After you defeat the first boss and reach Sacrament, you’ll be able to talk to Captain Randolph to start various challenges and bounties. While most of these tasks are relatively trivial, if lucrative, weekly bounty hunts are another matter entirely, featuring both unusually strong enemies and offering great rewards for success. More than the generous silver you’ll receive, you also stand to gain ichor by defeating these foes, and the prospect of unlocking more gear and inventory slots should prove enticing enough for any gamer. This page will cover the fight with the Brutal Couplet, the targets of the weekly bounty A Savage Pair in No Rest for the Wicked, including their location and strategies for taking them down.
Accept the bounty “A Savage Pair” to get the targets to spawn.
A Savage Pair - Location and Preparation¶
Pick up this bounty from Captain Randolph and note that it directs you to The Shallows. The Brutal Couplet can be found along the eastern end of the beach, not far north of where you wash ashore following the tutorial. These foes displace an axe-wielding brute who can also throw firebombs, and this foe is a good test for how you’ll perform against the Brutal Couplet - if you can kill it without much fuss, you should be fine. If not… this might not be a good bounty to attempt at this time. While the Brutal Couplet fights much like generic axe and maul-wielding Risen brutes, they’re far more durable and, of course, there are two of them. Fortunately, you have some options to make this easier on yourself, and much can and should be done before the fight even begins to shift the odds in your favor.
First and most importantly you should upgrade your weapon(s). If you’ve just wandered into Sacrament and are perusing the new content it can be easy to end up pursuing bounties without realizing just how much power you can gain at this point in time. Check out the page Ingots and Weapon Upgrades for more details, but essentially if you upgrade Fillmore’s Smithy and convert Copper Ore into Copper Ingots at a Furnace you can easily upgrade a weapon three times, doubling its damage output. Six upgrades isn’t out of the question, but you may need to buy or find Wolf Claws and/or Iron Ingots to do this, but doing so will just about triple your damage output. Needless to say this will make a huge difference in how fights play out.
(1 of 2) The Brutal Couplet may be dangerous together, but they can also harm each other with their attacks!
The Brutal Couplet may be dangerous together, but they can also harm each other with their attacks! (left), Patience is a virtue, especially in this fight. Circle the enemies, provoke their attacks, and punish when they’re recovering. (right)
A Savage Pair Strategy¶
When you’re ready, seek out the Brutal Couplet at The Shallows. The trick to this fight - as with many fights in No Rest for the Wicked - patience. There are two foes here, they hit hard, can leap and charge, and are both quite durable. On the plus side they also damage each other with their attacks, so you should circle around them, provoking attacks and zipping back out of reach. This isn’t reliable enough to serve as your primary strategy, but “divide and conquer” arguably isn’t the answer either - range invites them to perform leaps and charge attacks. In our experience these enemies are easier to read and exploit if kept together - try to provoke their standard attack, dodge out of the way, and be ready to land a strike when they finish.
This becomes trivial when one of them falls, but you have to pick your spots when both are alive. Fortunately, these brutes spend a lot of time slowly stomping towards you, taunting, or trying to goad you into an ill-advised offensive. Don’t feed them and they can be whittled down… then again, the Hammer Brute Risen can be lethargic to attack and if you have a weapon with some range on it - like a Claymore - you may be able to get some cheap hits in while it stomps at you, but this is risky, as if it decides to attack, you’ll probably end up taking a hit.
Their attacks are as follows:
Axe Brute Risen Attacks¶
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Five-Hit Combo: Unlike the Hammer Risen, the Axe Brute Risen is fond of performing a five-hit combo - chop, swing, chop, chop, chop. This covers a great deal of ground, but you can punish after the fifth chop.
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Pommel Rush: Like the charge attack (see below) the Axe Brute Risen will charge forward and attempt to strike you with its pommel, knocking you down if successful. It will likely follow up with a short axe swat, but if your equip load is fast you may be able to dodge before it connects. Not an easy attack to punish.
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Charge, Chop, and Slash: The Axe Brute Risen will dash forward, potentially knocking you prone, before chopping down with his axe. These two are part of a combo, clearly, but this brute will also perform a 360-spinning slash with his axe after the chop, just in case you get aggressive. You can score some hits after the 360-slash.
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Leap and Slash: Instead of charging, the Axe Brute Risen can also leap into the air and perform a potent jumping chop with its axe. It’ll perform a 360-slash after the slam, so stay away until you see this follow-up attack.
Hammer Brute Risen Attacks¶
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Four-Hit Combo: Despite using a bludgeoning weapon, the Hammer Brute Risen prefers sweeping attacks with its standard combo - swing, swing, slam, swing. You can punish after the fourth attack.
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Charge and Slam: A fairly fast combo, the Hammer Brute Risen will charge forward and use its momentum to slam its maul forward. Collectively this covers a lot of ground and has surprisingly good tracking, so distance is your best friend here, especially if your timing isn’t perfect with lateral dodges.
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Leap Attack: Like its axe-wielding ally, the Hammer Brute Risen can leap into the air, covering a great deal of ground. It’ll slam the ground with its maul when it lands.
For defeating the Brutal Couplet you’ll score some Plague Ichor, which you can use to unlock Cerim upgrades.
Defeat these two Brute Risen and you’ll earn a hefty amount of EXP, and while the silver reward for this bounty isn’t usually stellar, you will gain some Plague Ichor for your effort. Take this back to the Watcher in the Rookery and he’ll use it to upgrade your character, allowing you to pick a new gear slot or increase your inventory slots!
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