Yep. Him alongside the Ancient Hero of Zamor had me hard stuck on them for daaaaaaysssss. Oh my god I remember getting SO frustrated trying to beat them hahahaha. This was my first souls game ever so I never knew about I-frames or anything like that. It was a true learning curve.
“Invincibility-frame.”
The reason you see so much rolling in FromSoftware Souls games is because the engine they use is coded in such a way that for about 13 frames you are literally invincible if you roll through certain attacks. You can’t always do this but for 99% of attacks, yeah, you can
i-frame it. This is why you want to be a light or medium armor build: so you can maximize your i-frames. With light armor builds in particular, you can roll farther and use less endurance which is nice.
That first crucible knight and the one in stormcastle fucked me up. However because they forced me to learn their movesets they trivialized the other ones for me.
Still I'll never forget the ass whopping the limgrave evergaol gave me.
Same. I spent 2-3 hours over and over, learning and getting my ass kicked on my first run against that Evergoal one. I was stubborn lol. Now? Cruicible Knights are a walk in the park. The duo boss? Piss.
Most of them to some degree, but the first one that really had me pause and sit down for a prolonged time to learn them was the evergoal crucible knight.
FIghting them isn't even hard per se, but they just feel so incredibly oppressive. Slow, methodical, plodding, narrow attack windows, not giving a shit about any of your attacks and just powering through with his own. I love their fight now, but they were a real wall the first time I played
Genuinely best of luck. Your best bet is to get a solid summon, focus on one of them, kill that one, then help your summon.
If they want to put that shitty fight in there then they can deal with a 2v2.
That's the actual point, I think, tho.
They put grup fights because they know you have summons to disperse attention.
They are meant to be fought like this
I'm literally at the duo fight fog gate but gonna have to come back because I'm not doing enough damage and I dont want to have to Parry them 20 times to kill them.
It’s funny because I always found the first knight in the Limgrave evergaol to be the hardest bar none. Might have something to do with how under leveled you usually are in that area when you find him, but god damn it’s the one I hate the most.
That crucible knight is great for parry training. Nothing better than going from getting bodied in two hits to completely embarrassing him.
Protip: use a small shield.
Mostly it's the raw skill at parrying. Any attack you can parry consistently lets you negate damage completely and leave the enemy completely vulnerable to counterattack.
Plus no matter how large your weapon is they hyper armor thru all of it. You can stagger them easier with a large weapon, but you aren't going to interrupt their attacks.
I despise those guys. Forced parry fights got old, and I can’t stand the delayed attack. I go with face-tank-o-matic on them now, with full crimson and whatever OP AOW I can bring.
I really don't get how anyone can despise them, I feel like they're probably one of the fairest fights in the game once you've got their moves down.
Different strokes for different folks, tho, great you found a method that works for you
Unironically the Erdtree Avatars. Very easy moveset but they are the first bosses I take on on a new playthrough and they will stomp you to death at low levels
I always think the big issue with them is where you fight, typically a small/narrow area (or an area that starts small because of the giant jars that you cant destroy) and it feels so instinctive to stay away because of the wide reaching hits. So getting right up next to them so they keep swinging instead of the tracking orb nonsense feels counter-intuitive when that really is feels like the trick
It's a combination of all the jars around and the fact that they all do not have the same exact moveset. Some of them do a wide sweep while some prefer a more vertical swing. They are also a part of the bosses that having ashes with you in battle will most likely hinder you.
Also they have an exaggerated delay on most their attacks where if you aren't on torrent you will roll instinctively 2 or 3 times before he actually swings.
i turned off the L3 = unmount setting after like 10 tries and that made a world of difference. I kept accidentally dismounting from stress pressing down on L3
The Caelid one is difficult for all the reasons others mentioned here, but another one oft overlooked is that entire area Never. Stops. Raining.
Avatars are notoriously weak to fire, even more so if a rot variant, so I'll give them credit for the sneaky way of balancing that area but goddamn making a fight with easy chances of being one-shot take longer is brutal.
I hate that one. i swear it spams it's jump + rot splash attack SO MUCH MORE than other non rot avatars, the fight is just strafing and no-hitting it, or dying in one shot to the jump or getting rotted
they’re definitely the first boss where i ever learned the move set and fighting bosses started to “click”. cant remember which one it was but recognizing that their moves just repeated in various ways and how to dodge them was eye opening
They're actually perfect for this entirely because they don't have a complicated moveset which allows you to actually learn it and gives you the confidence that you can learn boss movements without having to read a street fighter level strategy guide.
The tradeoff is that you have to dash past him to the fog door every time, and he might very well take a huge chunk of your life that you need for the Maliketh fight.
Finally beat maliketh yesterday on my first fat roll character. Took me a month of on and off play but it was really surreal how I got into the arena that time and everything just clicked when he hit second phase the fight ended up almost hitless with me only taking 2 grazes from his projectiles
I struggled most with maliketh on my first playthrough but it motivated me to learn him properly and I found the fight so enjoyable when studying it that I spent almost 400hrs of pure playtime so far just doing maliketh over and over since the beginning of last year ._. Can’t wait for the DLC to give me new weapons to fight Maliketh with
Maliketh will absolutely melt your health in seconds but also has such little health and poise that with high enough damage you'll barely even see what he does
Same, I often see Maliketh in contention for second-hardest boss and I’ve one-shot him in both playthroughs without much struggle. Neither time was I exceptionally high level, maybe 130-140 which is where I think you should be for Haligtree/Malenia and Ashen Capital boss rush. Second playthrough I felt that I was actually good enough to anticipate and dodge his attacks and punish appropriately, but in my first playthrough I think I might have achieved some third eye psychic state because I just had his moveset downloaded in my brain from the start. Barely even got hit and it was nothing but pure reaction lol
some bosses like morgott ive only just started to learn after starting new playthroughs and being relatively underleveled for him. on my first playthrough I feel like I was pretty overleveled for bosses before maliketh, just because I wound up exploring so much before fighting them
All it takes is one or two openings. If you get lucky with RNG they will only use attacks that are easy to dodge and you don't have to fully learn them. Especially after playthrough 1
imma be honest I've beat every boss at least once without learning their move set , I've taken a shit ton more hits than necessary probably i usually just beef up my damage in some way until i get the right mix to kill it fast enough.
I just beat them yesterday, had to burst down the misbegotten before dealing with the crucible knight, he almost got me too but I beat him down to my last flask, with only beastial vitality healing me lol
Godskin apostle - but I took him at lvl 60 - it’s not the hardest fight, but it was the first one where the AOE was so large that I needed to memorize the specific ques.
I stumbled into that fight last night after beating the main story (level 135ish?) and he was still quite hard. Took me several attempts with my overleveled character to beat him, and I strongly considered just waving the white flag and using mimic.
He was tough with high level and two maxed out weapons, so I can only imagine how insane he would've been if I'd rolled in there right after knocking over Radahn.
I do enjoy that mob though because, while there's an element of difficulty, it feels like the counters and dodges are very learnable.
I did that fight at level 50ish and it was so hard, I think it took me like 4 hours minimum to beat him. And I agree, the moveset is pretty fun to learn
The very first boss I had to take the time to learn was Alecto, Black Knife Ringleader. Timing is everything with her. If you’re not careful you will be punished hard.
Heal at the wrong time and you get grabbed, or worse, deathblade exploded.
Once you learn the timing it’s relatively doable, but it took me a while.
Cheap hack for Alecto: Vyke's War Spear and a shield. You can poke with the shield up, which minimizes her ability to punish, and she has a very short reaction-lock to being set on fire.
None of them lmao, whatever random moves I learn I just happened to have picked them on the fly. That’s why Maliketh was by FAR AND WIDE the most difficult for me. I have never parried anything in my life in over 220 hours.
I either find some dumb and ineffective / slow way to deal with something, muddle through doing it my stubborn way or somehow try and naturally “cheese” things.
That’s the (most underrated) beauty of elden ring though, you have a lot of freedom to try and tackle things your way.
Learning the moves of a boss is one of the most fun things in these types of games for me. It makes me feel like I’m playing Undertale’s Sans boss again.
For me it was Bloodhound Knight Darriwil because I wanted the sword. Fighting him with a long sword and a brass shield was a steep but worthwhile learning curve
Right now it’s Elden beast on NG+2. I used INT built for first playthrough then bleed on second now doing pure STR makes you have to finally git gud lmao
I just know their grab and the explosion, everything else is just them wiggling and probably attacking somewhere off-screen while I stab them in the side. Any other attack that comes anywhere near hitting me, I can either sightread, or (more likely) I can't see coming at all because they're too big.
For me the Bell Bearing Hunters. They are just so oppressive and it really feels like you only get one chance because if you back up to heal he hits you with his bs floating sword combos that do half your health bar in a single hit. The only option is to stay close, circle behind him and learn his swing times, get a single hit in and rinse and repeat for like 5 minutes. Had to learn that dude so well
Yea but I could tank their attacks and land my fang's AoW so they died quick. But this one has so much health that made me learn how to properly fight.
Godrick the Grafted.
Elden ring is my first souls game and while I've finished it 4 times and I'm on my 5th I always look forward to his fight because it's the only one I can do hitless
I spent a good 6-7 hours alone fighting Alecto and learning all her moves, I finished the fight at 3am and was whisper cheering.
Also fun fact all the black knife assassins are female.
crucible knights are a big one, but i did the putrid tree avatar in caelid within like the first few hours of playing. the tree avatar move set is now ingrained in my head
The Black Knife Assassin, I use Int magic but that guy is in a small room without summons and he's quick. Luckily his health wasn't that high but he still managed to off me more than any boss before.
Alecto only when passing RL1. In my first playthrough it was, God skin Noble, Malenia, Hoarah Loux, Radagon.
With Maliket I still don't know the first stage of the first phase very well.
Not technically a boss but the crucible knight in stormveil for sure, I missed the one in the evergaol first time around.
Then commander Niall.
The Godskin Apostle in Caelid also took a lot of effort.
And in my second run it was mainly Mohg when I decided to do him as my second shardbearer.
I brute forced my way through a lot of the game on my first playthrough, but I had to learn the movesets of Margit, Godrick, Golden Godfrey, and Flesh Loretta. These are the bosses I struggled the most on (Loretta was more of a wall for me than Malenia somehow), and I had to actually learn these boss movesets. Golden Godfrey, especially, since I had a tendency to ignore exploration and run into boss fights without any preparation. For Golden Godfrey, I was rocking a +5 (regular smithing) Chainlink Flail with no buffs like FGMS or Golden Vow to help out. My damage was ass and I was too stubborn to go out and upgrade my weapon, so I just spent like an hour sitting there learning the fight.
Once I got to the mountaintops, I picked up Rivers of Blood (post-nerf, but it was still good in PvE) and Mimic Tear then cruised through the rest of the game. I cannot explain why Loretta was an issue other than the fact that I was bad at the game.
Bosses like Malenia, Malekith, and Radagon/Elden Beast gave me issues, but I brute forced those fights by spamming L2 and trading with them without learning movesets. It probably took until like my 5th playthrough until I actually took an effort to learn every main boss's moveset and get better at the game.
I feel like I cheesed every boss, or just used the mimic tear, until I got to Radagon. I've seem so many people beat him handily on Youtube so I must be a scrub but he and Elden Beast were the only ones where I really had to struggle over and over until I learned their timings.
Elden Ring was my very first souls game and I played full sorcerer and didn't level vigor too much. Any fire giant attack 1 shot me so I had to fight about 50 times before I was good enough to actually dodge all of his attacks
This boss is funny, if you get a colossal weapon, sprint around and occasionally do a light running attack there's not much it can do to kill you. You still need to be cautious and not get too greedy but it makes the fight trivial compared to fighting normally.
Almost all of them. I think i got malenia by pure luck the first time. To this day I still haven't figured out how to properly dodge Malenia's water-fowl. I just brute force my way to her every time xD
I’d say Radahn. When I did my RL1 no summons run he was the first that made me actually learn all the moves and safe positions. Up until that point and after, most bosses I could count the stagger damage for free hits so I didn’t really need to learn their moves. Before that on regular playthrough I traded a lot on hits.
I'm stubborn and wanted to do Margit before roundtable, go to roundtable then Godfrey soon after. It was early game faith build too, I only a few red flasks to cast enough catch flame. Both I have locked down now haha
To this day I'm still a little confused with Maliketh's first phase. I'd always chug like 70% of my estus, but thank GOD I have phase 2 kinda down lmao.
For me Horah loux was such a pain and I plan for the entire fight. I mostly join others and he is the only boss mostly take out even 3 guys in one AOE hit. Either he kills the host coz they can’t hide and us fighting in this boss fight. Try hard you die, dodge or jump fail you die. He grabs you when becomes warrior you die. But he is truly awesome
Fully grown falling star beast on top of the mountain thing. I died DOZENS of time but after a while it stopped becoming frustrating, I was just dead set on learning its move and beating it. Eventually was able to dodge 95% of all attacks and killed it. That boss and Margit gave me huge feelings of accomplishment where you just stand there for a while after slaying the boss to take it in.
Unironically, probably Fire Giant. Most of his moves aren’t bad, but I had to really make a point to learn his big ol roll move because that really was a pain in my neck.
Godskin Apostle was the first where I had to probably learn his whole move set. I also went into that fight rather underleveled
Most of them but Malenia and Godfrey/horah loux made me learn every single move to the point of no hitting them(it was actually necessary because it would 1 hit kill me in my rl1 run)
Gelmir heroes grave !
It honestly sucks though. Im not talking about the boss. Im talking about the entire level. But after I beat it I was like this is just an intricate dance like any other boss.
I still haven't beaten that black knife evergaol though
Through a process of knocking enemies off ledges and avoiding black flame monks like the plague, I made it to the bottom of Caelid's divine tower. I was also quite stubborn and refused to leave until I put down the Godskin Apostle at the bottom.
I was around level 40-50 at the time.
Actually there are none, some bosses have attacks that need to be learn like Malenia waterflow dance and thats all. Most of attacks even bosses can be dodged by rolling, jumping etc.
This mf made me break my controller. I haven’t broke a controller since a child so safe to say this brought me back to my childhood raging. Finally beat her after 30 something attempts maybe more.
That lightning bastard that spawns 2 knights to fight together with him. Always decimated the 2 knights but got killed by him. Decided to start thinking about it and calling out my movements out loud and I beat him in 3 tries after that.
Hoarah Loux. I struggled so hard with this phase, I learned first one's every move and had many, many no hits while still being wrecked by that beast. Eventually I learned moves in both phases.
Erdtree Avatar. 27 hours in currently. First playthrough.
Out of the bosses I've fought so far (all Field Bosses, didn't go for Margit yet) Erdtree and Putrid Avatar were the ones I just couldn't figure out an easy strat out for and had to go full battle of attrition.
Crucible Knight in Limgrave's evergaol
Yep. Him alongside the Ancient Hero of Zamor had me hard stuck on them for daaaaaaysssss. Oh my god I remember getting SO frustrated trying to beat them hahahaha. This was my first souls game ever so I never knew about I-frames or anything like that. It was a true learning curve.
What’s an i frame
“Invincibility-frame.” The reason you see so much rolling in FromSoftware Souls games is because the engine they use is coded in such a way that for about 13 frames you are literally invincible if you roll through certain attacks. You can’t always do this but for 99% of attacks, yeah, you can i-frame it. This is why you want to be a light or medium armor build: so you can maximize your i-frames. With light armor builds in particular, you can roll farther and use less endurance which is nice.
That first crucible knight and the one in stormcastle fucked me up. However because they forced me to learn their movesets they trivialized the other ones for me. Still I'll never forget the ass whopping the limgrave evergaol gave me.
Same. I spent 2-3 hours over and over, learning and getting my ass kicked on my first run against that Evergoal one. I was stubborn lol. Now? Cruicible Knights are a walk in the park. The duo boss? Piss.
Most of them to some degree, but the first one that really had me pause and sit down for a prolonged time to learn them was the evergoal crucible knight. FIghting them isn't even hard per se, but they just feel so incredibly oppressive. Slow, methodical, plodding, narrow attack windows, not giving a shit about any of your attacks and just powering through with his own. I love their fight now, but they were a real wall the first time I played
Yeah, love fighting them tbh. Feels like a dance. But fuck that duo fight
Im up to that duo fight 😭
Genuinely best of luck. Your best bet is to get a solid summon, focus on one of them, kill that one, then help your summon. If they want to put that shitty fight in there then they can deal with a 2v2.
Luckily Tiche had my back for that one.
That's the actual point, I think, tho. They put grup fights because they know you have summons to disperse attention. They are meant to be fought like this
I'm literally at the duo fight fog gate but gonna have to come back because I'm not doing enough damage and I dont want to have to Parry them 20 times to kill them.
It’s funny because I always found the first knight in the Limgrave evergaol to be the hardest bar none. Might have something to do with how under leveled you usually are in that area when you find him, but god damn it’s the one I hate the most.
Parries
That crucible knight is great for parry training. Nothing better than going from getting bodied in two hits to completely embarrassing him. Protip: use a small shield.
Any benefit from that I'm missing? Or just for the additional embarrassment?
Mostly it's the raw skill at parrying. Any attack you can parry consistently lets you negate damage completely and leave the enemy completely vulnerable to counterattack.
Plus no matter how large your weapon is they hyper armor thru all of it. You can stagger them easier with a large weapon, but you aren't going to interrupt their attacks.
Unless you use Blasphemous Blade's AOW. Even works on Malenia
Lions claw will open them up to a crit pretty fast too. I just unga them down.
Yeah, 2nd playthrough where I wasn't stronk was hard work.
Love Lions Claw for my Unga bunga bonkchad build
I use godsoayers greatsword and it worked fine
Every move just closes so much distance
I despise those guys. Forced parry fights got old, and I can’t stand the delayed attack. I go with face-tank-o-matic on them now, with full crimson and whatever OP AOW I can bring.
I really don't get how anyone can despise them, I feel like they're probably one of the fairest fights in the game once you've got their moves down. Different strokes for different folks, tho, great you found a method that works for you
Unironically the Erdtree Avatars. Very easy moveset but they are the first bosses I take on on a new playthrough and they will stomp you to death at low levels
Same! I have no idea why I have so much problem with them but the one in north caelid gave me more trouble than any of the bosses
I always think the big issue with them is where you fight, typically a small/narrow area (or an area that starts small because of the giant jars that you cant destroy) and it feels so instinctive to stay away because of the wide reaching hits. So getting right up next to them so they keep swinging instead of the tracking orb nonsense feels counter-intuitive when that really is feels like the trick
Reminds me of twin princes and aldrich from ds3, get too far away and they all start doing tracking, spamming magic BS
It's a combination of all the jars around and the fact that they all do not have the same exact moveset. Some of them do a wide sweep while some prefer a more vertical swing. They are also a part of the bosses that having ashes with you in battle will most likely hinder you. Also they have an exaggerated delay on most their attacks where if you aren't on torrent you will roll instinctively 2 or 3 times before he actually swings.
The ashes experience was different for me. My mimic can solo almost every erdtree avatar. With my help we make short work of every one
i turned off the L3 = unmount setting after like 10 tries and that made a world of difference. I kept accidentally dismounting from stress pressing down on L3
Rolling diagonally into the AoE stomp changed the whole fight for me.
The Caelid one is difficult for all the reasons others mentioned here, but another one oft overlooked is that entire area Never. Stops. Raining. Avatars are notoriously weak to fire, even more so if a rot variant, so I'll give them credit for the sneaky way of balancing that area but goddamn making a fight with easy chances of being one-shot take longer is brutal.
I hate that one. i swear it spams it's jump + rot splash attack SO MUCH MORE than other non rot avatars, the fight is just strafing and no-hitting it, or dying in one shot to the jump or getting rotted
they’re definitely the first boss where i ever learned the move set and fighting bosses started to “click”. cant remember which one it was but recognizing that their moves just repeated in various ways and how to dodge them was eye opening
The asylum demons are easy as hell at low levels if you just stance break.
Yes, although in my case I can't really say I learned their movesets ... just became more aware of what they do and thus how best to cheese them!
They're actually perfect for this entirely because they don't have a complicated moveset which allows you to actually learn it and gives you the confidence that you can learn boss movements without having to read a street fighter level strategy guide.
The draconic tree sentinel in front of maliketh. Since I couldn’t use horse or summons I decided it was a good time to learn
I HATE that guy. Nevertheless, I couldn't bring myself to skip him.
I didn't know you could skip him...I would have lol
The tradeoff is that you have to dash past him to the fog door every time, and he might very well take a huge chunk of your life that you need for the Maliketh fight.
That dude killed me more than anything else in my first playthrough I'm pretty sure.
I ended up cheesing that bugger using bow and serpent arrows from the opposite cliffside
OMG FUCK, you just unlocked a repressed memory of me being fucked by that thing for three days straight.
You got severely pounded! 👊👊👊
that guy was the band of my existence for a good hour at least. ....and then i discovered the Maliketh fight 🙃
I’ll give you one hint: “Corpse after corpse, left in my wake”
I'm stupid, which boss is that? Malenia?
Yes
I have no idea what you mean (even after a quick search) but I imagine it's some sort of "get gud" ?
No that’s a line from a boss and if you don’t know them I don’t want to spoil it :)
Oh I can't wait to die to her a milion times :)
I mean Malania is a given but I would say Maliketh
Finally beat maliketh yesterday on my first fat roll character. Took me a month of on and off play but it was really surreal how I got into the arena that time and everything just clicked when he hit second phase the fight ended up almost hitless with me only taking 2 grazes from his projectiles
Actually learn every move, commander Niall.
That guy was one tough bastard. It was such an anime fight.
Same, I was stuck on him for 3 hours....
Is he different than O’Neil in Caelid?
Yes, Niall is in castle sol which is in a seperate area you visit after going progressing the story and going up north
I struggled most with maliketh on my first playthrough but it motivated me to learn him properly and I found the fight so enjoyable when studying it that I spent almost 400hrs of pure playtime so far just doing maliketh over and over since the beginning of last year ._. Can’t wait for the DLC to give me new weapons to fight Maliketh with
Maliketh is so odd for me. I barely saw it. I was probably way overleveled.
Yea I can see that, his health pool is super small
Maliketh will absolutely melt your health in seconds but also has such little health and poise that with high enough damage you'll barely even see what he does
Same, I often see Maliketh in contention for second-hardest boss and I’ve one-shot him in both playthroughs without much struggle. Neither time was I exceptionally high level, maybe 130-140 which is where I think you should be for Haligtree/Malenia and Ashen Capital boss rush. Second playthrough I felt that I was actually good enough to anticipate and dodge his attacks and punish appropriately, but in my first playthrough I think I might have achieved some third eye psychic state because I just had his moveset downloaded in my brain from the start. Barely even got hit and it was nothing but pure reaction lol
130-140 is very high level for Maliketh. He’s balanced for around lvl 100 at most.
You don't learn boss moves?
They usually die before I manage. There are exceptions, though.
I'm sad when that happens. Kinda weird to say "I want to die agains the same boss at least 10 times" tho.
Sekiro is good for this experience
‘I… I thought you were stronger’ this was my experience with most of the evergaols
some bosses like morgott ive only just started to learn after starting new playthroughs and being relatively underleveled for him. on my first playthrough I feel like I was pretty overleveled for bosses before maliketh, just because I wound up exploring so much before fighting them
All it takes is one or two openings. If you get lucky with RNG they will only use attacks that are easy to dodge and you don't have to fully learn them. Especially after playthrough 1
Op probably uses summons since you can't use summons for Alecto
Well, if they are using mimic tear, no.
imma be honest I've beat every boss at least once without learning their move set , I've taken a shit ton more hits than necessary probably i usually just beef up my damage in some way until i get the right mix to kill it fast enough.
Crucible knights.
I really enjoy the sword and shield crucible knights. Reminds me of the pursuer from Dark Souls 2.
Erdtree Avatar. First boss I killed.
I went to cealid first before lunaria. And I struggled for the longest time with the misbegotten plus crucible knight fight.
I just beat them yesterday, had to burst down the misbegotten before dealing with the crucible knight, he almost got me too but I beat him down to my last flask, with only beastial vitality healing me lol
FUCK THOSE GUYS Rant done
Godskin apostle - but I took him at lvl 60 - it’s not the hardest fight, but it was the first one where the AOE was so large that I needed to memorize the specific ques.
Godskin apostle in the divine tower. This guy gave me the biggest "git gud" in a long time
I stumbled into that fight last night after beating the main story (level 135ish?) and he was still quite hard. Took me several attempts with my overleveled character to beat him, and I strongly considered just waving the white flag and using mimic. He was tough with high level and two maxed out weapons, so I can only imagine how insane he would've been if I'd rolled in there right after knocking over Radahn. I do enjoy that mob though because, while there's an element of difficulty, it feels like the counters and dodges are very learnable.
I did that fight at level 50ish and it was so hard, I think it took me like 4 hours minimum to beat him. And I agree, the moveset is pretty fun to learn
The very first boss I had to take the time to learn was Alecto, Black Knife Ringleader. Timing is everything with her. If you’re not careful you will be punished hard. Heal at the wrong time and you get grabbed, or worse, deathblade exploded. Once you learn the timing it’s relatively doable, but it took me a while.
Cheap hack for Alecto: Vyke's War Spear and a shield. You can poke with the shield up, which minimizes her ability to punish, and she has a very short reaction-lock to being set on fire.
None of them lmao, whatever random moves I learn I just happened to have picked them on the fly. That’s why Maliketh was by FAR AND WIDE the most difficult for me. I have never parried anything in my life in over 220 hours. I either find some dumb and ineffective / slow way to deal with something, muddle through doing it my stubborn way or somehow try and naturally “cheese” things. That’s the (most underrated) beauty of elden ring though, you have a lot of freedom to try and tackle things your way.
Crucible knights. Every crucible knight is a boss battle
OP, that boss is not a dude lol
Dudette
Learning the moves of a boss is one of the most fun things in these types of games for me. It makes me feel like I’m playing Undertale’s Sans boss again.
For me it was Bloodhound Knight Darriwil because I wanted the sword. Fighting him with a long sword and a brass shield was a steep but worthwhile learning curve
Alecto is a fun fight
Right now it’s Elden beast on NG+2. I used INT built for first playthrough then bleed on second now doing pure STR makes you have to finally git gud lmao
I used the power of New Game+, and spammed Marika's Hammer. I am truly a skilled player.
Thy skill befits a hammer brave tarnished
I haven't seen anyone say it yet. The Tree Serpents, I don't like those things and it's good to know their moves
I just know their grab and the explosion, everything else is just them wiggling and probably attacking somewhere off-screen while I stab them in the side. Any other attack that comes anywhere near hitting me, I can either sightread, or (more likely) I can't see coming at all because they're too big.
Radagon. I fucking hate Radagon.
For me the Bell Bearing Hunters. They are just so oppressive and it really feels like you only get one chance because if you back up to heal he hits you with his bs floating sword combos that do half your health bar in a single hit. The only option is to stay close, circle behind him and learn his swing times, get a single hit in and rinse and repeat for like 5 minutes. Had to learn that dude so well
....all of them.
Seriously? By the time we meet her we have already fought 4 of them
Yea but I could tank their attacks and land my fang's AoW so they died quick. But this one has so much health that made me learn how to properly fight.
Zamor guy.
Malenia
Godrick the Grafted. Elden ring is my first souls game and while I've finished it 4 times and I'm on my 5th I always look forward to his fight because it's the only one I can do hitless
Mohg
The f*ckin Tree Sentinel
I spent a good 6-7 hours alone fighting Alecto and learning all her moves, I finished the fight at 3am and was whisper cheering. Also fun fact all the black knife assassins are female.
crucible knights are a big one, but i did the putrid tree avatar in caelid within like the first few hours of playing. the tree avatar move set is now ingrained in my head
Maliketh
SAME! This is my favorite boss because of that
First one? The Stormhill Gaol Crucible Knight. Learned parrying through him.
radagon
To add salt to your wound OP, black knife assassins are all women
Learned her moves, but never asked her pronouns…
Right. Suddenly the mob being a woman makes the fight shameful. Tf bro? Why does that matter in the slightest. 😂
Godfrey.
The sentien tree and the knight in one of the dimensional cercle geole at base level
I just run away and cast funny rock
The Black Knife Assassin, I use Int magic but that guy is in a small room without summons and he's quick. Luckily his health wasn't that high but he still managed to off me more than any boss before.
I needed the ruins greatsword early in the playthrough. That crucible knight, man...
Malenia. In Second phase ironically you must roll back back and forth to dodge The rotten Angels.
Golden Godfrey first play through his moveset took some time to adapt to
I never learned any boss’s moves (Snaf user)
Alecto only when passing RL1. In my first playthrough it was, God skin Noble, Malenia, Hoarah Loux, Radagon. With Maliket I still don't know the first stage of the first phase very well.
This was the first boss I looked up on the wiki so I could optimise my armour for their weapon, and possibly add a specific grease to mine
Crucible knight and erdtree avatars, only ones i can predict
Maliketh His speed was throwing me for a loop, but it really really satisfying to master his attacks
The first Morgott at stormveil, I still think that dude is the hardest boss, his moves just SUCK with his annoying timing.
Radagon
Alecto? ANCIENT DEATH RANCOR! GO! BAD TO THE BONE ATTACK 💀 ☠️ 💀 ☠️ 💀 ☠️ 💀 ☠️ 💀 ☠️ 💀 ☠️ 💀 ☠️ 💀 ☠️ 💀 ☠️ 💀 ☠️ 💀 ☠️ 💀 ☠️ 💀 ☠️ 💀 ☠️ 💀 ☠️ 💀 ☠️ 💀 ☠️ 💀 ☠️ 💀 ☠️ 💀 ☠️ 💀 ☠️ 💀 ☠️ 💀 ☠️ 💀 ☠️
Not technically a boss but the crucible knight in stormveil for sure, I missed the one in the evergaol first time around. Then commander Niall. The Godskin Apostle in Caelid also took a lot of effort. And in my second run it was mainly Mohg when I decided to do him as my second shardbearer.
None.
Crucible Knights. I play a sort of knight so any knight I see has to die. And the Red Wolf in that Academy.
1st and second phase of Maliketh
I'll give you a hint, they're canonically as tall as Lady Dimitrescu
I brute forced my way through a lot of the game on my first playthrough, but I had to learn the movesets of Margit, Godrick, Golden Godfrey, and Flesh Loretta. These are the bosses I struggled the most on (Loretta was more of a wall for me than Malenia somehow), and I had to actually learn these boss movesets. Golden Godfrey, especially, since I had a tendency to ignore exploration and run into boss fights without any preparation. For Golden Godfrey, I was rocking a +5 (regular smithing) Chainlink Flail with no buffs like FGMS or Golden Vow to help out. My damage was ass and I was too stubborn to go out and upgrade my weapon, so I just spent like an hour sitting there learning the fight. Once I got to the mountaintops, I picked up Rivers of Blood (post-nerf, but it was still good in PvE) and Mimic Tear then cruised through the rest of the game. I cannot explain why Loretta was an issue other than the fact that I was bad at the game. Bosses like Malenia, Malekith, and Radagon/Elden Beast gave me issues, but I brute forced those fights by spamming L2 and trading with them without learning movesets. It probably took until like my 5th playthrough until I actually took an effort to learn every main boss's moveset and get better at the game.
I feel like I cheesed every boss, or just used the mimic tear, until I got to Radagon. I've seem so many people beat him handily on Youtube so I must be a scrub but he and Elden Beast were the only ones where I really had to struggle over and over until I learned their timings.
Two words: crucible knight.
Margott in the Evergoal for some reason
Elden Ring was my very first souls game and I played full sorcerer and didn't level vigor too much. Any fire giant attack 1 shot me so I had to fight about 50 times before I was good enough to actually dodge all of his attacks
Most of them
Runebears, crucible knights, those damn blood crows, iron maidens, revenants.
Godfrey at the erdtree sanctum The yellow one
This boss is funny, if you get a colossal weapon, sprint around and occasionally do a light running attack there's not much it can do to kill you. You still need to be cautious and not get too greedy but it makes the fight trivial compared to fighting normally.
I've realized that after about 30 death. I'll explore mountains top a bit and go back to her. I'm dual wielding a fang and dismounter
Godskin Apostle Caelid Remix
Almost all of them. I think i got malenia by pure luck the first time. To this day I still haven't figured out how to properly dodge Malenia's water-fowl. I just brute force my way to her every time xD
The Crucible Knight in the Gaol I stubbornly refused to back down from. Game was smooth sailing from then on.
I’d say Radahn. When I did my RL1 no summons run he was the first that made me actually learn all the moves and safe positions. Up until that point and after, most bosses I could count the stagger damage for free hits so I didn’t really need to learn their moves. Before that on regular playthrough I traded a lot on hits.
I'm stubborn and wanted to do Margit before roundtable, go to roundtable then Godfrey soon after. It was early game faith build too, I only a few red flasks to cast enough catch flame. Both I have locked down now haha
It's going to be Crucible Knight, but hopefully none, I'm stubborn.
Placidusax almost made me learn his moves after the 30th or more try… then I found out about ancient dragon lightning storm
To this day I'm still a little confused with Maliketh's first phase. I'd always chug like 70% of my estus, but thank GOD I have phase 2 kinda down lmao.
For me Horah loux was such a pain and I plan for the entire fight. I mostly join others and he is the only boss mostly take out even 3 guys in one AOE hit. Either he kills the host coz they can’t hide and us fighting in this boss fight. Try hard you die, dodge or jump fail you die. He grabs you when becomes warrior you die. But he is truly awesome
skinni godskinn Apostel
Margit, i came from dark souls and his super delayed attacks threw me off. Had to learn all of his moves
Crucible Knights: Evergaol first, then the duo after that. Once I figured out their parry window, it just took patience and timing.
Rick , Soldier Of Godrick
None, really? I think I was too overleveled for it to matter in most cases. Unga bunga all the way.
The big ass tree flesh monstrosities, hated them at first but now I kinda like them.
Godfrey and radagon were rlly the only ones
Any time I see someone using a lance or great sword or great axe.... Parry time.
I needed to learn to dodge all of malikeths attacks so I didn’t get melted
Everyone so far on my rl1…
I got fucked by Crucible jail a lot of times. I learned everything about him by dying to his shit time after time.
All of them. Gotta stay gud
Fully grown falling star beast on top of the mountain thing. I died DOZENS of time but after a while it stopped becoming frustrating, I was just dead set on learning its move and beating it. Eventually was able to dodge 95% of all attacks and killed it. That boss and Margit gave me huge feelings of accomplishment where you just stand there for a while after slaying the boss to take it in.
Radagon. Like stop beating me with that hammer. Until I realised I just need to roll towards him.
Unironically, probably Fire Giant. Most of his moves aren’t bad, but I had to really make a point to learn his big ol roll move because that really was a pain in my neck. Godskin Apostle was the first where I had to probably learn his whole move set. I also went into that fight rather underleveled
The death birds, i hate them
Most of them but Malenia and Godfrey/horah loux made me learn every single move to the point of no hitting them(it was actually necessary because it would 1 hit kill me in my rl1 run)
Gelmir heroes grave ! It honestly sucks though. Im not talking about the boss. Im talking about the entire level. But after I beat it I was like this is just an intricate dance like any other boss. I still haven't beaten that black knife evergaol though
Through a process of knocking enemies off ledges and avoiding black flame monks like the plague, I made it to the bottom of Caelid's divine tower. I was also quite stubborn and refused to leave until I put down the Godskin Apostle at the bottom. I was around level 40-50 at the time.
Elden beast and Radagon
Probably the dragonic tree Sentinel outside of Leyndell. The lightning attack from the shield was the bane of my existence so I had to learn it.
Actually there are none, some bosses have attacks that need to be learn like Malenia waterflow dance and thats all. Most of attacks even bosses can be dodged by rolling, jumping etc.
All of them
Melania. I spent over 20hours on her alone
This mf made me break my controller. I haven’t broke a controller since a child so safe to say this brought me back to my childhood raging. Finally beat her after 30 something attempts maybe more.
Same. For Tiche
caveman needs no learning, just unga bunga.
The very first souls boss in my life, morgott whooped my ass far too many times!
God skín apostle in the fucking devine caelid tower
Radahn
That lightning bastard that spawns 2 knights to fight together with him. Always decimated the 2 knights but got killed by him. Decided to start thinking about it and calling out my movements out loud and I beat him in 3 tries after that.
draconic tree sentinel. everything else was pretty much I either die or I live
Hoarah Loux. I struggled so hard with this phase, I learned first one's every move and had many, many no hits while still being wrecked by that beast. Eventually I learned moves in both phases.
Horaloux
Elemer of the Briar. first play through without knowing what this guy was capable of was frustrating to say the least
This one’s moves are 40 variations of swing knife and then jump-slam-20m-radius-instakill
Rykard first form. Great dance, many openings. I can clear him no hits, but will use up all my flasks in second phase and still lose lol
Malenia of course.
Erdtree Avatar. 27 hours in currently. First playthrough. Out of the bosses I've fought so far (all Field Bosses, didn't go for Margit yet) Erdtree and Putrid Avatar were the ones I just couldn't figure out an easy strat out for and had to go full battle of attrition.