Elden Ring bosses in order

Want to know how to beat the Elden Ring bosses in order? The most defining moments in any of the Souls-like games are the tough boss fights. They can be tricky for several reasons: some are hard to hit consistently, and others can squash you with just one attack. Despite having hundreds of monsters, you only need to beat 12 Elden Ring bosses in this order to finish the game.

In addition to a list of mandatory boss encounters, our list of the Elden Ring bosses in order includes where you can find them, and what items they drop when you beat them. We’ve also collated the top five bosses in order of difficulty. It’s worth noting that, generally speaking, dungeon bosses are not as hard to kill as the major bosses. However, there are exceptions, so upgrading the Flash of Wondrous Physick with Elden Ring crystal tears can make all the difference in one of the best PC games of all time.

Main Elden Ring bosses in order

You may think you need to beat all Shardbearers to complete Elden Ring, but this is far from the truth. You only need two Great Runes to access the Altus Plateau, then defeat the Great Rune bearer in Leyndell, Royal Capital to unlock the doorway to the Erdtree. From here, you start the final part of the game, where you must travel to the Crumbling Farum Azula, before returning to Leyndell, now an Ashen Capital, to fight against the final gauntlet of bosses.

Unless you’re aiming to complete a speed run, we don’t recommend that you solely focus on these boss fights. Instead, you should at least do a little bit of grinding or seek out some of the best Elden Ring weapons to aid you in combat, as well as the best Elden ring armor to survive fearsome attacks.

Here are the main Elden Ring bosses in order:

• Margit the Fell Omen (required boss to reach Godrick)
• Godrick the Grafted (beat for one of the two required Great Runes)
• Red Wolf of Radagon (required boss to reach Rennala)
• Rennala, Queen of the Full Moon (beat for one of the two required Great Runes)
• God-devouring Serpent / Rykard, Lord of Blasphemy (beat for one of the two required Great Runes)
• Starscourge Radahn (beat for one of the two required Great Runes)
• Magma Wyrm Makar (optional)
• Godfrey, First Elden Lord
• Morgot, the Omen King
• Fire Giant
• Godskin Duo
• Maliketh, the Black Blade
• Sir Gideon Ofnir, the All-Knowing
• Godfrey, First Elden Lord / Hoarah Loux
• Radagon of the Golden Order / Elden Beast

All Elden Ring bosses

To make it easy for you to see which ones you’ve beaten and which remain alive, you can find a complete list of all Elden Ring bosses locations and loot drops, including the best Elden Ring talismans, below, sorted by region. Next to each entry, you’ll also find any special conditions you need to complete to fight them, such as one of the many Elden Ring quests.

Here are all of the bosses in Elden Ring:

Limgrave

Stormveil Castle

Weeping Peninsula

Liurnia of the lakes

Caelid

Dragonbarrow

Altus Plateau

Mt. Gelmir

Leyndell, Royal Capital

Forbidden Lands

Consecrated Grounds

Mountaintops of the Giants

Miquella’s Haligtree

Siofra River

Deeproot Depths

Lake of Rot

Crumbling Farum Azula

Leyndell, Ashen Capital

Elden Ring bosses in order of difficulty

Here are the top five Elden Ring bosses in order of difficulty along with some vital tips on how to defeat them. It goes without saying that there are spoilers below.

Malenia, Blade of Miquella

Who else? Melania easily takes the top spot as the most difficult Elden Ring boss of the lot – in fact, she’s a strong contender for the hardest boss in FromSoftware’s stable. We’ve even got the stats to prove it thanks to Bandai Namco, who recently confirmed that players have engaged her in combat a whopping 329 million times, accounting for 5.5% of all boss attempts in the expansive open-world game.

Melania is fiercely aggressive and agile, but her extreme difficulty lies in her ability to heal after every successful attack, as well as the health that she regains during the transition to her second phase. Many of her attacks are a one-shot execution, most notably her lethal Waterfowl Dance. Your best bet is to rely on your summons to take some of the heat, keep your distance, and take advantage of her low poise to interrupt her less deadly attacks. Of course, can you really say you’ve beaten her if you haven’t rolled credits with the Elden Ring mod that transforms every enemy into Melania installed?

Margit the Fell Omen

While he’s not the most difficult on paper, Margit the Fell Omen is the first of the main Elden Ring bosses and can really test your mettle while you’re just beginning to find your feet in Limgrave. His attack patterns follow the usual tricks of the trade as far as FromSoftware is concerned, incorporating slow wind-up attacks to bait an early dodge with a flurry of attacks that barely give you room to heal.

Margit is an education for anyone who needs to brush up on stamina management since many of his attacks can break through your defences while blocking. Instead, rely on dodging, and take advantage of an opening to go on the offensive and induce a stagger. Mastering this fight will stand you in good stead for all of the other Elden Ring bosses that follow. On subsequent playthroughs, you might want to partake in a bit of jolly cooperation and help 20 Elden Ring players beat Margit, or try to defeat him using a harp as a PC controller.

Starscourge Radahn

Starscourge Radahn needs no introduction as one of the most difficult Elden Ring bosses, because the opening moments of this battle do a good job illustrating it by forcing you to charge headlong across a desolate battlefield towards a demigod. To call Radahn intimidating is something of an understatement. He’s flipping enormous, and remarkably quick despite his size. You can use summons to redirect his volley of arrows during the first half of the fight, but they won’t do you much good after he launches himself into the air and comes crashing back down as a flaming meteorite.

The Elden Ring Radahn boss fight is certainly one to remember, enshrouded in a festival of madness and fury, and it scored an easy win for the PCGamesN PC Gaming Awards 2022. You don’t just have to take our word for it – it’s Miyazaki’s favourite Elden Ring boss fight, too.

Maliketh, the Black Blade

Maliketh, the Black Blade follows a long-standing tradition of FromSoftware throwing an easy boss at you, only for that boss to transform into the stuff of nightmares. You begin this encounter by facing off against the Beast Clergyman, an aggressive boss with a suspiciously straightforward moveset. He transforms into Maliketh, the Black Blade once half his health is depleted – and if you thought the Beast Clergyman was aggressive, wait until you encounter Maliketh.

His eponymous blade inflicts damage over time and can trigger an AoE explosion when he plunges it into the ground. Thankfully, you can use the pillars dotted around the arena to hamper his mobility and block his projectiles, and many of his regular attacks can be avoided by rolling into him. Be sure to punish any openers he gives you, but be wary of his reach if you’re looking to put some distance between you both. Just be warned: defeating Maliketh too early could break one of the best Elden Ring quests involving Nepheli Loux.

Radagon of the Golden Order / Elden Beast

All your previous battles with Elden Ring bosses culminate in one final explosive encounter with Radagon, head of the Golden Order and wielder of the hammer that shattered the Elden Ring. Radagon is a fierce combatant in his own right, but the struggle to best him pales in comparison to what awaits after his transformation into the Elden Beast.

This spectral deity has a gargantuan health pool and wide-ranging attacks that are easily anticipated yet difficult to dodge. It also has a nasty habit of repositioning itself as soon as you’ve got it exactly where you want it, forcing you to sprint towards its incoming attacks. To win this fight you need oodles of stamina and a keen dodge, but be warned – if you fall to the Elden Beast, you’ll be forced to defeat Radagon before you can confront it all over again.

Those are all of the Elden Ring bosses. If you’re having trouble against any of them, you might want to swing by the Elden Ring Smithing Stone upgrade locations to upgrade your gear, or look into the Elden Ring respec system to fine-tune your build. Alternatively, if you’re just starting with the RPG game, here are the Elden Ring dungeon locations so you can find some of the optional bosses and the best Elden Ring builds for fun and victory. You may also want to know how to play Elden Ring multiplayer, so you and a friend can hunt the bosses down together in co-op.