Yuan Shao is one of the many bosses you fight in Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty's penultimate main mission, the Decisive Battle of Guandu. Yuan Shao serves as the first boss of the level, and you fight him before heading to another two boss battles not long after.
He's something of a mini-boss since he breaks the level up and guards the final section of the mission, leading to the fight with the Taoist in Black. Yuan Shao utilises Ice magic and has a shield you must contend with during the fight. You'd best bring some Fire spells, and make sure your armour is resistant to ice.
Yuan Shao Boss Fight Strategy
The fight will begin immediately with Yuan Shao blasting cubes of Ice magic on your position. This attack comes out fast, giving you precious little time to react to the strike. Due to this, you might want to hold the block button as soon as the fight begins, because it might already be on its way to you.
Being hit with three of his ice blocks is enough to inflict you with the chill debuff, depending on your resistance to it.
You can deflect them to negate this, but at the start of the fight, the game doesn't give you much time to react.
He will fire three times, three ice cubes for each shot, with a pause between each salvo. If you get smacked with the chill debuff, casting a fire spell will sort you out quickly and stop it from doing too much harm to your chances. The damage from the ice isn't too significant, but it puts you on the back foot from the start.
The main thing to watch out for in this fight is Yuan Shao's ranged ice attacks, of which he has several. The most troublesome is an uppercut attack he performs, which will send icicles stabbing out of the ground towards your position. There is a deceptively large range on this attack, so your best bet is to move to the side instead of backing away.
He will continue to use ranged ice attacks while you are at a distance.
Getting closer will force him to use different attacks.
In close range, you'll want to try and bait out an attack where he swipes twice using the serpentine head that is either a snake-like arm or a long-necked monster protruding from him. When you're in his face, he will use an attack that will launch him in a different direction, repositioning while dealing damage if he catches you.
He will reposition using his shield, and since this is on his right side, you will always want to stay on Yuan Shao's left side when attacking. More often than not, his ice attacks come from his shield, so keeping yourself away from it will help you steer clear of most ice-based attacks.
The best way to create an opening in this fight is to use the Fire Weapon spell.
Hitting him enough time while your weapon is enchanted will debuff him with burning, slowly ticking damage away.
More importantly, when the debuff takes effect, Yuan Shao will stagger for a second.
When you get Yuan Shao to half HP, he will briefly enrage himself. This will happen several times throughout the fight. When he goes into a frenzy, he will glow red and fire a barrage of ice clusters up into the air that will land at random points.
During this phase, he will do more damage. While enraged, he's also much more likely to use his Critical Strikes on you. The most common one, and the one you want him to perform, is his shield throw attack.
Yuan Shao will take the shield off his arm and spin it up, letting it rip across the boss arena like a horrific Beyblade-boomerang combo. Even if it hits you, it will continue to spin and drive around the building, meaning it can hit you several times. However, because the attack persists, you have more than one opportunity to deflect this attack.
Deflecting the shield will destroy it, leaving Yuan Shao without it temporarily. If you do this, you'll want to close the distance between you two and deal damage. His shield does a lot to block incoming damage since it's so big, but without it, he's one big target.
With the shield destroyed, he won't use any ice magic.
As mentioned, he will do this several times at or below half HP, making the rest of the fight easier if you deflect the shield. Deflecting this attack doesn't seem to do Spirit damage, but the tradeoff is you deal more damage to him anyway.
By the time you get a stance break on Yuan Shao, this will probably be enough to kill him or leave him open to being finished off. He's fairly easy to kill overall if you stay close and you can handle the ice magic. With Yuan Shao out of the way, only two bosses remain.