Poll of the Day > What's the longest boss fight you've ever been in?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Technically there was one I was in battle with for about 11 hours, but much of it was AFK and I went to bed once the set up was started (Cerberus in FFXI, btw)'

Other than that I think it might have been something like Yiazmat

I know some FFXI Superbosses which have strategies that made the fight SUPPOSED to be 2 hours (according to devs) have been beaten with concerted 18 hour efforts (both Absolute Virtue and Pandemonium Warden... but the dev confirmed "do it right it only takes 2 hours" is only for Absolute Virtue)..... because of HEALTH CONCERNS the devs outright made it so these bosses despawn after 2 hours just to make sure that if people don't know the tricks to beating them they won't DIE trying to brute force it.

...
...

Althoooooooo... there was this one time as a kid I was playing Yoshi's Island and I was sooo dang tired I didn't bother to ground pound Marching Milde and just bounced on its head for like 2 hours straight like an endurance thing

---

you mean a single attempt? even a WoW Raid boss wouldn't be more than an hour or something? not sure.

if you mean all attempts, then days and days.

---

Sahuagin posted...

you mean a single attempt? even a WoW Raid boss wouldn't be more than an hour or something? not sure.

if you mean all attempts, then days and days.

ya, single attempt.

---

Astaroth, Omikron: The Nomad Soul
I don't think he was taking any damage for most of it.

---

About 40 minutes to an hour. Cycling through party members dying and resing until I could land the final hit and everybody got the xp.

And I think there's a boss in ff 12 that takes like 12 hours. That shit sounds like a nightmare to me. I'd be bored after the first hour or 2.

---

Do you mean single attempt w/o dying or just constant retries? If 1 attempt that likely an hour, maybe a bit more or less. More than that most games have some kind of "ok you failed, give up" mechanic that will just kill you to reset.

---

the old man who is 20 years old in resident evil 4

I got trapped in a fight against the superboss in Tales of Innocence R. I think it took about 2 hours?

Ftr, the reason why it was so hard is because the superboss has a gimmick where it drains the overlimit meters of your party and then becomes invincible and goes berserk using that drained energy (overlimit meters are similar to limit break meters from FF where they build up as you take certain basic actions). The game is entirely in japanese so at first I had no idea what was going on, and up to that point in the game, my character builds had a heavy emphasis on building and using overlimit, and you can't change your set-up mid-battle, which means that he was going fucking supersonic like every 20 seconds. There wasn't a save spot before the boss and I didn't want to go through the dungeon again.

If you know about the thing's gimmick in advance and/or you don't care about having to redo the dungeon, it's not nearly as hard.

---

I'm sure there's got to be some low level shit or getting stuck in some crazy loop and somehow just managing to win?
---

That time I overslept and came in an hour late, we were going at it all day

---

3 years

---

Probably the big turtle thing in FF15

---

maybe the star magician fight in golden sun TLA when i did it at super low levels.

---

Not sure the longest. Recently took about 2 hours killing gnome in tales of arise. I stumbled onto it way too low level but the fight is mechanically trivial so I just kited it for 2 hours or so. In an MMO called raiderz I solod a lot of field bosses and some of those took more than an hour. Yiazmat or however it's spelled from ff12 was also quite a long fight, maybe 2 hours. I spent an hour or two plinking away at some of the bosses in neir automata because they too are mechanically trivial.

If we count multiple attempts ending in success, owl 2 on my challenge run in sekiro took like 2 solid days, the final run being like 25 minutes. Demon of hatred on that same run also took days with an eventual 36 minute victory. You do REALLY low damage with no upgrades and demon bell on/no charm on. Absolute radiance in hollow knight was also a day long affair.

---

I guess it would be a 45-min fight against Deviljho in MH Tri. I was playing it super safe with the lance lmao

---

Yiazmat from FF XII. Stupidly long for no reason. Thankfully TZA made it a lot better.

---

How could you possibly spend 11 hours on Cerb in FFXI? Sounds suspect to me.

AV and PW, sure, but Cerb was being killed pretty easy from the get-go.

---

12 hours for Yiazmat in FFXII.
The real question is why is that game so ass and why I even did that when I was 16?

---

---

Ahhh AV, who is now killed in a minute solo and only for aern lockstyle weapons or a vorseal (does he have a vorseal unlock? Maybe)

At least PW still drops scoria which everyone needs for mythics

There's escha ruaun geas fete AV, warder of courage, but he's just a quick burn fight these days. Dies before it even gets to use a 2hr if you're 6man and super buffed to the gills. Updated ilvl 140 UNM version of PW, Tumult Curator, is harder and not just an insta zerg, but it's still easy once you get it down and understand what you need to do

The mission where you battle Zinaida in Armored Core: Last Raven. It took me like 4 hours a total to beat. Harder than Nexus & Nine Breaker, but Ive gotten better the more I play it, though.

Also took me like 3 hours to beat Vamp and Metal Gear Ray on Extreme in MGS2.

My answer isnt interesting, though I know someone who spend about 11 hours on some final fantasy 15 boss. It was a giant fucking rock turtle or something.

---

I don't know if this was the longest one but it felt like forever. The first time I fought the big demon thing in Skyward Sword where I would hit his toes and knock him down, but had no idea what to do after that. So he would lie there for a while, eventually get up, I'd knock him down after a few steps all the way up the spiraling path. I tried literally everything but the one move that hurt him.

---

BTH_Phoenix posted...

I don't know if this was the longest one but it felt like forever. The first time I fought the big demon thing in Skyward Sword where I would hit his toes and knock him down, but had no idea what to do after that. So he would lie there for a while, eventually get up, I'd knock him down after a few steps all the way up the spiraling path. I tried literally everything but the one move that hurt him.

The imprisoned. You also had to fight him multiple times
---

Yiazmat from FF12

---

The first time I fought a stormbird in Horizon Zero Dawn it took like one and a half in game days. A day in that game is roughly 40 minutes.
---

I can't think of any single battle that took that long. I don't play any of these console games with crazy HP/difficulty bosses. Maybe Serenade from Battle Network 3. He was a pain in the ass because almost no moves damaged him.

---

Fighting the UR Dragon in Dragon's Dogma might technically count as it takes lots of people a long time to kill, but you yourself only have a small window of time to jump in there and deal damage to it.

Otherwise if we count prep time and etc. I participated in a Naggy raid in Everquest in 2002 that took forever to get going and wait for everyone to show up for, however once I was able to actually charge and help attack it the thing killed me in like 20 seconds haha.

Lokarin posted...

because of HEALTH CONCERNS the devs outright made it so these bosses despawn after 2 hours just to make sure that if people don't know the tricks to beating them they won't DIE trying to brute force it.

I dunno, I think if I just spent 2 hours trying to kill a boss and it suddenly disappeared that'd be worse for my health.

---

GanonsSpirit posted...

The first time I fought a stormbird in Horizon Zero Dawn it took like one and a half in game days. A day in that game is roughly 40 minutes.

The first time I fought a storm bird, I didnt realize what I was fighting for half the battle. I saw it in the sky, and thought it was weird that it was a single bird. Didnt even realize how high. So, at some point, the battle started. I was kind of in a haze no really thinking to much. After about half the battle, I realized how big the bird was. I was like, What the hell? Why is this bird so fucking big? When I checked the eyepiece thing, I realized it was a different bird. Then I really started fighting
---

I spent over 4 hrs trying out two different strategies on the true boss of Octopath Traveler. Still never beat it.

---

party_animal07 posted...

And I think there's a boss in ff 12 that takes like 12 hours. That shit sounds like a nightmare to me. I'd be bored after the first hour or 2.

Yiazmat, I did that one on PS2, so I guess that's my answer.

---

I don't know. The last one took me about 45 minutes including restarts.
---

Sahuagin posted...

you mean a single attempt? even a WoW Raid boss wouldn't be more than an hour or something? not sure.

if you mean all attempts, then days and days.

Final Bosses in WoW Raids average 15-20 min.

---

Rasmoh posted...

How could you possibly spend 11 hours on Cerb in FFXI? Sounds suspect to me.

This was way way way WAY back, I was Dragoon.

There was a way to fight Cerb with pets where you wouldn't take any damage, but it relied on your pet doing EVERYTHING. They fixed it in a very fast patch though

---

My life

So far, life is winning

---

There was a boss in KH 358/2 Days that took me I think 2 hours because I went in with the wrong equipment and was doing like no damage to it but I can't remember which one it was.

But I'll say Adamantoise in FFXV. That also took me 2 hours.

---

Yeah, Yiazmat in the original release. Took me 7 hours or thereabouts. Furthermore, the game doesn't really tell you that you can stop and try again later without restarting so I wasted an entire continuous afternoon+ on that.

Not a good design.

---

wpot posted...

Yeah, Yiazmat in the original release. Took me 7 hours or thereabouts. Furthermore, the game doesn't really tell you that you can stop and try again later without restarting so I wasted an entire continuous afternoon+ on that.

Not a good design.

It feels designed around the gambit system.

---

Maybe 15-20 minute for bosses that were designed to just be stupidly long? I can't think of many hour-long bosses, although I guess if a boss fight had checkpoints it could run long.

I never got into the kinds of MMOs and multiplayer online titles that did the ridiculously long stuff or had the possibility to go that long, just the normal far-too-long.

Actually, come to think of it, one of the Uncharted games I might have gone really long in a boss fight just because I was trying to avoid the boss while healing or whatever.

---

I think there was a boss in Octopath that took about an hour.

How are people taking 5+ hours on yiazmat, much less 12? If you are that weak, how do you even survive that long? It's a super long fight, but taking even 3 hours means you did something wrong. The dude has 50 million hp, even if you hit for half the damage cap, thats only 10,000 times you have to hit him. Split between 3 people attacking every 2-3 seconds. That's less than 3 hours but not counting higher damage or good chain attacks. If you do have people hitting the cap and chaining, that number should go way down.

---

YoukaiSlayer posted...

How are people taking 5+ hours on yiazmat, much less 12? If you are that weak, how do you even survive that long? It's a super long fight, but taking even 3 hours means you did something wrong. The dude has 50 million hp, even if you hit for half the damage cap, thats only 10,000 times you have to hit him. Split between 3 people attacking every 2-3 seconds. That's less than 3 hours but not counting higher damage or good chain attacks. If you do have people hitting the cap and chaining, that number should go way down.

It's because there are certain triggers where you can cause yiazmat to self-heal to almost full

---

Sub 3 hours seems pretty fast for a first-time Yiazmat fight in the original version. His attacks are strong and frequent, he constantly hits you with Stop or instant death attacks, he mitigates damage when his HP gets low, and he puts Reflect on your party which could lead to an unfortunate Renew casting. Unless you know what you're doing or are super optimized, a lot of time will be spent healing, reviving, buffing, debuffing, curing status effects, changing gambits when he changes behavior, etc. and some leave the fight to restock items. I can't remember how long my battle was exactly but I'm pretty sure it was around 3-4 hours (less than an hour in Zodiac Age)

---

SilentSeph posted...

Unless you know what you're doing or are super optimized, a lot of time will be spent healing, reviving, buffing, debuffing, curing status effects, changing gambits when he changes behavior, etc.

This, yes. I don't read guides the first time I play a game. I thought: I feel pretty strong, I'll try that Yiazmat guy. An hour later I regretted that decision. Six more hours later I won.

I don't believe he regenerated any HP so far as I recall: he just had an insane amount of it. I played only the original version.

---

Do you guys take breaks during the battle. I dont know if I could do a battle that lasted that long
---

LinkPizza posted...

Do you guys take breaks during the battle. I dont know if I could do a battle that lasted that long

I SHOULD have taken a break (or just given up) but as I recall I just grabbed a quick lunch during a short pause.

---

wpot posted...

This, yes. I don't read guides the first time I play a game. I thought: I feel pretty strong, I'll try that Yiazmat guy. An hour later I regretted that decision. Six more hours later I won.

I underestimated him too. I only read a few general tips about him and people mainly talked about his massive HP but said he was easy otherwise. I could see how certain setups would make him easy but I was surprised by his damage output, constant status effects, and other nasty tricks he had. Personally I really didn't find him any easier than the other superbosses.

wpot posted...

I don't believe he regenerated any HP so far as I recall: he just had an insane amount of it. I played only the original version.

If you're on the same screen as him but too far away from him to detect you for a certain amount of time, he will start regenerating all of his health at a rapid rate. I believe you have to leave the entire screen to prevent that but I've always fought him in one go. When his health gets low, he puts Reflect on your party, so you have to be really careful with healing gambits (especially with Renew which will fully heal him)

LinkPizza posted...

Do you guys take breaks during the battle. I dont know if I could do a battle that lasted that long

I took a snack break and bathroom break in the original version

---

SilentSeph posted...

I underestimated him too. I only read a few general tips about him and people mainly talked about his massive HP but said he was easy otherwise. I could see how certain setups would make him easy but I was surprised by his damage output, constant status effects, and other nasty tricks he had. Personally I really didn't find him any easier than the other superbosses.

I never really felt in danger of dying, as I recall, but I did not trust my gambits to heal so I micromanaged...and it sucked.

SilentSeph posted...

If you're on the same screen as him but too far away from him to detect you for a certain amount of time, he will start regenerating all of his health at a rapid rate. I believe you have to leave the entire screen to prevent that but I've always fought him in one go. When his health gets low, he puts Reflect on your party, so you have to be really careful with healing gambits (especially with Renew which will fully heal him)

Ah. I never had that particular problem: it was the completely non-optimized setup and micromanagement for me.

---

wpot posted...

I never really felt in danger of dying, as I recall, but I did not trust my gambits to heal so I micromanaged...and it sucked.

I got really unlucky with the instant death attacks so I did the same haha

---