Assassin's Creed Origins: Trials of the Gods - how to beat Sobek

Assassin's Creed Origins: Trials of the Gods puts us face to face with Sobek, the crocodile god. Are you ready?

The second trials of the Gods event is live in Assassin's Creed Origins, and will be available through November 28.

If you can take down Sobek, you'll receive the legendary weapon Was Scepter, a quality 94 staff with combo multiplier, critical hit rate and health on critical.

You'll also be one step closer to the legendary outfit we've been promised for beating all four Trials of the Gods events. Last week successful players received a bugged item drop to show they'd qualified, but this week there's nothing new in the inventory - and last week's has gone. Don't worry about it; it's probably fine.

Anyway, as part of our Assassin's Creed Origins guide, we're very happy to talk you through how to beat Sobek in the second Trial of the Gods.

Gear up for Trials of the Gods

The recommended level for the Sobek Trials of the Gods event is once again 40, the current cap in Assassin's Creed Origins; the closer you are to this the better, and if you have a few extra ability points invested you'll be laughing. This time you'll also need to have completed the Aya quest chain to participate, apparently.

Health regeneration is blocked during the Sobek Trials of the Gods event, so even if you have that particular Warrior skill, partially emptied HP segments won't fill up over time. That's something to consider when selecting your gear.

The battle is once again a ranged affair. Ideally, you want to bring your favourite, most powerful hunter bow as well as a quick bow with the health on hit attribute. If you only have one bow slot, skilled players should pack the hunter bow, while less confident players should opt for the quick bow with health on hit.

Melee-wise, bring a sword with the health on kill attribute, or just your best blade. You should also pack a good shield with ranged defence, as you'll need to block arrows.

As ever, we recommend upgrading your gear as far as Assassin's Creed Origins will let you, just to make life easier.

How to start Trials of the Gods - Sobek

Assuming you have finished the quest prerequisite mentioned above, you should find your journal is populated with a new Investigate the Animus Glitch quest. Select it to spawn a waypoint in the islands near Herakleion (north west of the world map). Otherwise, follow the main story mission until you complete the Aya quest chains (finish off Alexandria, in other words).

When you get close to the waypoint you'll see a bright light, which pulses and makes a sound. The event will begin when you come within about 60m of the waypoint.

How to beat Sobek in Trials of the Gods

Similarly to the Anubis trials of the Gods fight, the arena is circular with Sobek in the middle, turning to face you as you strafe around him. Staying at the outer edge gives you more time to dodge some of his attacks, but be careful not to stray outside the borders, or you'll reset the event.

Again like Anubis, the battle rotates through ranged and melee phases. You'll face four ranged phases and three melee phases before the battle is complete.

Ranged phase #1

Sobek has two attacks in this phase. In one, he sends a wave of earth towards you, radiating out from his central location. Simply strafe right or left to avoid it. He'll sometimes do it it twice in a row, and usually the second one will be in whatever direction you dodged out of the first one - so just reverse after it passes for an easy escape.

Sobek's second attack is more worrying - he causes large pools of swamp to appear on the ground. There are a lot of them and they're fairly close together. You have a few moments to get out of the red circles indicating their placement before he sets them off; if you're standing in one when it fires up, you'll lose as much as a whole health bar segment in one hit!

Your job is to fire arrows into Sobek's glowing heart in between dodging his attacks. He seems to take more damage when the heart is glowing brightly and less when it is dull, but that might be my imagination. The heart glows most brightly during active attacks, so you want to quickly dodge and then fire before it goes dull again.

If you find you are low on HP, use your quick bow with health on hit to refill your health bar. It doesn't do much damage to Sobek but it does chip away at him and will keep you alive. Arrows will spawn around the arena, and seem to crop up more often if you're low on ammo.

Melee phase #1

The first melee phase begins before you've chipped away a quarter of Sobek's health. The humanoid enemies he summons don't have any special tricks; they use normal swords. Try not to get swarmed, and watch out for Sobek's continuing earth wave attacks if you take too long to bring the enemies down.

Ranged phase #2

After you clear the melee attackers you'll go back to the ranged phase. On this second rotation Sobek has a nasty tendency to cast his swamp pools twice in a row. If you are slow to aim your bow, you may be better off not firing at Sobek between the two waves of pools, and instead just focusing on dodging them successfully. It felt like Sobek's heart was bright for shorter periods during this phase, but again, might be my imagination.

Melee phase #2

The second melee phase begins when Sobek's is at two-thirds health. During this phase he will introduce his third attack - arrow volley. The area of effect on this attack is so wide you have almost no chance of getting out of it before it lands, but you can avoid most of the damage simply by raising your shield and strafing out of the danger zone. Quickly clear the melee enemies so you don't have to do this very often! He'll also continue to use earth waves in this phase.

Ranged phase #3

After the second wave of melee attackers Sobek starts throwing arrow volley attacks in among his waves of earth and swamp pools. Although he will begin casting swamp pools three times in a row, it isn't much harder than the previous phase as long as you are patient and remember to block the arrows. If you get out of the arrow danger zone punctually, you have a great window to shoot at Sobek before his next attack.

Melee phase #3

The last melee phase begins when Sobek is down to one-third health. He will continue to cast his arrow volley and earth wave attacks during this phase, but your biggest problem is the single Brute type enemy. You may want to leave him to last; it's easy to pull the more agile enemies away from him and take them out while out of the Brute's reach. If you can charge heavy attacks (one of our most recommended abilities in Assassin's Creed Origins) you can (probably, level dependent) knock him down, which makes life easier. In my run I knocked him out of the arena accidentally, which was an instant kill. Nice.

Ranged phase #4

No new tricks in this phase. Sobek will continue to throw double earth waves, triple swamp pools and occasional arrow volleys at you, and you will ping away at his heart until he dies. Well done you!

Sobek shouldn't present too many problems to players who are appropriately geared up and have experience with Anubis, but will be pretty hard if you come in under-levelled or don't have the best tools for the job. Whether you go in from Assassin's Creed Origins' end game or battle through on pure skill alone, we wish you luck in the second Trials of the Gods. We'll get a video up for you soonest.

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