How to beat the Scrapped Watchman in Lies of P

Trying to beat the Lies of P Scrapped Watchman? This demented policeman puppet is a pretty serious challenge, especially so early on in the game. But if you’re determined to overcome Noewiz Games’ dark fantasy souls-like RPG, you’ll need to beat it.

Here, we’re going to cover our top tips for how to beat the Lies of P Scrapped Watchman. If you haven’t figured it out already, make sure you’re filled in on the finer details of how to use quartz and how to level up. You’ll need all these tools to overcome the adversity the Watchman poses.

How to defeat the Scrapped Watchman

The Watchman is the second boss you’ll face in Lies of P, and a pretty brutal step up in difficulty. His speed and aggression make it challenging to keep pace with him, but he isn’t invincible. Here are our best strategies and tips for beating the Lies of P Scrapped Watchman.

• Use fast attacks.
• Keep moving between combos.
• Learn the counters to his deadliest moves.
• Try to perfect parry most of his moves.

Let’s go over each of these in a bit more detail.

Using fast attacks

One of the Scrapped Watchman’s deadliest aspects is his speed. This boss can move ferociously fast, which leaves windows of opportunity somewhat rare. While you’ll only occasionally be safe to punish him with strong or charged attacks, you’ll find a lot more chances to do damage if you focus on short, one-off jabs.

Obviously the damage here is lesser, but over time it’ll build up. If you time it perfectly, you can even sneak in fast attacks like this in between combo moves. All these additional attacks will also contribute to building up that Groggy status effect, the shaking white shine around his health bar. This of course is your window of opportunity to stagger him, and perform a fatal attack.

Keep moving between combos

The Scrapped Watchman has a variety of powerful moves, but it is worth noting that most of them are close range and face in a forward arc – that is, the 180 degrees field of view in front of him.

Stay on your feet as much as possible, especially in between combo moves, as these will be your best opportunities to reposition. You’re not immune when behind him, but there are only a few attacks that can scratch you, and the Watchman will be forced to spend a moment reorienting, giving you some great openings.

Learn to counter his worst attacks

This one almost goes without saying, but it’s important to learn the boss’ moves. There are some moves in his arsenal however that are particularly deadly, which players should watch out for. Let’s cover the worst ones quickly.

Grab attack

He’ll start pulling this one out more often in phase two, but the Watchman’s grab attack is devastating if it catches you, and the animation following can easily claim half your health bar or more depending on your vitality. Luckily it’s an easy counter. Watch out for the long windup as he reels his right (your left) arm backwards to snatch at you. Either move away from him or perform a well-timed dodge to counter this.

One-armed diagonal lunge

When there’s a distance between you both, the Watchman may try to close the gap with a powerful one-armed lunge attack, usually his left (your right) arm. This move can smash a serious chunk of HP off of your health bar, so it’s important to try and avoid it.

You can attempt to guard on this move, though its unusual tempo makes it a little difficult to get a perfect guard on. Your best bet is usually performing a well-timed dodge, or quickly repositioning towards the puppet’s rear.

Mass lightning attack

During the second phase, the Scrapped Watchman can perform a move to summon pools of lightning across the arena. Being in one of these pools when it detonates can be dangerous, and being hit by more than one is often fatal. This is both because of the base electrical damage, and the build-up of the Electric Shock status effect. At full, this effect will leave you more vulnerable to all forms of damage. Whether it’s a slam attack or just a claw swipe, you’re at much higher risk.

This move is always telegraphed by an initial burst of electricity from the Watchman himself. After this point, your best bet is to back up and assess the arena, then position yourself out of harm’s way. It’s up to you whether you then want to close the distance and get in a couple quick attacks, or wait for the Watchman to come to you.

Fury attack

Fury attacks are deadly and powerful attacks that can easily end a run. With no i-frames for dodges and no success for normal guards, there are few solutions to surviving one. The Watchman particularly favours a devastating, dual-fisted overhead slam.

If you’re looking to counter this move, you have two options. Due to a long windup, you can avoid the area of the hit entirely by backing up quickly – three dodges back are usually enough to safely clear the range of the attack. Your alternative, if you’re looking to maximise your counter-attack window, is to perform a perfect parry. You’ll need to simply learn the timing for this solution though.

Try to perfect parry his moveset

The Lies of P Scrapped Watchman is fast, and aggressive, and favours close-range attacks. What all this ultimately means is that you’re under a consistent level of pressure during the fight. But you can make that consistency work for you.

The best strategy we can offer for this fight is to utilise parrying, or guarding as the game calls it, over dodging or other manoeuvring. A lot of the Watchman’s attacks, especially in phase 1, follow a fairly easy-to-learn rhythm and pattern. With fairly wide windows of opportunity, it’s actually quite easy to learn perfect parries to this boss’ moveset, allowing you to maximise your own attack windows.

Scrapped Watchman rewards

Once you finally finish the Scrapped Watchman boss fight, you’ll of course gain some handsome rewards. These rewards remain the same regardless of whether you use a Specter or not to assist in the fight, so don’t be afraid to use some Star Fragments to do so. Here’s a list of everything you’ll get when you beat him.

• Ergo. You’ll gain a sizable amount of Ergo, about 5040. This is enough to gain 3-4 levels depending on what you might have entered the fight with.
• Quartz. You’ll get a piece of Quartz to use for P-Organ upgrades.
• Broken Hero’s Ergo. This is the Watchman’s special Ergo. Like the Parade Master before him and Fuoco after him, you’ll be able to trade this in later for some unique boss weapons. If you want to know how, we covered it in our where to get weapons guide.
• Overcharged Storage Battery, which you can use to unlock the Fulminis Legion Arm.
• Small Wooden Officer Puppet. A key item alongside the Faded Whistle you’ll find at the back of the arena. You can use these to complete Toma’s quest, which will also reveal some lore about the Watchman, including his name – Murphy.

Who is the Scrapped Watchman?

The Scrapped Watchman is described as a failed invention by famed Krat inventor Lorenzini Vengini. Attempting to bolster the city police force with a new puppet, the city hall ultimately rejected his efforts, citing the puppet as too intimidating. So the Watchman never joined the force, instead being relegated to a slowly decaying attraction at city hall. While receiving regularly mixed feelings from adults, children seemingly loved the puppet, playing with him regularly. Apparently, this warm sentiment is something the Watchman retained memory of, even after the puppet frenzy woke him from a stupor and drove him mad.

That covers everything you should need to know about the Lies of P Scrapped Watchman and how to beat it. The Watchman is far from the only difficult boss in the game though. If you want to know how to handle King’s Flame Fuoco, or the Black Rabbit Brotherhood you’re in luck. Or if you’re just in search of more general guidance like the best tips and tricks, or something more basic like how to repair weapons, don’t worry, we have you covered.

Is the Scrapped Watchman a hard boss?

The scrapped Watchman can be a pretty difficult boss, requiring mastery of good timing, positioning and patience to effectively overcome.

Is the Scrapped Watchman a mandatory boss?

The Scrapped Watchman is a mandatory boss, and must be beaten in order to progress in the game.