If you thought that Elden Ring, a Spiritual Successor to Dark Souls, was going to be a cakewalk due to being a Wide-Open Sandbox, these guys will gladly remind you otherwise. Unmarked spoilers ahead.
Note: Superbosses are not allowed; not only are they optional and difficult even compared to the rest of the game, one must also need to go out of their way to find them. Essentially, this means Malenia, Blade of Miquella; Mohg, Lord of Blood; and Dragonlord Placidusax are barred from being added.
Recurring
- Fallingstar Beasts are extremely tanky, being Damage-Sponge Bosses of the highest caliber. First off, they are likely to start the battle charging at you right as you've walked into their arena — a behavior so annoying that the devs adjusted them to wait a moment before they commence their first attack so that you can actually prepare. While they take increased damage to the head, they are so tall and move around so much that you would be lucky to land more than a few hits there during the whole fight, forcing you to slowly chip away at their heavily armored bodies instead, and unlike most bosses with high defenses and health, Fallingstar Beasts are immune to Hemorrhage (given they are made of rock and all), so no cheesing with Bleed weapons either. While they are not extremely agile, their attacks often cover a massive area and deal tons of damage as well. Worst of all, should the player be caught in the chest trap at the Dragon-Burnt Ruins and fail to find the exit of the Sellia Crystal Tunnel, they may well have a Fallingstar Beast as the very first boss in their playthrough, and in a claustrophobic arena, no less! They've earned a reputation as being one of the single hardest mini-bosses in the game for these factors.
- What makes the Sellia Crystal Tunnel individual so hard is that you can only reach it by going through the already difficult level, losing a good chunk of FP and health elixirs in the process. You could try to run past the enemies, but there's one area that requires a well-timed jump to keep moving (it can take quite a few attempts), in which you can easily be taken out by projectiles. By the time you reach the boss, you will be at a major disadvantage, and there's no Lost Grace nearby either, so when you die you have to go through the whole tunnel again.
- Most players won't ever fight the Bell Bearing Hunter, or even know he exists, as he only appears at night in certain locations. But if you do, you'll regret it; he's more relentless than a Crucible Knight, has fewer openings, and can levitate his greatsword to give him incredible reach if you try to outrun him. What elevates him to That One Boss status is the variant fought in Caelid at the Isolated Merchant's Shack, whose health and damage exceed that of many of the other examples on this page. This version can easily three shot even the tankiest builds, and he's even stronger than his true form in the Shaded Castle. At least defeating him grants a whopping 50k runes.
- The Death Rite Bird is an upgraded version of the Deathbird that's gained a moveset with incredible zoning ability. Its basic attack combo frequently sends forth a trail of frostbite-inducing ghostflame that lingers on the ground, knocking mounted players off their horse and making it difficult to even keep distance from it. The lack of safe footing also makes it hard to get into its blind spots up close or behind, on top of the wonky hitboxes that make it difficult for blunt or holy attacks to connect. As you get it to low health it also begins pulling out its stronger attacks that either rain a multitude of projectiles or cause a massive ghostflame explosion with lingering flames in many directions, all of which can kill you in a few hits if you get caught in the wrong position. Also worth mentioning is the fact that against it, the camera lock is almost actively malicious, making you aim for the frequently out of reach body, and combined with the constant spraying of flames on the ground and the boss' Confusion Fu, makes it very easy to walk into an attack you can't even see. Oh, and it's also got a grab attack that does an absurd amount of damage. Like regular Deathbirds, Death Rite Birds only appear at night, so they're thankfully very easy to avoid encountering simply by only traveling during the day... except for one in the Mountaintops of the Giants that is encountered on the path down to Sol Castle even in broad daylight. When the developers see fit to put a Stake of Marika right next to a boss, you know you're going to be using it a lot.
- The Putrid Avatars are basically what happens if you dunk a Erdtree Avatar into a pool of Scarlet Rot, and make its Ground Pound attack spray Scarlet Rot in front of it instead of an AOE Holy blast. If that wasn't enough, this boss is notorious for two-shotting high Vigor builds with every attack, and even the ones in Caelid deal damage on par with Endgame bosses. To make matters worse, if you try to avoid its Ground Pound attack by moving backward, it has a high chance of following up with its Golden Land attack, and if you're far away when it does it, it may perform it again until it's close enough to sneak in a fatal hit against you while you're dodging its projectiles. By far the most notorious variant is the Degraded Boss version encountered near guarding the Elphael Inner Wall Site of Grace, since not only you have to deal with ballistae and Cleanrot Knights, but if you try to fight it in the open, you'll have to deal with Haligtree Knights who not only support the Putrid Avatar with gradual healing spells, but also will close in on you. Oh, and if you try to fight the Putrid Avatar from the Site of Grace it's guarding, you find out you can't summon your Spirit Ashes because the only way to do so is out in the open, and with the Haligtree Knights making it a death sentence to fight it out in the open, this tends to make them even harder to fight than Malenia, largely because unlike her, the fight is mostly based on whether you can avoid getting ganged up by the Putrid Avatar and the Haligtree Knights rather than trying to chuck in a few attacks in between its own combos.
Limgrave
- Margit, the Fell Omen is the first proper boss a player will encounter and is one of the biggest wake up call bosses in all of gaming. This guy has a ton of different attacks with varied timings including lots of wide sweeps to catch punish rolls, a delayed overhead smash to punish people watching for the tell and not the attack and ranged daggers to punish careless healing. He has long and unpredictable combos, gap closers, and high damage for the point in the game you fight him at. You fight him on a narrow bridge meaning trying to run away from him and being careless can end up in you being knocked off the arena. He is perfectly designed to beat into players the concepts of dodging attacks, staying close to the boss, and watching for openings he leaves where you can safely attack and heal. He also is incredibly strong for the point in the game you find him at, meaning to stand a chance against him you’ll need to go and explore Limgrave to get more levels, reinforce your weapon a bit, and get more healing flasks, a lesson the game is keen to teach you with this fight. But even with upgraded gear, this is a tough, yet fair fight that tests to see if the player is ready for the even greater challenges this game presents.
- In terms of early side bosses, the Crucible Knight at the Stormhill Evergaol gained a lot of notoriety. It's a heavily armored knight with a strong shield, only leaving itself open after its powerful attacks with odd dodge timings. At half health, it enters its second form, adding in a flying charge attack and a fast tail swipe to cover most of its openings, and at even lower health, it can do a massive tail swipe that deals a terrifying amount of damage if it connects. Players who can parry it can bypass most of the issues, but the timing for parrying is tricky to master, and non-shield builds will have a rough time indeed. This is just an introduction, though; the Crucible Knight becomes a recurring Boss in Mook Clothing throughout the game, and never gets any easier, even as you encounter variants with different attack patterns. Things get really difficult when the game pairs them up with other mini-bosses like the Leonine Misbegotten (in Redmane Castle; see below) or another Crucible Knight (in one of the grave mini-dungeons, also listed below).
Liurna of the Lakes
- The Red Wolf of Radagon tends to give lots of players trouble, especially those who travel to Raya Lucaria early to access more powerful sorceries. It's brutally fast and can lunge at you nearly instantly from across the room, rarely lets up on the offense, it's fought inside a not-very-roomy debate parlor, and it has access to Glintblade and Glintstone sorceries to punish ranged builds and a Sif-esque flaming sword with a deceptively-large hitbox that will chew through early-game resistances like candy. For players not using spirit ashes, this boss can be a nightmare, and about the only somewhat consistent strategies for getting in are dodging to its sides when it lunges and hoping its Glintblade sorceries accidentally get cast inside the walls. Worse still, the closest site of grace is located downstairs behind a platoon of Raya Lucaria Sorcerers and Wardens, whom you either have to deal with one-by-one or rush past brazenly in the hopes you don't get clipped by a stray Glintstone shard.
- After this first encounter, the Red Wolf appears later in the overworld as a Degraded Boss but has its strength dialed up to match the area you're in, so it's still a rough time facing it. While it won't respawn if you best it, players often opt to just dart past it. The re-encounter near a warp gate in the Consecrated Snowfields is one of the worst ones as the environment is in an eternal blizzard that conceals where the Wolf is coming from.
- Moongrum, Carian Knight isn't technically a boss, but he functions like one given the presence of two "phases", and he will likely give you as much trouble, if not more so, than some of the actual bosses in Liurnia. On top of being quite fast and having access to healing and magical attacks, he wields the Carian Knight's Sword, which deals magic damage and is thus one of the first melee weapons players will likely find that can damage them through a 100% physical blocking shield. His shield also comes equipped with the Carian Retaliation skill, which allows him to turn incoming spells into offensive glintstone attacks. The real kicker, however, is that he is absurdly good at parrying and will do so the instant he has an opportunity, in some cases outright cancelling his own stagger animation to launch a parry, which for lower-level players will likely be a guaranteed one-hit kill with no way to block it. To add insult to injury, the Checkpoint Starvation of Raya Lucaria means that every death will be followed by at least two minutes of mostly uneventful walking back to try again.
- The NPC fight against Preceptor Miriam is widely considered one of the worst designed NPC fights in a FromSoftware title, comparable to the Bloody Crow of Cainhurst or Yurie, the Last Scholar. The reason is that she hits as hard as many late game bosses thanks to her magic spells, that being Magic Downpour, which rains magic blasts from the sky towards you, and Loretta's Greatbow, on top of being able to freely teleport further up the Carian Study Hall as she takes damage, preventing even higher leveled players from rushing and killing her. Essentially, she's a Teleport Spam "Get Back Here!" Boss, but one whose offensive abilities are so much getting to her is incredibly difficult, which isn't helped by the mooks that spawn in your way. Her Greatbow like spell can almost one-shot a reasonably tanky Tarnished, and even though you are meant to ascend the tower till you reach the rafters for a more traditional fight, good luck doing so. Tellingly, looking her up yields numerous comments pointing out her fake difficulty, and many outright had to use Cheese Strategy via the two elevators in the tower to win, because she hits that hard and is difficult to fight head on. Not helping is that your reward for all of your hard work are magic spells, meaning that if you aren't a caster, the Carian Study Hall becomes a useless experience. Players might think that once they've finally managed to defeat Preceptor Miriam that she would be gone for good, but if they use the altar to flip the study hall upside-down (required to reach the Divine Tower), she reappears in the inverted version, where she at least is slightly less difficult because the player has to have progressed a bit further past when they likely first encounter her, and because she can be killed instantly by knocking her off the platforms with enough luck.
- Alecto, Black Knife Ringleader earns her title of leader of the Black Knife Assassins by being an incredibly tough encounter. She is extremely relentless and has tons of health, and as an evergoal boss, you can't summon players or Spirit Ashes to help distract her. But what sets her apart from common Black Knife Assassins is access to a death magic attack that both deals tremendous amounts of damage and inflicts a nasty DoT on the player, which she often uses in the form of a jumping attack with a massive area of effect that is very difficult to dodge. Thankfully, there are ways to cheese her by using a specific rock in her arena that messes with her AI, but even then, you may accidentally fall off the nearby ledge and die instantly if you're not careful. At least you get the Black Knife Tiche Spirit Ashes, one of the best in the game, as a reward for the ordeal.
Caelid
- The Dual Boss against Leonine Misbegotten and the Crucible Knight at Redmane Castle is considered one of the hardest fights in the game, and for all the wrong reasons. Leonine Misbegotten isn't really a tough enemy on it's own but is aggressive enough to still be a threat, while the Crucible Knight is a tough foe on its own. Putting them together results in a fight that is incredibly unfair, because you have a Fragile Speedster boss, and a Mighty Glacier boss working together, and neither are balanced around those differences. If you can't kill Leonine before the Crucible Knight drops in, the fight becomes borderline unwinnable because they often attack together, leaving no openings, especially when the Crucible Knight on their own is hard enough to qualify as That One Boss. If you can kill Leonine before the Crucible Knight can start attacking, than it just becomes a standard fight against it, but that requires a lot of effort to do so. It doesn't help that if you don't do Blaidd/Ranni's questline to start the Redmane Festival, you have to clear the two to continue on.
- Starscourge Radahn is fought in a gigantic desert, starting out a country mile away from you and almost instantly bombarding you at impossible ranges with high-damaging, heat-seeking gravity-infused greatarrows. Once you get close enough that he pulls out his dual greatswords, though, you'll find that Radahn moves fast, striking at you with rapid-executing and long melee combos and constantly chasing you down, while moving erratically enough that landing a hit can be surprisingly difficult. Radahn also has a diverse bag of tricks up his sleeve, with some of his more notable moves being a set of floating rocks with absurd tracking, a near-instantaneous vacuum attack that chips you down, and the infamous "one-shots-high-Vigor" meteor attack where Radahn jumps up and crashes onto the battlefield. You'd think having an army of infinite NPC allies would help, but the most they can do is distract him for a moment and they'll die very fast regardless. This fight was challenging enough that Radahn became one of the few FromSoftware bosses to warrant a set of nerfs through a patch update, getting adjustments to his hitboxes and projectile tracking, as well as lowering the damage from some of his attacks. However, the nerf to his damage output was unintentional, so a later patch restored it.
- Getting invaded by Millicent in the Swamp of Aeonia isn't a fun time, either. First of all, it's an invasion, which means you can't use Torrent to get around quickly or resist the swamp's Scarlet Rot build up, severely limiting the ground you can safely fight her on. Secondly, immediately surrounding where she invades you are spawns of two Cleanrot Knights, which are already listed under Demonic Spiders. Then there's Millicent herself, who is incredibly fond of using her Weapon Art. The Waterfowl Dance. You can book it past her to get the Grace near Commander O'Neil, but if you want to fight her, well...
- The three Putrid Crystalians fought at the end of Sellia Hideaway is another frustrating multi-boss fight. The Staff and Ringblade variants can deal damage at range while the Spear variant repeatedly uses a jumping spear-poke attack that nudges her forward towards you. They're all highly resistant to most forms of damage until they're shattered, are immune to common status effects like Bleed and Poison, and build up Scarlet Rot with their attacks to further whittle away at your health should you take too many hits. The arena is also fairly small for a trio battle, so it's difficult to separate them and get any breathing room or chances to take advantage of what are supposed to be openings in their defenses. Like Radahn, these three were so infamous that the developers actually nerfed them in a patch: making them less aggressive and less likely to attack from a distance, making them slightly easier to separate from each other and attack one-on-one.
Underground
- The Valiant Gargoyle Duo is this game’s answer to the Bell Gargoyles and are significantly worse. The gargoyles are huge with massive reach with their attacks, difficult to dodge combos, and hit like a freight train. The first phase is manageable, but once the initial gargoyle reaches half health things get significantly worse as the second gargoyle enters the fight. The bosses start doubling down on spamming their AOE poison breath that make approaching either gargoyle difficult, makes huge swaths of the arena hazardous, and reduces the openings to attack to next to none. You do get D's twin as an NPC cooperator for this fight, but expect him to die before the fight is even halfway done.
Altus Plateau
- The Auriza Hero's Grave in Leyndell, beyond having you deal with the nigh-instakill chariots, ends with a boss fight with Crucible Knight Ordovis and a second Crucible Knight. A single one of them is already a boss fight on its own, but here you have to fight two at the same time, while they aggressively hunt you down across the arena, with Ordovis using a sword and shield and the other Knight using a spear. If you've split your attention and worn both of them down to half health, dealing with their low-health special moves at the same time quickly turns the fight into a nightmare.
- The Black Knife Assassin in Sage's Cave is the only boss that can unambiguously be called "cheap". The other Assassins are no big deal, but this one is invisible. In a game where visual cues are everything, a boss that largely denies you that privilegenote is uniquely aggravating, particularly when it can easily kill you with a grab or two. This wouldn't be a problem if the game gave you decent tools to counter it, but the only useful option is the Sentry's Torch, an obscure weapon with an obscure function that exists specifically for detecting invisible Assassins. Your Spirit Ashes are a great asset as they can see and react to the Assassin despite the invisibility, but if you're choosing to do this fight solo, good luck.
Endgame
Unlike previous games, where the boss difficulty remains a bit sporadic towards the endgame, the last few mandatory boss fights of Elden Ring are no joke - they hardly ever pull their punches and have brought even seasoned Souls veterans to their knees over and over again, often driving players to resort to copious amounts of exploration, equipment upgrades and level grinding to even stand a chance. To wit:- The Fire Giant which guards the giants' forge has a mammoth health pool, bordering on Marathon Boss levels, with even fully upgraded weapons taking a long while to bring him down unless you abuse mechanics like bleed to speed it up. On top of that, he not only does insane damage (enough to two-shot you even with a highly vigor invested character), but he has AOE fire attacks that make it difficult and punishing for melee characters to damage him and which can kill them instantly if they're not careful. His second form is easier to kite, but his defense skyrockets anywhere except his hands and the exposed eye in the center of his face-chest, and he can still cast multiple firestorms and rinse the battlefield with high-damage exploding rock shards, prolonging an already-grueling fight. On top of all of that, he's also somewhat of a "Get Back Here!" Boss, as he likes to roll away from you frequently.
- Commander Niall, much like Commander O'Neill, can summon spirits to assist him, and while he thankfully does it only once, said spirits happen to be Banished Knights, who are very agressive with their attacks. However, that isn't the hardest part of the fight, as said knights can turn against Niall if Bewitching Branches are used against them. The hard part comes once he Turns Red when both Banished Knights are killed or his health reaches a certain threshold, as he suddenly gets a new moveset that consists of him performing AOE attacks capable of filling up almost his entire boss area with blistering speed, and unlike O'Neill, since his arena is located in Castle Sol, you cannot use Torrent here. To make matters worse, he also guards the other half of the Haligtree Secret Medallion, which you'll need if you want to access the Consecrated Snowfields and to get out of the Lord of Frenzied Flame ending.
- The Godskin Duo is often argued to be one of the worst examples of an unfair Dual Boss that FromSoftware has ever put to code. Both bosses individually are tough due to their Confusion Fu movesets, with the Godskin Noble in particular being one of the hardest mini-bosses you can fight, but by putting them in the same room together, it becomes one of the single hardest fights in the game by virtue of just not being balanced around their movesets. You have to fight a Godskin Apostle and Noble at the same time that constantly revive until their shared health bar is depleted. This means dealing with the fat one's incredible speed and persistence coupled with the skinny one's wide-range attacks simultaneously, including Blackflame spells that they can cast with impunity, especially when the player attempts to heal. Even though there are numerous pillars in the arena, which would usually be used to separate the bosses, the Godskin Duo can shatter them, rendering them almost useless. Put this all together and you end up with a boss fight that is more than most players can bear. Fortunately, you do get a lifeline in a summon sign for Recusant Bernahl near one of the arena entrances to make this a fairer fight, but players looking to do this completely solo are in for a rough time unless they opt to basically bypass the fight entirely with a cheese strategy (like Sleep arrows).
- Maliketh, the Black Blade is what you get when you mix the movesets of Artorias and an Outrider Knight together. He starts the encounter under his guise as the Beast Clergyman, who is a tough enough opponent in his own right. He's aggressive and has a number of impressive ranged attacks that punish those trying to get away from him. In phase II Maliketh reveals his true identity and ramps up the frantic nature of the fight. He's incredibly agile, jumping off walls and constantly putting distance between you and him before attacking with relentless and fast combos. The real kicker is that his Black Blade inflicts a curse that temporarily reduces your max HP, while simultaneously causing a temporary damage over time effect akin to poison. You can find the Blasphemous Claw, a reusable item that's meant to counter Maliketh, but unlike Margit's and Mohg's Shackles which bind them at almost any time in the fight during their first stage, the Claw is used to parry some of Maliketh's attacks which can be a tricky thing to time. All in all, you're in for a rough and frantic fight right before the Point of No Return.
- The second, proper fight with Godfrey, First Elden Lord is one of the coolest boss fights in the game, but also easily one of the most challenging. This is Godfrey at his most fearsome, boasting sky-high defenses, unlike his golden shade counterpart fought earlier in the game, and using quick axe bashes to catch players off guard attempting to punish his openings as early as his first phase. At about three-fourths of his health bar, he empowers his stomps, creating massive shockwaves that hit you from almost anywhere in the arena, and he does not let you breathe, leaving scant few openings to get hits in and dashing toward you and stomping if you try to duck out of his melee range and heal up. At half his health, he takes off his armor, ditches his axe, and absorbs the power of the Beast Regent Serosh to become Hoarah Loux, Warrior, gaining an entirely new, even more aggressive moveset, busting out difficult-to-dodge strikes into power bombs and choke slams that easily one-shot builds with less vigor, on top of his wide-reaching stomps that now send out grounded shockwaves you have to jump over if you're close to him and a series of claw swipes that just do not seem to end.
- Even though he may be the first phase of the final boss, Radagon of the Golden Order proves why he is not just the other half of Marika and the second Elden Lord, but also one of the hardest final bosses FromSoftware has ever produced. For starters, he is resistant to all status effects and immune to bleed except those of the Black Flame and Black Blade, making bleed builds largely ineffective against him, and he is resistant to everything but fire damage. However, even that is minor compared to whatever he does, such as having a chance to reflect spells a la Golden Retaliation, making it difficult for spellcasters to land a hit on him, and while some of his attacks are telegraphed, most of them aren't, such as his teleportation which spawns a light shockwave where he lands, his Gold Breaker skill which is a massive AOE attack that is delayed just enough to punish panic-rolling, and most infamously, there's a slight chance, and guaranteed if you parry him, that he'll perform a grab attack that will one-shot even high-vigor players with the toughest armor available. He's also a Sequential Boss- while the Elden Beast is usually agreed to be easier than Radagon (albeit a Goddamned Boss at that), focusing too much resources on Radagon will leave you unprepared for the Elden Beast, and unlike other bosses of his kind, losing to the Elden Beast forces you to replay his entire fight from the start, which can be incredibly frustrating.
