Each of the eight story Overlords in Saros accepts progress differently. Prophet hides its target, Bastion turns the floor into a timing test, Legion hides inside a swarm, Architect removes the arena, and Priestess asks for mechanisms instead of bullets. Identify the current phase’s requirement before committing Power or Overdrive.
Checked July 19, 2026. The official pages did not display a numbered client version. If a modifier value, damage window, or tell differs in your build, follow the current client while keeping the phase mechanic described here.
Choose a response before choosing a shot
| Threat | Default response | What the response creates |
|---|---|---|
| Blue normal projectiles | Hold Shield when the stream is clean | Power charge for a counterattack |
| Yellow corruption | Leave the line or dash; shield only when the alternative is a hit | A corruption problem that must be cleansed with Power |
| Red Nova patterns | Jump, route through a gap, or Parry after Blighted Marsh | Space, stagger, or reflected damage |
Do not hold Power for a hypothetical perfect moment while corruption seals the Integrity bar. A Power Weapon both spends collected energy and helps cleanse that damage state. Overdrive is a separate burst: arrive with it charged when a boss has a brief exposed window, an add phase, or a shrinking arena.
Primary’s Carcosan Modifiers unlock after the second Overlord. Protection settings can reduce incoming pressure or improve damage, Shield use, and pre-boss recovery; Trial settings add risk. Official launch material also describes an Overlord Restoration protection that returns full armor integrity at a boss. Use the current menu text, because protection capacity and balancing rules can change.
Prophet: the wall creatures are the health-bar switch
Do not shoot the closed body. Prophet is invulnerable while fully formed. Destroy the glowing tentacled growths on the walls to split the boss and reveal the central target. Stay away from the red grass around the arena rim; the slow turns ordinary diagonal barrages into unavoidable hits.
During the first bar, shield the clean blue volleys and move through gaps in the ground-level yellow bursts. Jump the circular floor shockwaves instead of dashing toward the slowed edge. When Prophet reforms, stop damaging the center and repeat the wall-target check immediately.
The second bar adds falling growths that create more slow zones and a full-width ground pattern. Destroy the new hazards before they partition your movement. The third bar closes the sides with tendrils but does not replace the core rule. Move laterally inside the narrow lane, jump the horizontal waves, and spend Power aggressively. A Power hit during an attack can interrupt the next action and buy a short reset.
Bastion: use the jump pads as phase equipment
Bastion can be damaged as soon as it descends. Its paired shots become projectile walls, and their colors decide the route: shield the blue portion, avoid the corrupted side, and do not try to dash through a red wall. The increasing circular shockwaves from the floor laser eventually become too tall for an ordinary hop; step onto a jump pad before the largest ring arrives.
After each health bar, Bastion retreats and Guardian turrets take over the arena. Clear every turret to resume the boss. Later Guardians can be shielded, so budget enough movement to reach them with melee instead of waiting for the boss to return on its own.
Side lasers reduce the usable floor in phases two and three. When hundreds of blue projectiles freeze in the air, retreat from Bastion: at range, that suspended field can fade before the next shockwave reaches Arjun. Preserve the jump pads as exits from Nova walls rather than standing on their hazardous upper panels between attacks.
Rhabdom: count to the third landing
Rhabdom has one long health bar, so the fight is an endurance pattern rather than three formal phases. Run the lower circuit until the boss begins its repeated leap. The first two landings emit manageable Nova bursts; grapple to an upper ledge before the third, larger impact. Drop back only after the spread has passed.
The stomp sequence also escalates. Early rings can be jumped, while the final stack is safer from the upper level. Homing blobs and diagonal swipes punish a straight retreat, so change elevation and direction instead of circling at one radius forever. Spend Overdrive on a stable damage window; saving it has no phase-transition payoff here.
If a strong run is being lost to visibility rather than damage, prioritize the arena geometry over firing. Grapple gives a complete answer to both the third leap and the tallest stomp pattern, and Rhabdom’s single bar means every safe re-entry still advances the fight.
Legion: find the red body inside the moving shield
Legion is the central red member of the airborne mass. The smaller creatures absorb shots and rearrange into attack shapes, but clearing the entire cloud is not the win condition. Keep the target lock or reticle on the center whenever it becomes visible, and use area damage to remove enough of the screen around it to make the next burst reliable.
The circular surround is a Parry test. Rotate toward the incoming Nova segments and reflect them in two or three controlled timings instead of panic-dashing through the ring. When blue homing shots arrive alongside the central corrupted beam, run across the beam’s track while shielding the blue stream; standing still to absorb everything lets the yellow attack do the real damage.
Later shapes include a five-point star and a semicircle that fire Nova lanes in sequence. These patterns are not homing, so continuous lateral movement preserves space. Overdrive is especially valuable after the swarm compacts: it can remove several escorts and hurt Legion in the same shot.
Architect: build the fight around grapple recovery
Architect spends much of the fight at range. Bring a Rifle, Handcannon, or another reliable long-distance roll; a Shotgun loses too many windows while the boss circles. The body is always damageable, so aim for consistency rather than waiting for an unverified weak-point bonus.
During the first bar, move away from the persistent red laser line, shield the broad blue wake when it is separated from Nova, and dash through the lower portion of mixed walls instead of jumping into their red top edge. The important phase cue is the diving slam at the end of the bar: it throws Arjun off the platform. Grapple back immediately.
The platform shrinks again after the second bar and can be reduced to a small center during phase three. Keep the camera wide enough to see a grapple point whenever Architect lands or leaves. For the square Nova tunnels, jump-dash through the open center and raise Shield in mid-air for the blue cluster behind it. When the final sweeping beam begins at one side, move with its sweep; do not cross the persistent line twice.
Shepherd: tentacles open the target but do not lower health
The fight begins on the Echelon II vessel. Destroy the tentacles striking the ship until Shepherd’s head rises; tentacle damage itself does not reduce the boss bar. Once the head is present, attack it and treat the side appendages as attack sources, not alternate weak points.
Shepherd changes sides between bars, rotating the useful sight line. Stay toward the back of the deck so the yellow and Nova waves separate enough to read. A toothed side tentacle can send a low corrupted wave across the ship: run away from its origin, then jump-dash back over the wave into the space it just vacated.
In the last bar, the hand at the side produces repeated Nova shockwaves and the boss adds narrowing rings, crosses, and a large disc with a blue center surrounded by red. For that disc, move into the blue lane and shield; trying to clear the red rim wastes the only safe section. Use Power after absorbing the center rather than carrying the charge into another mixed-color pattern.
Priestess: stop shooting when the room asks for a bell
Phase one starts with three attackers. Eliminate two copies to make the actual Priestess return and expose a real health bar. The trio can fire simultaneously from different corridors, so keep all three in view and use the hallway geometry to escape a bad overlap. When the main body appears, target the chest while jumping the red floor waves.
Phase two enlarges the copies and makes direct damage inefficient. Move around the perimeter and melee all three active red tuning forks. Each ring clears nearby projectiles and contributes to recombining the boss. Once a single body returns, the chest is the clear damage target.
The last arena is a set of platforms. Ring the two active forks to remove invulnerability, then attack until the mechanism resets. Nova-emitting orbs and collapsing floors compete for attention; transfer platforms as soon as one begins to fail. If the health bar locks at mid-phase, repeat the two-fork check rather than shooting through it.
King: every health bar changes the projectile contract
Yellow Shore disables Second Chance, so the boss inherits the entire biome’s one-life risk. King repeatedly creates a yellow forcefield. Close the distance and use Blazing Strike to remove it; ranged fire cannot substitute for that melee gate.
The first bar is the Shield economy phase. Absorb the large blue spiral and blue ring walls, then turn that Power back on King. Jump the Nova shockwave that sometimes arrives just before a blue ring. When the barrier returns, do not run through an active shockwave just to break it; wait for a clean approach.
Phase two converts many familiar shapes to red Nova. Route through gaps, Parry a readable lane, or dash at the last moment. King’s lunging punch has a bright flash near the drawn-back fist; dodge immediately after that cue, not when the boss first begins to pose.
The third bar mixes yellow corruption with Nova and adds a cone with a smaller cone nested inside it. Move sideways early so the narrow end does not pin Arjun. Near the end, King shields behind a gapless yellow wall. Dash through, use Blazing Strike, and survive the scripted finish. On the first clear, follow the prompted ending. On the post-credits return, the final decision changes; that route is covered in the platinum roadmap so it is not buried inside combat advice.
Confirm modifiers and phase behavior in your build
The official Housemarque page confirms the game identity, and Sony’s official modifier brief lists the named protection systems and launch accessibility options. The tutorial Consort is a mini-boss, not a ninth story Overlord. Check damage values and modifier text in your build instead of relying on an unverified percentage or permanent “best weapon” claim.