Commander Honglan is easily the first most difficult boss that you’ll encounter in Wuchang: Fallen Feathers. Any other boss that you encounter before Commander Honglan can be easily dealt with, even if you’re not familiar with the game’s mechanics. However, you’ll have to fully grasp the game’s combat and be well prepared if you want to defeat Commander Honglan.
Once you’ve defeated Commander Honglan, you’ll be ready to take on any boss the Wuchang: Fallen Feathers has to offer.
Preparations To Fight Commander Honglan
Commander Honglan’s attack pattern can be quite tricky to grasp. She’s insanely aggressive and won’t let you heal yourself for free. You’ll have to try to stay behind her and deliver a heavy charged attack to stagger her at the right opportunity. Make sure you’ve acquired the Windforce or the Unmatched skill for your weapon of choice to consume a Skyborn Might charge to unleash a heavy attack more quickly.
You’d also want to have some long-range spells, so you can slowly deal damage to the boss from a distance in the first phase. In her second phase, it’s better not to do anything at all when she’s at a distance. That’s because, in her second phase, Commander Honglan can quickly unleash ranged projectile attacks. You have to focus on avoiding those.
You should also equip an armor that gives a lot of resistance against Slash and Stab attacks. The Ming Armor set is a good choice as it may have terrible status resistance. But it does pretty well against Slash and Stab attacks.
How To Defeat Commander Honglan
Commander Honglan uses a mix of weapon attacks and martial arts. She also has some ranged projectile attacks that she starts using in her phase two. Honglan’s relentless attacks don’t give you much room to retaliate if you’re going to wait for her to stop attacking. Your mindset should be to land a single attack after avoiding one of hers. And then, simply keep doing it repeatedly until she staggers.
The following is a table of most of her moves, alongside the ideal ways to avoid them:
| Attack Name | Description | How To Avoid |
| Sword Thrust | It’s the move she uses the most when she’s at medium or far range. She’ll get into stance, and then immediately thrust towards you with precision. | If you have any good parrying Discipline Skills available, you can use those. But the best way to avoid this attack is to simply dodge it. She recovers quickly after you’ve dodged it, so wait and see what she does instead of immediately attacking. |
| Martial Arts Combo | Commander Honglan will hold her fist close to her chest and unleash two punches, one after the other. From there, she has multiple options. She can do a jumping kick, or a stomp to the ground, or even swing her sword around. Note that she won’t always initiate her combos with punches; she can adjust this combo in multiple ways, but it will end with a stomp attack most of the time. | The punches are easy to avoid as they have terrible range, and if you distance yourself from her after seeing her stance, you’ll be able to avoid them. A good practice is to try to stay behind her back. You’ll be able to avoid most of the hits on reaction and punish them with an attack that way. However, what you’re looking for here are the follow-ups. Both the flying kick and the stomp have slow recovery, so you can easily get one or two attacks in before she steps away or initiates another attack. |
| Sword Slashes | The boss will swing her sword, attacking you twice, and then she’ll back away or do a ranged attack where she jumps back and throws daggers at you. | Countering her here can be a challenge because after each swing, she adjusts her positioning, often moving away from the player. Avoid the first two swings, and if she does the jumping dagger attack, dodge to the side and continue attacking her. |
| Jumping Away Attack | After you’ve depleted half of her HP, Commander Honglan will unleash a slow attack. Here, she will stand her ground, gathering energy for a while, before jumping back with a kick. | You can get a few hits in right after she starts charging. Be careful not to overdo it, or you’ll get hit by the jumping kick attack. |
| Ranged Slashes | There are two variants of this attack. Most of the time, she’ll unleash vertical slashes. If she’s using quick vertical slashes, she’ll throw out multiple of them. However, if she uses a horizontal ranged slash, it takes slightly longer to charge, and she’ll stop for a while after using it. | This is what you have to be wary of once she enters phase two. Her quick ranged slashes can be tricky to avoid if you’re looking for an opportunity to attack. Focus on avoiding them. The horizontal slash has a wide hitbox and deals a ton of damage. You have to do your best to avoid that attack by dodging. |
| Dual Wield Combo | Commander Honglan will violently swing both of her swords around, spinning like a top before jumping in the air to deal a finishing blow. | Dodge backwards to avoid this attack. In case you get hit by the first part of this attack and get knocked down to the ground, don’t immediately get up. Wait for a second until she’s up in the air, and then hit the dodge button to avoid the follow-up. It has a big recovery, and you can get plenty of attacks in. |
This fight can take a while compared to any of your other boss battles so far in Wuchang: Fallen Feathers. But it also prepares you for all the future boss battles that will be just as challenging.
After defeating Commander Honglan, you’ll receive the Revenant Temple Key and 9,000 Red Mercury.
