The Giant

The Giant is the fifth boss in Dead Cells, added in the Rise of the Giant update. His skeleton rests in the The Prisoners' Quarters until the player beats the Hand of the King.

Once the Hand of the King is beaten, the Giant awakens from the starting cell and busts down the door found after the starting items, where the Cavern Key lies. If the player follows him, a small cutscene will play, then a key can be found to permanently unlock the Cavern entrance from the Graveyard. The Key must be used on the door for it to remain open.

His boss fight is found in the Guardian's Haven, reached from the Cavern or from a 2+ BSC door in the Forgotten Sepulcher.

Attacks
The Giant’s fists each have their own health and when their health gets depleted, they will stop functioning for 3 seconds, after which they will resume their attacks.


 * Punch: Quickly sweeps across the arena with one of his fists. Deals high damage and pushes the player into the lava. If parried, the fist will retreat instantly regardless of distance.
 * Energy orbs: The Giant opens a fist to fire a salvo of energy orbs across the arena. Can be reflected with a shield or deleted by any skill that destroys projectiles (e.g. Wave of Denial, Tornado).
 * The energy orbs comes in groups of three. In a single group, the orbs are parallel, though the elevator between groups can vary.
 * Ground pound: Slams the ground with a fist, sending incendiary shockwaves in a direction.
 * Charging: Each fist may clench and gather energy, with its charge level visible on that his shoulder armor. When fully charged, they will release unique attacks.
 * The left fist performs the ground pound attack three times in a rapid succession.
 * The right hand fires four salvos of energy orbs. Each group may form a trapezoidal pattern.

The player must first reduce a fist’s HP to 0 to actually deal damage. Disabling a fist will cause it to fall to the ground and an eyeball will start to dangle out of the Giant’s skull, during which the other fist will become invincible and cease attacking. That eyeball needs to be damaged in order for the Giant to lose his actual HP. When the eyeball is out, the player can climb onto and stand on the downed fist for better aiming. The closest eye will appear depending on which fist was disabled.

The eyeball will remain there for only 3 seconds, and when time passes, it retreats, and the Giant resumes his attacks. In exchange, the Giant's eye does not have a damage limit and will not retreat without the timer expiring, or if if the damage triggers his enraged phase. The eyeball will only come out once one of the fists loses its health again. If you defeat one hand with a parry, it will regain full health instantly and the eye will not pop out.

When enraged
Once the Giant’s health drops below 70% and 50% respectively, he will lose teeth, roar and for the rest of the fight, include the following attacks:


 * Twin ground pound: (50% or below) The Giant puts his fists together and drops them both onto the ground, covering a wider area and producing overlapping shockwaves. This causes sharp crystals to drop from the ceiling for a long period of time, like the falling swords of The Time Keeper or the collapsing ceiling from Ground Shakers.
 * The crystals continue to drop even if the Giant is not attacking.


 * Eye lasers: (70% or below)The Giant shoots out two beams of lasers out of his eyesockets that sweep inward and restrict the player to the center of the arena. They deal damage on contact, can't be rolled through, and will repel the player if they roll or walk into them, trapping them in the center until they end. He is still able to fire energy projectiles from his hand.

Strategy

 * Damage from the falling crystal shards are counted as trap damage, and thus can be reduced by Masochist.
 * Grenades and burst damage items are really useful for delivering huge amounts of damage for when the eyeball comes out, like the Powerful Grenade.
 * Killing a fist while the eye is out will reset the 3 second timer, but that is not recommended since it will require repositioning for damage dealing, for the previous fist will go back to regenerating and stop being a platform. Rather, it would be best to deal as much damage to the eye as possible during the brief period.
 * Using automatic skills like turrets like the Double Crossb-o-matic and the Heavy Turret allows for continuous damage to the fists even when attacking the eyeball, which will allow for more damage earlier. The Double Crossb-o-matic will shoot both of the Giant's hands at once due to it's ability to target two sides of itself simultaneously.
 * Alternatively, you can just spread your damage evenly and attack any fist that's easier for you to reach, so by the time the Giant's eye returns to him, you can quickly disable the low-health fist and deal even more burst damage.
 * The Parry Shield's damage bonus to returned ranged attacks and the Spite mutation's boosts can work well against The Giant's laser orbs, sometimes dealing massive damage to his fists and potentially disabling by parrying just 1 salvo.
 * Ranged weapons are useful to attack the fists while they hover in the air.
 * Quick melee weapons that slow your descent when used are your best choice, slower weapons are not that useful. It is difficult to damage the fists with slow melee weapons, since they move a lot. Exceptions do exist, however.
 * Traps other than the Barnacle (which floats mid-air) tend not to be very useful, as most of The Giant’s attacks destroy them instantly. The Crusher also struggles to hit The Giant’s fists at all.
 * The Giant’s fists are immune to controlling effects and it's not useful to have them on the eye, so The Nutcracker is useless as well.
 * However, they are vulnerable to damaging status effects like Bleeding, Burning and Poison, so Blood Sword, Torch and Alchemic Carbine, as well as the like, can easily chip off his fists even when the player cannot hit them directly, provided that enough stacks were applied to his fists.
 * Neither the fists or eyes have a back or a front, making Assassin's Dagger and Vorpan ineffective choices.
 * However, all the entities are counted as bosses. If you have the Giant Killer (obtained when you beat the Giant for the first time), it will deal constant critical blows and he will take massive damage easily.
 * If you do not have the Giant Killer, the broadsword is another effective alternative, but for both weapons you need to land the final two hits of the combo for them to be effective. Fortunately, Broadsword's most damaging hits in it's combo are able to hit the Giant's hands when they are hovering or charging.
 * The Giant will not attack if one of his fists were disabled. Crystals will still drop from the ceiling if he has done the double ground pound attack, however.
 * The falling crystals can be repelled with Wave of Denial but requires precise timing.
 * Networking ensures that the player can damage both fists at a decent rate just by attacking 1 of them.

Lore
The Giant was in the Royal Guard, indicated by the huge painting in High Peak Castle depicting him under the King's banner. His duty was to guard the gates of the Castle. He has a negative opinion on the Hand of the King, who returns his dislike also with hatred. They both do agree that nobody likes the alchemist, however.

"The Giant didn't like the Hand of the King, and the Hand of the King didn't like the Giant. But they did agree on one point: nobody liked the Alchemist."

During the Malaise epidemic, the Giant warned the King that his methods would lead the island to its ruin. In response, the King had his men kill the Giant with a spear and dump his corpse in the Prisoners' Quarters, which explains the huge skeleton lying there. While the King gave instructions to make sure the Giant would never rise again, beating the Hand of the King for the first time reawakens the Giant. Upon seeing the skeleton's absence, the Beheaded remarks: "Where the hell has old bones gone?"

When reaching the Giant for the first time, he reveals the Beheaded as the former King, his body lost to the Malaise. The Giant thinks poorly of the Beheaded as he recalls The King's actions, but still respects his title.

When defeated, the Giant again expresses his frustration and disappointment with the King's actions, then sinks in the lava while calling him "an incorrigible ass" and giving him the middle finger. The Beheaded returns the gesture.

When reaching the Giant with 4 BSC active, he wears a crystal on his forehead identical to the one on the King's chest. Defeating him triggers a different dialogue where the Giant admits that he was defeated fairly. He gives the 5th Boss Stem Cell to the player, noting that it might be of more use to him, then his head explodes before he can finish his sentence. This cutscene cannot be seen again once the 5th Boss Stem Cell is absorbed.

The Beheaded doesn't seem to be able to understand the Giant's speech as he is unaware that he is the King.

Trivia

 * The Giant is basically a skeleton wearing heavy armor. However, parts of his faces are animate for unknown reasons.
 * By size, he is the biggest boss in the entire game.
 * He is also the first boss to employ a unique fighting mechanic, namely composing of multiple high-health units and requiring the player to defeat one of them in order to damage other ones.


 * The Giant himself, his fists, and Eyes are all listed as separate entities if the player accesses their enemy information from The Scribe. There, a few more things are revealed about him:
 * His hands, eye and his background entity are all separate entities and are listed as such.
 * They all share the same kill counter, regardless of how many times were his fists disabled.
 * If the player loses to the Giant in a fight, the game will always register that his hands defeated them, unless the attack came from his eyes.