During Maliketh's second phase, when he shoots the three projectiles, you can use this item to "parry" him when he slams down and it will give you a few seconds to hit him. Haven't been able to do a critical hit though just a stagger

when fighting malekith, you can deflect attacks that have a gold glow before landing. successfully doing so staggers the boss for a couple seconds.

You can counter Maliketh, the Black Blade with it; the timing is really difficult but it leaves him staggered for several seconds and open for easy damage.

Except you need to do 2 manor quests, his quest, then the last manor quest for him to invade... if you don't... he won't show up.

i didn't do any of the manor quests (aside from killing rykard of course) and he still showed up for me

He invades when the manor empties after Rykard is dead. No quests required.

You can only parry golden attacks, like after the 3 beam attacks

"soloed"

"Soloed boss with the most overpowered moves in the game"

"solostomped" "mimic +10" pick one

You cheesed him you mean

Same

Next time try beating the boss without the training wheels so you can at least properly brag about it instead of informing the world you're using the mimic tear that half the difficulty if not all of it on every bosses and hoarfrost stomp that can be spammed to literally break bosses ai.

lmao you did it before they nerfed both of those things. Now do it again.

I think by "soloed" he meant that the mimic killed the boss by itself without the player's help.

where did you get all that lore from lmao and i read plenty of the item descriptions

Not OP but quests and quest items mostly. Ranni's and Fia's most importantly.

Or Rogier's rather. He fleshes out Ranni and Fia's questlines greatly.

OP here, Ranni herself says she stole death, and Rogier confirms that she was behind The Night of Black Knives. Rykard's goals seem pretty clearly to be devour heroes to get strong enough to devour the gods, and eventually (as indicated by the Devourer's Scepter) devour the world itself, but this item is one of our only insights as to the kind of person he was before he fed himself to the serpent during The Shattering. I forget where it's stated the Rykard, Ranni, and Radahn are all Rennala and Radagon's children, but if nothing else the naming convention holds up. Radahn holding back the stars was said to be preventing Ranni from achieving her goals in her questline, but I suppose we'll never know if he was doing so specifically to oppose her, or just because he's a nice guy who wanted to keep Limgrave (and maybe the world at large) safe from impact and fallingstar beasts.

I doubt Radahn holding the stars in place had anything to do with Ranni, that's just an aftereffect or coincidence. Considering that no one in the game even knows of Ranni's plans, and that she even gave up her Great Rune, they had no reason to confront her.

Radahn seems to not be holding the stars back consciously. He started holding them due to the rot he was infected with, instead of it being a conscius decision.

It says she gave it to him on the night of the dire plot. It's much more likely that means she gave it to him on the Night of the Black Knives, probably as a last resort in case Maliketh came for what was stolen.

Ranni sends blaidd to the festival to help kill radahn im pretty sure he actively stopped the starts so she cant progress her plans.

Radahn definitely *was* holding the stars consciously. He's the "Starscourge", there's mention somewhere in game (I forget exactly where) about him *conquering* the stars, and Collapsing Stars has a quote of him thanking his Alabaster Lord teacher for helping him gain the power to "challenge the stars".
Whether it has anything to do with Ranni, the overall Carian dynasty, or astrologers is another matter, though.

Wdym... Rannis plans are known and everyone knows she gave up her great rune... theres books written about it. Gideon tells you himself

Wdym... Rannis plans are known and everyone knows she gave up her great rune... theres books written about it. Gideon tells you himself

It's also possible that Radahn learned to manipulate the stars in order to HELP Ranni, as the stars are the key to the Carian family's destiny, but after his battle with Malenia he literally lost all sense of who he was and existed as just a raving beast wandering the battlefield with his power preventing them from moving on, because he himself was locked in his unending battle, which is why you have to attend the festival and overcome him and it's run by Jerren who's friends with Iji. Given that Blaidd was a Half-Brother Shadowbound beast for Ranni exactly like Malekith was to Marika, it's no surprise that Iji had his suspicions about what would happen to Blaidd once they turned against the Two Fingers and thus locking him in the Evergaol, especially given how Rykard became so consumed in his own madness when he was someone Ranni once trusted enough to give him this.

Radahn was literally holding back the star that would cause ranni to die if not for the intervention of the main character