How to beat Beloth the Darksworn in Crimson Desert

Defeating Beloth in Crimson Desert is a tough optional challenge. He's significantly tankier than the other Antumbra-aligned bosses throughout the world, and what's more, you'll have to cope with taking constant ice damage and periodically freezing. A few of Beloth's attacks can also one-shot you, even if you face him later in the game.

The good news is that you can counter most of the more annoying elements of this fight, turning it into a straight-up duel with the ancient icy monarch. Defeating Beloth will give you the full Shadow Armor set, including his ice-breathing helmet, which you're otherwise unable to get. So, here's how to defeat Beloth the Darksworn in Crimson Desert.

How to beat Beloth in Crimson Desert

Before we get into the nitty gritty of dealing with the boss's attacks, these tips make Beloth exponentially easier to fight:

1. Grab the Frostcursed Armor: Specifically, the cloak and the chest for their high ice resistance. You'll notice, fighting Beloth, that the icy conditions damage you over time, making it harder, but ice resistance can counter that.
2. Unlock the Abyss Nexus by Beloth's arena and enter the fight from there: Some players have mentioned ghosts attacking them during Beloth's fight, which seems to be a result of accidentally aggro-ing them when entering from the east. Instead, unlock the fast travel just southwest of Beloth and enter via that.
3. Evade to stop yourself freezing: If you look in the bottom left by the minimap, you'll see a little temperature gauge for Kliff. After this drops to blue and stays there for a while, you'll freeze, but evading raises your temperature back to green, so you should be evading Beloth's attacks. If you do freeze during the fight, hammer spacebar (or A on controller) to quickly free yourself.
4. Fire weapons deal DoT to Beloth: If you haven't unlocked fire imbuement yet, you can get the Groundsurge Abyss Gear which creates a fiery explosion on Turning Slash. You get this by defeating the second-to-last Chapter 7 boss. You can also get the Parting Gift Abyss Gear by defeating Walter Lanford in the Nemesis' Demise quest for House Serkis. A little like Flashing Reeds, this one leaves behind a bomb if you evade post-damage that creates a fiery explosion. You could also try a weapon with fire affinity, like a Flame Spear, which is a potential drop from the Black Bear enemies in Pailune wielding them.
5. Stack Abyss Gear effects: Beloth is tanky, so another way to deal more damage, besides just refining your weapon, is to stack Abyss Gears on specific skills. I stacked Ator's Orb from Darkbringer, Crow's Pursuit from Crowcaller, and Shadow Claw from the Legendary Wolf quest. This let me do three different damaging effects on my Forward Slash. You could do the same for Turning Slash, adding Groundsurge, mentioned above, Wound of Darkness from Antumbra's Sword, and the +35% Turning Slash damage gear you get from the secret chest in the Sanctum of Benediction.

Besides this, I recommend making sure you have a decent amount of Abyss Artifacts specced into health and stamina, plus some Palmar Pills. You can get some Refined Palmar Pills by the chests when you collect the Frostcursed Armor, so keep your eyes peeled.

Attack-wise, Beloth only has three that are super dangerous, so here are clips of how to deal with each:

1. Double spear slams

In this attack, Beloth flashes red, summons an ice spear in his off-hand, then alternates slams with either one twice, before jumping and creating an ice spike AoE in front of him. Simply stay away, dodge under or to the side of him when he jumps, and then deal damage.

2. Slash and spin

For this one, Beloth will swing his spear twice, summon an ice spear before spinning at you, and then follow up with a stab (which will one-shot you most of the time). The most important thing is dodging through him as he spins towards you with the ice spear. Usually this will throw his stab off target, but I always dodged again after just to make sure it didn't hit me, before dealing damage.

3. Spin and drop

This attack is much rarer, but the screen will darken, Beloth will summon an ice spear and enter his crouched pre-spin pose before spinning towards you, disappearing, and then dropping in from above to create an icy shockwave around him. It's not worth trying to deal damage when he does this, because it's really hard to predict where the ice spikes will appear.

There are other variations on his attacks, but these are the three he'll use most often and the most dangerous. Beloth's tankiness really does make him a battle of attrition, as you methodically evade his attacks and deal damage afterwards. Obviously, throw some Level 3 Force Palm combos in there to help build his stagger meter and use a finisher on him with the left and right mouse button (RB and RT on controller) when he goes down.

The main tips that make the biggest difference in this fight are evading to stop yourself from being frozen in place, bringing enough ice resistance to stop the DoT, and entering the arena from the west side so as not to draw any ghosts in. I never had a single ghost appear during my time with Beloth and I didn't light any of the Hoenmark Ruins lanterns, either.