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It is finally time to draw the curtain onElden Ring Nightreign’sEverdark Sovereign Nightlords, at least for the time being, with the current roster of available expeditions.
But until FromSoftware decides to add newer ones orenhances Heolstor, we currently have our hands full today with the enhanced Gladius, Beast of Night in the Everdark Sovereign Tricephalos expedition.
Our adorable little three-headed puppy has got some powerful new enhancements, truly living up to the hype of being the lastly added enhanced bosses.
Join me, my fellow Nightfarers, as we tackle everything you need to know to defeat this upgraded beast, from its brand-new moveset to battle strategy.
Recommended Team Composition
As traditionally followed by our previous guides, I’ve listed therecommended Nightfarersto bring along below while also mentioning their reasons and which character can work best in both Duos and Trios.
For Duos, I found that an Ironeye and Raider can be excellent because you can, unsurprisingly, make quick work of the fight due to the balancing of this mode compared to trios.
Key Differences With Everdark Sovereign Tricephalos
The closest thing I can summarize when explaining the differences between the base Gladius and his Everdark variant is that it’s essentially an amped-up version, nothing more and nothing less, similar to the Everdark Sovereign Darkdrift Knight.
Gladius will always start the fight in his split-up form and transform into his suped-up Everdark Sovereign form when he reaches past 70 percent HP.
There’s no gimmick nor any new mechanics to worry about; the key difference is the intense new attacks he gains here,from a mixed-up fiery sword combo to new split-up attacks that can catch you from the other side of the arena.
There’s also a specific attack that’s similar to Heolstor’s one-shot AOE ground blast, which you need to be wary of; otherwise, you’ll get annihilated if you’re running a squishy character.
How To Prepare For Everdark Sovereign Tricephalos
Similar to his tutorial counterpart for the game, the main weakness of the Evedark Sovereign version of Gladius is the Holy affinity.
Ironeye can have a chance to get a holy-affinity bow at any designated sites with that affinity. And with Raider, you have a bunch of options with his strength-based arsenal that can (possibly) have holy affinity as an Ash of War.
Additionally, I strongly recommend obtaining anything that can boost your damage negation against fire to lessen the damage from Gladius' fire-spewing attacks.
It’s all about luck here, like most of the game, since you can even obtain reward boons that canboost your affinity-based weapon’s damage or give you more I-frames when performing evasions.
And regarding the Shifting Earth Event, my team and Iopted for the Craterto get our weapons to Legendary status. Still, theNoklateo City Shifting Eventworks great as well to help provide an auto-revive buff in case your whole team goes down.
You’ve got room for flexibility here, but the bottom line is to come prepared with holy damage weaponsto tear through this puppy and even apply a status effect on him in the process to proc staggers easily.
Everdark Sovereign Tricephalos Moveset
Time to explain the majority of the moveset stuff in the most brief way possible, and, oh man,I had to run this back a couple of times to make sure I didn’t miss anything, so here we go.
Description
Fissure Discharge
Gladius will ignite himself and launch at a player a couple of times before stopping and unleashing a cluster of ground fissures in the arena. It immediately follows that up with a massive AOE explosion. Get away as far as possible to have a high chance of noticing the fissures and to easily dodge the AOE blast. This is also Gladius' transitional move into his Everdark phase.
Lunging Bite
The standard bite attack that he uses in his base form is by running and lunging at you. A timely performed dodge roll can easily evade it.
4-hit Combo
One of the brand-new combo attacks of Everdark Gladius. He’ll slam his chainsword down, followed by a second hit from a leaping stance in front of him. The third hit is a 360-degree sweeping spin with the flaming sword, followed immediately by a straight slash on the ground. The fourth hit can catch you off guard due to the immediate animation, so try to evade it promptly or use anything to give you i-frames to avoid it.
Volcanic Triple Sweep
Gladius will charge up and unleash a massive flaming sweep in front of him with the chainsword. He’ll continue to do this a total of three times in quick succession. The volanic sweep can be easily dodged as I’ve shown above in the video clip.
Double Chain Spin
Another pretty standard attack where Gladius will spin his chainsword around a couple of times in a 360-degree motion.
Split-Up Attacks
I’ll try to condense the major split-up moves here. The first is one where the dog with the chainsword can quickly launch a volcanic sweep to destroy you. The other is a running attack followed by a leaping one from the normal ones. That can be a great opportunity to damage them should you dodge it.
Comet Dash
Instead of separating normally, Gladius runs far away to split himself up. The three clones will individually launch a long-range dash attack engulfed in a fireball. After the third one dashes at your location, it will follow that up with another wave-like blast. All of these can be easily evaded while also having someone else take the aggro of all the dashes.
How To Beat Everdark Sovereign Tricephalos
First Phase
Pretty self-explanatory stuff here, but regardless, the first phase consists of us fighting the split-up gank squad of Gladius, who’ll immediately target one of your teammates.
It’s extremely crucial here that you don’t waste any resources or healing flasks. As long as you’re all consistently damaging the three singular clones, you should be able to send him into his Everdark transformation in less than a minute.
The three singular versions can overwhelm you and even surprise you with their quick attacks, but there’s nothing too threatening here that you should worry about before the actual fight begins.
Second Phase
This is where the fun begins. When you see Gladius charging up violently, that’s your cue to run. He’ll pick a random player to target with the initial two slash attacks before moving into the nuke phase of the Fissure Discharge attack I mentioned previously.
Here’s the strategy: Survival is the main catalyst here, since you’ll want to focus on dodging Gladius' attacks when he’s focused on you and have your teammates lay on the damage.
Now, this may be dependent on the player using said Nightfarer, and you may be inclined to run a team comprising the same character. Still, I HIGHLY suggest having two tanky characters like I mentioned, between a Raider and Guardian.
Like I said, Ironeye is great due to his consistent damage ticks without missing your shots. Still,Gladius' new attacks are devastating enough to easily one-hit KO you or other squishy characterslike Recluse.
For the Ultimate Arts, it’s encouraged to unleash them whenever you think Gladius is about to take a powerful attack, which will interrupt him and possibly even let you stagger for some big damage, as we did above in the clip.
When it’s in the split-up phase, attempt to stay on the defensive side, especially when playing duos, since the chainsword puppy here can brutalize you with the unique attacks it specifically possesses.
Besides that, nothing much that I can offer here.I honestly think the fight is balanced enough, even with the zoning AOE nuke attacks or the annoyance of Gladius' split-up phase.you’re able to either breeze through it or have a rough time trying to survive here, depending on your loadout.
Stay alive as much as possible, and if you’re on voice comms, make sure to call out to teammates when Gladius is split up to make sure the clones switch aggro or not.
After successfully completing the Everdark Sovereign Tricephalos expedition, you’re able to head back to the Roundtable Hold tovisit the Collector Signboard merchantandgrab the brand-new Dark Night of the Beast relic, as shown above,which I honestly think is a good choice to have for Raider’s relic setup.
