How to Defeat Annihilation in Remnant 2

Well, this is it. After clearing out three entire zones, handling endless encounters, and taking down three major bosses, you’ve made it to the finale of Remnant 2. It’s time to take the Root out once and for all, though one major hurdle still remains. That hurdle is Annihilation, a gigantic Root being hiding away in the Blackened Citadel. You may find yourself struggling with this boss. Thankfully, it’s not as hard as it might look. Here’s how to defeat Annihilation in Remnant 2.

How to Kill the Final Boss in Remnant 2

We’ll start with the first phase, naturally. Annihilation in this phase has a lot of attacks that primarily involve its gigantic sword, slamming down to the ground with short delays on each. Some of these merely slam down, while others will create shockwaves. Its other attack involves spamming multiple energy orbs that will fly at you after a short time.

The main thing to remember for this phase is the timing of its sword slashes. Each of them has this delay that must be learned before you can avoid it. After you finish reading this, take a couple of runs merely to learn how quickly to sword slashes go and practice avoiding them. This’ll do you a lot of good later. Another thing to remember is that you can dodge when it stabs its sword into the ground and shoves it in further, forcing you into the quick-time event

Related: What is the Bulwark Stat in Remnant 2? – Answered

How to Beat The Second Phase of Annihilation

Once you have that out of the way, the much more daunting second phase is where things get tricky. If you’re anything like me, you’ll probably die almost immediately when entering the second phase once or twice. Its main form of attack is to slam its sword down, then swing it to the side after a delay. Otherwise, it’ll slam down its tentacles to block movement, or send down lightning sparks to damage you.

Regarding this phase, you should worry very little about damaging the boss for reasons I’ll get into later. What you instead want to think about is avoiding all of these attacks. The sword swings will always slide toward you after slamming down, with a chime playing half a second before it’s set to go across. Keeping track of that chime is your key to success since it’ll remove a lot of the damage the boss will do.

As for the tentacle attacks, the red boxes spawning near them aren’t damage fields. These are where the tentacles are set to slam down, so you can move through them beforehand without issue. Just don’t do so when the tentacles are going to slam down. For the lightning sparks, standing in between four of them can serve as an immunity spot. Otherwise, you can dodge toward where the sparks are starting to explode to avoid damage.

The final attacks to worry about might be a bit more daunting. The damage grid it throws at you is straightforward when it’s just the vertical lines, but with the actual grid, you can dodge when it’s set to fly at you instead of trying to crouch. It’ll help you afterward when Annihilation follows it up with other attacks. The other attack is the heaping amount of energy balls it spawns. You’ll want to focus these down before doing anything else since those can easily kill you if you don’t focus them.

Now, you’re probably wondering when the hell I’ll talk about my damage comment from earlier. See, partway through some attacks; Annihilation will send you back to fight the first phase for a bit. This is the best time to dish out as much damage as possible, especially since you already are so well-versed in the first phase from running it so much. You can get some damage in on the second phase, but this will easily be your main source.

Since that’s a lot of information to take in at once, we’ve offered a brief summary of the tips below:

• Phase One
  • Be careful with your dodge timing, since the sword slashes tend to have a delay on them.
  • Kill the energy balls as quickly as possible.
  • You can dodge before the quick-time event occurs to avoid it.
• Phase Two
  • Don’t worry much about damaging the boss until it sends you back to Phase One temporarily.
  • The sword swings will always have a chime go off just before they go toward you.
  • The red boxes next to the tentacles aren’t damage fields; they’re where the tentacles will slam down.
  • Dodge through the damage grid instead of attempting to crouch under them.
  • Kill as many energy orbs as you can, and dodge through the remainder.

Keep everything above in mind, and you shouldn’t have much of an issue with Annihilation anymore. It’s also worth noting that there is technically a third phase, though this involves killing a bunch of small creatures for a short time rather than damaging the boss at all. You shouldn’t fail on this section, hopefully. Good luck!

If you’re planning to replay and get stuck on one of the puzzles, check out our guide on how to complete the Lament puzzles in Remnant 2.