V Rising Tips: Nicholaus the Fallen

Looking for some V Rising Nicholaus the Fallen tips to get you through this tough, skeleton-raising boss? Here you will find a tried and tested strategy that will lay the dead to their final rest, including a build guide and even a shortcut!

V Rising Tips: Nicholaus the Fallen

Right in the middle of Vardoran’s Farbane Woods, there is a massive graveyard. Weirdly enough, it’s called the Forgotten Cemetery. This is strange both due to the fact that it is not only right in the middle of the woods, surrounded by bandit encampments, it also spawns an alarming number of undead that wander the surrounds.

Nicholaus the Fallen seems to be responsible for the blight afflicting said graveyard. He is a powerful necromancer, and can be found vibing at the top level of the graveyard. He must be quite lonely, because he has reanimated a bunch of skeletons for company. 

Before we crash his party, we must prepare to fight Nicholaus the Fallen. After much trial and error, I have put together some tips to help you put an end to this guy’s shenanigans, as well as his apparent misery. Check out the video below to see my strategy in action – but be sure to check out the guide for more hot tips to make this boss a cakewalk!

Gear Up

First up, make sure your gear is up to scratch. I got mine up to level 35 by upgrading most of my weapons and armor, and just scraped through. It was a real tight battle. For comfort, you might want to aim for level 40.

This is mostly a product of time – gathering recipes for the appropriate armor and weapons to get my level this high took something of a grind, not to mention the resource gathering. Getting your weapons to copper level (you’ll need a lot of copper) is a good place to start. You should pick up more recipes as your level increases.

Try get the recipe for Merciless Nightstalker Armor at the very least, and upgrade your weapons to merciless copper weapons is essential in the end – the base copper weapons don’t do enough damage.

Approach The Cemetery

The Forgotten Cemetery is not difficult to find. You can enter from either of 2 directions – East or West. It doesn’t matter too much which way you do this, but you will have several enemies to dispatch on your way in.

See all the dropped loot? That's where we're going

See all the dropped loot? That’s where we’re going

Enemies include Skeleton Wizards, that cast AoE and projectile attacks. The 2 by the first set of stairs are troublesome, take one out as quickly as you can. You will also be contending with Skeleton Archers and Undying Ghouls. Undying Ghouls aren’t immortal, despite their misleading name – they revive once at about half health, after which they will stay dead.

Get Some Blood On The Way

You will want to make an extra effort to find some decent blood before you go to the Forgotten Cemetery, mostly because you will be stuck with what you’ve got until you fight Nicholaus the Fallen. You’ll also be in trouble if you run out, so make sure your tank is full before heading in.

A key element of my strategy is using either the Mace or Axes’ Q ability for extra mobility to evade Nicholaus’s attacks. I found it helpful to travel to the Vampire Waygate Northeast of the Cemetery, just inside the Dunley Farmlands. This will give you access to stronger blood – I recommend Warrior Blood due to the enhanced weapon ability cooldown. Rogue Blood is also viable due to the movement speed buffs.

Get Grave Dust and Vermin Salves

Due to the lack of warm-blooded types in a cemetery, you’re going to have a hard time relying on Blood Mend to keep yourself alive. Gather rats, bones (plenty of these around) and plant fiber to craft Vermin Salves. Using these instead of Blood Mend will ensure that you don’t run out of blood halfway through the fight.

You'll be spamming that Q throughout the fight - weapon skill cooldown helps!

You’ll be spamming that Q throughout the fight – weapon skill cooldown helps!

As a bonus, there is also a chance you will find Grave Dust by smashing the headstones. If you haven’t already, use Grave Dust and Mourning Lily to build or repair your Gravekeeper’s Ring – if this breaks in battle, you lose nearly 10 equipment levels. You won’t last long if that happens.

Proceed Further In

The cemetery has a 3-tiered layout. The 2nd tier has a few groups of enemies wandering about, you can choose if you want to take them all out or pick your path carefully through them.

Be warned – the Skeleton Necromancers  can be annoying, summoning droves of Skeletons that will overwhelm you with their numbers. Kill them before they have a chance to raise too much hell. Once you have reached the 3rd set of stairs, take a break and heal up – Nicholaus is just up ahead! Craft a few more Vermin Salves, heal up and brace yourself for battle.

If you can make it to this corner on horesback, you can avoid most of the mobs

If you can make it to this corner on horesback, you can avoid most of the mobs

If you don’t feel like clearing out the entire cemetery, you can grab a horse and zip past most of them by running for a corner next to the stairs leading up to Nicholaus. You might still have to fight a handful of enemies, but it will save you time and energy if you have to retry the fight. If you have beaten Putrid Rat, you can use Rat Form to evade these enemies.

Set Your Spells

I experimented with a few loadouts and found that crowd control spells are a must in this fight. Nicholaus is quite jacked up as far as Necromancers go, so rest assured he won’t be fighting alone. As such, here are my recommendations:

  • Aftershock: Unlocked by beating Erroll the Stonebreaker, this ability sends a crack for a distance ahead and then inflicts chaos burn damage for a few seconds after.
  • Spectral Wolf: Unlocked by beating Polora the Feywalker, this ability sends forth a ghostly familiar that bounces up to 2 times between enemies, damaging them and applying a fading snare.
  • Veil of Illusion: Also unlocked by beating Polora, this travel ability propels you forward, and then rewinds your movement on recast leaving a doppelgänger in your place that draws enemy aggro and attacks using projectiles.

Other Viable Spells

These spells could also work, but aren’t as good in my opinion.

  • Veil of Chaos: Unlocked by beating Clive the Firestarter, this travel ability can be recast to propel you further away. I found the rewind effect of Veil of Illusion great for closing the gap to deal some melee damage to Nicholaus, but you also run the risk of getting caught in a mob. It’s cooldown is also 1 second longer.
  • Frost Bat: Unlocked by beating Keely the Frost Archer, this is an early-game spell that is still fairly serviceable  in some situations. Use this only if you don’t have Spectral Wolf, or if you are having better results with this old faithful.
  • Chaos Volley: Unlocked by besting Lidia the Chaos Archer, another V Blood Boss. This spell launches 2 projectiles that deal chaos damage over time. This is also a great option for crowd control over  Aftershock, in the end it may come down to your own play style
Don't forget to smash headstones for Grave Dust

Don’t forget to smash headstones for Grave Dust

V Rising Nicholaus The Fallen Tips And Strategy

Engaging Nicholaus at first is easy enough. His primary attack is a ghostly projectile, which is easy to dodge by circle strafing around Nicholaus. Try do as much damage as you can to him before he teleports away. 

You will see where Nicholaus wants to teleport by a red ring indication on the ground. Try not to stand in this ring – as he teleports in, he casts Fear and can hit you from behind with one of his projectiles. Keep avoiding him by strafing around him, hitting him with your spells patiently.

Nicholaus starts his second phase with a new animation, raising a handful of Skeletons to help him in the fight. I dispatch these guys by trying to kite them close to Nicholaus, then using the Q weapon ability to deal some real damage. The Aftershock spell also works like a dream, allowing you to consistently damage Nicholaus even with his skeletal bodyguards.

Bullet Hell Phase

Invoking Nier: Automata (for me, at least), Nicholaus goes full-on bullet hell and releases rings of spiraling projectiles. Again, not too difficult to dodge but it does get challenging when you are avoiding these, arrows, melee attacks, and trying to deal some damage to a boss that keeps hiding behind his friends.

If you skipped Erroll the Stonebreaker, his Aftershock is great for crowd control

If you skipped Erroll, his Aftershock is great for crowd control

Patience is a must at this point. The sun doesn’t seem to be a problem due to the ghostly and almost certainly unholy fog permeating the air. Keep circle strafing, using your Q and travel abilities for mobility. If you do take damage, try heal early on by hiding behind the brazier at the back of the boss area and using a Vermin Salve. 

Final Phase

Nicholaus is desperate now, and summons a small army of skeletons. There must be around 20, at least! Things get quite hairy now, but thankfully you have equipped Aftershock which is great for wearing these guys down. Kiting them while circle strafing, patiently taking opportunistic swings at them will slowly thin out the numbers, allowing you to focus on Nicholaus again.

Nicholaus's projectiles hit hard- watch out!

Nicholaus’s projectiles hit hard- watch out!

He still does his bullet hell thing in the final phase, and it’s difficult to manage but not impossible. Focus on avoiding the attacks while chipping away at the skeleton army carefully – one misstep could mean death!

It may seem a little anti-climactic, but that’s how the fight goes. You’ll wear him down slowly, he may even spawn more skeletons by the time you drain his healthbar but if you are patient you will win this fight. It certainly had me on the edge of my seat!

The Spoils Of War

Defeating Nicholaus unlocks 3 rewards – 1 of them being a recipe, while 2 are powers that will certainly prove useful. Ward of the Damned sounds like a cool metal band but is in fact a shield spell that may help with the upcoming bosses Ferocious Bear and Quincey the Bandit King.

The other power is called Pestilence, which resembles Chaos Volley unlocked from Lidia but is imbued with Unholy magic rather than Chaos. You also unlock the Study recipe, which you can build to unlock more technologies with all the Scrolls you have collected by now.

Conclusion

If you have followed these tips, you should have bested Nicholaus the Fallen and claimed the recipe for the Study, as well as his abilities to help you along your way to Vampire Rockstardom. Maybe if he got out of the graveyard more often, you could have been friends with him.

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