Tracking boss runs without going insane
The spreadsheet is basically a master log. You track every boss in the Lands Between across columns — date fought, build used, time to kill, whether you died, notes on patterns, anything that sticks with you after the run. The monthly version just means the sheet gets updated with new bosses from patches, DLC additions, and whatever Miyazaki decided to throw in. Most people copy it from a Google Sheets link and duplicate it so they don't wreck the original. I grab it from the shared community Google Sheets repository, usually linked in the Soulsborne spreadsheets Discord or the main Elden Ring wiki megathread. Once I open it, I hit File > Make a copy and rename it with the month and year so my versions don't collide. That's important because the monthly sheets get updated by the community and if you're editing the original, your changes disappear the next time someone pushes an update. Before I fill anything in, I spend about ten minutes going through the default columns and renaming a few. The template assumes a standard playthrough order, but I reorganize to match my actual route because fighting Margit before Godrick throws off the sorting. I also add a few columns I keep coming back to: boss phase transitions noted, stances broken, and summon used. Takes five minutes and saves me from having to dig through old runs to remember whether I broke Mohg's stance during that one nightmarish attempt at 3 AM.
The actual data entry is tedious but mechanical. After each boss run I spend maybe two minutes logging the result. If it went badly, I write a sentence or two in the notes field about what went wrong. If it went well, I still write something. The point is to capture a signal while it's fresh, not rely on memory. Two weeks later I won't remember whether I used Brunny or Nepheli on Radahn, but the note will tell me exactly what happened and why it failed. I hit one edge case that broke the spreadsheet's usefulness for a while. The template has a Total Deaths column per boss, but it doesn't distinguish between deaths on the first attempt and deaths on attempt number twelve. I realized after tracking Malenia for about three weeks that I was misreading my own data. I was seeing low totals and thinking I was improving when in fact I was just avoiding recounting. I added a separate Attempts column and started logging it per boss instead. Now my completion rate is actually visible, and I can see which bosses are draggers versus which ones I'm clearing on first try after enough study. There are things the worksheet does poorly, and I should be blunt about them. The built-in conditional formatting — green for wins, red for losses — is useless once you start mixing in NG+ and trueNG data because the colors don't adapt to difficulty level. You end up with false positives where a red loss in NG3 looks the same as a red loss in NG1, and that flattens your analysis. I solved this by adding a Playthrough Stage column and using a custom filter view instead of relying on the color rules. It took me twenty minutes to set up and it pays for itself immediately.
Another limitation is that the template treats all bosses equally. A 30-second Vajra clear registers the same way as a forty-minute Rykard fight. If you want weighted data — which matters if you're tracking build efficiency across the whole game — you need to add a column for time elapsed and calculate averages yourself. The spreadsheet doesn't do this automatically. I wrote a simple formula that divides total time by number of kills per boss, and it gives me a meaningful baseline for comparing build performance without inflating the numbers with quick trash mob clear times. The monthly update cycle is the main selling point and also the main frustration. Community maintainers push new boss entries when patches drop, but the lag between release and sheet update can be three to seven days. During that window the sheet has placeholder rows or missing mechanics for the new encounter. I usually wait a day after the patch drops before pulling the latest version so the maintainers have time to stabilize it. Pulling too early means you're working with incomplete columns and you'll have to merge data manually, which takes longer than just waiting. For people who want something more automated, there are third-party trackers like the Elden Ring build planners that sync with Steam or PlayStation trophies, but those don't capture pattern notes or build context the way a manual worksheet does. The spreadsheet wins on depth and loses on convenience. I'd recommend it for anyone who plays through more than once and wants to compare builds side by side. It's useless for a single casual run unless you already have a habit of logging things.
Get the Full Details
I keep my sheet open alongside the game in a second monitor window. Logging takes less than a minute per boss after you get used to the columns, and the payoff is real. Six months in, I can pull up my Malenia data and see exactly which builds I tried, how many attempts each took, and what phase I was weakest in. That kind of detail doesn't exist anywhere else in the game's ecosystem, and the monthly refresh keeps it from going stale as new content drops.
