How to Beat the Bosses in Elden Ring: A Beginner's Guide

This guide teaches you how to defeat the boss encounters in Elden Ring. It explains the basics of what a boss fight is, what to look for, how to react properly and use the weaknesses of the opponent you face!

This guide will give you tips and recommendations without spoiling your fun. The images we use are from early game bosses, to preserve your excitement and lessen the risk of you seeing something that has not already been shown in trailers and previews.

How to get help with defeating a tough boss

The difficulty of boss fights changes dramatically depending on how much help you want. The Ashes (Pokemon) provide a fair bit of help, some are dedicated to tanking a bunch of damage while others emphasize damage or distracting a large number of enemies.

If you feel you need additional help, you can often summon an NPC helper or if you play online, you can activate a summon sign that a friendly stranger has placed on the ground near the entrance to the boss or use the Small Golden Effigy at a nearby summoning pool to ask for help.

Summoning an NPC helper in a boss fight in Elden Ring

I feel that both of these options can trivialize the boss fights by making them too easy, but you do you. Elden Ring is an extremely difficult game even for experienced gamers, so if you’re a more casual player or otherwise don’t want such a challenging experience, these can enable you to actually enjoy the game when you otherwise couldn’t.

Not everyone enjoys the bosses either, they are a bit different from the rest of the game, so it is completely reasonable if you don’t want to bother with them

I enjoy learning the dance of each boss and it feels incredible to finally beat something truly challenging, so I avoid using helpers when possible and sometimes prefer to level up more as opposed to using them.

The rest of these tips (and my boss guides) will focus on how to fight the boss without brute-forcing them with helpers.

What to do with your Runes before a boss fight

Give up any runes you have on hand. There will be an attempt where you won’t be able to pick them up. You will get exhausted from pulling the fight repeatedly and you can get defeated extremely quickly by making a couple of dumb mistakes in a row or by just ignoring the boss and rushing over to pick up your lost Runes each time.

Runes left on the ground from a previously failed attempt at a boss fight vs Leonine Misbegotten in Elden Ring — Don’t bother picking these up.

Spend down to as close to zero as possible before doing a boss by leveling up. Do not expect or try to hold onto Runes in your pocket unless you are extremely confident that you can beat it in 1-2 attempts.

If you don’t have enough Runes on hand, this is a great time to consume enough Great Runes in your pocket so you can level up.

How Boss Fights work in Elden Ring

Boss fights in Elden Ring (and souls-likes in general) are a dance of openings created by the length of attack animations. You attack, present an opening, the boss capitalizes and attacks, you dodge, then capitalize on their opening with another attack. Rinse and repeat.

For melee players, the openings can be shorter and less pronounced, so you might only be able to get a single swing in while for ranged players, the attack sequences can be longer and more complicated, requiring you to dodge multiple times, but you might have a longer opening alongside it.

Openings, Fear, and Greed during a boss fight

You have to decide what you’re going to do with every opening, either attack or drink from a Flask of Tears (HP or FP regeneration). You typically don’t have time to do both.

It’s ridiculously tempting to heal immediately after you take a big hit from a boss, but you have to wait for your opening. Your Flasks of Tears are finite. It does you no good to drink in the middle of a boss attack sequence only to lose all the health you just healed.

The boss will hit you while you are healing if you don't wait for a proper opening

There isn’t always enough time to heal either, so you’ll sometimes just get defeated right there if you don’t evade the attack.

You will always get the HP or FP if a Flask of Tears is consumed, though in the case of HP, it might be removed immediately if you get hit. If you don’t get the HP or FP, a use of the Flask is not consumed.

Towards the end of the fight or during a long opening, it’s super tempting to try and finish the boss off right now rather than wait for the next opening. Don’t get greedy!

Don't rush to finish off a boss when it's at low health — I chose to regenerate my HP (and then FP) here even though I might have been able to defeat the boss during this opening. Not worth the risk.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten greedy, trying to get just one more hit in only to get defeated and have to do the whole fight again. You have to resist the urge to get one more hit in.

How to decide on Heal vs Attack in a boss fight

You can almost never attack and heal in the same opening unless the opening is super long (in which case you might be giving up a lot of damage) or the boss is entering a new phase.

I recommend prioritizing healing if you’re a single hit away from getting defeated by the boss or you can take full benefit of one sip from a Flask. Don’t waste your Flasks on only healing half of what they’re capable of.

If you’re getting defeated in single or even two hits from full health from most attacks, you’re not a high enough level for that area and should come back later.

How to decide on Heal vs Attack in a boss fight

Once you’ve pulled out your Flask and have begun drinking, you can take multiple gulps by pressing the drink button again.

The animation is faster than pulling out the Flask multiple times, but some openings are just barely long enough for a single gulp, so only do it if you have enough time.

You may need to tweak your balance of Crimson and Cerulean Flasks of Tears for boss fights. I know I tend to not need quite as many Cerulean Flasks for a single boss.

Only do this if you keep getting close to beating the fight but see that you have an excess of one and deficiency of the other. You can also tweak your armor and talismans to better match the damage dealt by the boss.

For example, if the boss deals a lot of fire damage, you might want to put on armor that is better at mitigating fire damage even if it mitigates less damage overall.

If you don’t need to heal, commit the full opening to dealing damage unless you’re too low on stamina, then you might just want to give up an opening to be in a better position.

How to evade attacks

Evading an attack from a boss in Elden Ring

Since most boss attacks do a ton of damage, you can’t effectively use shields unless they have very high stability or have applied magic or a special skill to them. I don’t have much experience with parrying in souls-likes, so I’m not sure how well it works against bosses in Elden Ring. Worth a try though!

Most players will have to dodge attacks, and for this, you need to make sure you have medium or light equipment load. Be patient and observe the animation. There will almost always be some sort of wind-up or telegraph for the attack. Don’t worry about dodging until the boss has committed and begins accelerating.

It’s actually harmful to spam dodge during the wind-up / telegraph because you waste stamina and will likely not have dodge immunity active when the damage goes out.

The boss also follows you in often physically impossible ways while in the wind-up animation, they don’t lock onto a position until they commit to the attack.I know it will be tempting to spam dodge, so I’m gonna say it again: do not spam dodge!

Which direction to dodge in depends on the type of attack and where you want to be. For horizontal swipes and ground pounds, you want to dodge forward or backward. For vertical slices and stabs, you typically want to dodge to the side. This gets a little more complicated if you have a specific location you want to be in.

For example, you may need to dodge diagonally forward to the left or right to evade a stab so you can get beside or behind the boss. Sometimes bosses don’t hit as hard if you get hit by their arm rather than their weapon or may not do some attacks if you can manage to stay close.

How to identify openings and beat the Boss

You will need to get familiar with the telegraphs for different attacks and attack sequences. The sooner you can identify the attack, the sooner you’ll know when it’s over and can begin your counter attack. This can easily result in additional swings, shots, or casts.

For more complicated sequences, sometimes you have to take a step back and actively think about how to dodge each component, and you can’t do that unless you have a rough idea of what the attack is. In my specific boss guides, I’ll try my best to identify these longer attack sequences and explain how to deal with them.

As soon as you know the attack sequence is over and have exited your final dodge, your opening begins and you can attack or heal or spend your opening however you like. Don’t get greedy.

Again, you will get anxious as the boss is almost out of health or flasks and want to finish them off. This will usually not work, especially if you’re not at full health. Just wait for the next opening, you’ve made it this far. It’s just one more!

How to manage your Stamina

Don’t overextend yourself. Make sure you have enough stamina left for 2-3 dodges after attacking to evade the next attack sequence.

You might be able to get away with only having enough for 1 dodge if the boss is mostly doing singular attacks to you. Don’t worry about how much stamina you have until you get to this point.

Remember to take a break

If you’ve been going at it for a while and you’re just spinning your wheels in the mud, not really getting the boss’ health bar lower than you have before with almost every pull, especially if you feel a bit exhausted, take a break.

You start getting sloppy and picking up some bad habits without realizing it. Taking a short break, like getting out of your chair and taking a drink of water can help you to clear your mind.

Resting near a Site of Grace in Elden Ring. Taking breaks is important

When you come back, you may find that you’ll get further than ever before after the first or second attempt as you are refreshed and your brain has had time to process your practice as you remember what you’re supposed to do and forget the little mistakes.

You are now, hopefully, familiar with how to beat bosses in the game. I highly recommend you the Ultimate Guide to Elden Ring for beginners.

You can check out the Elden Ring Boss Fights Guides here on VULKK.com for some helpful tips on specific boss encounters. Or read one of our growing collection Beginner’s Guides to learn how various mechanics and systems in the game work to take advantage.