How to summon help with boss fights in Lies of P

Lies of P is a Souls-like that occasionally offers its own take on ideas and mechanics you’d expect to see in those games. While you may find a lot of familiar mechanics here, be prepared to see a different interpretation of one thing or another the more you play.

A lot of Souls-likes - including most of FromSoftware’s work - let you co-op the game with friends, but there is no such option in Lies of P. Developer Neowiz, however, still wanted to offer players a bit of a helping hand.

Enter the summoning mechanic, which lets you use a specific item to summon a Specter - though only in boss fights. You can’t have them running around the world with you, sadly, and they vanish after the boss is defeated. Here’s how to summon help with boss fights in Lies of P.

How to summon a Specter in Lies of P

In Lies of P, most boss fights are clearly marked with a big door that indicates you’re about to enter an arena. There, you’ll also find a Crack’s Calling, which is a little basin you can interact with. Interacting with it is what summons a Specter, which spawns at the start of the fight right alongside you.

You can only summon one of them, and it’s always the same AI fighter - so you don’t get to choose their gear or equipment. To summon your AI partner, you need a Star Fragment, which is a somewhat rare item in Lies of P.

Simply interact with the Crack’s Calling and it will use up one of your stored Star Fragments to summon a Specter. The menu also shows how many you have left, which you can think of as the number of attempts.

Where to find Star Fragments

Star Fragment is the item in question, which will be stored under Material in your inventory. You can check how many you have at a glance ahead of a big fight without having to go to a Crack’s Calling at the boss door.

Star Fragments typically drop from tougher enemies, and the mini-bosses you can only kill once. Some of those are named, and trap you in their area with them when you trigger the fight, while others are simply enemies more challenging than most, and they’re found roaming around alongside standard enemies.

Star Fragments can also be found in chests, and occasionally drop from normal enemies. While they are rare, you can farm them by just going on a bit of a grind and either go back and fight mini-bosses you previously skipped, hunt for chests you may have missed, or just take on normal/tougher enemies until they drop.

Is it worth grinding for Star Fragments to summon Specters?

Generally speaking, no. Boss fights in Lies of P can feel overwhelming, so it can certainly help to try a different approach. Having a Specter with you in the fight can offer you that little bit of room to breathe.

That said, the Star Fragments grind may not ultimately be worth it if you get stuck on one particular boss long enough to run out of Star Fragments altogether. As a standard RPG, your power in Lies of P grows the more you invest in your stats. In other words, the time you spend grinding specifically for Star Fragments could instead be spent grinding for Ergo and powering up your character/upgrading your weapon to stand a better fighting chance.

There’s also the issue of the Specter AI. You have no control over it, and it will always rush in and throw itself at the boss, with little regard for its own health or yours. You can sort of try to get in the way of it to minimise damage, but then you’re babysitting it and taking the bulk of damage yourself. If the boss has a lot of large-area-clearing attacks, your Specter is pretty much guaranteed to die as it doesn’t have the sense to back off or use items to counteract status effects.

In short: try it a few times, but don’t get over-invested in making it work.