This page details how to defeat The Cavalier - Gerswinda du Lilibonne, one of the Frankish Nobles required to unlock the We Nobles Three achievement. You’ll find Gerswinda at Les Champs Bleus, in Evresin.
How to Defeat The Cavalier - Gerswinda du Lilibonne¶
This is perhaps the most difficult of the three fights with the Frankish nobles, since Gerswinda will be permanently mounted on her horse. You won’t be able to dismount her with special abilities, or by reducing her stamina bar to zero. However, you will often need to rely on special abilities to interrupt her red rune aura attacks, and to inflict damage in general once you’re out of arrows.
The fight will begin as soon as you approach Gerswinda and her soldiers. If you’re mounted, you can circle around them and shoot at the soldiers to eliminate them early on. They don’t be coming back, so it makes sense to take them out first. Alternatively, you can approach on foot while crouched to stealth assassinate one of the soldiers, then call your mount. Once you’ve dealt with the soldiers, you won’t find being on a mount useful for long, since your arrows are finite and melee attacks are extremely limited for you on horseback. Instead, you should dismount and make use of the large tree nearby for cover. This will allow you to easily avoid Gerswinda’s javelin throws, and some of her charges.
Gerswinda’s charge attacks are particularly brutal, capable of almost killing you in one hit on the highest difficulty settings. It’s therefore essential that you’re ready to dodge or roll away from these by keeping your eyes on Gerswinda, and looking out for when a red rune aura appears around her. This will almost always indicate an incoming charge attack, but she’ll also scream “Charge!” when the charge begins, so you’ll have multiple warnings. The other red rune aura attack that you’ll need to avoid is the javelin throws, although these aren’t anywhere near as damaging as the charge. Almost all of the red rune aura attacks can be interrupted with special abilities.
You won’t find it useful to hit Gerswinda’s weak points here, since she is invulnerable to stun attacks. The only way you can stun her for a brief moment is by using special abilities such as Harpoon Impalement and Throwing Axe Fury. These are both particularly useful because they essentially hone in on Gerswinda’s location, ensuring a successful hit almost every time you use them. If you’re able to use them while you’re positioned relatively close to Gerswinda, you can follow them up with a few swift light attacks to inflict extra damage. This will be your main form of inflicting damage without arrows, since you’ll find it difficult to remain in melee range for too long before Gerswinda retaliates.
There are two skills from the skill tree which will make your life much easier during this fight. These are Brush with Death (Way of the Raven) and Sprint Attack (Way of the Wolf). If you have these two, you can sprint at Gerswinda and attack her with a leap, then dodge out of the way before she’s able to retaliate. Time will then be slowed (so long as you have Brush with Death), allowing you to place a few more hits before Gerswinda can respond. You can essentially chain this method of attack for as long as possible, since each time you dodge an attack your stamina bar will refill. This is the most reliable way of inflicting consistent damage to Gerswinda, but it’s risky. You’ll need to have good timing to avoid being caught off guard between dodges and hits.
As special abilities are so useful for this fight, you’ll want to make sure that you enter it with a full adrenaline bar. However, if you need to replenish adrenaline, you’ll find plenty of mushrooms around the large tree. You’ll also benefit from the Thrill of War skill (Way of the Raven), which slowly replenishes adrenaline so long as you remain in combat.
Once you’ve defeated Gerswinda, be sure to complete the mystery by confirming the kill.
No Comments