Given the truly staggering number of enemies and bosses in Elden Ring, many of them have notorious attacks that will devastate even well-experienced players.
Unmarked Spoilers Ahead.
Base Game
- Monstrous foes, like Prawns, Bats, and Trolls, typically have a ranged attack that varies from being a blast of water, to a gust of wind. These attacks are all fast and hit hard enough that they can knock the player off of Torrent even if you level your Vigor and Endurance to higher levels, and wear bulky armor. They tend to be sent at such speeds that they can even outpace you on Torrent while sprinting, which makes avoiding these kind of enemies annoying because you may be trying to just run past, and then you get blasted by an attack that you couldn't see coming.
- Dog enemies have a bite attack that, if they hit you, even if blocking, they then proceed to do another set of bites that are incredibly fast and almost seem to overlay their damage together. What pushes that into this trope is the Bleed Dogs you start encountering around Altus Plateau, whose attacks now cause Bleed build up. Due to a bug, these particular dogs' bites would apply damage per frame instead of per attack, meaning you essentially took about 60 attacks in a second and would instantly die no matter now much health you had or how good your armor was. Plus, since they cause Bleed, even if you blocked all of the direct damage with a shield, you would just suffer from several consecutive instant Bleed procs and die almost as fast. This bug was eventually fixed in Patch 1.04., and now are only slightly more dangerous than the average FromSoft dog.
- The giant crabs get a unique variant of one, which only works if the player has previously played Dark Souls III. The giant crabs in Elden Ring are almost exact copies of those crabs, except for one detail: Their body slam attack. In Dark Souls III, whenever they reared up to use this attack, you could run in and get a free Critical Hit on their soft underbelly. Try this in Elden Ring and you'll only get Squashed Flat for your trouble.
- While Flying Dragon Agheel is generally a manageable boss if you've leveled and geared up in Limgrave, he has one attack that is almost guaranteed death for an early player. He will lift up and fly backward a short distance and spray the ground before him with a wide cone of flames, which will do severe damage if you're on the outer edge of the attack and will almost certainly kill the player if they're in the middle. Since the windup for the attack looks almost identical to his other flight move windups, the only warning you'll get that he's going to use it is when he flies backwards instead of up and stops a short distance off the ground rather than going much higher. The only option to avoid it is to keep moving so whenever he lifts off you won't be in the "Instant Death" Radius of the flame cone, and to make sure your gear is good enough to quickly kill him before he randomly chooses to use this attack.
- Cemetery Shades have an attack that involves building up a web-like ball that they throw, and if it connects, holds you in place for several seconds. Though fairly easy to see coming, the attack is charged and thrown so quick that getting hit is very easy, and if you do, it's practically going to ensure death because it leaves you unable to break free while the boss whales on you. If the boss happens to be alone, it is possible to survive if you have enough HP, but if there is another enemy, you're basically dead due to being ganged up on.
- Bell Bearing Hunter and his true form as Elemer of the Briar has an attack that makes an already tough fight into a truly frustrating one; a weapon art-like skill where he turns his sword into a Flying Weapon that swings several times at the player. The attack hits really hard, comes out very quickly, and it's difficult to gauge if he's going to use that or one of a number of other similar attacks, but what makes it so difficult to counter is that the sword can strike you in ways you can't block, such as going right behind you, and it can extend into another few swings that travel very far if you try to outrange it. Combined with the attack coming out so fast that dodging is a dicey prospect, and yet also hits hard enough and at awkward angles such that it can break your guarding stance, and you've got the most dreaded move in his arsenal. This isn't helped by the boss's habit of following up with a Foe-Tossing Charge that he can use after the weapon art is done to close the distance if you try to get some space from him. Considering the Bell Bearing Hunter is a recurring boss, expect to die to it at least once.
- Black Knife Alecto has a fast-charging grab attack that can instakill a player with Vigor under 30 or so. This is especially frustrating since, as a grab, it can't be blocked. Adding insult to injury, Alecto is fought inside the Ringleader's Evergaol, meaning the player can't summon Spirit Ashes or other players for help. Most guides on how to beat her focus on breaking her low Poise, rather than trying to resist this attack.
- Erdtree Avatars can use the Golden Land Ash of War, which causes a large AoE explosion of Holy damage and then spawns around a dozen Holy projectiles which fire themselves at the player after a delay. Not only they do large damage by themselves, the only good way to dodge them is to either keep running or take cover - both of which can be impeded by the uneven terrain around the Erdtree, and the projectiles themselves can shatter anything you might want to use as cover. Putrid Erdtree Avatars have an even worse attack on top of THAT as their butt slam shoots out several streams of Scarlet Rot that cover a vast area in front of it and deal enough damage to kill you in seconds without even the need to fill your meter, especially as some of the streams track your character. It can technically be avoided by running around the boss but they are liable to simply spam this move anytime your character is behind them, thus covering almost the entire area in Scarlet Rot until you either die or finally move away. Oh, and Putrid Avatars particularly love to start repeatedly spamming Golden Land as soon as you're out of melee range too.
- Certain large and mobile enemies, such as the Tree Sentinel, have attacks which, depending on the angle and location when they start, can overshoot the player and land behind them. A player may have their shield up expecting to block the attack as they have done many times before, only to unexpectedly get hit in the back for full damage instead.
- Iron Virgins have a really annoying grab attack that can come out really quick without much warning, and if it lands it's an essential One-Hit Kill on any character without high Vigor. But if you do manage to dodge it, this leaves their weak point vulnerable for you to punish.
- Giant Crows can fake a stagger, complete with the telltale vulnerability sound. If you fall for it, they'll snatch you up and drop you for serious damage.
- Magma Wyrms have an attack where they simply crawl around while leaving a magma trail behind them. Like the Godskin Noble's rolling attack, its entire body is the hitbox for as long as it's crawling around. Not only is it diffcult to dodge on its own due to the Wyrm's size and the attack's tracking, but even if you do dodge it, a sizeable portion of the arena is now covered in magma, and they really love to spam this attack a lot, leaving very little safe footing and openings to attack. Fortunately, they stop doing it once they get to Phase 2. By the way, the Magma Wyrm who's the boss of Gael Tunnel doesn't have a Phase 2, so you have to put up with this attack for the entire fight (although since this one drops the infamous High-Tier Scrappy Moonveil, a sizeable portion of the player base is of the opinion that anyone who wants to use the weapon in PvP deserves the suffering they have to go through in order to obtain it).
- The Shardbearer boss of Volcano Manor, Rykard, Lord of Blasphemy, has an attack in his second phase that is pretty notorious and, similar to the final boss's star orb mentioned above, makes an otherwise-manageable fight grueling. At half health, he raises his sword, causing a red fog to engulf the arena and several dozen giant flaming skulls suddenly start spawning in over the next fifteen to twenty seconds and home in on you relentlessly, exploding for high damage if they reach you or touch the ground. Much like the star orb used by the Final Boss, Rykard is still free to pummel you with any of his long-reaching, damaging sword attacks and AoEs while all of this chaos is going on. When he unleashes this attack, you pretty much have no choice but to run away/roll frantically and hope you don't get hit.
- The first phase, the God-Devouring Serpent, has a completely undodgeable attack where it headbutts the ground, sending an earthquake in your direction which causes the ground to erupt with fire. The hitbox lingers too long to roll through it, the eruption makes it too high to dodge by jumping, and the area of effect is too large to simply get out of it before the eruption happens. It can be blocked, which will at least reduce the damage you take and prevent it from launching you into the air, but as it deals at least partially fire damage, there is no way to prevent all damage from it.
- The Draconic Tree Sentinel has a widely hated attack where he uses his shield to call down an extremely damaging lightning strike on your head. The window to dodge it is extremely tight, and if it connects it has a high chance of one-shotting you unless you've put a lot of points into Vigor. Furthermore, he is almost guaranteed to use it if you're any farther from him than medium range. It's the main reason the Draconic Tree Sentinel is considered a huge brick wall to entering Leyndell.
- Borealis the Freezing Fog has an ice breath AOE attack, which comes out extremely fast, has unclear hitboxes, and stunlocks you repeatedly while dealing heavy damage and Frost buildup, enough to one-shot even high-Vigor builds. Worst, he often starts the battle with it, before you can easily see where he is through the blizzard.
- For all of Maliketh's flashy and over-the-top attacks after revealing his true identity, it's actually Gurranq who provides the most consistently difficult to handle attack in the entire boss fight: a simple set of quick swipes with his Cinquedea. This attack has attracted considerable hate because it's effectively un-reactable — the swings come out immediately with no telegraphing, guaranteeing that you take considerable damage. It's not a rare attack either; this is easily one of his favorite close-range options to use (and no wonder, considering its effectiveness). He also backsteps as he uses it, meaning if you attempt to trade with him, you'll more than likely miss. It makes an otherwise basic boss frustratingly difficult.
- The Godskin Noble has a very infuriating attack where it inflates its large robes, goes on its side, and rolls at you. This makes it very difficult to keep track of and avoid, and Collision Damage makes it hard to get a melee attack in until it is done. You can use the surrounding environment to trap it and wait out the attack, but the duration of this rolling attack is extremely long, it tracks your movements well, and, save for the Godskin Duo fight, all of the Godskin Noble encounters are in comparatively cramped environments. It doesn't help that, if the Noble changes its vertical plane mid-roll, its animation can glitch out and cancel
, allowing it to attack normally and then clip back into its rolling attack with no delay or animation. Also, while originally the Noble had the courtesy to stop his roll after hitting you once with it, one of the patches to the game made him no longer do this, and you now have to deal with the full duration of the roll every time, meaning he can hit you multiple times with it. - Both the Godskin Apostle and Noble are infamous for lobbing a ball of blackflame at you the moment you decide to drink from your flask, almost completely negating whatever healing you needed. Most other enemies have other heal-punish moves, but their blackflame balls are the most blatant ones.
- Godfrey's Shockwave Stomp is consistently cited as his most annoying attack. All of his moves are strong, but they are well telegraphed and not too bad to manage, but his Shockwave Stomp is not only unblockable (thus requiring jumping or dodging), but after he first demonstrates it with a comically long telegraph, he starts throwing it out almost every other attack, and he does so fast enough that most players can't reliably dodge in time. Worse, if you have Spirit Ashes or summons, he will often spam the move while chasing down his target, and while the attack is not strong enough to one-shot most builds, it does enough damage to punish players who back off to heal. In phase two he starts using it again, but now combined with his aggressive attacks to make it even harder to avoid. Even worse, Regal Roar (or Hoarah Loux's Earthshaker in his second phase) boosts the stomps' shockwaves to the point of covering the entire arena, necessitating the players to jump over them.
- Mohg, Lord of Blood will cast a ring around the player 3 times during his battle. The rings do no damage themselves, but during his phase transition at half health, Mohg will activate these rings, causing full blood loss and healing himself 3 times in quick succession. That's right, he forces the player to use 3 healing flasks in a row or die instantly. The worst part is that this attack is completely unavoidable. It cannot be dodged or blocked in any way; the only way to get out of taking the damage is to get a Physick ingredient from a specific NPC invader in a sidequest chain, and even then it doesn't stop him from healing himself (although it does let you attack him while he does it, which can counter at least some of his healing)
- The local Superboss Malenia has a truly horrible attack in both of her phases called the "Waterfowl Dance." The attack begins with the boss leaping backwards into the air for a brief moment before rushing forward with several dozen sword strikes. The strikes are divided into sections of three, with a brief delay between the second and third set of swipes. This attack is exceptionally tough to dodge, as the tracking on it is very strong. If you're close to Malenia when she rises up into the air, you're pretty much dead. The third set of swipes also has a counter-intuitive dodging rule where you can only avoid it if you dodge into Malenia while she prepares the third set of strikes. Even worse, she has extremely strong healing abilities that only activate on hits, meaning if you somehow survive the onslaught after getting hit, Malenia has likely recovered a substantial portion of her health. And in second phase? It also inflicts Scarlet Rot. Overall, the move is an extremely large source of frustration for the fight, especially since it's just one of her standard moves (Waterfowl Dance does seem to have a cooldown, but there's no actual limit to the number of times she can use it per match and the cooldown is relatively low) rather than a scripted or limited-use super. There are quite a few ways to avoid it, some of which are pretty simple and require nothing more than basic gear, but players who don't know about them and instead have grown used to relying solely on a single damage-avoidance method against every other boss are in for a rough session of trial-and-error.
- The Final Boss has one attack that makes an otherwise manageable fight extremely painful. When it switches into phase two, the boss casts Elden Stars, an orb that tracks the player's movements and constantly deals damage before it eventually explodes. The issue is that the orb lasts a terribly long time before it disappears, meaning you have to juggle this ball of death and the boss's lethal attacks at the same time, which is especially tricky as the orb's tracking makes it difficult to avoid. While there exist ways to dodge both threats at once, the fight is frantic enough that the usual strategy will ultimately be "run around like a maniac, chug Tears, and hope for the best".
- A second very annoying attack is one that was nicknamed the 'Elden Ring' attack: the boss flies up into the air, becoming virtually unhittable for the entire duration of the attack, and a ring of light appears around the player which slowly closes in - if it hits the player it does no damage, but briefly staggers them, and once the ring closes in completely a massive Pillar of Light strikes in that spot. In a later phase it can do the attack again, except this time MULTIPLE rings appear and have to be jumped over in sequence while you run like hell.
- Astel, Stars of Darkness has a Grapple Move in which it spawns multiple copies of itself that grab you, which is guaranteed to fill up the entire arena, and since it's located in an endgame area, it's almost guaranteed to be a One-Hit Kill. The fact that the Naturalborn of the Void version doesn't do this makes it even more startling.
- Death Rite Birds have a charged ground attack that causes a big explosion of ghostflame (the Explosive Ghostflame sorcery but much more potent) which also immolate the ground with ghostflames in a asterisk pattern from quite a long distance from the Bird, all of this does heavy damage and also inflict frostbite. If you're beneath the Bird when it uses this, you will die, and if you get caught in the rapidly-expanding flames you will also likely die due to both direct damage and extremely fast frostbite build-up. Worse still, the orientation of said asterisk pattern is not determined by where the Bird is facing, making it hard to guess where safe ground is until after the attack goes off. The only way to avoid it is to run away as soon as the Death Rite Bird starts its windup and hope you get enough distance that you don't get hit. note
Shadow of the Erdtree
- Pray that you aren't on the wrong end of a Furnace Golem's kick. Not only does it have a surprisingly good amount of tracking, but it also sends a flechette of projectiles that can one-shot an high Vigor build.
- Fire Knights, while already gigantic threats as is, also pack a "Fire Serpent" spell, a lingering projectile that flies at you after a delay and has a mild homing, making the mere act of approaching them incredibly annoying as they consistently spam this when not at melee distance. Considering they're at their deadliest up close, this means you either deal with constant Fire Serpent spam from afar or force yourself into their preferred territory. Pick your poison.
- Commander Gaius is a tough boss, but is otherwise consistent with Shadow of the Erdtree's difficulty curve. That is, except for his most basic and most commonly used attack: a running charge on his boar. The hitbox on this thing sucks, encompassing the entirety of the boar, meaning the main window to dodge requires Gaius to be very close to you so you can roll either through it or to the side, which is frustratingly precise. The tracking is strong enough that trying to juke him isn't an option, and the boar's sheer speed means that not even Torrent can outrun it. This attack is criticized for severely overcentralizing the fight: if he charges too much, you probably die, and if he doesn't, the rest of his moveset is straightforward enough to lab out for the win.
- The Putrescent Knight isn't that hard compared to other bosses, being a Glass Cannon with a predictable moveset, but whenever it does its leaping blade strike, the "horse" may chain in one of its attacks, making it harder to dodge some of its moves, especially its Spinning Guillotine attack.
- Once in its second phase it adds several magic flame attacks that travel over the ground. Jumping over them makes the attack relatively simple to dodge, but occasionally it'll cast the spell in a ring surrounding the player, which can make the flames approach rapidly from behind.
- Of many combatants in the penultimate fight, Moore stands out as a nuisance — while he's mostly a Stone Wall who lacks a proper weapon, he lobs Hefty Rot Pots that can instantly inflict Scarlet Rot, so you can't let him out of your sight otherwise you'll be fighting on a timer. Some players willingly give him the cruel words of "be sad forever", or at least answered "I don't know" (letting his questline hang on the answer you'll never give), just to spare themselves the headache of dealing with this attack.
- Promised Consort Radahn, the final boss of the DLC, has quickly grown infamous for his incredibly brutal moveset, only further enhanced during his 2nd phase, with a few notable examples as follows:
- In spite of his arsenal of extremely flashy moves, none are as despised as his simple 3-hit cross slash. To wit, it comes out incredibly quick, looks like a few of his other slower attacks, does a ridiculous amount of damage if all hits land and, most frustratingly, is all but impossible to dodge normally, as the initial two slashes are spaced out just enough to catch your roll near guaranteed. In order to avoid this attack, you will either need to perform two perfectly-timed dodges back to back (one of which must be a little pre-emptive) or hope you get lucky by rolling into his side so that he turns and the attack misses... or just pick the right moment to simply run away from it in time. 1.14 nerfed this by slowing down the double slash attack, making it much easier to dodge it.
- Once he enters his second phase, he is very likely to open it with the Light of Miquella, which is basically a massive light nuke cast directly on top of you. The only way to avoid it is to preemptively run the hell away from the spell, use Raptor of the Mists to dodge it, drink a Flask of Wondrous Physick with Crimsonwhorl Bubbletear at the correct moment or - for certain weapons - hit him hard enough with an Ash of War such as Giant's Hunt which can poise break him and leave him open for a riposte attempt. Otherwise, you're basically eating what is 2/3rds of your health, assuming a 60 Vigor character with a maxed Scadutree Blessing. As insult to injury, it also spawns a barrage of secondary light beams that can do chip damage even after you dodge the nuke. The radius of the attack was reduced in the 1.14 update so that players can more easily get out of dodge.
- When he hits around 40% health or less, he'll use a reprise of his meteor crash from his Starscourge fight's second phase opener, which now strikes the area with several near-instant light rays before Radahn comes crashing down in a similarly massive explosion. This time, it deals a LOT of holy damage, the impact occurs much faster and hits multiple times, and the area of effect is also massive (whereas the original had a deceptively small hitbox). Much like Light of Miquella, 60+ vigor and a maxed Scadutree Blessing is just about mandatory to stand a chance to survive this attack if it hits you, and even then, being near its epicentre will likely one-shot you anyway. The only solution is to run towards the very edge of the arena as soon as Radahn jumps up, then dodge and hope for the best.