How to defeat the Dead Space remake’s Leviathan boss

During the Dead Space remake’s sixth chapter, “Environmental Hazard,” you’ll have to eject a giant Necromorph boss called the Leviathan. It’ll be at the end of the chapter, after a lot of running around in Hydroponics poisoning Wheezers.

Our Dead Space Leviathan guide will tell you everything you need to know to prepare for and win the boss fight.

Be prepared

Preparation for the Leviathan boss fight is oddly not important. As soon as you enter Food Storage — it’s very dark when you walk in — you’ll see a ton of items floating around amid the bodies and explosive canisters. There’s enough ammo and healing that, even if you walked in with an empty inventory, you’d stand a fighting chance.

That said, most of what you find is Plasma Cutter and Pulse Rifle ammo. Sure, that will work, but there are much better weapons. There’s a shop back in the Hydroponics Central Hub if you need to visit your inventory or stock up on anything (watch out for the couple Necromorphs on the catwalk). Let’s talk about what works:

• Contact Beam. The Contact Beam you picked up pretty recently is probably the best weapon for this fight. You don’t have the schematic for the Contact Energy ammo yet, so you’re limited to whatever you have in your inventory, though.
• Flamethrower. All of this fight will take place at a distance, so the Flamethrower’s more flamethrow-y primary fire isn’t going to do anything for you here. But, the secondary attack, the Fire Wall, is very effective. It will eat through your fuel fast, though, so stock up if you can.

Those are your heavy hitters, but the Plasma Cutter and Pulse Rifle are good to have on hand as well. The Force Gun and the Ripper are too short-range to do you any good in this fight. The Line Gun will work if it’s all you have, but it’s not at the top of the list.

Unlike most other fights, Stasis isn’t going to do much for you in this fight. We’re not going to recommend you use it at all below, so don’t worry about picking up any Stasis Packs.

Also unlike other fights, it’s not important to go in with any healing — you’re going to get a couple Med Packs from the items floating around the room.

Leviathan boss fight

Image: Motive Studio/Electronic Arts via Polygon

Before you release yourself from the deck in the (zero-G) Food Storage room, use Kinesis to collect every item you can see there are a lot of them, and only a few are out of reach. Try to avoid the explosive canisters while you pick up everything.

Phase 1

Once you float about halfway down the tube that is Food Storage, the lights will kick on and you’ll see the Leviathan for the first time. The head/mouth is in the center of the wall, and you’ll see three tentacles around it.

For the first phase of the fight, watch these tentacles. One will wave around a little extra and spurt some yellow fluid (gross), and then launch at you. When this happens, use Isaac’s zero-G thrusters (left thumbstick if you’re using a controller), and strafe to the side to avoid the attack.

Image: Visceral Games/Electronic Arts via Polygon

Quickly target the big yellow pustule (gross) near the base of the tentacle. You need to blow up this sac on each of the three tentacles around the mouth. Do this with a weapon — using Kinesis to throw an exploding canister is too imprecise and takes too long. The best weapon for this is the Contact Beam. Even unupgraded, it’ll stop the tentacle with one or two shots. If you don’t have ammo in your Contact Beam, just unload the Plasma Cutter or Pulse Rifle into the yellow lump.

Phase 2

Once you’ve taken out all three tentacles, they’ll retract and the central mouth will get a lot grumpier. This is a more straightforward phase of the Leviathan boss fight, but it can take quite a while.

The mouth will spit a series of five poison boulders at you. You can thrust-strafe to the side to avoid them, but your ultimate goal is to catch them with Kinesis, and toss them back into the mouth.

This is a good time to send some explosive canisters into the mouth with Kinesis as well. You’re going to have to keep at this for a while, so every little bit helps.

To speed things along, the Contact Beam does a lot of damage to the mouth — especially if you hold down the trigger for a few seconds at a time. The Flamethrower’s secondary fire Fire Wall is also particularly effective here.

Phase 3

After enough damage, the Leviathan will thrash around some more, all three tentacles will return, and the air will become poison.

Image: Motive Studio/Electronic Arts via Polygon

There’s a lot going on — and a lot of things thrashing and flying around to avoid — but your goal here is the same as in Phase 2 — keep dealing damage to the mouth when it’s open. You don’t have enough oxygen to deal with tentacles one at a time, so focus on the mouth.

Always keep moving to avoid the tentacles and giant spitballs, and put whatever you can into the mouth — especially the Contact Beam or Fire Walls if you still have the ammo. Otherwise, keep grabbing the spitballs and any remaining explosive canisters.