Great Nue Boss Guide — Two Modes, One Pink Rule

The Great Nue is the Nue Beast's upgraded form, and it fights in two distinct modes. Master both, learn the pink rule, and the palace fight becomes a victory lap.

Crawl Mode

Functionally identical to the regular Nue Beast — dodge-centric play, deflects barely matter. One twist: its bites chain both of the old bite patterns into two-hit combos, so don't let your Beast-fight muscle memory call the second hit wrong. Full bite-tell breakdown in the Nue Beast guide.

Stance Mode

Standing on its hind legs, the beast shifts to double-claw attacks — and this mode rewards deflection and parries, at a much better rate than dodging. The moveset is honest: normal two- and three-hit strings, no fancy variants.

The grab exists only in stance mode and comes with a generous reaction window.

The Pink Rule

Starting with this fight, certain attacks glow pink — and they are undodgeable, full stop. Deflect or parry is the only answer, and a successful one chunks the beast's posture bar hard. This mechanic carries into Benkei and beyond, so treat this fight as its tutorial.

Extras Worth Knowing

Execution: sever the tail. When the execution prompt appears, choose the tail. It drops beside you — interact to pick it up and throw it at the beast's face for a chunk of bonus damage. A delightful little reward for explorers.

The aerial slam. It leaps and crashes down on your position almost immediately. The timing: the beast floats for about two seconds — dodge as those two seconds run out.

The lightning charge. After absorbing too many souls, or once its second bar drops, its charge attack gains a lightning wrapper. A double-tap dodge sideways clears it completely.

This fight caps the climb up the Kyoto Imperial Palace.