Elden Ring: Ancient Dragon-Man (Dragon's Pit) Boss Fight (SOTE)
Published: January 8, 2026 at 9:54:58 PM UTC
Ancient Dragon-Man is in the lowest tier of bosses in Elden Ring, Field Bosses, and is the end boss of the Dragon’s Pit dungeon in the Land of Shadow. He is an optional boss in the sense that it is not required to defeat him in order to progress the main story of the Shadow of the Erdtree expansion.
As you probably know, bosses in Elden Ring are divided into three tiers. From lowest to highest: Field Bosses, Greater Enemy Bosses and finally Demigods and Legends.
Ancient Dragon-Man is in the lowest tier, Field Bosses, and is the end boss of the Dragon’s Pit dungeon in the Land of Shadow. He is an optional boss in the sense that it is not required to defeat him in order to progress the main story of the Shadow of the Erdtree expansion.
If there is one type of creature that have consistently tried to ruin my day and have me for lunch throughout my travels in both the Lands Between and the Land of Shadow, it’s dragons. And this is a dragon-man? Is that better? I don’t know. He’s certainly highly annoying, but perhaps he’ll skip the have-me-for-lunch part. Or perhaps he won’t, there is something about this whole situation that feels like yet another ploy to get me on the pointy end of a rotisserie. And remember, it’s not paranoia if someone is actually trying to do that.
Anyway, I found this encounter to be a pretty fun fight, very duel-like. He’s fairly fast and hits very very hard with his great katana though, so be careful not to take too many hits. He will also use Dragon Communion Incantations against you, but other than that, he’s not particularly dragon-like.
In the first part of the fight, I had some issues getting hits in. It took me a while to get the timing just about right, as he would hit and interrupt me whenever I moved in to do some damage myself, at which point I had to retreat to sip some Crimson Tears. I know some people frown upon that, but if the boss didn’t want me to drink healing potions, perhaps he shouldn’t hit me in the face with a giant curved sword.
But once I did find the timing, it wasn’t a very difficult fight. He’s easily interrupted, so with fast weapons it’s possible to get multiple hits on him before he strikes back, which I took advantage of with my dual katanas to knock off a good chunk of his health. If he could have just stayed still the whole fight, it would have gone much smoother overall.
The boss is a Tarnished type, meaning it works much like a player with equipped items. That also means it will drink a healing potion when it gets below half health, but fortunately it only has one of those. Still, when bosses heal up in the middle of combat it feels like they’re stealing my moves and I don’t particularly like that.
And now for the usual boring details about my character. I play as a mostly Dexterity build. My melee weapons are the Hand of Malenia and the Uchigatana with Keen affinity. I was level 185 and Scadutree Blessing 4 when this video was recorded, which I think is reasonable for this boss. I’m always looking for the sweet spot where it’s not mind-numbing easy mode, but also not so difficult that I will be stuck on the same boss for hours ;-)
Fan art inspired by this boss fight
Further Reading
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