Valor Mortis Boss Order: Full Checklist & Parry Patterns

Knowing the full Valor Mortis boss order before you start a run saves hours of blind retries, because every encounter in the game tests a different defensive skill, and the difficulty curve does not follow a straight line. This checklist walks through every required boss from the training-hall duel all the way to the final confrontation with Napoleon, with each entry covering the recommended level, the parry window that consistently works, and the elemental or status weakness that players report as the safest route. If you are new to the parry system, the Valor Mortis beginner guide explains the timing window and stamina economy that the rest of this article assumes you already understand.

Complete Valor Mortis Boss Order Checklist

There are nine mandatory boss fights in a standard single-player run, and a tenth optional encounter against the Crimson Revenant that gates the hardest achievement in the game. The table below lists every encounter in progression order along with the recommended character level, the arena zone, and the dominant damage type each boss resists least. All values come from community testing shared on the official Discord, so treat them as a baseline rather than a hard rule, because patch notes occasionally shift attack speeds by a few frames.

The single most important detail in this table is the parry window column, because Valor Mortis's combat engine reads input in 60-frame ticks and the window shrinks as the run progresses. If you are still learning how to read incoming attacks, start by reading the combat basics in the beginner guide before tackling anything past the Bone Warden.

How To Use This Checklist Across A Playthrough

The recommended levels above are not arbitrary numbers; they correspond to the average gear score a player carries when entering each arena, and the game scales incoming damage to roughly 110% of that baseline. A useful rule of thumb is to delay fighting a boss by one sub-zone if your health pool drops below 400 HP, because the boss's first combo is tuned to remove around 60% of that pool on a single unblocked hit. The checklist is also the most reliable way to plan the Valor Mortis boss order in a co-op run, since the host's level is what the lobby uses for damage scaling.

Most players find that the toughest skill jump happens between encounters four and five, because the Mirror Sentinel demands precise reaction timing on a six-frame parry window while the Vargulf the Hollow introduces a charge-and-recover rhythm that punishes panic rolling. Spend at least one full attempt on the Mirror Sentinel learning to bait its thrust follow-up, then carry that muscle memory directly into the Vargulf fight.

Valor Mortis Hardest And Easiest Boss

The community currently ranks the nine mandatory fights on a clear difficulty ladder, and the data lines up almost perfectly with the parry window column from the checklist above. The narrowest window in the game belongs to the Siege Automaton, and the widest belongs to the Drill Sergeant Garron tutorial fight, so difficulty tracks directly with the precision the parry system demands.

What Makes The Siege Automaton So Hard

The Siege Automaton is widely reported as the single hardest fight in the standard rotation because it stacks two pressure systems at once: a five-frame parry window on its hammer slam, and a shockwave follow-up that covers roughly 70% of the arena floor. According to community data gathered across 2,400 attempts, the average player dies 6.2 times before clearing the encounter, and roughly a third of those deaths come from a successful parry followed by an immediate shockwave hit because the player did not have the stamina buffer to dodge afterward. The recommended counter is to spec into Stamina Recovery on at least two armor pieces, and to bait the slam by standing at mid-range so the shockwave is easier to sidestep.

A second detail that catches players off guard is the Fortified Plate buff the Automaton gains at 50% HP, which reduces incoming damage by 30% for twelve seconds. During that window, switching to a Lightning-inflected weapon deals bonus damage and partially bypasses the buff, which is why the weakness column lists Lightning as the recommended damage type. Pairing the parry window with this elemental exploit cuts the average kill time from around four minutes down to just over two.

Why Drill Sergeant Garron Stays Easy

By contrast, the Drill Sergeant Garron tutorial fight is essentially a training room: a 9-frame parry window on every attack, no follow-up combos, and a stagger threshold that breaks after three clean parries. Community data shows that 96% of players clear this fight on the first attempt, and the average kill time sits at around 90 seconds. The encounter exists to teach the parry timing, the stamina economy, and the dodge-roll cancel that every later fight assumes you have already mastered, so the apparent simplicity is a deliberate design choice rather than a difficulty oversight.

If you are still dying repeatedly to Garron after three attempts, it is almost always a sign that the underlying input latency or controller deadzone needs adjustment, not that the fight is unfairly tuned. The combat settings section of the beginner guide walks through the deadzone slider that most players overlook.

Boss Weakness Reference Table

Knowing what each boss is weak to turns a long retry loop into a clean two-attempt clear, and the data below comes from decompiled weapon damage values shared by community testers, cross-referenced against patch 1.04. The damage multipliers are listed as percentages of base weapon damage, so a value of 150 means the attack deals one and a half times its normal damage against that boss.

Why Napoleon Resists Everything

The Napoleon fight is the only encounter in the main rotation with no elemental weakness, because the final boss was designed around raw mechanical execution rather than a damage-type puzzle. The reason is balance: every weapon archetype in the game needs to feel viable in the climax, and giving any one element a multiplier would lock out entire playstyles. Players who still want an edge should focus on gear with the highest raw DPS stat, or consult the Napoleon-specific strategy page for the recommended loadout that community speedrunners use.

If you are looking for a weapon that maximizes this neutral-damage window, the boss weapon tier list ranks every available option by DPS, stamina cost, and parry follow-up speed, and it is worth reading before committing to a final build for the Napoleon fight.

Parry Pattern Guide For Every Boss

Every boss in the Valor Mortis boss order has a distinct attack rhythm, and recognizing the windup is what turns the parry system from a coin-flip into a reliable defensive tool. The patterns below are written from a one-on-one solo perspective; co-op adds monster density that changes the timing windows by roughly one to two frames, so adjust accordingly if you are running a duo lobby.

Drill Sergeant Garron Parry Pattern

Garron uses a three-attack cycle: a slow overhead slash, a horizontal sweep, and a thrust feint. Each windup takes around 18 frames, and the parry window opens on frame 9 and closes on frame 12, giving you a 4-frame input margin that is the most generous in the game. The recommended counter is to bait the overhead, parry on the downward swing, and immediately dodge-roll left to avoid the sweep follow-up. Doing this three times in a row triggers a stagger, and the boss becomes a damage dummy for roughly six seconds.

Bone Warden Parry Pattern

The Bone Warden opens with a two-handed hammer slam that has a 22-frame windup, a parry window of frames 7 through 10, and a follow-up shockwave that covers the ground beneath the player. The safest rhythm is to parry the slam, sidestep right immediately after the parry lands, and prepare a charged heavy attack during the four-second stagger window that follows a clean parry. The pattern repeats every 14 seconds, so you have plenty of breathing room to heal or manage stamina between cycles.

Crimson Duelist Parry Pattern

This fight is the first real test of the thrust parry, because the Crimson Duelist chains a thrust, a slash, and a second thrust in roughly two seconds. The parry window on the thrust is frames 8 through 11, while the slash opens on frame 10 and closes on frame 13. Players who try to parry both slashes and thrusts with the same timing get punished hard, so the key skill is learning to read which hand the boss is leading with and adjusting the input window accordingly. The arena is also one of the narrowest in the game, so dodging sideways is often a worse option than parrying on timing.

Mirror Sentinel Parry Pattern

The Mirror Sentinel is the encounter that most often breaks a player's confidence, because it has the shortest non-final-boss parry window in the game: frames 6 through 9 on its main thrust. The trick is to wait until the boss's arm fully extends before pressing the parry button, because the early frames of the windup look identical to the recovery frames of a previous attack. According to players who have documented their attempts, baiting the thrust by standing just outside its melee range is the single most reliable strategy, because the Sentinel always telegraphs the thrust with a 4-frame shoulder lean before committing.

Vargulf The Hollow Parry Pattern

The Vargulf the Hollow swaps precise timing for momentum reads, because its charge attack has a windup of 26 frames followed by a 12-frame parry window that only opens during the final quarter of the animation. The recommended counter is to dodge-roll into the charge rather than away from it, which puts you behind the boss at the moment the parry window opens. After a clean parry, the Vargulf staggers for roughly three seconds, and that is the only safe window for dealing meaningful damage. Fire-type weapons cut the total fight time nearly in half because of the 150% multiplier.

Plague Matriarch Parry Pattern

The Plague Matriarch has the most varied move list in the mid-game, with five distinct attacks and a DOT cloud that fills the arena at 30% HP. The parry window on her scythe sweep is frames 7 through 10, but the real trick is learning to parry the tail whip that follows at frames 14 through 17. The DOT cloud can be avoided entirely by standing at max melee range, which is a strategy that most players overlook because the rest of the game's arenas encourage close-range play. Holy damage cuts the DOT duration by half, which is why the weakness column lists Holy as the recommended element.

Siege Automaton Parry Pattern

The Siege Automaton has a five-frame parry window on its hammer slam, the narrowest in the standard rotation, but the windup is also the longest at 28 frames because of the boss's size. The recommended strategy is to parry the hammer, then immediately dodge-roll backward twice to clear the shockwave follow-up. Players who try to chain two parries in a row almost always fail the second one because the stamina cost of the first parry leaves them with insufficient buffer for the second input. The fight also has a hard enrage timer at five minutes, after which the boss's attack speed increases by 20%, so a slow safe approach will eventually run out the clock.

Void Conjurer Parry Pattern

The Void Conjurer is unique in that its parry window changes between phases: Phase 1 has a 9-frame window on its main staff swing, while Phase 2 shrinks that to a 6-frame window and adds a homing projectile that must be dodged on sight. The recommended counter is to learn both timings before the boss enrages at 50% HP, because the second phase hits noticeably harder and the smaller window does not leave room for error. Void damage is the only reliable weakness, and most players switch to a Void-inflected weapon for this fight even if their main build does not normally spec into that element.

Napoleon Parry Pattern

The Napoleon fight has two distinct phases, and the parry window shrinks from a 6-frame opening in Phase 1 down to a punishing 4-frame window in Phase 2 once the boss drops below 25% HP. Phase 1 also introduces a grab attack that cannot be parried at all, so the only safe counter is a frame-perfect dodge-roll. Phase 2 adds a fire AOE that covers roughly a third of the arena every 12 seconds, so positioning matters as much as timing. The boss has no elemental weakness, so raw DPS and stamina management are the only ways to close the fight quickly.

Crimson Revenant Parry Pattern

The optional Crimson Revenant fight is the hardest encounter in the game by a wide margin, with a 3-frame parry window on its main slash and a second-phase mechanic that spawns three mirror copies that must be differentiated by particle color before they attack. According to players chasing the hardest achievement in the game, the average clear rate is around 4% across all attempts, and the parry timing has to be practiced in the training room for at least an hour before the real encounter becomes winnable.

Boss Run Preparation And Loadout Tips

A clean boss run depends as much on what you carry into the arena as on how well you read the parry pattern, and the table below summarizes the recommended consumable and gear loadout for each encounter. The values are tuned for solo play on standard difficulty, and they assume a player who already owns one or two pieces of boss-drop gear from earlier fights in the chain.

Pre-Fight Checkpoints And Runbacks

One of the most useful pieces of information in any Valor Mortis boss tips guide is the location of the nearest checkpoint before each arena, because the runback time directly affects how aggressive you can afford to play on each attempt. The game places a checkpoint within roughly 30 seconds of every boss entrance, with the single exception of the Void Conjurer, whose nearest checkpoint sits around 75 seconds away at the top of the Shattered Spire. Plan to carry one extra healing consumable into that fight specifically, because the runback cost will burn through two or three attempts' worth of resources over the course of a clear run.

A second checkpoint-related detail that catches new players off guard is that the Napoleon arena has no checkpoint at all; the game saves your progress immediately before the cutscene, but if you die during the fight you restart from the Shattered Spire, which is a full two-minute run away. Stock accordingly, and consider practicing the Phase 1 parry timing on a separate save before committing to the real run.

Stamina Management Across Multiple Fights

Stamina is the single most under-tracked resource in the game, because every parry, dodge, and heavy attack drains from the same shared pool, and that pool does not regenerate during a boss cutscene. The general rule is to enter each arena with at least 80% stamina, and to use a stamina food buff before any fight that has a parry window narrower than seven frames. The achievement tracking guide also covers the no-healing run that some players use to plan their stamina budget, because that challenge forces tighter resource management than a standard clear.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Valor Mortis boss order in a standard playthrough?

The standard order is Drill Sergeant Garron, Bone Warden, Crimson Duelist, Mirror Sentinel, Vargulf the Hollow, Plague Matriarch, Siege Automaton, Void Conjurer, and finally Napoleon. Each encounter gates the next zone, so you cannot skip ahead without using the optional Crimson Revenant summoning item.

Which is the Valor Mortis hardest boss in the base game?

The Siege Automaton is the hardest base-game boss because of its 5-frame parry window combined with a wide shockwave follow-up. Most players die at least six times before clearing the fight, and the Lightning elemental weakness is the only reliable way to shorten the encounter.

Which is the Valor Mortis easiest boss?

Drill Sergeant Garron is the easiest boss in the game by a wide margin. A 9-frame parry window, slow windups, and a generous stagger threshold make it possible to clear on the first attempt, and 96% of community-tested runs never lose to the fight at all.

How do I find each Valor Mortis boss weakness before entering the arena?

Each boss arena has a glowing rune on the wall near the entrance that hints at the recommended damage type. The rune color matches the column in the weakness table: red for fire, blue for lightning, gold for holy, purple for void, and white for radiant.

Are there hidden bosses beyond Napoleon?

Yes, the Crimson Revenant is an optional hidden boss that only appears if you carry a specific summoning item into the Echoing Void at the end of the run. Clearing it unlocks the hardest achievement in the game and a unique weapon that cannot be obtained anywhere else.