Anna is a boss that you fight very early in Chapter 6, just having come off a gruelling encounter with The Slaughtermill at the end of Chapter 5 in Valor Mortis. While the fight against Anna is nowhere close to being as difficult as this one, she moves across the field quickly, and has an irritating habit of disappearing and reappearing quickly to attack; as well as summoning troublesome minions.
Here is the full guide on the setup, and the strategy to defeat Anna, the Bride in Drowned Tears in Valor Mortis.
Preparing for Anna Boss Fight
First, make a run back to the Eerie View Lantern through the shortcut ladder, if you have not already jumped down into the flower-lined passage.
Melee Weapon: Go with the one that you have become comfortable with and upgraded. If you are looking to parry her moves, the Rapier serves the purpose better.
Firearm: Blunderbuss is the best one to take; it will help take down minions quickly and keep the pressure on Anna.
Transmutation: Fire works nicely to do tick damage, and ensures that this continues even if she disappears.
Amber: Choose any of the following;
- Dilated Moment – slows down time at the cost of Endurance and lower Firearm damage
- Limit Break – Converts excess healing into temporary higher max health
- Iron Grip – Use Ferrofluid Flask faster, and cannot be interrupted
- Dominatus – Critical Hits restore Health
You may also want to use a Whetstone since you will be relying on melee damage quite a bit for this fight.
Strategy to defeat Anna Boss in Valor Mortis
There are 4 boss moves that you need to account for and prepare. Here’s what to do in each of these:
4 Slashes – Easy to stay away from, then run in to get a good number of melee attacks. You can also parry these to build up the stagger meter rapidly.
Vanishing / Reappearing – Keep looking in all directions, get ready for the enemy attack indicator, and press dodge immediately.
Minion Summons – She will do that roughly twice in the fight. In my case, the first happened at ~50% of her health and then at ~25% of her health. Use the Blunderbuss, the slow time effect will ensure that you get your shot in before any other minions attack you, and the Blunderbuss will be strong enough to take them out even with the lower damage debuff.
Red Glowing Attack – She will two-hand the sword and lunge at you. Dodge and land in a few attacks.
Keep the following in mind when fighting Anna:
- The arena is quite big enough, so if you get mobbed up on, just make a run for the other side to create some distance and work out what to do next. Most of the minions will approach slowly, so you will then get time to either chug a potion or reload the Blunderbuss.
- After almost every move, there is more than ample opportunity to go in and land a good number of hits.
- Also, save up on the Blunderbuss ammo exclusively for the minions, since there will be 2 rounds of them, with around 3 in each of the rounds.
- It is not a good idea to use Transmutations when there are minions summoned – Each will be at a different stage on its attack patterns, hence you are likely to keep getting interrupted and take damage.
Defeating Anna, the Bride in Drowned Tears gets you 14,000 Catalysts.
