Mortal Shell II: Finish the Fight Achievement Guide
How to unlock the Finish the Fight achievement in Mortal Shell II: get the Tar Golem to 0 HP in the Open Beta's tutorial boss fight, plus retry tips.
Finish the Fight is an achievement in the Mortal Shell II Open Beta, and its unlock condition is exactly what it sounds like: get the Tar Golem, the optional tutorial-area boss, down to 0 Health. It's one of 9 achievements in the beta and doesn't exist in the original 2020 Mortal Shell.
What the Achievement Actually Requires
Per TrueSteamAchievements, the official unlock condition is "Get Tar Golem to 0 Health," and Sportskeeda's achievement table matches that description. Note that reaching 0 HP is not the same as winning the encounter in the traditional sense — more on that below.
Where the Tar Golem Fight Happens
The Tar Golem shows up early, during the tutorial. Here's the sequence, per Game8:
- You clear an early "Perfect Guard" combat tutorial in the Village Outskirts, heading toward Disciple's Grotto. The raven NPC Ruk warns you of danger ahead.
- Continuing forward, you pick up a Torch.
- Picking up the Torch awakens the Tar Golem and triggers a scripted boss fight.
- Whether you defeat the Tar Golem or die to it, the game plays the identical follow-up cutscene. The only tangible outcome of winning is the Finish the Fight achievement — there's no in-game reward and no story difference.
- After the encounter resolves either way, you ride an elevator up, collect an Ovum, and continue on to Marrow's Keep, the main hub.
It's a Scripted Loss — Reaching 0 HP Isn't the Same as Winning
This is the part that trips people up: getting the Tar Golem to 0 HP doesn't let you actually beat it. The boss still explodes and the same forced-loss cutscene plays regardless. The achievement fires purely for reaching zero health on the boss, not for walking away with a clean victory.
You can't fail the story by dying here
Because the outcome cutscene is identical whether you win or lose, there's no risk to attempting this fight repeatedly — the only thing at stake is the achievement itself.
How to Beat the Tar Golem
A full moveset breakdown from the Tenkiei channel covers both phases of the fight.
Setup tips: avoid using Harros's petrify ability — it adds break damage, but the red damage-aura it leaves on the boss makes its attacks harder to read. The ranged "nail shot" for chip damage is recommended instead, especially while the boss is staggered (health bar flashing) and can't retaliate.
Phase 1: the golem mixes blockable 3-hit chop combos (which speed up on repeat) with unblockable "red" attacks — a two-weapon clap explosion, a ground-charge that can suddenly redirect, an overhead smash that sends out a fire wave, and a jump slam with a brief telegraph. Staying at medium range encourages the boss to favor its telegraphed red attacks over the faster melee combo. Chip it down with nail shots until it reaches roughly 60% health and staggers — at that stagger, landing one or two heavy attacks before riposting (instead of riposting immediately) squeezes out extra damage before Phase 2 starts.
Phase 2: the golem gets more aggressive. Its attacks widen into longer-range sweeping strikes, and its basic combo grows from 3 hits to a 4-hit sequence with three timing variants — a standard version, a slower-into-faster version, and a running lunge that opens with a jump-sweep and ends in a foot-stomp before both axes crash down. Because hit timing gets less consistent, standing closer and blocking more (rather than relying on dodging) works better here, and it also helps you avoid triggering the harder-to-read running combo.
According to Tenkiei, clearing the fight for the achievement took about half an hour of attempts.
Easiest Ways to Retry Without Replaying the Intro
Since the fight is scripted to continue the story no matter what, there's no need to grind through the earlier tutorial sections every time you lose. A few methods, drawn from Game8 and community videos:
- Jump off the arena's edge just as you're about to die. This resets you to just before entering the fight, per Game8, so you get another attempt without replaying earlier content.
- Jump off the cliff at the back of the boss arena at any point during the fight. A tip from the Elbethium channel: this immediately ends the current attempt and restarts the fight from scratch. Damage already dealt does not carry over, but you can trigger this reset as many times as needed for effectively unlimited retries without leaving the arena or reloading.
- Manually save before reaching the Tar Golem. Game8's alternative suggestion — reload the save to retry the fight freely.
Alt+F4 trick may get patched
One video tip (Tenkiei) notes that quitting the application via Alt+F4 right as the losing cutscene begins resets you back to just before the fight, letting you retry immediately. The creator flags that this could be patched out in a future update, so don't rely on it long-term.
Should You Fight the Tar Golem on Your First Playthrough?
Sportskeeda flags Finish the Fight as the one achievement in the beta that might require starting a fresh save file to unlock, since the Tar Golem is "extremely difficult" to beat this early in the game. It compares the encounter to Genichiro from Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and The Lightreaper from Lords of the Fallen — bosses that are "technically not supposed to be defeated at this point in the game."
That said, Sportskeeda also notes that once you've got the game's core combat basics down (parry and dodge timing), beating the Tar Golem for this achievement "is not a particularly difficult feat to accomplish." Tenkiei's closing advice echoes this: skip the challenge on a first playthrough and instead attempt it on a fresh save after finishing the game once, since familiarity with the attack timing makes it substantially easier.
Community Reports: Is It Bugged?
A Steam Community discussion thread describes the achievement as "bugged but still achievable." One player reported it unlocking on roughly their 6th kill attempt, and the only difference they noticed from earlier failed kills was using two Strong attacks instead of a different loadout — suggesting the achievement trigger was inconsistent for some players but eventually resolved itself on a later kill. This is unconfirmed beyond the thread's search snippet — the full discussion wasn't accessible, so treat it as an anecdote rather than a confirmed bug pattern.