How to Build and Use Elden Ring Boss Examples Vintage
I spent way too long trying to make boss reference sheets that actually felt useful for speedrunners and new players at the same time. Most of what people online do is just copy-paste wiki stats with screenshots slapped together. That's not helpful. What works is something different. I ended up building a collection called Elden Ring Boss Examples Vintage because the old-school approach to boss guides had a rhythm that newer wikis lost somewhere around the FromSoftware renaissance. Here's what it means and how to put one together if you need to.
Elden Ring Boss Examples Vintage: What It Actually Is
The term refers to a specific style of boss reference documentation — the kind that mirrors early 2000s game guide aesthetics but adapted for Elden Ring. Think scanned page layouts, handwritten annotations, stat tables with actual notes in the margins rather than just numbers. It's not an official thing. You won't find it on Bandai Namco's website or on the official Elden Ring wiki. People who make these are usually speedrunners, lore historians, or forum regulars who got tired of scrolling through the same four YouTube boss guides everyone links to. The core idea is simple. You document a boss not just with HP and damage values, but with how it actually plays across multiple encounters. The vintage style adds the constraint of making it readable at a glance during a fight or a quick study session.
How I Made My First Set
I started with three bosses I knew cold: Margit, the Fell Omen, Malenia Blade of Miquella, and Radahn. For each one I logged something most people skip. I recorded the exact number of frames between her second phase transition and the first scarlet Aeonia burst. That's about forty-two frames on PC at sixty frames per second, which means a player has roughly zero point seven seconds to react from the telegraph to the actual hitbox activation. People don't tell you that number anywhere in the standard guides. I built the actual document using a scanned paper template. Yes, I printed a blank page, wrote the boss name and stats by hand, took a photo, cleaned it up in GIMP, then layered the typed stats over the top. The aesthetic matters to the people who collect these. The vintage style is the whole point. If you just want clean data you should use a spreadsheet and be done with it. But if you're making Elden Ring Boss Examples Vintage content, the presentation is what separates it from another wiki page.
Get the Full Details
What Goes Into Each Entry
A proper entry has five sections. First is the standard stat block — HP, stamina, resistance values pulled from the official wiki. Second is the phase breakdown with frame data where available. Third is the common pitfalls section, which is the part nobody writes well. Fourth is a visual reference chart showing attack recovery windows. Fifth is a notes margin area where I put things like dodge direction, i-frame timing, and weapon recommendations that actually worked for my builds. The pitfalls section is where most people fail. They write "dodge when he swings" which is useless. My entries say "he feints twice on the right side before committing to the left sweep, and the second feint is shorter. Wait for the foot stomp after the second feint." Specificity is what makes it work. I've seen people waste twenty minutes in a boss fight because a guide told them to dodge-roll on animation start when the real window was mid-animation.
Where to Download Existing Collections
There isn't an official repository. The closest thing to a centralized collection is on the Steam Community Hub and the Reddit thread that started when someone posted a full scan set for the Caelid bosses. I found my first useful one linked in the Elden Ring Speedrunning Discord under the guides-and-resources channel. The folder is called Boss_Vintage_Examples and it contains PDFs for every demigod and several standard bosses. The quality varies because different people made them. Some have accurate frame data. Some have wrong resistance values. You can also find individual entries scattered across Tumblr blogs and old Xbox Life forums where people posted their scanned guides back when the game first launched. The Archive.org Elden Ring collection has a few, but they're incomplete. The most reliable single source I've used is a Google Drive link shared by a user named RunAndRoll on the speedrun.com forums. The link changes sometimes. Search for "Elden Ring Boss Examples Vintage PDF" on the forums and the current active link stays pinned near the top.
A Problem I Hit and How I Worked Around It
When I was documenting Malenia, I discovered that the frame data I had for thewaterfowl dance attack didn't match what I was seeing on my capture card. My initial recording showed the recovery at fifty frames. Real footage showed it at sixty-three. The discrepancy was because Malenia's windup changes depending on whether you're in first phase or second phase. The wiki only lists the second phase data. I missed the first phase variation entirely. My workaround was straightforward. I recorded the same boss fight on two separate builds — a bleed build and a straight physical build — because different builds trigger different aggro behaviors and the AI routes change slightly. Then I compared the frame times across both recordings. The first phase windup was consistently thirteen frames shorter. That's the kind of detail that doesn't exist anywhere else online. I added it to my entry and flagged it as first-phase only.
Counter-Intuitive Things Beginners Miss
Most people treat boss guides like a checklist. They read the recommended weapon, equip it, and go in. That almost never works because Elden Ring's enemy AI scales aggression based on your movement speed and attack frequency. A fast weapon draws more hits. A slow weapon lets the boss commit to attacks you can punish. The vintage example sheets I make always include a movement speed note. It's not flashy. It's the difference between dying to Godrick's grab and walking through it. Another thing nobody mentions enough is that boss example documents should be color-coded by build type. I use red for bleed builds, blue for magic, yellow for strength, green for dex. When I scroll through my own collection I can find the relevant page in about three seconds. People who don't color-code spend longer reading their guides than they do fighting the boss.
When This Approach Falls Apart
It doesn't work for multiplayer-focused bosses. The frame data shifts when you have a co-op partner because the boss's health scaling changes its aggression thresholds. Some bosses like the Dragonlord Placidusax have different attack rotations in single-player versus two-player versus three-player. My vintage sheets only cover single-player data. If you need co-op versions you should look at the speedrunstracking community instead. They have separate rotos for each player count. Also, the vintage format is inherently less searchable. A wiki page lets you Ctrl+F for a specific move name. A scanned PDF with handwritten notes does not. If you're looking for a quick answer to "what is Malenia's waterfowl recovery frames" a wiki gives you the number faster. The vintage approach is better for deep study, not for quick reference. Be honest about which you need.
My Actual Process for Creating One
Here's the workflow I use now. It takes me about two hours per boss from scratch. First I run the boss on a no-hit challenge run while recording with OBS. I mark every phase transition with a timestamp. Then I export the video frames and count manually. I don't rely on third-party tools for frame counting. They're inconsistent across resolutions and I'd rather spend ten extra minutes being accurate. Next I draft the stat block using the wiki. I verify the resistance values against in-game testing because the wiki has known errors in the later DLC bosses. I found out the hard way when testing Rykard's lava pool resistance. The wiki said 40 fire defense. My tests showed 28. I measured it myself by hitting him with the same spell at different distances and calculating from the damage numbers. That's the process. It's slow. The result is worth it. I then set up the scanned paper template. I use a standard letter-sized sheet with a margin area on the right. I type the main content in a monospace font that mimics old typewriters. I hand-write a few notes in the margins for the visual texture. The final scan goes through a light sharpening filter and saved as a PDF at 300 DPI. That's the file I share.
Which Bosses Are Worth Documenting in This Style
Not every boss needs a vintage entry. The standard enemies in Limgrave are too simple. You're wasting time if you make a framed guide for a Crystalian. Focus on boss fights that have meaningful phase transitions, complex attack patterns, or frame-dependent dodges. Margit is worth it. Morgott is worth it. Mohg is worth it because his heal animation is a hidden mechanic most guides skip. Maliketh gets one because his phase two has invisible hitboxes that aren't documented well anywhere. The bosses I consider low priority are those with one-note patterns. Most of the minor demigods fall into that category. You'll spend more time making the guide than learning the fight. Skip them. Put your time into the bosses that actually challenge your reading of the game's systems.
Final Note on Usage
The best way to use these is to keep the PDF open alongside the game on a second monitor. Don't read it before the fight like a strategy doc. Read it between attempts. You'll retain more that way. The format is designed for quick scanning, not deep reading. Treat it like a reference manual, not a novel. That's the vintage approach and it works when you respect the constraints it comes with.
