What's actually happening in this fight
Ramon Salazar's "boss form" is a giant plant-creature with Salazar fused into the right-hand position. The central mouth is the only damageable weak point. Tentacles and the right-hand Verdugo are distractions whose job is to keep you from getting clean shots into the mouth.
Walking into the throne room — the merchant outside the door is your last save. Heal up to full, refill shotgun shells, top up TMP if you have one. Once you cross the threshold the fight starts immediately.
Phase 1 — The mouth opens, you shoot
The mouth at the center of the creature opens on a predictable cycle:
- Salazar uses a tentacle whip or grab.
- The central mouth opens for a 2–3 second window.
- The eyeball inside is the weak point.
The repeatable pattern:
- Stay at medium range in front of the throne — close enough to land shotgun shots, far enough that the tentacles whiff.
- The moment the mouth opens, two shotgun blasts to the eye do major damage.
- If you have grenades, a frag thrown into an open mouth is the single biggest damage output in the fight.
Mouth opening in two seconds — pump shotgun, get ready. After your second shot, sidestep right to dodge the tentacle counter.
Phase 2 — Tentacles get faster
After about 50% damage Salazar enters phase 2. The tentacles strike faster and the swallow attack becomes a meaningful threat.
What changes:
- Swallow grab — long tongue extension from the central mouth. Sidestep, don't backpedal. Backpedaling fails 80% of the time.
- Tentacle slam has a wider arc — stay closer to the side of the arena, not center.
- Right-hand Verdugo becomes more aggressive — he's there for damage but not as a survival threat. Don't waste shotgun shells on him; TMP burst him to staggered, then refocus the mouth.
The rocket launcher option
If you carried a rocket from the chapter 10 merchant: phase 2 ends in one shot if the rocket hits the central mouth. The decision tree:
- You have a rocket and you're playing Hardcore or Professional: use it. Phase 2 punishes mistakes hard, and the time savings is significant.
- You have a rocket and you're playing Standard: save it for Krauser, where dodge timing is harder.
- You don't have a rocket: 4–6 shotgun shells per phase is enough. Don't panic-spend TMP ammo on the central mouth — TMP is for tentacle clearing, shotgun is for the eye.
The pressure plates
The arena has pressure plates that drop ceiling spikes when shot. They're easy to miss because the visual is muted during fight chaos. The window to use them effectively is small — Salazar needs to be directly under the spike when it drops.
He's centered under the left ceiling spike and the mouth's about to open. Shoot the plate now — spike drop hits before you'd land your shotgun follow-up anyway.
Ammo budget
A clean fight uses:
- 6–10 shotgun shells for the mouth across both phases.
- 2 frag grenades for big mouth-open windows.
- 30–40 TMP rounds for tentacle / Verdugo clearing.
- 1 rocket if cheesing.
If you're burning more than that, the fight has gone wide — usually because you're shooting tentacles with the shotgun (waste) or trying to fight the Verdugo as a primary target instead of the mouth.
What Sidekick AI does in this fight
The mouth-open cycle is the entire fight. Players miss it because they're tracking the right-hand Verdugo and dodging tentacles. Vision AI watches the central mouth model and calls the open window the instant it triggers, so you get clean shotgun shots every cycle. The fight goes from "I died with three shells left in the chamber" to mechanical.
Summary
Salazar is a weak-point fight pretending to be a chaos fight. The central mouth is the only real target; everything else is distraction. Shotgun the eye when it opens, frag the bigger windows, rocket if you've been hoarding one. Sidekick AI calls the mouth window so you stop missing it.