Kovess, the Guardian Demon of Qliphoth
Boss · Chapter 3: The Tree
Kovess is the first of Qliphoth's two guardian demons, a 4,000 HP bird demon fought in the Rooted Cave from chapter 3 on. The fight alternates between grounded phases you can punish and flight phases you mostly survive.
Its signature is the feather economy: tornadoes shed feathers, dives drop falling bullets on warned circles, and the ring attacks come with an orbiting shield, so the safe answer keeps changing between melee range and the far wall.
It takes off and dives through your position, following up with a second strike that drops falling bullets behind it.
A tornado phase that sheds feather projectiles for its whole duration. The feathers, not the funnel, are what usually hit.
Rings of projectiles expand outward from it, each ring drawn with a warning first. During ring casts it holds an orbiting bullet shield, so this is not the punish window it looks like.
Warned circles mark where feathers will land across the arena, layered over whatever else it is doing.
Wide wave attacks that sweep the ground level and force a jump or a dash through.
In hard mode its ranged volley fires a different, nastier shot type on top of the shared boss modifiers. In hard mode every boss also draws from the pool of 10 modifiers listed on the bosses page, from flat HP and defense gains to elemental resists and ignoring your defense or evasion.
Defeating Kovess for the first time adds these to the item pool: