Best Elden Ring Boss Worksheet

Why You Actually Need This

Most people build their Elden Ring boss knowledge through repeated deaths and fragmented notes scattered across Google Docs, Reddit threads, and Discord DMs. It works until you need to reference two bosses simultaneously or realize you forgot a specific weakness because you wrote it three weeks ago in a document you can no longer find. The Best Elden Ring Boss Worksheet consolidates everything into a single structured file that you can actually use while planning builds or preparing for a specific run. At its core, this is a spreadsheet-based tracking system organized by boss encounter. Each row represents a boss, and the columns cover health pools, damage resistances, elemental affinities, phase transitions, key attack patterns, and vulnerability windows. The format isn't fancy. It doesn't need to be. What matters is consistency across every entry so you can scan down a column and find answers without parsing different formatting styles. I built the first version back in November 2022 after spending an entire evening trying to remember whether Margit resisted fire or cold. I had written it down somewhere. I just couldn't find it. That annoyance alone is worth the thirty minutes it takes to set up a proper template. Since then I've added entries for every main boss, mini-boss, and optional encounter, and the whole sheet now runs about forty pages when exported.

The columns that actually matter are different from what most people assume. Everyone puts health first because it seems obvious. Health is useful for general scaling but terrible for build planning. What you really need are the resist and affinity columns, followed by the stance break thresholds. Those three numbers tell you whether your chosen weapon type will even register meaningful damage against a given opponent. A +12 Heavy Crepus's Knife hits radically differently against Godrick than it does against Malenia because the resist distribution shifts everything.

How the Worksheet Actually Works in Practice

Each boss entry has a section for standard build recommendations. This is where most people stop using the sheet. They write "use fire" and move on. That's why the worksheet stays shallow and becomes useless within a few bosses. The deeper sections are the combo compatibility notes and the specific frame trap windows. These are the details that separate a player who wins by accident from a player who wins because they anticipated the opening. For example, the Mohg, Lord of Blood entry notes that his blood flame incantation has a 42-frame recovery after the initial dash, but only if you're positioned past his left shoulder. If you're in his blind spot to the right, the recovery extends to 58 frames because he pivots before committing to the attack. That 16-frame difference is the gap between landing three hits and getting punished through your recovery. I learned that the hard way during the third attempt on that fight in a solo NG+7 run. The attack pattern column should list not just what the boss does, but what follows each action. A boss that swings a huge hammer is only dangerous if you don't know the recovery animation. The real value is in documenting the chain — hammer swing leads to ground slam, which leads to a lateral sweep if you're still in range. Those chains are consistent within a boss. You can memorize them, but you'll forget the later ones. The worksheet keeps them fresh.

Setting Up Your Own Version

You can find a copy of the Best Elden Ring Boss Worksheet in the linked Google Sheets file in the resources section below. It's structured with three tabs: Main Bosses, Demigods and Legacy Dungeons, and Optional Encounters. Each tab uses the same column layout so you can pivot between sections without relearning the format. To start filling it in, open a new row for any boss you've encountered. Record the baseline health first because you need that anchor point. Then note your damage output with your current build — not the optimal theoretical damage, but what you actually dealt in your last successful run. Real numbers beat estimates every time. After that, fill in the resist table. Google's community has already mapped most elemental and physical resistances across all bosses. Cross-reference your own experience to catch discrepancies, since some late-game adjustments shifted values from the initial patch data. The stance break column is the one most people skip. It's also the most important for weapons that rely on poise damage like great hammers or colossal swords. Malenia's stance threshold in phase one is 48 damage before the scarlet rot meter activates. If you're building around poise breaks and your weapon does 36 per hit, you need to understand that you're not going to posture break her without external help — either from a companion, a spirit ash, or a status effect that adds bonus posture damage. The worksheet makes that math visible instead of guessing.

Where the Worksheet Falls Short

It doesn't account for build variance well. Two players with different stat distributions will deal significantly different numbers to the same boss, and the resistance columns show baseline percentages, not your personal effective damage after scaling. I ran into this with Radahn in late-game play. The resist table listed him at 40% physical reduction, which suggested my heavy weapon would be inefficient. In practice, my +24 weapon with high strength scaling was still dealing acceptable numbers because the scaling multiplier outweighed the flat reduction. The worksheet gives you the starting point, not the final calculation. Another limitation is that certain boss modifications in later playthroughs — notably the NG+7 scaling and the unique affinity changes introduced in patches — aren't always reflected in publicly shared versions. I maintain my own updated copy with patch notes attached, but if you're using someone else's sheet from June 2023, some of the resistance values for bosses like Maliketh and Placidusax may be outdated by a few percentage points. It won't break your strategy, but it will make your numbers feel slightly off until you adjust. The worst case scenario is optional bosses that were added or rebalanced post-launch. The combat artist's game encounters in particular went through multiple hotfixes that changed aggression patterns and damage values. If you encounter inconsistent behavior, check the patch history notes at the bottom of the sheet rather than assuming the worksheet is wrong. It's usually the game, not the data.

What to Do After You Fill It In

The real utility shows up when you review the sheet before attempting a new build. Instead of grinding the same boss repeatedly with the same strategy, you flip to the relevant entries and look for patterns. Do three out of four demigods resist magic? Switch to bleed or frost. Are the larger bosses all vulnerable to strike damage in phase two? That's your cue to diversify your weapon loadout rather than relying on a single specialization. The worksheet makes those patterns visible without requiring you to replay every encounter from scratch. I also use it to track spirit ash compatibility. Each boss entry has a small section noting which summon types perform reliably and which ones fail against specific mechanics. Margit melts most spirits in the first thirty seconds because his combo chains interrupt aggression timers. Radahn's gravity mechanics punish stationary summons but leave melee-type ashes relatively safe. Having this recorded means I don't waste summons testing things blindly. The file is available as a Google Sheets template so you can duplicate it and populate your own entries. The column headers are documented with examples in the first row of each section. If you want to contribute your own boss data, the shared comment thread on the sheet accepts updates, though I can't guarantee real-time syncing for everyone.