TUNIC – The Heir Strategy Tips

The Heir Boss Fight Tips

All credit goes to MultipleMonomials !

I was stuck on the Heir boss fight for 3 IRL days / >3 hrs of trying, and just finally beat it last night. While it’s fresh in my mind, I wanted to share some of the tips and strategies that I’ve figured out.

• Learn the dance. Expect to spend your first 20, 30, 40 minutes just dueling against the boss and learning its attack patterns. Try and get to the point where you can predict if it’s going to use a melee or a ranged attack next.
• Don’t be afraid to take a break. There are some items in the game world that you couldn’t access until now which will give you additional upgrades. It’s not a bad idea to go on another pass through the world and search for stuff. In particular, make sure to fully explore the Swamp now that you have your strength back. There is also a way to set the time back to day so you can explore more, if you can find it
• Use the right cards. Avoid the Chalice which cuts your defense and the Scavenger Mask which does nothing in this fight. For me the Perfume was the most useful by far.
• In my experience, it’s better to dash than to shield against this boss. Its attacks will break your shield very quickly, which leaves you very vulnerable. If you can get good at shield-parrying, that changes the equation, but I’m not that pro. Though it’s still a challenge, learning to dash at the exact moment each attack lands is more forgiving timing-wise, uses less stamina, and gives you more opportunities to counterattack.

Learn how to punish each attack:

• When it slams its sword into the ground and shoots out multiple blast waves, it’s stunned for a second or two. You can hit it with the magic wand and it can’t dodge, or you can blink in close and melee it.
• When it holds its sword above its head and sends out a shockwave ring, it’s vulnerable after sending out the shockwave. This is your chance to dash in close and attack.
• When it does its three hit sword combo, after the third hit it’s stunned for a bit. If you time your dashes right, you can dash away from the first two combos, then dash behind the boss as it delivers the third hit, and then you have a chance to attack. Learning to do this takes some practice but is VERY useful for getting attacks in later in the fight when it uses this attack a lot.
• When it spins its sword in front of it Nier Automata style (augh I hate this attack it hurts so much), you can attack from the back while the sword is spinning.

• Doing the Ice Wand trick (look it up!) is probably the most effective way to use magic against the boss, but be careful — as soon as it breaks out of the ice, it will attack, so get out of there when the ice starts melting.
• If you swing your sword at close range and miss, that seems to often trigger the Heir to dodge out of the way of subsequent swings. So, it’s worth taking the time to line up that first shot, even if it means you can’t get a full combo in.
• When you’re attacking, you need to be watching the boss very closely. As soon as it starts to move after an attack, mash that dodge button and get out of the way. Often there will be another melee attack quite quickly after it recovers from being stunned.
• If you need to heal during the fight, blink far away from the boss. It will almost never attack if you’re on the other side of the arena from it. Otherwise, healing can be quite risky.
• Manage your stamina carefully. Blinking is fun and basically required to win, but you can still exhaust your stamina if you blink too much, which leaves you unable to block or dodge and quite likely to die. Again, the Perfume (card with the plant on it) is very useful here.
• Use your echo. If you didn’t know (I didn’t until this part of the game), when you pick up your echo, it stuns nearby creatures for a couple of seconds. If you lure the Heir over to your echo, then pick it up, you will stun it and you have a chance to attack. If you’re really pro you can save the echo for a later stage of the fight when the boss is even harder to hit — just be careful not to pick it up accidentally when trying to dodge!
• For the second stage (and yes there is a second stage), it’s better to play defensively. The second stage has less health but hits harder, and reduces your max health with each attack that connects. For the first stage you might play aggressively just to defeat it more quickly, but for the second stage I’d recommend just avoiding it until it uses the three sword swing attack, then taking that chance to attack. You’ll be able to kill it in a couple of minutes.
• Don’t be overawed. Both the particles-falling-from-the sky effect and the screen-turning-purple-when-the-2nd-stage-hits-you effect don’t actually matter that much in terms of damage, but they can easily distract you from what the boss is doing.
• After the second stage initially shows up, it’s vulnerable for a couple of seconds before it starts moving. If you make sure to be next to the Heir when it dies the first time, you can get in a good 1/8 of its health bar before the second stage starts attacking.