Mad Warrior

FoldUnfold Table of Contents Description Location Spawning Info Drops See Also Farming Strategies Basic Farming Strategies to Make Farming Faster Prediction Techniques

Description

King Vendrick called upon powers from beyond his borders in an attempt to stave off the curse.¹

Called Dark Spirit Samurai Sorcerer in the guide. He occasionally spawns in Belfry Sol if you are member of the Bell Keepers covenant.

Every kill of him counts towards your Bell Keepers rank.

Location

Belfry Sol
Uncommonly spawns in the corner outside the building with the tall ladder.

Bonfire Intensity	HP	Souls
1 (NG)	~1,980	1,000
2 (NG+)	~3,200	2,000
8 (NG+7)		4,000

Spawning Info

You have to be a member of the Bell Keepers covenant.
Do not need to be human.
Can spawn both offline and online.
Can spawn when the area is reloaded by the use of a bonfire, or by teleporting back to a bonfire with an Aged Feather or a Homeward Bone.
Will spawn indefinitely.

Drops

Mad Warrior is one of the NPC red phantoms with a special loot table. He will drop each item exactly once per playthrough, no duplicates.

Mad Warrior Set (rare)
Berserker Blade (rare)

Farming Strategies

He rarely drops his set one piece at a time until the whole set is obtained.

Basic Farming

Play in Offline mode to avoid getting invaded by other players.
Rest at the Belfry Sol bonfire.
If he is next to the building with the tall ladder, kill him.
Return to the bonfire and rest again.

Repeat as necessary.

Note: he spawns much more often in offline mode. Approximately twice as much as in online mode. Tested on SOTFS version on pc.

Strategies to Make Farming Faster

Stack Item Discovery items in order to make the most of your encounters.
Clear the area of the other enemies. He will continue to spawn even after they have been killed 12 times.
Use the Aged Feather or a Homeward Bone to quickly return to the bonfire. Sitting down is not required as warping causes respawns.
Equip Delicate String, this seemed to increase his spawn rate (Token of Spite seemed to decrease his spawn rate)(Confirmed in Scholar of the First Sin).

Prediction Techniques

Unveil

Any build can easily operate the miracle Unveil regardless of Faith stat by using Faith-boosting equipment such as Ring of Prayer and/or Skeptic's Spiceing down the requirement.
If you despawn all enemies in Belfry Sol and on the nearby platforms in Iron Keep (12 kills each), you can use Unveil at the bonfire to confirm his spawn.
If he spawned, the Unveil orb will fly just above your head then almost horizontally directly diagonal towards his spawn position.
If he didn't spawn, the orb will fly nearly straight upwards at a steep angle like it always does when it can't find a target.
The difference between Unveil finding him and not finding him is very obvious.
You can cast this miracle just after going through the door way (and entering to the area), but casting it before the door way wont work, because the orb will go below the ground.
You can equip equipment that reduce Falling Damage to return faster to the bonfire if he isnt in the area.

Playstation 3: Predicting when he spawns based on disc drive sounds

(Confirmed to work on all models)

Mute your TV's sound to more easily hear the disc drive.
As soon as you choose to rest at the bonfire your PS3's disc drive will make a 'Whir-whir' sound. Your character will then sit down, and green-white mist will fill the screen.
If the Mad Warrior isn't going to spawn this is the only noise you'll hear, provided you don't touch your controller again.
If the Mad Warrior is going to spawn a single, slightly higher pitched 'whir' will occur a second or two later, just as your character has fully finished sitting and the mist is about to dissipate. The disc drive seems to make an additional sound as it loads the Mad Warrior into the game.
Rest repeatedly until you hear the sound that indicates he's about to spawn.
(These sounds are based on trying to get the Mad Warrior to spawn with the three nearby Belfry Guardian enemies killed enough times that they've stopped appearing. Disc drive sounds may be different if the game has to load them up as well.)
Instead of listening for a sound, you can also just watch the HD indicator light on the front of the console. If the game is not saving, you'll see a quick flash of the yellow light, telling you he's loaded into your world.*
Demonstration video

PC: Predicting when he spawns based on memory usage

Play in Windowed mode with Task Manager opened in another window and select the Processes tab.
Rest at the Belfry Sol bonfire and stand up again, now watch the memory usage of the DarkSoulsII.exe process.
When you rest at the Bonfire and the animation begins, there will be a small increase in the memory usage (value varies depending on computer specs). This value may fluctuate a bit, but what matters is NOT the amount of memory being used, but the amount of memory changed after you leave the bonfire instead, so pay attention to that only.
When you leave the Bonfire, the value will decrease. Now keep paying close attention to it. If this value remains like that, it means he will not spawn, so you can safely rest at the bonfire again. But, if there is a noticeable increase in the memory value right after the standing animation is over, then this means he will spawn. (Tested on 3 different computers)
This may not be true with all computers. If you have a powerful graphics card that processes some of the game information with it's VRAM your memory usage might appear to remain the same. Confirmed on i7 2600K @ 4.4, 8gb Ram, GTX 780 Ti
It's still possible to determine it based on GPU memory usage with Process Explorer tool and "GPU dedicated bytes" column where an additional ~20 MB is used on highest settings.

PC: Mad Warrior Farming Mod

Using this mod (GeDoSaTo must be installed with texture override enabled) will cause the game to briefly freeze whenever the player rests at the Belfry Sol Bonfire if the Mad Warrior has spawned.

Drop rate testing

+ Show tests - Hide tests

Killed him 33 times. He dropped items on kill 1(mask), 4(armor), 7(blade), 25(gauntlests). I used Prisoner's Hood and Tatters, Gold Serpent Ring +2 and 22 Coins. Mask dropped without Coin, all other items dropped with Coin. I am still missing leggings. As of now it was 4 drops out of 33 kills - 12% chance.v0itech

I'm not sure if this is a coincidence or not but on three different characters while farming him he dropped his items in a set order every time. The drop order goes: weapon, mask, armor, leggings, and finally gauntlets. (Addition: On 2 Characters this applied to me too, but on a third one the mask dropped first - still farming) (Addition: Drops need not come in these orders. Another person got weapon last)

killed him 71 times NG to get the full set. kill 8 (blade) , kill 46 (legs), kill 47 (chest), kill 51 (mask) kill 71 (gauntless). I used Jester's cap, Prisoners tatters, Gold serpent ring +2 and 21 lucky coins. Only the blade dropped with coins. Using Token of Spite seemed to decrease his spawn chance (tested it with 2 tokens)

Killed him 25 times on NG++, after 3 kills he dropped the armor, 4 kills the mask, 9 the blade, 11 the gauntlets, he dropped the leggings after the 25th kill. I equipped the jester cap, prisoner tatters and gold serpent ring +2, plus delicate string to increase the spawn rate.

Killed him 39 times on NG (using: Jester's Cap, Prisoner's Tatters, Covetous Gold Serpent Ring +2, not using: coins, tokens or string, was: hollowed the entire time). Got the items on: Kill 2 (Mask), Kill 7 (Leggings), Kill 19 (Gauntlets), Kill 27 (Blade), Kill 39 (Armor). Took 152 area reloads using either the feather or the bonfire. I thus had a spawn rate of 25.66% and an item drop rate of 12.82%. I can confirm that using the unveil spell is an excellent strategy to detect the presence of the Mad Warrior from the bonfire location (if the Mad Warrior is not present, the eye icon will float upwards, if he is present the icon will float in the direction of the ladder). This requires the entire Belfry Sol area to be cleared, as well as the nearby room with the trapdoor platforms and the raisable platforms.

Footnotes 1. Mad Warrior Set description.