Possessor(s) hides some of its best encounters off the golden path. These optional bosses live behind traversal upgrades, side pursuits, and tucked-away routes, and each one flips the playbook when they enrage at half health. If you’re bouncing between dead ends or wondering whether you’re ready, use this guide to reach every arena, bring the right tools, and apply the tactics that actually close these fights.
Map locations and prerequisites
| Boss | Region | How to reach | Key requirement | Related pursuit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Sightless All-Star | Fluorescent Park (east) | Meet Tens at the hunter’s cabin, then head further right; launch from tree branches to the arena. | Dive Breaker | The Hunter’s Test |
| Mr Demars | Campus Hill (near entrance) | Reach the Campus East fast travel, go left to the courtyard, unlock the red plant shortcut, then whip-swing across and ascend to the gym. | Slide Breaker, Whip latch | Broken Records |
| The Document Eater | Campus Hill (basement) | Collect all microfilms for Professor Foss, use the Campus Chem Lab Key to enter the basement; follow the timed platforms and clear red tentacles. | Campus Chem Lab Key | Broken Records |
| The Benchwarmer | Campus Hill (east side, secret) | Find the odd tree branch indoors, bounce up with Dive Breaker to a room outside the map. | Dive Breaker | The Ones That Got Away |
| Dr. Michaels | Rusted Dockyard | After the first waterfall climb on the return path, look up for an office space; enter before hitting the area checkpoint. | Water Dash | — |
The Sightless All-Star — parry the ball, not the bat
This demonic slugger mixes long bat sweeps, short-range teleports, and two baseball patterns: single shots that fall vertically after being tossed skyward, and multi-ball spreads thrown from a corner. On enrage, everything accelerates, and the barrage grows.
- Moves to expect: long-reach bat swings; teleport repositioning; single vertical baseballs; corner spread volleys.
- Strategy: prioritize parrying the baseballs and deflecting them back; the bat can be dodged with tighter timing. Keep center stage so teleports don’t corner you, and be ready for faster rhythms after half health.
Mr Demars — stay mobile, jump the aftershock
Demars is deceptively quick for his size. The opener to watch is a fast ground pound that sends a damaging shockwave; the projectile from the torso eye looks mild until it splits into homing shots. In enrage, he adds a short flight with sweeping lasers and pushes more splitting projectiles (two at a time).
- Moves to expect: quick ground pound with radial aftershock; lateral dash into a body dive; torso-eye shot that splits into homing orbs; airborne lasers while enraged.
- Strategy: This is a dodge-first fight. Jump the shockwave after each slam, then reposition. When the eye shot splits, you’ll often be dodging something else; parry only if he’s between moves and you have a clean read, otherwise evade and counter. The laser phase looks scary, but is easier to avoid than the doubled homing patterns—save stamina/iframes for those.
The Document Eater — find the decoy, then punish
The possessed printer can’t be damaged until you locate and destroy its roaming red decoy. Meanwhile, the arena layers projectiles and hazards that punish hesitations, turning this into a platforming-clear plus burst-DPS cycle. Enrage adds a damage-boosting glow to projectiles; patterns stay the same, stakes go up.
- Projectiles to identify: slow homing paper planes (parryable); drifting paper talismans that trigger a flame pillar on proximity; crumpled paper balls that persist until you break them and cannot be parried; a bite if you stray near a mouth before exposing the core.
- Strategy: prioritize pathing to the decoy over trading. Parry the planes to open space; bait talismans to safe real estate before they ignite; clear one or two crumpled balls only if they pin your route. After you break the decoy, burn cooldowns and specials on the exposed boss before it resets.
The Benchwarmer — destroy decoys, dodge the orbs
Don’t treat this as a reskin of the All-Star. Benchwarmer’s kit is much faster and loaded with traps. He chains dashes, repeats ground slams from the top of the screen, and peppers you with glowing orbs that detonate after a delay. At half health, he begins seeding decoys during most moves; he also gains a flurry of short dashes that leave purple decoys, which fire a parting shot as they vanish.
- Moves to expect: multi-slam from the top with teleports; explosive orbs thrown in patterns based on your position (not parryable); side-to-side dash chains including a shockwave slam variant; enrage flurry dashes with purple decoys; frequent orange decoys left behind during actions.
- Strategy: treat orbs as pure dodge checks—don’t try to parry them. Break decoys immediately; if he touches one again, it explodes. Use jumps and forward dodges through dash lines to land behind him, chip two to three hits, then reset. Expect higher punishment for greed once he enrages.
Dr. Michaels — read the tells, pick safe punishes
Michaels broadcasts every major attack. Learn the pre-move animations and you’ll get guaranteed openings almost every time. Only one pattern—the side-to-side flailing tentacle—has reasonable parry windows, and even that can be risky. Enrage speeds up the script and expands many hitboxes.
- Recognizable tells: tentacle jabbed into the ground (don’t stand still; it erupts under you); tentacle raised behind the back (floor-wide sweep you can jump); knees bent (short-range tentacle burst around him); head tilted back (high-damage chroma spit straight ahead); charged flailing tentacle swinging multiple times.
- Strategy: dodge first, punish second. Jump the floor sweep, dash behind the chroma spit, and stay out of knee-burst range. After each pattern, step in for a small combo rather than a full string. If you parry, do it only on the flailing tentacle and only with space to disengage—enrage multi-hits can catch late inputs.
What you get (and what you don’t lock out)
These encounters are optional and don’t alter the ending. They’re worth doing for practical gains: expect a healthy pile of chroma and upgrades tied to survivability, like increased HP and painkiller capacity or potency. There’s no true point of no return until the final confrontation, so you can backtrack freely and clean up any fights you missed before committing to the finale.
If an arena isn’t clicking, leave it, unlock another mobility upgrade, and return. Most of these bosses are gated by traversal, and the time you spend opening new routes often pays for the retry with better gear and a clearer path back.
