Royal Rat Authority

The Royal Rat Authority is a boss in Dark Souls II.

General Information
The Royal Rat Authority is fought in Doors of Pharros right next to the second bonfire. The fight looks easy with four small rats in the room, but once engaged a giant rat will appear in a very short amount of time. The smaller rats in the room are able to inflict the player with the toxic status effect, which should be avoided.

Summoning
There are no NPCs that can be summoned as a phantom for this fight. It seems that other players can't be summoned to assist as well. This is probably due to the fact that this area is a PvP area designed to forcibly take the player into another players world.

Fight Overview
There are two phases in this fight: Small rat phase and Giant rat phase. The first phase lasts about 2 seconds whether the small rats are dead or not.

When you enter the fog gate the boss fight does not start, this gives the player some time to devise a plan to take on the first phase. Whatever choice the player makes, it needs to be acted fast once the rats are agro'd because the big rat will soon jump down and join the fight. The small rats can give toxic and stun lock the player where the big rat can half shot the player with one attack. The big rat acts a lot like Sif from the previous Dark Souls.

Strategy
There are a couple of ways to tackle this boss and all ways go to killing all four little rats instantly.

Phase 1:
 * 1) Halberd Strategy - The idea is to do a 2-Handed sprinting normal attack. Run up to the rats, only close enough to agro them, don't get too close. Once you grab the rats run back towards the back part of the room you came in. Then turn around and run towards the rats and so the sprinting normal attack to spin around and kill them all. This idea can be frustrating because sometimes a rat will hit you and if you do not have a lot of poise it will stun you stopping the animation or your attack can miss 1, 2, 3, or even all 4 of the rats.
 * 2) Sorcery Strategy - The idea is to kill all of the rats instantly with a single cast. The sorcery to be used is Soul Greatsword or Shockwave, Soul Shower may work. This one is pretty simple and doesn't need to be explained much, just walk up and cast the sorcery on them when you can hit all with one cast.
 * 3) Pyromancy Strategy - The idea is to kill all of the rats instantly with a nice new pyromancy. This is by far the easiest strategy, the only problem is you need 2 attunement slots for the pyromancy you want to use. The pyromancy to use is Lingering Flame which is sold by Straid. What you want to do is set up the flames just outside of the little rats agro range. Two flames should be enough, but three wouldn't hurt. Once the flames are in place agro the rats and run back behind the flames and watch as the rats blow up and die. If you're lucky you could even get some damage on the big rat.

Phase 2: The big rat is very simple, but can be annoying. He acts a lot like Sif but also has some different attack patterns. What you don't want to do is follow the Sif strategy and stand under him, he has a spinning attack that will obliterate your health bar even if your shield is up. You can run under him but you don't want to stay under him for too long, instead you want to follow a different strategy. You will want to stick to his left and attack his left hind leg as he does his front paw swipes. Don't try to attack him from the front after his front right paw swipe as he can also swipe with his left paw as a follow up swipe. Circle around and stay on his left. He will jump away after a little bit and may do a head but, this attack can easily be blocked if the player has a shield with high stability.