My list of hardest to easiest bosses in the game!

Absolutely massive levels of spoilers. You have been warned .

This was created with my first playthrough in mind (basically sword and shield playthrough with ornamental sword) I'm currently playing a sorcery build and some of these would definitely he shifted around. So this is all very subjective and build dependent.

I ommited bosses that are "buffed" versions of common enemies (Mad pumpkin head for example), minus 1 or 2 exceptions. I kept the enemies that are recurring mini bosses ( Tree spirits for example). For  the recurring bosses, I chose the encounter that was the hardest for this list. Also, note, for 80% of the game I had radagons Scarseal which increases stats at the cost of getting hit for higher damage. So that skewed some things a little I'm sure.

Malenia, blade of miquella- God damn this fight was insanely difficult. The first phase itself could easily be one of the hardest fights in the entire game, but then you have phase 2 to deal with. This boss is unrelenting. Her ability to heal with each hit, even if your block is hard to deal with. Her final fantasy limit break attacks are brutal. This and the next 2 bosses I absolutely needed a summon of some kind (be it a spirit ash or another player)

maliketh the black Blade-I rate this one lower than malenia hecause I think the overall fight with malenia is harder. With maliketh, his first phase it's actually not so bad (considering you'll see it like 20 times). There are openings and you can avoid the attacks fairly easy. The 2nd phase is insane. I think if the fight were separated to two separate health bars like malenia, this would be the hardest fight. The 2nd phase is clearly the hardest boss in the game, but it gets knocked to the 2nd Hardest fight because he does only have half of a health bar. This phase is a nightmare, fast moving, insane combos, delayed attacks, and attacks that will damage your health for a second or two after already taking damage.

Radagon/elden beast-I love fighting radagon, elden beast not so much. Radagon is a cool fight in the sense that it just gets continually ramps up the difficulty and adds more to the moveset the more damage you do to him/her. Also love learning the timings to dodge the attacks. It does really feel like you are fighting a God when shards of gold splatter everywhere everytime they strike the ground. Elden beast fails the sheer awesomeness that is radagon by just being an especially difficult game of tag. I feel like so much of this fight is wasted trying to run down the beast once it teleports away. Then whenever it teleports away it does some extremely hard to avoid attack. Either the elden ring attack where the Insignia burns onto the ground and explodes, the sword slashes that are tough to judge the distance of, a grab attack that had a weird hitbox, or the worst of them all, the magic orbs that swarm you like a bunch if mosquitoes and are near impossible to avoid. The fight is quite a spectacle though! This fight could be put above maliketh, but I decided on putting this one third.

Hoara loux- the first phase of Godfrey isn't all that bad. It just takes a couple times to get a feel for his openings. I, however, found his hoara louh phase to be total bullshit. His grabs reminds me of the ogres In sekiro. You feel like you clearly dodged it, but there you are getting mangled into a bloody pulp by roid rage. On top of the bullshit grabs, he is extremely relentless and quick to where you genuinely cannot heal. I died to this phase so many times that I was able to do a no hit run flawlessly every time on Godfrey. I died so many times to hoarah loux that I became an expert of godfrey.

Mohg Lord of Blood- I think he is the easiest of the end game main/optional bosses, which is still saying a lot because outside of maybe death right bird and Commander Niall, he is very clearly a step above all the other bosses in the game in terms of a difficulty spike. Phase 1 is hard , but not insurmountable, phase 2 starts off with a bang with his 3 hit blood loss attack that will basically get you down to near death, then he flies around causing more bleeding and burning. This guy was hard af.

Death Rite bird- the mountaintop of the giants variant of this enemy is an absolute machine. You don't get a whopping 220000 souls on NG if a boss isn't an absolute Chad. This thing is a nightmare! Just ridiculous levels of damage and then he has the AoE black flame attacks that commonly killed you and anyone you were summoned with. This was actually one of the few bosses i don't think I successfully helped anyone beat because he either destroyed me or the host. Bonus points for being absolutely horrifying visually. Double bonus points for coming out of fucking nowhere

Commander Niall- all I can say is thank God he generally does not attack while his spirits are fighting you, if that were the case I am not sure how you would do this fight. I always found myself dying the the dual greatsword spirit more than the other one. In any case, once you get them out of the way, you have to fight Niall. He is extremely difficult to get close to since he loves to spam his frost cyclone, or his flying lightning kick. You have to just pick your attacks wisely and adopt a hit and run playstayle. Even without the spirits I think this would be one of the more difficult fights in the game.

Dragonlord Placidusax-I'm not sure there is a more epic boss in videogames than this guy right here. God DAMN! This is elden rings version of Midir (though i personally think Midir is a tad harder). His first phase isn't too bad, but phase 2 is legendary with him phasing in and out, flying at you, summoning lightning, firing Lasers, it's just an exhilarating final half of a boss fight. Like midir, his difficulty comes from the damage output. Where anything outside of being fully healed is a death.

Astel, stars of Darkness- just the higher level version of astel, but both are the same. When I first came across astel doing Ranni's questline it was actually a "holy fuck" moment. Just the visual design of this boss in the giant cave was so cool. I really think this fight is awesome too. He has so many visually awesome looking attacks. He is definitely hard, but its really rewarding bringing either one down. His only attack that is kinda bullshit is his grab which I am fairly certain kills you no no matter what.

Godskin (Duo) I just used the clearly hardest version of the bossfight which is the dragonskin duo. Personally, I find the fat tire to be much harder the tornado-noodle , but they are equally hard when fighting together. As with all duo fights I needed to bring a summon to the fight for a meat shield.

Lichdragon fortissax- tell me about being thrusted into a boss fight I was utterly unprepared for! First fighting fia's heros was super fucking lame (not even on this list) and for a moment I was absolutely disappointed in the huge ass arena being relegated to a lame ass fight. Boy was I wrong! I entered fia's dream and was greeted with the almighty fortnightsnacks! This dragon was a monster and is the reason he is only 1 of 2 dragons I Included in this list (mostly because most of the dragons have a similar moveset, just with different statuses). He was a totally unique dragon that truly feel is on par with black dragon kalameet in terms of difficulty. Also loved his framerate melting visual effects.Love me a good dragon fight (unless it's DS2 Ancient dragon)

Starscourge Radahn-pre patch radahn squad represent! Wow this guy was a fucking monster. I thought he forsure had to be one of the hardest bosses in the game! How wrong I was :) (thanks endgame!!) Anyway, getting to him was hard once you reached the point he decided to pull an Aldrich. Then once you reached him he had a movement that was sooooo bizarre and hard to read with delays left and right. Then he had the magic gravity swords. Thats all well and good. But phase 2? BITCH PHASE 2?? How many times did I die to his dinosaur extinction event entrance? Too many! How many times did I die to his meteorite magic? Too many times. How many times did I die to phase 2? TOO MANY TIMES. however, I genuinely didn't mind dying to this fight. It's just an all around epic fight. 10/10 would die to a lot again. Radahn is a badass

Fire Giant- first of all, bruh. The leg snapping in half and then his body turning into a face was classic "wtf miyazaki?!" But outside of that this boss was fucking hard! The first phase is your typical giant fight where you just shred their Achilles tendon over and over again. However, he had some difficuly to read attacks due to his large-ness that would more often then not be hits until you watched them a few times. His 2nd phase was just really difficult to deal with with him rolling all over the place and making it hard to reach him with his Insane fire magic. This fight was an absolutely spectacle all around though!

Ulcerated Tree spirit (haligtree)-THIS MOTHER FUCKER HERE! OH MY GOD. This is a"non boss" variant of a boss I am including. Ths asshole sitting in the pool of rot is the worst! Having to fight it in a pool of Rot on a tiny little island with its what-in-the-actual-fuck-is-going-on movest its infuriating. He also did High damage to the point that scarlet rot would have a very clear and tangible effect to where you would die from rot after getting hit. This is the worst, most annoying version of this damn enemy.

Sir Gideon Ofnir- he was magic spam condensed into a singular ball of hatred and disgust. If you didn't get totally melted by his Insanely OP magic, you would only be able to get like 2 hits in before he turned into a Fucking flower and exploded. Rinse and Repeat this over and over again. He is literally a magic spam invader with boss level HP and damage. Ughh

Alecto Black Knife Ring leader- dear GOD this was a black knife assassin totally buffed to oblivion. Holy hell! It's red laser attack that drained health was insanely strong and would commonly kill you while it drained your health, she has much more oomph behind her attacks, and in general has some moves that are tough to read. I got killed by her grab so many times trying to pop a heal. At least she gives you , arguably, the best summon in the whole game.

Elemer of the Briar- LOVE this fight. It's equal parts difficult and fun. He has a really hard moveset to figure out with his magic sword but BOY is it satisfying taking him down. Genuinely one of my favorite bosses in the game.

Erdtree Avatar (haligtree) - the hardest version of this enemy is not even a boss version! NOPE the hardest version is the non boss variants in ephael. One of them has you fight the enemy on a narrow walkway where isn't will seemingly  spam its scarlet rot ground pound over and over again, as well as its death by a thousand stars attack. Both of these attacks were minorly inconvenient when fighting in the open world, but on this walkway they are a nightmare. The 2nd one is surrounded by knights and ballistas. So it's a very tough enemy surrounded in a gank of tough enemies, you also got a pathetic amount of souls for beating either, but at least the walkway one gives you its weapon.

Dragon Kin soldier(ainsel river) this version is the hardest IMO. The siofra River version could be fought on horseback, the lake of Rot version doesn't really stand much of a Chance as you'll like have some very strong gear at that point, and you'll have so many crimson flasks that the scarlet rot isn't ad much of a threat as it seems. The ainsel River version is the hardest I think. It will hit devastatingly hard at the point you fight it, and it's 2nd phase Introduces frostbite lighting AoE attacks that is hard as fuck to avoid. And it generally just had an absolutely tanky amount of health.

Crucible knight (duo)- Another borderline impossible fight without summons. You cannot do anything if you don't have a summon. They will gang up and you're fucked. This enemy isn't so bad 1v1, but 2v1 is a fucking joke. Thank God for statues of Marika, or else you'd have to go through hell in the hero grave you had to go through to get to this point.

Gargoyle(duo/black blade??)- I'm having a hard time between either the duo, or just the singular black blade kindred. So I am doing both here. I know I am not the only one when you saw "gargoyle" as the boss fight in nokstella and didn't immediately go "oh fuck there's gonna be more than 1" and bam player 2 entered the game. Pretty freaking insane difficulty if you didn't have a summon. Black blade kindred was just an absolute monster of a boss. His death beam attack would one shot well into the early end game. I think we all collectively shit ourselves the first time we came across him!

Morgott,the Omen king- just a harder version of margit with a really dope 2nd phase with the weapon rain attack. Great fight!

Royal Revenant- outside of the Rune Bear, theae are my 2nd least favorite enemies in the game. The boss version in the ruins before carian manor is the worst of the bunch. You have to fight it in a tiny fucking room. It would absolutely melt your shield and stamina with his 7000 hit combo, it's poison vomit had literally aimbot hacks, and it was just relentless in its assault. Fuck this guy and all the times you fight it.

Godfrey, first elden lord(spirit version)- just a very aggressive, hard hitting boss. So hard to heal against. But generally was a typical big 2 legged warrior from software boss. Pretty balanced fight overall though.

Red wolf of Radagon- this boss was pretty difficult. Always was a pro at avoiding your attacks, and it's sword would du huge damage. Also was a pain to heal against if you did get hit. It's variant in the consecrated snowfield might legitimately be one of the hardest encounters in the game, not even joking.

Rykard lord of Blasphemy- I had no issue with phase 1. It's actually one of the easier fights if phase one is the only thing considered. However, phase 2 killed me SO MANy TIMES  when he summoned fucking Ragnarock to rain destruction down on you. There is so much chaos going on that you don't even realize he Is charging an insta death mega slam with his sword lol. That really is the sole difficulty of this fight, that freaking single attack

Godrick the Grafted- not Including godefroy because he is an inferior version of Godrick. Just like with all the main bosses (except rennalla lol) you definitely need to learn the moveset before you have a chance. His movements are so bizarre that he was quite an obstacle for the first main boss. Then gets phase 2 where he can burn you from insane distaces, grab you, mix combos up with his dragon arm. Fun fight once you get him down though!

Grafted scion- these guys are freaking hard to deal with! They are just so difficult to read and deal huge damage. I still had trouble killing the one you encounter at the beginning of the game when you can go back there later.

Draconic Tree Sentinel- including this as a it is a unique variant of the below enemy and I find them to be harder, especially because you are forced to fight one without a horse. They hit insanely hard and phase 2 have a bunch crazy AoE attacks that deal massive damage. Tree Sentinel- I am including any version as they have a similar difficulty whenever you fight them, no matter the level (great balancing!!). You should definitely fight on horseback, but it can definitely wreck torrent if you aren't careful and he has a pretty large range of attacks to hit on almost a 360 degree angle. You can't hug the rump on these guys!

Margit the Fell Omen- I think this guy stomped everyone in their first playthrough. The first mandatory boss, he defintely was a tough one to learn! The delays in his attacks were super difficult to read. Great first mandatory boss though!

Loretta knight of the haligtree I really enjoy this fight. The arena is cool and she had some fun attacks to dodge(like the bow and arrow!) I think this boss strikes a great balance in not being cheap, but not being a pushover either

Royal knight Loretta- similar sentiments as above. Loretta is one of my favorite bosses in the game in both iterations.

Crystallian (scarlet rot trio)- ughhhhhh fuck this fight if you do not have a strike weapon. The arena is tiny, between all 3 of them they can damage you and long, medium, and short range AAANNNDDD afflict scarlet rot on top of it. Having to try and get each one staggered before being able to damage was actually pretty hard to manage, on top of dealing with scarlet rot.

Erdtree Burial watchdog(duo) A boss that is no problem on its own, but can be fought with a gank of imps, or can be fought as a duo. I personally found the duo one to be very tricky as a sword and shield melee character. They would frequent alternate their floating smash attack which would leave literally no openings, and they would not separate from one another. Had to resort to a spirit summon on this one to attract attention so I could actually win.

Rune Bear- I fucking hate this enemy. Legitmately the one enemy in this entire game where I will just run past them instead of fighting them. Because of that, I am adding this enemy because there is a " boss" variant of the enemy. It takes forever to stagger, they have huge health pools, do very high damage and  have really annoying hitboxes, and in the arena you fight it in, I found myself getting jammed against the wall quite a bit and also had to deal with a camera. I just seriously hate these guys. Most frustrating enemy in the game IMO

Regal Ancestral Spirit- just the harder version of Ancestral Spirit with a few different tricks up it's sleeve, mainly its ability to heal itself while also draining you health, or even heal itself while NOT draining your health. It hits pretty hard compared to its weaker version and can take a LOOONGG time when fighting solo.

Demi Human Queen(gelmir version)- I don't think the Demi Human Queen by herself is difficult. However the version you fight on mount gelmir right before that crystal wizard is soooooo annoying because of all the sorcerers that spam magic at you. You'll have to deal with all of them first while she chases after you. Combining her with the gank sorcerers makes this a challenging fight

Magma Wyrm- this boss is more just annoying and tedious than anything. You'll have to chase it back and forth and avoid the lava when it crawls towards you/away from you, or you'll have to wait out lava to get some attacks in. Phase 2 is much less annoying and also fairly straightforward, they can just deal some hefty damage.

nights calvary I'm not counting the duo fight as a singular fight since you can bait one and leave the other. So im basing this on a singular enemy. I just circled around and charged a heavy attack on my horse until his horse died and you can end them with a critical while they are on the ground. But they can be annoying to fight sometimes depending on the environment.

Rennala Queen of the full moon- this was a beautiful looking fight, but wasn't very hard. The first phase is literally almost impossible to die on. The 2nd phase isn't so bad as her attacks are easy to dodge. The only time this fight becomes a huge threat is when she is almost dead and has the ability to summon a dragon, but she is so easy to damage that you pretty much can blink and miss this phase.

Bloodhound knight- for some reason I struggled a little bit on this Bloodhound you fight right before meeting latenna. It hit pretty hard for that point in the game. Difficult to get a heal against too if you mess up. Not overly hard once you figure them out.

Cemetery shade this was the first boss that killed me quite a few times. Between the large group of skeletons in the room, his paralyzing attack, and his ability to Inflict blood loss instant death with his combos, this was a tricky boss to the down. Thankfully, it's health seemed pretty low for a boss, so you could get him down after an opening or two.

Adan thief of Fire- i thinkhe was mostly hard because he was the first boss I fought in liurnia. I felt like there was a noticeable difficulty spike on a first playthrough between liurnia and limgrave. He just hit pretty hard when your first starting out. I could see him be much easier if you explored liurnia more and came back to him later. So, like a few of these bosses, it just happens to be subjective of when you actually run Into them

Wormface- his moveset isn't hard. Just a typical giant enemy, where you should hug the feet. However, his blighted death smoke is actually pretty hard to avoid and it takes a while to go away, so it's not unlikely you will get an instant death. I found myself getting stuck on trees and stuff trying to avoid him and it took a Few tries to not get blighted.

Ancient hero of Zamor- he has a pretty strange moveset to get used to and has frostbite which is always an annoying  status effect to deal with.

Leonine misbegotten I'm putting his first iteration here just because you fight him as a pretty low level if you're exploring around limgrave on a first playthrough. So you're pretty weak and he can be one of the first bosses you even face.

Battlemage Hughes- his difficuly mostly just comes from how strong his attacks are. He is easily downed, just can hit hard

OmenKiller- the difficulty with this one is the dogs. Basically Capra demon, but with a much bigger arena. Once you get the dogs put of the picture he is just a big, slow moving enemy with lots of openings.

Bols Carian Knight -again a common troll enemy. Just Including it because it is an evergaol boss. Pretty easy to just hit the and dodge.

Alabaster lord- we see these enemies in multiple locations. I am Including this just because he is an Evergaol boss. Nothing special here, same with the other variants. Pretty typical sword enemy. Easy to block and hit. Not really much of a threat. Can be annoying with gravity magic at times.

Tibia mariner(altus)- pretty easy enemy. Very telegraphed attacks. His summoned mobs can be pretty much ignored if on horseback. This version on alrus is probably the hardest just because of the giant skeletons he can summon.

Necromancer Garrus- nothing special. Typical NPC fight. Easy to stunlock

Patches- not much to say. Not intended to reapply be a boss. Easy to damage, just have to get to half health before he surrenders. I count him as a boss because he is typically not encounter again and is a "unique" fight.

And there we have it! I think I got most of the bosses on here. Like is said there are quite a few that I skipped because I felt like they were an embarrassment of boss (Scaly misbegotten anyone?)

Right now as a sorcerer I would move the scarlet rot crystallians much higher. Had to abandon ship and will come back later :)