them?

Answer: Lone Hunter Schmidt

In addition to Schmidt, Bashful Ray and Lucatiel of Mirrah may also be selected. Worth noting that the player should wait until they actually reach the boss fight before summoning these NPCs. If they summon Bashful Ray immediately upon reaching his summon sign, they will later be invaded by two red phantom NPCs, whereas this will only be one red NPC if the player does not immediately summon anyone.

4. Despite being huge and monstrous, The Rotten was actually saddled with quite a number of significant weaknesses. What is one of them?

Answer: Thrusting

The Rotten has a number of unfortunate weaknesses. Its weakness to thrusting attacks is by far the highlight, at a very high 35%. It's also weak to Lightning (25%), Bleed (15%) and Slashing (10%) making for a very exploitable boss fight.

5. The Rotten has two arms. The non-weapon wielding arm can uniquely be sliced clean off if the player is skilled enough. This actually does provide a nifty, valuable reward. What reward will the player receive if they cut The Rotten's arm off?

Answer: Pharros Lockstone

Pharros Lockstones are only available in finite quantities, with one niche exception, and the player has them removed from their inventory when transitioning to the next New Game Plus cycle. As such, it could potentially be worth it trying to cut The Rotten's arm off.

6. As it turns out, The Rotten is not sentient and is constantly being controlled by a lone, small figure standing atop the enormous creature and giving it directions using visuals. Who is the figure commanding The Rotten?

Answer: This is never revealed

Over the years, plausible theories have arisen that make good arguments for who this person is. But, the game itself never formally confirms who the person guiding The Rotten is.

Prior to the Scholar of the First Sin edition of "Dark Souls 2", content was cut in which the item description attached to the Soul of the Rotten largely implied that The Rotten's conductor is, indeed, the Sunken King himself. As well, content which made it to the game supports this train of thought. The iconography of The Soul of the Rotten is the exact same as the iconography for the Boss Soul of every King in this game, yet The Rotten itself is clearly no King. This would seem to imply, but not conclusively prove, that The Rotten's conductor is the very Sunken King himself.

There are also arguments to be made that this individual is, in fact, the very Pharros himself. When cutting The Rotten's left arm off, it drops a Pharros Lockstone despite the fact the fight takes place nowhere particularly close to any Pharros related structures or areas. As well, The Rotten is supposed to be an amalgamation of all the unwanted, disregarded corpses, filth and general species of Drangleic, and Pharros is said to have been a man bent on aiding "those in sincere and dire need". It does make theoretical sense that Pharros could have been drawn to The Rotten out of sympathy, then perhaps hollowed while tending to it some day.

There are holes in both theories, so it can't be conclusively said that any player knows who the person guiding The Rotten truly is.

7. Incidentally, there is an item the player can retrieve inside The Rotten's boss room. In particular, Pyromancy builds are absolutely going to want this. What item can be looted here?

Answer: Fire Seed

Fire Seeds are needed to reinforce one's Pyromancy Flame, causing all pyromancies to deal more damage. One can very simply be scooped up at any point in The Rotten's boss room. Thankfully, unlike Scorpioness Najka, the item is actually worth picking up this time, and also unlike Najka, the player can just... grab it, and doesn't need to jump through hoops for it.

8. When slain, The Rotten drops Soul of the Rotten to the player. This can be used to earn the Butcher Knife, the weapon wielded by The Rotten. This is actually a returning weapon from "Dark Souls 1" and retains all of its properties to a tee. What unique special effect happens when the player hits an enemy with the Butcher Knife?

Answer: The player heals very slightly

Exactly as it did in "Dark Souls 1", the Butcher Knife very slightly heals its user when they strike an enemy with it. The exact value of healing is 8 + 0.1% of the player's max HP. Admittedly, it isn't very much, but it's the only weapon in the entire game which actually does this, giving it an exclusive niche.

This weapon can work quite effectively on health regen builds, which usually run things like Ring of the Evil Eye, Ring of Restoration, potentially the Wicked Eye Greatshield, maybe even the Crown of the Ivory King for maximized passive health regeneration.

9. When slaying The Rotten on New Game Plus or further, it will now drop the Old Dead One Soul to the player. This Boss Soul gives the choice between one of two things. The first is an Ultra Greatsword sometimes wielded by Grave Warden Agadayne. What weapon is this?

Answer: Crypt Blacksword

The Crypt Blacksword is, as all UGSes, a predominantly Strength scaling weapon which also draws significant scaling from Intelligence and Faith due to dealing part Dark damage. Overall, this is an extremely powerful weapon on the right build, and has become iconic over the years for doing exactly that.

However, the one downside is that it has very steep stat prerequisites which are difficult to meet during the early, or even mid stages of one's playthrough. This explains why the weapon was intended for New Game Plus.

10. The second potential reward from the Old Dead One Soul is a very quirky Hex known as Numbness. Numbness has both an extremely highly desired benefit and an equally annoying and taxing drawback. When cast, the player takes significantly less damage from everything. When looking for the drawback, the player won't have to look very far. What is Numbness' negative side effect?

Answer: Partial screen obscurity

When cast, Numbness applies a 30% resistance to every thing in the entire game to the player except for Petrification. In return, the player's clear vision of the game will be reduced to a moderately sized circle in the center of the screen, with everything outside of this circle being greatly obscured, effectively killing the player's peripheral vision.

The circle is slightly larger than the character, so the player will be able to clearly see anything taking place atop or next to their character. Anything too far beyond this will be difficult or impossible to see.

Source: Author cavalier87

This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor kyleisalive before going online.
Any errors found in FunTrivia content are routinely corrected through our feedback system.

The Rotten Trivia Quiz

The Rotten embraces all, including those who come to take a quiz about it. See what you know about this hideous amalgamation in "Dark Souls 2" for the PS4, XBox One and PC.

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