If you found your way and actually fought yourself fighting the Royal Rat Vanguard boss, well done. This optional pest-boss is more annoying than hard, so just keep your cool and you’ll be fine.
Upon entering the area you’ll be greeted by a number of rats. The rat pack will attack you viciously. Deterring the attacks are not that hard, but the number of them might become a real nuisance that if left unattended, will become a chore that will turn this fight into a living hell. Long story short, don’t ignore those rats. Take down as much as you can, and avoid those bites as petrification build-up is quite dangerous.
After taking down a number of them, you’ll be greeted by a “Royal Rat Vanguard” health bar and red mohawk wearing fool, who deserves no pity. Besides mohawk, Royal Rat Vanguard is distinguished by lack of health bar, when locked on.
The best strategy to use against Royal Rat Vanguard is “hit and run”. Depending on how many rats you took down before fighting the Royal Rat Vanguard, it is plausible that more than a few are still chasing you, so the most effective method of fighting would be leading the pack away from you, and running right into the Royal Rat Vanguard. He’ll spawn in the same place you entered, so keep yourself a bit further from there. By doing that, be ready to play a little game of cat and mouse.
The Royal Rat Vanguard doesn’t have that many attacks, though its main one, the Rearing Bite is something to look out for. The poison damage from it stacks massively and overlooked opportunities of dodge-roll will bite you in the rear quite hard. Like with Plague Rats, the petrification damage build up from the Royal Rat Vanguard increases too. But faster than the Plague Rats’ one.
Try to focus on the Royal Rat Vanguard the most, as upon killing it, other rats will scatter and disappear back into the sewers, making your escape from the foul area that much easier.
The battle itself is not that exhausting. Just keep your eyes on your health bard and avoid poison bites/attacks. By using AoE spells, you’ll easily eliminate any difficulty that the fight might provide you with, but using melee weapons is not that hard of an option too.
