Eternal Strands Guide: “On The Precipice / Heart of the Matter” Walkthrough

Eternal Strands Walkthrough: On The Precipice

Mission List (Tap to jump down the page!)

Consult With Oria

Reach The Source

Heart of the Matter

After fighting off the Surgeborn Herald for the first time and preparing for the final fight, it all comes down to this. You should have completed Weathering The Storm and In Memories, which both lead into this finale.

To begin with, go and speak to Oria. Make sure you’re completely prepped before this final fight, being sure to Harvest any Strands you need to for the fight, along with crafting some good armour too.

When you’re done, select “As ready as I’ll ever be.”

When the dialogue is done, go to your tent and sleep.

Consult With Oria

With a good night’s sleep and a chat with Oria completed, our next task is to head back and talk to Oria again.

This time, select the top option again and that you’re ready.

Reach The Source

After  another cutscene, we’ll now be deep underground with the Ark. We’ve got a walking mission to take part in, and the goal is pretty simple. Stay within the barrier that the Ark is surrounded with.

Eventually you’ll reach a large chamber and once again, we’ll have to fight the Surgeborn Herald properly

 

Heart of the Matter

 

Boss Fight – Surgeborn Herald

Phase 1

The Surgeborn Herald is the toughest foe you will have faced so far. It’s a massive, towering force and it has some pretty nasty attacks too. Its body is coated in armour and it wields a huge sword. The attacks are largely the same as what we faced back in “A Sudden Gambit” but for a few big changes.

The arena here is completely different, with the upper-levels shrouded in fog that will damage you over time so avoid going up there. With that in mind, make sure you stay on the ground level.

You want to watch out for Surgeborn’s various melee strikes, which include a sweeping attack and a triple-plunge, where it’ll drop the sword down three times. There’s also a swipe forward where with the sword will linger for a few seconds before being dragged toward him. However, unlike in the outdoor arena, the time window for this sword being kept on the ground is much tighter than before.

For the sweep, it’s a good idea to get very close to Surgeborn to avoid the worst, or rush out of the hit zone. You can also block the attack to minimize the damage as well.

As for the triple strikes, these are quite easy to dodge, simply move from side to side and dodge-roll if need be. The swipe forward is an opportune time to jump and cling to the sword, but you’ll need a lot of stamina for this. Surgeborn, unlike most of the other big foes, will regularly try and shake you off. You’ll also notice that Surgeborn’s body has a mix of armour plates and ethereal shadows that are translucent and can’t be clung to. This is where your powers come into play.

The game doesn’t tell you this but just like the first time, the aim here is to remove Surgeborn’s armour plates to reveal a larger body, then use Ice Wall to freeze that section to make it solid.

Keep hitting with ice until you see the translucent body become solid and grey-white in colour.

When it does, you’ll be on a tight window so switch to Weaver’s Grasp and pick up rocks (or the removed armour plates on the ground) to throw at Surgeborn Herald.

In terms of removing the armour plates, it really is up to you over what strategy you choose. You can use your Bow if you’ve been upgrading that over the game, use Weaver’s Grasp to throw rocks at the armour plates, or try your luck and jumping on top of Surgeborn Herald and slashing with your sword like you would an Arkon.

However, given we also have the Kinetic Blast too, you can create “warp pads” to fling yourself up at the Surgeborn Herald too and then hack away with your sword.

There are a ton of Vitality Flasks dotted around the arena, and if you do happen to die, although you’ll have to restart the entire fight again, you will start with the same amount of armour left on Surgeborn.

If you’re looking to keep a distance from Surgeborn Herald throughout, it also has several different long-range attacks too.

There’s a fireball strike, an ice-ball strike and a special shadow attack, which will lift you up from the air and then slash at you with its sword. Use Weaver’s Grasp to throw the projectiles back, and be sure to run outside the area of impact for the shadow attack.

However, if you are caught in the shadow, make sure to block just before Surgeborn tries to hit you with his sword in mid-air.

This will be a pretty long fight but be sure to use your Weaver’s Grasp and the exploding flower buds do work well to remove the armour plates. If you can grab the fireball projectile and aim that at the armour to remove them, this will also work incredibly well.

Once you hit the 50% mark on the armour, we’ll move into phase 2.

Phase 2

Phase 2 is quite simple once you get the strategy you need to use. You’ll start off in the center of the arena with a couple of Surgeborn grunts on the ground. Dispatch these first then focus on the Herald. We now need to Harvest the Surgeborn Herald, and its weak spot is located right in the middle of its face.

In order to get there, you need to use Ice Wall on both of Surgeborn’s hands. Then, switch to Kinetic Stream and aim for the face. Catapult up to the head and hold triangle to Harvest.

The reason we’re freezing the hands is simply because otherwise the Herald will reach up and try to pluck you off. This is a very simple but effective strategy to buy us precious time to Harvest successfully. 

Alternatively, you can climb onto the sword and then freeze the arms to make a bridge up to the face (like we initially tried, pictured above!), but this method is unpredictable, especially as your stamina will sap a lot unless you have Frost Resistant Armor equipped.

Either way, once you’ve Harvested the Surgeborn Herald, you’ll gain another two trophies, Point Made, and Voidsewn.

 

Activate the Ark of Verdance

With the Herald defeated, climb up the steps on the left and press triangle to interact with the Ark. This will also bring in the final cutscene and complete the game. Congratulations!

 

This isn’t the end of Brynn’s journey though, as if you sit through the credits and make it back to camp again, go and speak to Laen. In doing so, it’ll unlock the final Side Quest, A Shift In Perspective. This requires you to Harvest another Surgeborn Herald. If you go and warp with the Loomgate, you’ll notice that the Surgeborn is now showing up as one of the Epic Quests in the various areas.

We’ll cover how to Harvest the Surgeborn Herald in a separate guide but that pretty much completes the game! If you still have Side Quests to do though, you can go ahead and complete those now too.

<< On The Precipice

 

You can check out our full walkthrough and game guide here!

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