Messmer the Impaler, Bayle the Dread, and Midra, Lord of Frenzied Flame form the S tier in this Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree Boss Tier List. They combine demanding but learnable combat with memorable arenas, strong visual identity, and satisfying payoffs. This is an opinion-led ranking of the expansion’s ten Remembrance boss fights, judged for overall encounter quality rather than raw difficulty alone. Your order can change substantially with build, summons, exploration, and Scadutree or Revered Spirit Ash Blessings, so treat the tiers as a consistent editorial framework—not an official scorecard.
What does this Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree boss tier list rank?
This list covers the ten bosses that grant Remembrances in Shadow of the Erdtree: Divine Beast Dancing Lion, Rellana, Twin Moon Knight, Golden Hippopotamus, Putrescent Knight, Messmer the Impaler, Scadutree Avatar, Commander Gaius, Romina, Saint of the Bud, Midra, Lord of Frenzied Flame, and Bayle the Dread.
That scope matters. A 2024 PC Gamer guide counts 55 bosses when it includes field and dungeon encounters, mausoleum fights, returning boss types, and some difficult unique-drop enemies. A Remembrance-only list is a curated ranking of the expansion’s major fights, not a claim that every boss in the Realm of Shadow appears here.
The word “tier” also needs a definition. These placements balance challenge, attack readability and fairness, spectacle, and how satisfying or memorable the encounter feels. A boss can therefore rank highly despite not being the hardest fight, while a punishing encounter can land lower if its hitboxes, camera behavior, or pacing make victories feel less earned.
How were the tiers judged?
The baseline assumes one player, ordinary weapon upgrades, no online co-op, and enough exploration to collect blessings naturally rather than rushing directly from the first Site of Grace to a fog gate. Spirit ashes and other summons are legitimate ways to play, but they can change pressure, target control, and damage windows so dramatically that they are treated as modifiers rather than part of the base ranking.
| Criterion | What a high placement means | What can lower a placement |
|---|---|---|
| Challenge | Demanding patterns that reward learning, positioning, and resource management | Difficulty that comes mainly from abrupt tracking, camera problems, or oversized hitboxes |
| Readability and fairness | Clear tells, punishable recovery windows, and attacks that can be understood after practice | Ambiguous animations, arena collisions, or damage that feels disconnected from the visible hit |
| Spectacle | A distinctive arena, phase change, soundtrack, or visual idea that supports the fight | Visual scale that obscures the player or makes the action difficult to parse |
| Satisfaction | A victory that feels like the result of learning the encounter | A win dominated by awkward positioning, repeated stunlocking, or luck |
These are editorial criteria, not laboratory measurements. The guide judgments cited by the sources are also author assessments rather than controlled comparisons, and there is no universal “correct” order for players using different builds or preparation levels.
What is the tier list at a glance?
| Tier | Bosses | Overall character |
|---|---|---|
| S | Messmer the Impaler; Bayle the Dread; Midra, Lord of Frenzied Flame | Standout encounters with strong identity, learnable patterns, and exceptional payoff |
| A | Rellana, Twin Moon Knight; Divine Beast Dancing Lion; Romina, Saint of the Bud | Excellent fights with one notable issue such as visual clutter, narrow punish windows, or uneven pacing |
| B | Putrescent Knight; Scadutree Avatar; Golden Hippopotamus | Good ideas and memorable moments, but less consistent readability or repetition holds them back |
| C | Commander Gaius | Potentially very difficult, yet less satisfying because of approachability and hitbox concerns |
Which bosses are S-tier?
Messmer the Impaler
Messmer is the most complete duel in the expansion. His spear, flame, and serpent imagery are immediately legible, and the fight’s phases escalate without abandoning the spacing game established at the start. He pressures greedy healing and panic rolls, but his animations provide information that a patient player can convert into reliable punish windows.
The arena and presentation reinforce the mechanics instead of competing with them. Messmer’s spectacle comes from controlled escalation rather than a giant model filling the screen, so the fight remains readable while still feeling like a major story confrontation. He earns S tier because challenge, fairness, and payoff reinforce one another.
Bayle the Dread
Bayle is the expansion’s largest set piece and one of its most memorable victories. The fight sells the scale of a wounded, ancient dragon while giving the player a specific target and a sense of progression through its phases. Its visual and musical impact are difficult to match.
Bayle is not flawless. A huge creature, airborne movement, and camera transitions can make individual attack origins harder to read than in a human-scale duel. The encounter still reaches S tier because the spectacle is purposeful, the core attacks become learnable, and the eventual win feels like overcoming a singular monster rather than repeating a generic dragon template.
Midra, Lord of Frenzied Flame
Midra delivers a compact, theatrical fight with an unusually strong sense of place. The first phase establishes an unsettling rhythm before the true battle opens up, and the second phase turns that tension into a focused test of reaction, spacing, and composure.
His attacks communicate danger clearly once the player stops treating every animation as an immediate roll cue. The arena keeps the action legible, and the encounter’s short, intense structure avoids the fatigue that can affect longer endurance fights. Midra’s S-tier position comes from cohesion: theme, mechanics, and atmosphere all point in the same direction.
Which bosses are A-tier?
Rellana, Twin Moon Knight
Rellana is an aggressive technical duel built around close-range pressure and rapid transitions. Her twin weapons create a strong visual silhouette, while her elemental enhancements force the player to recognize when familiar strings have changed. The fight rewards disciplined positioning rather than simply waiting for a single safe opening.
She ranks just below S because the pace leaves little room for error, especially for slower weapons, and several sequences can feel overwhelming before their timing becomes familiar. Those complaints do not erase the design quality; they explain why Rellana is an excellent but less universally approachable encounter.
Divine Beast Dancing Lion
The Dancing Lion makes movement itself the theme. Its acrobatic body, elemental attacks, and sudden changes in direction create a spectacle unlike the humanoid duels elsewhere in the expansion. The boss also teaches an important lesson about reading a creature’s whole body rather than watching a weapon arm for a tell.
The camera is the main reason it remains in A tier. Close contact with the beast can obscure the wind-up for a sweep or leap, and visual effects can crowd the arena. When the player maintains enough distance to read the silhouette, the fight becomes inventive and rewarding; when that spacing collapses, fairness feels less consistent.
Romina, Saint of the Bud
Romina’s encounter has a distinctive visual language and a graceful attack rhythm. Her segmented, insect-like form creates unusual angles without turning every move into a surprise, and the arena gives enough room to plan around her reach. The fight feels deliberate rather than merely fast.
She falls short of S because the pressure curve is gentler once her patterns are understood, and some players may find the encounter less mechanically varied than the top three. That accessibility is also a strength: Romina is a strong example of a boss that can be challenging without relying on constant speed or oversized damage.
Which bosses are B-tier?
Putrescent Knight
Putrescent Knight offers one of the expansion’s strangest silhouettes and a memorable arena concept. The separated knight-and-mount presentation creates attacks that arrive from unusual directions, so learning where the danger originates is part of the challenge. Once the rhythm clicks, the fight has a satisfying back-and-forth quality.
Readability is less dependable than in the higher tiers. The dark setting, multiple bodies, and low-profile movement can make it difficult to identify the active hitbox during a first attempt. Putrescent Knight is a good encounter with a strong identity, but the visual complexity keeps it in B.
Scadutree Avatar
Scadutree Avatar turns a familiar tree-monster concept into a multi-stage endurance test. Its broad sweeps are easy to recognize at range, and the open arena supports deliberate repositioning. The fight rewards players who resist attacking during a safe-looking but actually active recovery animation.
Its limitation is repetition. The phases build durability and pressure more than they reinvent the moveset, so the later portions can feel like an extended execution of a lesson already learned. It is effective and visually memorable, but less varied than the A- and S-tier fights.
Golden Hippopotamus
Golden Hippopotamus makes an immediate impression through its bulk and forward momentum. The opening moments establish that staying directly in front of the boss is dangerous, and the encounter rewards players who learn to work around its body rather than challenge every charge head-on.
The fight is comparatively short on mechanical ideas, and close camera angles can make its largest attacks harder to parse. It remains a worthwhile spectacle, but its design does not sustain the same depth as the higher-ranked Remembrance battles.
Why is Commander Gaius in C tier if he can be so difficult?
Commander Gaius
Gaius can produce some of the most punishing attempts in the expansion, particularly when his mounted charges control the entire arena. That raw difficulty is real, but this list does not equate “hardest” with “best.” The approach to his attacks, abrupt movement, and disputed-feeling hitbox interactions can make failure feel less educational than it should.
Players who master the spacing may find a more coherent fight, and different builds can change the experience substantially. On the stated baseline, however, the encounter’s frustration-to-satisfaction ratio is weaker than the bosses above it, which places Gaius in C for overall quality rather than ease.
How much do build, summons, and exploration change the ranking?
They can change the perceived difficulty more than a tier boundary suggests. A high-damage build may shorten a phase before its most dangerous pattern appears, while a slower setup may require learning every transition. Ranged attacks, status effects, shields, stance-breaking, spirit ashes, and online allies each alter how often a boss can pressure the player.
Preparation in the Realm of Shadow is especially important. The DLC can be entered and its bosses encountered in different orders, and the guide advice is consistent: collect Scadutree Fragments and Revered Spirit Ash Blessings during exploration. Those systems can materially change how hard a fight feels, so a player who rushes to a boss is not experiencing the same conditions as someone who explores first.
- If a boss kills you before you can identify its attacks, explore for more blessings before changing your entire build.
- If you understand the moves but cannot create a damage window, adjust weapon range, stamina management, or summon timing.
- If a summon removes all pressure and the victory feels hollow, try the encounter again later without it; that is a different challenge, not a correction to the tier.
- Record the conditions when comparing advice: weapon type, blessing progress, summon use, and whether the fight was attempted solo.
Does the list include every boss in Shadow of the Erdtree?
No. The list intentionally ranks only Remembrance fights. PC Gamer’s 2024 inventory reaches 55 by counting a much wider set of encounters, including field bosses, dungeon and mausoleum fights, returning types, and certain enemies that drop unique items. Those counts answer different questions and should not be treated as contradictions.
An all-boss list would need an explicit counting rule before ranking anything. It would also have to separate repeated enemy types from unique fights and decide whether powerful non-Remembrance enemies belong beside the expansion’s headline battles. This article avoids blending those categories so each placement remains comparable.
What changed after the DLC launched?
Launch impressions are not automatically current. Bandai Namco’s July 4, 2024 update notice documented downloadable-content balance changes and bug fixes, including changed rematch placement for Golden Hippopotamus and Commander Gaius. That confirms that encounter behavior and presentation can be adjusted after release.
The available evidence establishes that an update occurred, but not the latest game version or whether later patches changed these bosses again. Use this tier list as a design and experience assessment, and check the current in-game version if a specific animation, arena placement, or balance detail is important to your build.
What do I need to play the expansion?
Shadow of the Erdtree is an expansion for Elden Ring, and the base game is required. The publisher also lists a Shadow of the Erdtree Edition that bundles the base game and expansion. Availability and naming can differ by platform and region, so distinguish a DLC-only purchase from the bundle when checking a store listing.
Because the bosses can be approached in different orders, there is no single route implied by this ranking. The tiers are intended to help you set expectations, choose which fights to tackle next, and recognize whether a frustrating attempt comes from the encounter itself or from entering underprepared.
How should you use this tier list?
- Choose your scope. Use this page for the ten Remembrance bosses; use a separately defined inventory when you want every field, dungeon, mausoleum, or returning encounter.
- Check your conditions. Note your build, weapon upgrades, blessings, exploration progress, and summon rules before comparing a difficulty opinion with your own.
- Read the rationale, not just the letter. A C-tier fight may be extremely hard, while an S-tier fight may become manageable after its tells are learned.
- Reassess after a patch. Balance and bug-fix updates can change placement, rematch locations, or the feel of a specific attack.
What should you take from the ranking?
For the strongest blend of challenge and craft, start with Messmer, Bayle, or Midra. Rellana, Dancing Lion, and Romina are close behind, each with a particular readability or pacing trade-off. Putrescent Knight, Scadutree Avatar, and Golden Hippopotamus remain memorable but less consistent, while Commander Gaius demonstrates why difficulty by itself is not a quality score.
Most importantly, the tier letters are not a substitute for your conditions. Blessings, preparation, build choice, and summon use can move a fight across several personal difficulty bands without changing what the encounter is designed to do.
FAQ
Can I exchange a Remembrance more than once?
Normally, a Remembrance offers a choice between its associated rewards, so spending it is a decision rather than a way to collect every option on one character. Duplicate-remembrance mechanics elsewhere in the game may provide another opportunity, but they do not turn this tier list into a reward-optimization guide.
Is a higher tier always the best boss to fight first?
No. The expansion’s encounters can be approached in different orders, and story access, exploration, and your current build may make one fight a better next target than another. Use the tier as a quality signal, then choose based on your readiness and desired challenge.
Why can two players disagree about the same boss’s difficulty?
They may be using different blessing levels, weapon classes, status setups, or summon rules. A fight that is oppressive at close range can become much more manageable with reach or ranged damage, while a build that relies on long attack commitments may experience the same openings as traps.
What is the safest response when a boss feels unfair?
First separate a recognition problem from a damage problem: spend a few attempts watching the attack cycle without forcing hits. If the patterns are clear but your damage or survivability is too low, explore for blessings, improve equipment, or change your approach before concluding that the encounter cannot be learned.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I exchange a Remembrance more than once?
Normally, a Remembrance offers a choice between its associated rewards, so spending it is a decision rather than a way to collect every option on one character. Duplicate-remembrance mechanics elsewhere in the game may provide another opportunity, but they do not turn this tier list into a reward-optimization guide.
Is a higher tier always the best boss to fight first?
No. The expansion’s encounters can be approached in different orders, and story access, exploration, and your current build may make one fight a better next target than another. Use the tier as a quality signal, then choose based on your readiness and desired challenge.
Why can two players disagree about the same boss’s difficulty?
They may be using different blessing levels, weapon classes, status setups, or summon rules. A fight that is oppressive at close range can become much more manageable with reach or ranged damage, while a build that relies on long attack commitments may experience the same openings as traps.
What is the safest response when a boss feels unfair?
First separate a recognition problem from a damage problem: spend a few attempts watching the attack cycle without forcing hits. If the patterns are clear but your damage or survivability is too low, explore for blessings, improve equipment, or change your approach before concluding that the encounter cannot be learned.