How to Defeat Varg in Thymesia

Varg is the traditional tutorial boss turned real boss in Thymesia. As a result, you should know his basic move set, which is basically Guts with armor, but he has some things working in his favor. Despite the large reach, the space is really small and he is incredibly fast. Thankfully, he isn’t as bad as Odur, but this doesn’t mean he is a joke either.

How to Defeat Varg in Thymesia

General Tips

There are four tips that are always good to remember in Thymesia. The first is that Talents can be freely reset or single choices can be unlearned to change your build on the fly. This makes some of the bosses a lot easier or just getting past certain bothersome enemies. Another is that weapon shards increase Plague Weapon power, making them useful if you want to rely on them.

In the item menu under general there are items called Collection of Memories. These start at level one and give 100 memory shards per use, with the level two version giving 500. These are great for leveling fast or quickly gaining access to another skill or ability without risking your life for shards.

Finally, I want to touch on potions, as this is something that impacts all aspects of Thymesia. I personally beat everything with the General Potion, but there are use cases for the other two. These are subjective, but the order you upgrade potions is not. I would say quantity is the most important category, followed by recovery and then crafting. The only thing to keep in mind is total health. If the potion heals more than your current HP or when you’ll likely use it, consider getting the craft upgrades.

As for crafting, these use random drops that have various effects. These ingredients are permanent, meaning there is no risk in using them in a potion or just picking certain useful effects. I personally found Black Pepper, Garlic and Basil, which gives Warming Up (damage increased by 10 percent) the most useful, but there is a case that can be made for each of them.

Set Up

For this fight I suggest taking a more measured approach, so the only Plague Weapon you need is the Bow. In regards to Talents, Short Dodge, Long Claw, Energised Claws, Feather Dart, Full Winged, Growing Feathers and Plague Wounds help a lot.

Fighting Varg (Tutorial)

In the event you’re reading this guide to unlock the trophy/achievement YOU SHALL NOT PASS!!!, I figured I would briefly touch on how to do this. Let me start by saying, this is, by a wide margin, the hardest task in Thymesia and should only be attempted by those looking for that type of challenge.

That said, what makes it hard is the fact there is no set up or options to make this fight easier. Either you can do it, do it enough times to have the skill to do it or give up. Now, one thing that helps is making a copy of your save after killing the elite enemy to get the gate key and checkpointing at the chair. You can also quit while the losing animation is taking place and restart before the fight. This requires running back to the chair to heal and I can’t confirm will unlock the trophy/achievement, but it can be done.

The trick that helped me the most was knowing when to dodge and when to deflect. Varg has a lot of slow moving attacks, which makes it incredibly easy to deflect, but you’re also only allowed about four hits and most combos will kill you.

For me, the simplest tactic was to move back and wait for either the rush or jump. Both of these are incredibly easy to deflect and punish. Outside of that, use Feathers to maintain damage, though use them sparingly given how slowly they regenerate. This is more of an endurance fight than anything else.

Beating him will give the same cutscene as losing, prompting the start of the game.

Fighting Varg (Hermes Fortress)

Phase One

Varg will come at you extremely fast and use his long sword to deal devastating damage. The best trick to overcome him is to keep your distance and shoot your bow to damage him. What will eventually happen is, once there is enough distance, he will leap towards you. This is a single attack, which is extremely easy to dodge and leave him open to a double Long Claw combo or a single charged claw. It’s best to retreat, wait for his advance and just keep punishing him until his phase is up.

Phase Two

Absolutely nothing changes with phase two except for one attack. After like four or five rotations he will scream and grab you, which does a substantial amount of damage. Good news is that it’s still a close range move and it will have no impact if you maintain the same tactic. It also shouldn’t kill you if it does land, I think it’s around 230 damage, though it’s always better to play it safe.