Noskella ended up pretty much the same as Nokron, just with a much easier boss fight. Deeproot Depths, similarly, doesn’t have much of note danger-wise (although the boss fight is tougher since you don’t have access to your horse).
After those two areas it seemed I’d been worrying for nothing… but then I arrived at the Lake of Rot. This location is extremely unpleasant. Both because of the unavoidable scarlet rot soup you have to wade through (which will trigger rot in ~10 seconds even if you’re in full mushroom gear with double Immunity talismans) and because the enemies hit quite hard. The area’s pretty small though and the Dragonkin boss can at least be drawn over to the cliffside where you can safety pelt it with ranged attacks from above (good luck fighting the Tree Spirit though; I ended up skipping it).
The last sidequest location at this point happened to be that formerly unreachable plateau in southwest Liurnia. Not much up there really besides a pretty nasty evergaol fight. That one took awhile, though not as long as the Crucible Knight one since at least this enemy could be easily staggered.
Once all that was done I was level 121 (Vig 40, End 25, Str 12, Dex 50, Fai 23, Arc 30) with Reduvia +9, Great Knife +20, Eleonora’s Poleblade +8, Nightrider Flail +20, Serpent Bow +8, Dragon Communion Seal +7, Mimic Ashes +10, Fanged Imp/Greatshield Ashes +9, and Ancestral Follower/Jellyfish Ashes +8.
Now it was time to tackle the Mountaintop of the Giants, which I’d heard was where the game took a nosedive. Personally I don’t see it. The area’s pretty unique and apart from the oddity of seeing a bunch of enemies from Caelid here nothing felt particularly phoned in. In terms of danger the only location that stands out is Castle Sol, which features spectral versions of those windy knights found in Stormveil. The boss fight features them as well and stalled my progress for some time (Greatshield summon reliably distracts the shield knight and boss, but the twin-greatsword knight kept murdering me).
Once the Fire Giant fell (don’t see why anyone would have trouble with him, he’s just a 2-legged dragon) I was level 131 (End 30, Arc 35) and now using Rivers of Blood +9, Wakizashi +23, Dragon Communion Seal +9, Mimic Ashes +10, and Fanged Imp/Greatshield/Ancestral Follower Ashes +9.
After a quick trip to kill Rykard (who is in fact quite hard for a melee character if you don’t use the special spear it wants you to use) and before moving on to the the penultimate area, there was one more sidequest location to visit: The Consecrated Snowfield, which in turn allows access to Mohgwyn Palace and the Haligtree.
The snowfield comes across very much like a DLC area with all the endgame materials strewn about alongside the bizarre palette-swapped bosses. It’s pretty bad and half-assed really. Surprisingly not all that dangerous though so long as you don’t try to fight everything you come across head-on (or at all in some cases). Mohgwyn Palace meanwhile is extremely dangerous since its basic enemies hit quite hard and the giant crows in particular will chase you forever. Fantastic place to grind for Runes though, if that’s your thing.
With those cleared it was finally time to visit the Haligtree. Heard lots of horror stories about this location… and it absolutely lives up to them. This is just a real dangerous location all-around, whose only saving grace is that most of the trash mobs are easy to kill. The boss in particular is nastier than most in that she can both heal-on-hit and has a brutal 3-second, staggered, multi-hit combo that will basically kill you if any part of it connects. Allegedly there’s a fancy way to dodge this with 100% reliability… but you’d need bullet-hell reflexes to pull it off in the given timeframe. Better to have her use it on your spirit summon, or hit her with a Freezing Pot when she starts floating, instead.
Then the second phase starts.
She gets her health back and starts off with a meteor strike that, incongruously, you have to run toward to avoid. After that it pretty much plays out the same as before, except she might do one of several instant-kill moves after floating upward. It’s real unpleasant overall. Took about 10 or so tries to beat her at level 156 (Vig 60, Arc 40) with Mimic Ashes +10, Rivers of Blood +10, Wakizashi (Arcane) +25, Dragon Communion Seal +10, Swarm of Flies, and Freezing Pot & Raw Meat Dumpling on my item wheel. Also had Nightrider Flail +25, Serpent Bow +10, and Fanged Imp/Ancestral Follower Ashes +10 by that point.
All that’s left now is Farum Azula and the final boss rush.
