Elden Ring Bears Guide: How to beat Runebear and all other Bears

This guide will help you learn how to fight Bears in Elden Ring. The Runebear boss shares the same attacks and strategy with the other bears!

Where and when you have to fight Bears

The bears in Elden Ring are challenging foes that you’ll encounter throughout your quest to become the Elden Lord.

Thankfully, all bears feature the same moveset, so once you learn how to fight one, you can beat them all.

Your first encounter with a bear might be on the path near the Mistwoods on your way to get the Flask of Wondrous Physick, or it could be the Runebear boss at the end of the Earthbore Cave where the developer FromSoftware trolls you several times.

In this guide, I’ll explain how to fight bears using footage from my fight with the Runebear.

Bear Mechanics and Strategy

The key thing to keep in mind when fighting bears in Elden Ring is that they’re super fast and hit pretty hard. It’s basically impossible to go out of range and still have enough time to do anything substantial. Bears will almost always chase you down and hit you before you have time to finish drinking from your flask.

You’re just wasting your time or flask if you try to run away. If you need to recover some HP or FP, you have to wait near the bear and begin drinking from your Flask as soon as the bear finishes its attack sequence.

Once in a while, the bear will do an attack with a bit of animation end lag allowing for a longer opening or temporarily run away from you. It’s best to wait until then to replenish your HP or FP if possible.

It’s safest directly to the side behind its front arms or completely behind the bear. I don’t think I would recommend spending extra time trying to get behind it since they can turn so quickly that you aren’t gaining much, but it is technically safe and likely superior if you find yourself there if the bear charges past you.

The core idea here is that you have to avoid being in front of the bear as much as possible.

As a Sorcerer, I’ve found it’s best to use the Carian Slicer spell against bears. You might also be able to use the Swift Glintstone Shard at point-blank range, but you’ll deal more damage with Carian Slicer since the attack speed is similar and you have to be in melee range anyway.

You could also just attack with melee weapon attacks, though I’d recommend imbuing it with the power of magic using Scholar’s Armament.

Pound and Grab

Both attacks have incredibly similar startup animations and danger zones. They also both deal a ton of damage, so there isn’t much value in differentiating them. Both attacks start with the bear standing up on its hind legs.

With the pound, the bear slams both its claws against the ground.

This attack takes a huge chunk of your HP!

If the bear decides to pick you up instead, it’ll give you a couple of bear hugs and then toss you to the ground.

The key thing with both the pound and grab attacks is to just dodge away in any direction except towards it. You might be safe if the attack hits during the immunity frames, but it’s better if you can outrange it. The boss will rotate slightly to try to hit you, but he doesn’t ever move during the attack.

Roar

If you’re super far away, bears can also do a ranged shout attack where the soundwave quickly travels to you and damages you upon impact. I don’t think it’s possible to get far enough away unless you run away from them at the same time that they run away from you.

The attack itself is super fast, so be prepared to dodge to the side in case it decides to roar at you when you’re far away.

Bleed

The bear’s claw attacks inflict bleed, but I think you’ll probably be defeated by the time the bleed meter fills up if you get hit by that many attacks. You really don’t want to get hit by any of the bear’s attacks because it’s so difficult to heal while fighting them.

Where to find the Runebear in Elden Ring

The Runebear is a boss at the end of the Earthbore cave. In order to get the full experience, I’m going to keep this section light on details. First, travel to this location on the northern side of the Weeping Peninsula in Limgrave:

You’ve arrived at the right place when you see this:

It might need to be nighttime for anything special to happen. It was at night when I experienced it, but that might have just been a coincidence. That’s all I’ll explain, but I’ll leave you with a single word: follow.

What rewards do you get for defeating the Runebear?

Defeating the Runebear gives you the Spelldrake Talisman and 2,600 Runes.

The Spelldrake Talisman boosts magic damage negation while you wear it.

You can also take a look at this one: How to defeat Bosses in Elden Ring: a beginner’s guide. This is a comprehensive collection of tips to help you beat any boss in the game.