Don’t fight the Black Myth: Wukong Stone Vanguard without this crucial spell

Stone Vanguard is one of the key bosses you have to defeat in Black Myth: Wukong to progress in Chapter 2 and it can be a tough one without the right tools.

Black Myth: Wukong is a mixed bag when it comes to its boss collection. You will find enemies that take one attempt at best to defeat them, while there will be a few that will take multiple ones to even understand the fight.

Additionally, the game isn’t open-world, which means you won’t be able to over-level yourself, which further increases the difficulty of the fights. One such boss that players seem to be struggling with is the Stone Vanguard in Yellow Wind Ridge.

If you are one of those players and looking to defeat it the easy way, we have you covered.

How to defeat Stone Vanguard

The most important skill to use against Stone Vanguard is Cloud Step. The Stone Vanguard has a couple of moves that are easy to dodge, but there is one move where it summons minions that jump at you while the boss tries to combo the player.

If you get caught in the combo you will be dead. Fortunately, Cloud Step makes sure that the boss ignores you for a while and so do the minions. Once the minions disappear, you can jump back into the fight once again.

Upgrade your weapon before entering this fight as it will help you out a lot. The Stone Vanguard, as the name suggests, is literally made out of stones.

This means things like Fire, Poison, and other status effects do not work on it. The only way to defeat the boss is raw damage, and you can increase that by upgrading your staff.

Resolute Counterflow is an amazing spell for this fight as it improves the damage output of the heavy attacks. You can consume Focus Points and bash the Stone Vanguard’s head with a crushing blow. If you do that successfully, the boss gets staggered, which opens up a longer damage window.

Immobilize will be your best friend as always since you can stun the boss for some damage. If possible you should level up the spell so that you can dish out extra damage when the Stone Vanguard is stunned. It also helps you stock up on Focus Points to use skills such as Resolute Counterflow and Skyfall Strike.

Finally, Stamina management is essential against the Stone Vanguard. This boss uses AoE attacks that deal a lot of damage. You need to land perfect dodges to escape from some of the attacks.

After you dodge, you can go for a counterattack since the boss hits hard but is also slow when it comes to chaining its attacks. If you run out of stamina, you will lose more than 50% of your health in one combo.

Stone Vanguard moves & how to counter them

Here are all of Stone Vanguard’s moves and best tips to counter them:

• Ground Stomp: The Stone Vanguard will stomp on the ground with its hands and after a few seconds release a bunch of stone spikes in a small AoE.
  • Counter: You can easily dodge the first stomp by dodging. After that, notice the boss’ hands as they will start glowing yellow. Once it does that, the spikes will be released from underneath your feet. You need to time the dodge by looking at its hands. However, it is better to simply run away after the initial stomp as the AoE of the spikes is very small.
• Rampage: The boss will walk forward while swiping with its hands and stomping the ground. The move ends with the stone spikes.
  • Counter: You can walk backward as it starts its attack. If you keep moving backward, the Stone Vanguard will miss its entire attack combo.
• Minion Spawn: The boss will aggressively stomp the ground and small stone minions will jump at you. The move ends with it stomping the ground with both its hands and then jumping at the player. The minions disappear after the move is over.
  • Counter: Use Cloud Step the moment you see the minions spawn. By the time it runs out, the move will be over and you can re-engage once again.
• Jump: The Stone Vanguard will occasionally jump in the air and smash the ground underneath, crushing everything that gets in the range.
  • Counter: The jump has a pretty long windup, so you can easily counter it with a well-timed dodge.

Just remember that patience is the key. You can try going aggressive but the Stone Vanguard is slow, yet hits hard. As long as you’re patient, wait for the moves to run out, and then launch a counterattack, you’ll be able to get the win pretty easily. This boss is important as it rewards the Sterness of Stone, an item required to unlock the final boss.

We would recommend after you defeat the Stone Vanguard, get the Wind Tamer by following the Drunken Boar questline before unlocking the final boss. You also gain access to the Clone spell from the headless monk after you have defeated all three Vanguards, which includes the Stone one as well.

So, that’s all you need to know before fighting the Stone Vanguard boss in Black Myth: Wukong. While hunting it down, be sure to check out how to get hold of Silk or Refined Iron Sand to upgrade your weapons and armor.