Tracking Your Progress Without the Bloat
The basic idea is simple enough. You print out a grid or list of every boss in the game, check off the ones you've beaten each month, and see where you stand. It's mostly useful for people who want a tactile way to track their runs without opening another app or tab. I printed my first one two years ago during the patch churn when I was trying to figure out how long NG+ actually takes to clear. You need to start with the right template. Most people grab whatever random PDF they find on Pinterest, but those are usually wrong. The official boss list is bigger than people remember, especially once you account for optional lords and the DLC additions. I found that a spreadsheet was the cleanest starting point. Google Sheets or Excel, both work. Here's what I do. I create columns for the month, the boss name, and a column for each difficulty tier — normal, NG+, etc. Then I print it on A4 paper using landscape orientation. That gives you enough room to write note entries like "used fire build, took three hits from the dragon." A standard 0.8mm pen works fine. Don't bother with fancy stationery for this.
The trick people miss is formatting. If you just dump the whole boss list onto one page, it becomes unreadable at a glance. I split mine into six separate pages, one per major area. This took me about forty minutes the first time but now I can reprint a fresh sheet in under five. Download link: I keep mine hosted on a private GitHub repo. The latest version includes Malenia, Radahn, and all the Shackled Ones variants. Grab it here if you want something that doesn't require hunting down incomplete lists: eldring-boss-tracker-v3.pdf.
What Most People Get Wrong About These Trackers
The biggest problem isn't the format. It's that people don't realize how quickly the boss list grows once you start factoring in encounters across multiple playthroughs. I learned this the hard way. My first version had around 160 bosses. By the time I included all of the DLC and alternate forms, I was at 247. That's a lot of checkboxes on a single page. I ended up redesigning the layout entirely. Instead of one massive table, I went with a two-column format with smaller font — basically 9pt Arial, single spaced. It fits everything on roughly eight pages and still prints cleanly on a home inkjet printer. The key is setting your margins to 0.5 inches on all sides. Standard 1-inch margins waste half the page on white space you don't need. Another thing nobody mentions: the DLC bosses break the traditional grouping. They don't fit into the Lands Between layout at all. If your template assumes one continuous list, you'll end up with a mess when you try to add them. I solved this by separating the base game from the DLC into two distinct sections with a clear divider line between them. It keeps the main flow intact.
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Edge Case: What Happens When a Boss Has Multiple Phases or Forms
This is where most trackers fail. Take Malenia, for example. Do you mark her as beaten once after the full fight? Or do you track each phase separately? I hit this issue head-on during my second NG+ run. My old system just had one checkbox, which meant I couldn't tell later whether I'd actually gotten past the water bloom or just limped through phase one. The workaround I settled on was adding a sub-line beneath each boss entry. Instead of one checkbox, there are two: one for phase one and one for phase two. It adds maybe thirty extra lines to the whole document but it's the only way to make the data actually useful for retrospective tracking. Radahn does the same thing — you have two distinct phases in that fight. So do many of the late-game bosses. If your template doesn't account for this, you're essentially logging incomplete information every time you check off a boss.
When This Approach Fails Completely
Let me be blunt. This method works fine if you're playing casually and just want a simple record. It does not work if you're speedrunning or testing builds for min-maxing purposes. A printed sheet can't capture the nuance you need for that — damage numbers, data, summon call timings. For that stuff, you need a digital log or at least a spreadsheet that lets you sort and filter. There's also the issue of updates. Every time FromSoftware patches in new content, your printout is immediately outdated. I've had to reprint at least four times in the last year alone. If you're not comfortable with that, consider maintaining a Google Sheet instead and printing from it whenever you want a physical copy. The sheet stays current while your prints age out. Finally, the physical format has a shelf life. Ink fades. Paper yellows. If you want something that lasts beyond a few years, scanning your completed sheets into a cloud service is worth the five minutes it takes. I use Dropbox for mine and label each file with the date I finished the tracker. Makes it trivial to look back and see which build got me through Radahn first.
