Part 17: - Catacombs of Carthus Part 1
High Lord Wolnir
Wolnir is a very large skeleton imprisoned in his own small part of the Abyss. A lot of people like to theorize that he's the Player Character from Dark Souls II but I don't believe that was the intention. That theory is mainly based on the description of the crown, which mentions that Wolnir defeated lords and ground the crowns of them to make his own crown. The idea here being that tose crowns would be the three crowns from the DL that would, when combined with the fourth crown, the one of king Vendrick along with Vendick's blessing would grant immunity to the effects of the curse. But again, I don't like that theory or believe it holds any ground because his story seems to be a different one in that he was a ruler of some kind and eventually conquered other kingdoms and ground the crowns of their lords to dust to make his own crown in order to crown himself high lord.
Fighting Wolnir can go quick either way. It's possible to die really fast, and also to kill Wolnir quickly. In our fight he didn't even get a chance to show off half of his attacks. If you attack Wolnir normally you'll notice that your attacks do very little damage. What you need to do is to attack his bracelets, once one is destroyed Wolnir takes a huge chunk of damage.
It's best to stay on the outside of his arms because if you stay on the inside you might get dragged into the fog of death by his attack and idle animations. Staying on the outside also makes all of his other attacks easier to dodge and less effective in general. He can sweep with his arm, which you can dodge through or run away from, he can breathe fog, which can either be dealt with by running or getting really close, there's a bit of a sweet spot between the fog behind him and the one he's spitting across the arena.
Wolnir will also summon skeletons on some occasions but he almost never does it for me. I find them very trivial to deal with as long as they stay on the inside for the arms while you're on the outside. Another thing that we didn't see was his sword. Wolnir can get out his sword, which extends his moveset somewhat but since all his attacks come out really slow anyway they should be simple enough to predict and dodge.
His most dangerous move is probably just moving forward. If you get too far away he will charge towards you, which also causes the fog behind him to advance. So if he actually catches up with you you're dead. He can sometimes also do this regardless of your distance to him after destroying a bracelet, so it's wise to get ready to run for a few seconds after a bracelet is dealt with. Aside from that it's better to stay close rather than far away, because if he repeatedly charges you'll eventually reach the wall behind you, making a comeback from that is incredibly hard. But destroying a bracelet makes him go back down a bit too.