Wo Long Lu Bu Boss Guide: How to beat one of the game's toughest fights
He has a horse, no fair!
Fighting Lu Bu in Wo Long can be painful, but you are not alone in your heartache.
He’s a kind of boss that souls-like players often refer to as a “skill check”, an extra-hard brick wall designed to weed out players who have been scraping by without playing Wo Long “properly” by forcing you to make full use of the game’s different mechanics to progress.
Throughout the fight with Lu Bu you’re required to pull off a frankly ridiculous amount of parries, to the point where you need to learn his moveset and proactively engage with the triggers that indicate which move he’s about to use, rather than reacting once it’s already too late.
If that wasn’t enough, Lu Bu is also one of those bosses that you get in Team Ninja games who feels like he breaks the rules of the combat system and world physics. His horse is slippery, he doesn’t seem to get staggered or stun locked out of his attacks when you hit him, and most of his attacks feel like they appear at a moment’s notice almost at random.
If you’ve been frustrated with enemies constantly trying to fake you out with their deflect timing so far in Wo Long, Lu Bu might threaten to push you over the edge. But with some perseverance and a little luck, it’s possible to take him down without resorting to outright cheese strategies.
Fight Lu Bu like a rhythm game
If you’re struggling with Lu Bu in Wo Long, abandon all pretence that this is an action game and play the fight as you would a rhythm game. Hide behind a guard and just wait for him to perform one of his punishable, but unblockable, red-highlighted attacks.
Deflect it - which is easier said than done - then retreat back under a guard and wait for the next one.
Approaching Lu Bu in this mechanical fashion helps to take some of the panic and tension out of the battle and strips one of Wo Long’s hardest bosses down to what it really is: a test of reflexes and learning.
While on horseback, Lu Bu has two main punishable attacks you need to watch out for: the horse jump and horse charge.
A single swish of his polearm before an attack means he’s going into the horse jump. A longer twizzle means he’s doing the charge.
Guarding takes the pressure off getting perfect deflects every time
Fighting Lu Bu can be a war of attrition, so it’s very difficult to ask yourself to perfectly deflect everything for the whole duration.
Lean on your guard (L1/LB) for most of the attacks it protects against, particularly his arrow-based ranged attacks. This stops him from chipping you down and hopefully leaves you with a cooler head to deflect an unblockable hit.
Like in all of Wo Long, avoid greed
If you focus on deflecting Lu Bu’s attacks you will eventually emerge victorious. Wailing on him with as many hits as possible once you feel like you have an opening is just going to lead to him breaking through your hits and smashing you for huge damage.
Once he is knocked off horseback, the strategy remains the same. He has a jump attack and a charge attack that you need to punish, while you can guard against or dodge the rest - or try deflecting if you’re brave.
When he raises his axe in the air, that means the jump is coming out. When he twizzles it in front of him, the charge is about to appear.
Repeatedly deflect these attacks when they appear until he gets back on his horse. All you need to do then is repeat the first phase - deflecting both the horse jump and horse charge attacks.
Once he’s back on the ground again, there’s another attack you need to watch out for. He’ll pull back and swing his axe around his body. This is pure bait and a very naughty trick from Team Ninja. Don’t let yourself be faked out by the swing, what you need to deflect is the extremely fast charge right after the swing - be ready.
Get some help from friends for a little breathing room
You’ve probably tried this fight a lot and since your allies disappear on death you will quickly run out of Tiger Seals if you call in some friends on every attempt.
However, once you’ve got a feel for how things are going, consider summoning two friends to help draw some of the aggro away from yourself. It can buy you some vital breathing room to let your Spirit Gauge cool off after a lot of blocking.
If you’re on “the run”, don’t be afraid to burn your Dragon Powder for extra healing
Your Dragon Pot is a reliable, refillable source of healing, but there are some limited healing items in Wo Long too.
If you think you’re about to win and just need a tiny bit more life to get you over the line, add some Dragon Crystal Powder to your quick bar and use it in a pinch. You should have found a couple of stashes of it during your adventure so far.
Your journey doesn't end here. Check out our Wo Long Walkthrough in progress for more demon-slaying advice!