Kang Taeshik Boss Guide – Solo Leveling: ARISE OVERDRIVE

by JFFK · November 24, 2025

Welcome to our Kang Taeshik Boss Guide for Solo Leveling: ARISE OVERDRIVE.

Kang Taeshik is a challenging boss found in Chapter 4 of Arise Overdrive’s main story. He is a big step up in difficulty from anything encountered previously in the story, so a lot of players run into problems here.

This boss guide explains how to avoid Kang Taeshik’s attacks and get the better of him. The info in this guide is suitable for both Normal and Hard difficulty.

How to Beat Kang Taeshik in ARISE OVERDRIVE

The main difficulty with Kang Taeshik is his fast attacks with minimal telegraphing, making it hard to predict and respond to his movements.

There is a pattern to his attacks that you can learn, which will help make the fight a lot easier. The fight is split into two phases – below we will discuss each phase and list the boss attacks found in each phase, and how to avoid them.

Phase One

The first phase lasts until you reduce Kang Taeshik to around 65% HP, at which point you will get a cutscene and proceed to the second phase.

In this phase, you will encounter the following attacks:

Teleport Strike – When you are out of his melee range, Kang Taeshik will glow purple for a couple of seconds. When this happens you should get ready to dodge. He will teleport to your location and unleash several attacks, all of which can be dodged. You can block them, too.
Triple Attack – Kang Taeshik performs two standard attacks (these glow purple and can be dodged or blocked) and a final heavy attack. The final attack glows yellow, and if you block it you will stun Kang Taeshik, giving you a window of about 10 seconds to attack him safely.
Teleport Flurry – When you are some distance from Kang Taeshik, he will briefly glow yellow, then teleport to you and unleash a flurry of rapid attacks that deal heavy damage, lock you in place and cannot dodged. If you fail to block the first attack in the flurry, you will be helpless and take the whole sequence of attacks to the face. Therefore, watch Kang Taeshik very closely for the whole fight – whenever he glows yellow (see image) you need to quickly hit your block button, even if he is a long way from you.
- The good news is that when you successfully block this attack, Kang Taeshik is stunned, so you can attack him safely. Learning to quickly react to this move is one of the most important aspects to winning this boss fight.
Bolt Throw – Taeshik launches several bolts in your direction. It’s best to dodge these.

Phase Two

The second phase is similar in difficulty to the first phase, but his attack patterns change a little bit which causes a second learning curve:

Camouflage – He only does this once at the beginning of Stage Two. Taeshik turns invisible and several purple shades abruptly attack you. It’s possible to dodge these but it’s very hard to time it properly, I recommend healing up before this happens because if you get hit by several of these attacks it can cost you about half of your HP bar (depending on your defensive stats and which difficulty you’re playing on).
Quick Slashes – Kang Taeshik teleports to you (sometimes behind you) and attacks you several times with purple slashes. You can dodge or block all of these, but you have to be fast.
Enhanced Bolt Throw – Taeskik launches several bolts at you; they now come in an arc so they’re a bit harder to avoid, but you can still dodge them.
Enhanced Triple Attack – The triple attack from the first phase is also encountered here, but the animation is different and it hits a bit harder. The way to deal with it is the same, dodge or block the first two and block the final hit (see image) when he is glowing yellow. It seems to be janky sometimes – when you block the final hit it sometimes just goes through you so he doesn’t get stunned like he’s supposed to.
Charge Attack – Taeshik charges towards you. He then unleashes a long sequence of rapid purple bolt attacks. This attack stuns you for the duration, preventing you from dodging or blocking. To deal with this, you need to avoid Taeshik whenever he starts running towards you. I tend to dodge sideways at the last second, but just running around erratically should be enough to throw him off. When he misses you, he starts throwing the bolts anyway so you have a couple of seconds to circle around behind him and get a few hits in.

General Tips & Strategy

Memorising the above attacks is going to take a bit of trial and error even if you’ve read this guide, so don’t worry if you fail the fight a few times, it is a tricky one.

The key points to remember are:

When he glows purple, you need to dodge soon
When he glows yellow, you need to quickly block. This will also stun him for about 10 seconds.
All his standard weapon attacks can be blocked or dodged.
And most of all – be patient! This boss will punish players who are too greedy.

I found it easiest to block Taeshik’s yellow attacks to stun him, and deal most of my damage during these windows. But you can usually get one or two quick attacks in after each one of his attacks. Avoid using skills that have a long animation, because you’ll be forced to cancel it or else get hit before its finished.

One final tip if you’re struggling is to make sure you’ve upgraded Sun Jingwoo properly! Check if you have any armour or weapon upgrades available and that his potion has been upgraded. All of these menus can be activated by pressing Esc (pause) in the lobby. You should be able to enhance your potion with Briga Durians, which will give you a chance to not consume a healing potion charge when you drink it. This can be a life saver and if you’re lucky you can get several free potion uses during the Kang Taeshin boss fight in SL: Arise Overdrive.