Windrose: Israel Hands Guide
Once you’ve explored most of the Foothills and took your gear to item level 10, it is time to take down Israel Hands, the second region’s boss.
Here is our Windrose guide for taking down this pesky boss, which will make you dodge a ton more than Thomas Richards. Let’s get into it.
Preparation
As is the case with pretty much everything in Windrose, half of the battle is won via good preparation. Cook good meals, ideally a mixture of Vitality and Endurance. We recommend the two following recipes:
- Coffee: +20 Endurance, Lasts 30 minutes. Recipe: 4x Cane Sugar, 4x Coffee Beans.
- Seafood Platter: +20 Vitality, Lasts 30 minutes. Recipe: 3x Crab Meat, 7x Fish Fillet (obtained via fishing), 4x Lime, 4x Salt.
And, as usual, bring with you a full stack of Elixir of Cruelty: Increases Damage by 8%, Lasts 15 mins. Recipe: 1x Alchemical Base, 1x Boar Tusk, 1x Pearl.
Beyond this, we recommend indexing more into Endurance than Vitality in your stat spread. You will be dodging a lot against Israel Hands and often running, too, so you’ll need as much Stamina as possible.
We advise you to forego ranged weapons entirely in this fight. Hands can dodge and has multiple ranged options of his own, so you’re better off focusing entirely on melee.
Lastly, make sure you have all your equipment maxed to item level 10. That is what actually matters, not your character level.
Windrose: All discoveries in Coastal Jungle
Complete Israel Hands Guide
As Windrose’s second main boss, Israel Hands ups the ante with a much more diverse arsenal of threats than Thomas Richards. The reason why you need to dodge so much in this fight is because Hands has three unblockable attacks, homing projectiles, and two separate spells that leave damaging areas.
Let’s break it down into parts:
- X marks the spot: Israel Hands jumps into the hair, the skeletal spirit jumps out and a massive X appears on the ground. The lines in the X and, crucially, an entire square around Hands, damage you every tick you are on top of them. Dodge to a safe area and let the boss come towards you.
- Unblockable Lunge: when you are far away from him, Hands will sometimes lunge at you with an unblockable attack. Additionally, he will leave a damaging line in his path that spawns multiple spectral skulls. These are the homing projectiles. Dodge to the side, wait a bit, and spam your dodge until no other skulls are left. Do not try to punish this move.
- Unblockable Twirl: if you spend too much time close to him, Hands will sometimes do a long unblockable twirl. It is very telegraphed, the spectral skeleton will rise from him, holding the sword in preparation for an obvious rotational attack. Dodge backwards, and then jump back in for a lengthy punish.
- Projectile Spam: the most punishable move that Hands does is one in which he bends forwards, putting his face in his hands. He’ll then proceed to float and unleash a torrent of homing projectiles. The wind-up animation is quite long and allows you to sneak multiple hits in. Keep attacking him until you actually see the skulls come out of his body, and then spam your dodge away from him.
- Slow Combo: if you’re lucky, the move that Israel Hands will spam the most is what we’re calling the Slow Combo. The way you can identify it is when he raises his sword to his right. He’ll hit you with two attacks, followed by a pause. This pause will then lead into an overhead strike that (often) finished the combo. But the pause can also lead to a spin attack, which is a second three-hit combo. All mentioned hits are parriable.
- Fast Combo: the harder default combo to deal with is the fast one. Instead of raising his sword to his right side, he will raise it above his head, with a longer wind-up. What makes this combo trickier to deal with is that it is a very fast three-hit combo. We could never reliably parry this one, so you’re safer just dodging backwards twice. This one has no follow up.
- Unblockable Finisher: similarly to Thomas Richards, Hands can occasionally switch up his default combos. The Slow Combo usually finishes with the aforementioned overhead strike following the pause, but this final strike can be followed by an Unblockable spin. You can tell he’ll do this if he starts up an animation as soon as he finishes with the overhead strike. This is an unblockable spin similar to the Twirl, but much quicker, so you can safely dodge into the attack, allowing you to punish with a three-hit combo.
- Gunshot: As long as you stick relatively close to Hands, this gunshot will never hit you. The spirit is the one shooting, so he will always be aiming above you, unless you are too far away. If you’re sticking close, simply rush Hands and spam attacks until the animation finishes. If you’re too far, dodge the shot normally.
Our final tip is to start every fight by landing a combo on Israel Hands. He will always kick off all fights with the same lengthy possession animation. Although he explodes, there is nothing actually harmful about this. So every time you get into the boss arena, rush him and spam your light attack until he gets up.
As always, be patient and don’t get greedy and you’ll succeed. Takin Hands down will unlock access to the Swamp area and will allow you to upgrade your items all the way to level 15, the current max in Early Access.
