Promised Consort Radahn is the toughest Shadow of the Erdtree boss in this ranking, with Rellana, Messmer, and Bayle close behind. This is a subjective list, not a universal difficulty measurement: build, skill, progression, and encounter choices can change how hard any fight feels.
How this ranking judges difficulty
The order weighs four things: how severely a mistake is punished, how quickly and continuously a boss attacks, how much its moveset changes across phases, and how much the arena or camera complicates a clean read. Build and progression matter too: a setup with the right defenses, damage type, or range can make an encounter feel dramatically different. Other published rankings also disagree on placements, even when they identify the same hardest contenders; Den of Geek, Twinfinite, and GamingBolt each present editorial judgments rather than a shared difficulty scale (Den of Geek; Twinfinite; GamingBolt).
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This list focuses on 15 substantial DLC encounters, including optional fights. Optionality is not a discount on difficulty: a boss can be avoidable and still be one of the expansion’s most demanding challenges.
The 15 most challenging Shadow of the Erdtree bosses
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Promised Consort Radahn
Radahn earns the top spot through sustained punishment and relentless tempo. Fast combinations, charges, and lunges leave little room to recover from a bad read, while his second phase adds further pressure to an already demanding fight. Twinfinite and GamingBolt both place him at the hardest end of their rankings. His damage can make even a single missed dodge costly; surviving often depends on learning when a sequence is truly finished rather than trying to force an opening.
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Rellana, Twin Moon Knight
Rellana’s speed and long combos make defensive timing the central test. She layers physical attacks with magic and fire, then broadens the threat in her second phase with large-area attacks. Twinfinite ranks her second. A build that can withstand or avoid her mixed damage has a meaningful advantage, but the main challenge remains identifying the brief moments when her strings end.
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Messmer the Impaler
Messmer pressures the player with spear thrusts and flame attacks, then shifts substantially in the second phase. That escalation means a strategy that works early may need to be adjusted rather than repeated. Twinfinite places him third and GamingBolt also highlights the two-phase increase in difficulty. His rank reflects both the intensity of his attacks and the extra adaptation demanded by the phase change.
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Bayle the Dread
Bayle’s attacks cover wide areas, and the second phase adds broad lightning threats while preserving narrow opportunities to strike. The scale of the fight can make positioning and attack recognition harder than simply staying close or retreating. Both Twinfinite and GamingBolt treat him as a major challenge, though their lists differ in the exact order of the top contenders.
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Commander Gaius
Gaius combines rapid pursuit with forceful attacks that can make distance feel temporary. The challenge is managing his approach and finding a safe response without committing to a punish too early. Twinfinite includes him among the expansion’s upper-tier fights; his placement here reflects the pressure of handling both his movement and attack timing at once.
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Scadutree Avatar
The Scadutree Avatar tests patience across a multi-stage encounter. Its reach and area coverage can make close-range opportunities difficult to use safely, while the phase progression requires repeated execution rather than one successful opening. Twinfinite places it among the DLC’s more demanding bosses. The fight rewards recognizing which attacks leave a genuine recovery window instead of treating every pause as an invitation.
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Golden Hippopotamus
The Golden Hippopotamus is dangerous partly because of where the fight takes place. Its confined arena makes camera management important, and dodging without accounting for the room can send the player into a corner. Den of Geek specifically notes these arena and camera pressures, while also acknowledging that build suitability affected how difficult the encounter felt to its writer. This is a good example of why rankings shift with player setup and perspective.
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Divine Beast Dancing Lion
The Dancing Lion’s shifting movement and broad attacks can make its next direction difficult to read. The pressure comes less from a simple exchange of blows than from staying oriented while it changes position and covers space. It appears in the reviewed top-15 rankings, though its placement varies—another sign that a boss’s perceived difficulty depends on what a player finds hardest to manage.
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Romina, Saint of the Bud
Romina mixes mobile attacks with sweeping, area-covering threats. Her movement can make a punish difficult to line up, and a player who misreads the coverage risks taking damage while trying to close in. She appears in the reviewed rankings, but sources do not agree on a single placement. Her challenge is best described as a combination of spacing and attack recognition rather than one overwhelming mechanic.
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Blackgaol Knight
Blackgaol Knight is a punishing early challenge for players who meet him before they are well prepared for the Realm of Shadow. His inclusion among the ranked encounters reflects the danger of a focused, hard-hitting duel: there is little arena complexity to distract from the need to read attacks and avoid overcommitting. How severe that feels depends strongly on when the player chooses to take him on.
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Putrescent Knight
The Putrescent Knight’s mobile, low-to-the-ground attacks can be awkward to follow, and the fight asks the player to keep track of threats arriving from different directions. Its rank here is a qualitative judgment rather than a claim that it is harder for everyone than the bosses below it; builds with safer ranged options or strong defenses may find its pressure easier to manage.
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Death Knight
Death Knight fights demand care around close-range pressure and punishing follow-ups. Their difficulty comes from staying disciplined: attacking into an uncertain recovery can turn a manageable exchange into a costly mistake. The encounter’s relative challenge can vary with equipment and player familiarity, so it sits below the DLC’s most relentless or phase-complex fights in this ranking.
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Metyr, Mother of Fingers
Metyr’s imposing size and unusual attack patterns can make spacing and visual reads less straightforward than in a conventional duel. The encounter asks players to recognize when a large animation is still dangerous and when it has truly ended. It is a substantial optional challenge, though this ranking puts the more consistently fast, punishing, or multi-phase fights above it.
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Midra, Lord of Frenzied Flame
Midra’s fight builds from an unsettling approach into a more forceful boss encounter. The shift in pace and presentation demands attention, but the fight offers more readable opportunities than the highest-ranked bosses once its patterns become familiar. Its exact difficulty will depend on the player’s tolerance for its attacks and how much room their build has to absorb mistakes.
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Jori, Elder Inquisitor
Jori rounds out the list because the encounter can become difficult when multiple threats and ranged pressure disrupt the player’s preferred rhythm. It is less punishing overall than the bosses above, but still tests target awareness and the ability to avoid chasing an opening that is not safe. This placement is especially sensitive to build and approach, which is why it belongs near the bottom of a subjective ranking rather than on a universal scale.
Why rankings differ
Even rankings that agree on Radahn’s position diverge on the bosses around him. Twinfinite places Rellana second and Messmer third, while other lists weigh Bayle and the rest of the roster differently. That is expected: one player may struggle most with long combos, another with arena pressure or tracking a mobile target. A build that handles a boss’s damage type, keeps pressure at range, or survives a missed read changes the practical challenge without changing the boss itself.
There is no official DLC boss-difficulty score behind this order. Bandai Namco Europe’s November 9, 2024 “Stats from the Shadows” page does not provide a named difficulty ranking in its published text. The publisher’s 2023 base-game page concerns most-attempted bosses, not Shadow of the Erdtree difficulty, so attempt counts should not be treated as proof that a boss is hardest (Bandai Namco Europe).
Do you need Elden Ring to play Shadow of the Erdtree?
Yes. Bandai Namco states that “Shadow Of The Erdtree requires ELDEN RING base game to play.” The publisher also lists an Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree Edition that includes the base game and DLC. Check the platform and the contents of the specific listing before buying; the edition’s availability and format can vary.
Quick Recap
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