The Evil Within 2 boss guide: Keepers and Laura

At the end of The Evil Within 2 Chapter 14, you’ll face a series of bosses. The first is easy. The second two waves — keepers and then Laura — are quite a bit more difficult. In this guide, we’ll show you how to beat them.

Keepers boss fight

The key to overcoming keepers is to prevent them from overcoming you. That means putting distance between you and your enemies, setting traps and shooting from a safe distance. They’re big, and they’re powerful, but they’re not fast or smart. You are. Those are your advantages.

1. As soon as the fight starts, turn around and run away. (If you’re low on ammo, look on the walls for some.) The keepers will start following you, but you run faster than they move, so you’re buying yourself time.
2. Equip your warden crossbow and any bolt that will stun an enemy. We like the shock bolt.
3. Shoot a wall with your crossbow, which will create a tripwire.
4. Back away from the tripwire and wait for the keeper to walk through it.
5. When the keeper walks through the tripwire, he’ll be stunned and frozen in place for several seconds. Fire at his big, fast stomach (not his head). It won't take long until he’s down.

Tango Gameworks/Bethesda Softworks

The strategy remains the same for the second phase of the fight when there are two keepers. Freezing your enemies in place has another advantage in this phase, too: If you stop one keeper, you can focus on the other.

If you don’t have crossbow ammunition that freezes enemies, the strategy above will still work. It’s just a bit more dangerous. Run to put some distance between you and the keepers, take aim and fire away at their bellies when they appear.

Laura boss fight

There are two ways to fight Laura, one easy and one … well, certainly more complicated. We’ll discuss both strategies here, but if you have a flamethrower, skip to the easy section.

Either way you fight her, her weakness is fire. Also, Laura only had two attacks, but they’re super powerful. If she claws at you, she’ll drain immense amounts of health. If she grabs you, it’s game over.

As with keepers (and all powerful enemies, really), the key to survival lies in keeping your distance, planning your attacks and executing your strategy consistently.

The complicated way

Grid View

The key to Laura’s demise is built into the level, and this is the way you’ll need to fight Laura if you don’t have a flamethrower (or you don’t have ammo for it).

There are two valves in the arena surrounding you and Laura. You’ll need to stand in front of a valve and press a button on your controller repeatedly — and repeat this process twice, because there are two valves — to open pipes. This is dangerous. It leaves you vulnerable to her devastating attacks. Your best bet is to run away from Laura and only start turning a valve if you’re sure that she’s not close to you.

After you’ve turned both valves, run over to the switch (which looks kind of like a yellow streetlight). When Laura’s standing under an area where the pipes are pointing down from the ceiling, hit the button and damage her with fire.

The easy way

Tango Gameworks/Bethesda Softworks

If you have a flamethrower and bolts that stun enemies, the fight with Laura becomes trivial. Equip your warden crossbow and anything that freezes enemies in place. We like the shock bolts. Here’s what to do:

1. Shoot Laura with your crossbow to freeze her in place.
2. Fire your flamethrower at her until she screams.
3. Run away to get some distance, and reload your crossbow.
4. Repeat steps 1 and 2.

It really is that easy, as you can see in the video above.