Lord Rydell Black Phantom | Demons Souls Wiki

Melee

Backstab

• Occasionally one of his swings will end in a pause, allowing you to stab him in the back. Most of his swings are slow, allowing you to roll and attack, but they come one right after the other requiring you to stay on your toes.

Alternative backstab

• A melee alternative if you have a fast moving character and don't want to fight him in the close quarters of the corridor landing, is to lead him downstairs. Go down to the first floor and kill the Prisoner Horde enemy and all the canned prisoners, and smash up all the barrels, chairs, etc, to make it easy to dodge and roll. Lure Rydell and he will follow down the stairs and there is plenty of room to roll and backstab and then dodge behind the archways to heal or recover. If you wear the Thief's Ring, you can run out the door towards the arrow ballista (break line of sight to him) and he will start walking back towards/up the stairs, for more backstab opportunities.

Cheap Backstab

• A super easy melee strategy is to equip the Graverobber's Ring, walk forward to about the middle of the walkway leading to Rydell, hit him with an arrow for aggro, then start running back to the stairwell. Before long, he'll give up the chase, then you can run up behind him and backstab. From there, just run away again, he'll de-aggro and repeat the process until he's dead.

Knockdown

• For strong characters, a good melee approach is to repeatedly knock down Rydell with the Meat Cleaver. Just stand over him, and each time he begins to get up, knock him down again. With the right timing, you might kill him without ever being hit yourself. Keep the Warding spell on, just in case you do get hit, wear the Eternal Warrior's Ring to keep up your stamina, and bring plenty of grass and spice to keep your meters full. Just be careful to avoid getting into a tight position where you can't swing the Meat Cleaver. If he gets into a narrow corner, you might have to let him get up and move the fight back out in the open (where you found him standing) before continuing.

Turtle

• If you move back into the stairway corridors his attacks often get hindered on the tight walls. Using a spear and heavy shield (magic damage hurts, tower shield is usable but dodging is best) slowly moving back through the stairway corridors is a slightly slower method for those without equipment found later on. Since it is in a corridor, just jumping back does enough and get some quick stabs from behind the shield.

Soul Remains

• A super easy melee strategy is to toss Soul Remains every so often and just run up and slash away at him. Make sure you time yourself so as to not get too close during one of his swings at the remains.

Ranged

Bow

• The easiest method may simply be the Clever Rat's Ring and a good bow. By firing arrows at him from near the stairwell he'll never really get a lock on you, and after a short jog will return to his beginning position, allowing you to continue firing. This method will be extremely slow, but it will get you the kill if you have enough arrows.

Magic

Poison Cloud

• A slow, but safe, method is to equip your Graverobber's Ring, push up against the wall on the landing opposite where Black Phantom Rydell is standing and hit him with Poison Cloud or Death Cloud a couple dozen times.
• Similarly one can also equip the Graverobber's Ring and approach Rydell slowly. You should be able to target him without alerting him. When done, hit him with a Poison Cloud and watch his hp dwindle. Run should he give chase - he will give up after a short pursuit. It takes three casts to kill him (6-7 casts in New Game +).

Soulsucker

• A really quick way to kill him is to equip the Graverobber's Ring and Dragon Bone Smasher. If you pass the last wall, he will attack you. Give him a hard Punch (R2) and he gets knocked back. Now run to him and use soulsucker as he stands up.

Harvesting soul glitch

• When left in his cage, he can be soul sucked through the bars and never die. This allows you to harvest souls from him for as long as you want.