Elden Ring: Bell-Bearing Hunter (Isolated Merchant's Shack) Boss Fight

Published: August 14, 2025 at 6:34:21 AM UTC

Bell-Bearing Hunter is in the lowest tier of bosses in Elden Ring, Field Bosses, and is found outdoors near the Isolated Merchant’s Shack, but only if you rest by the Site of Grace inside the shack at night. Like most lesser bosses in the game, this one is optional in the sense that you do not need to defeat it in order to advance the main story.

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.

Bell-Bearing Hunter is in the lowest tier, Field Bosses, and is found outdoors near the Isolated Merchant’s Shack, but only if you rest by the Site of Grace inside the shack at night. Like most lesser bosses in the game, this one is optional in the sense that you do not need to defeat it in order to advance the main story.

The previous Bell-Bearing Hunters I have faced have been some of the most difficult bosses in the game for me. Similar to Crucible Knights, there is just something about their timing and relentlessness that makes taking them in melee really difficult for me. Add to that their telekinetic attacks that they always manage to time perfectly with me having a sip of Crimson Tears, and it’s just more annoying than fun.

I did manage to take down the previous ones in melee and I was fairly close to killing this one in melee a few times as well, but after I don’t even know how many defeats, I finally decided I needed to try something else as I simply wasn’t having fun anymore.

Realizing that what would kill me by far most of the time was his swooping telekinetic sword attack that made it almost impossible to drink Crimson Tears without immediately losing the health again, I figured that that I would try to take him out mounted, as Torrent’s speed and the ability to drink Crimson Tears while moving would seem to reduce the difficulty a lot.

Furthermore, I always like a good ranged fight, so I decided to use my longbow in this one. My shortbow would have worked better from horseback, but it’s still lacking a lot of upgrades, so it does pitiful damage. I wouldn’t have had to slow down so much to fire it though, but I think I would have run out of arrows before the boss was dead. Only after the fight did I realize that the merchant right next to the shack sells an unlimited supply of Serpent Arrows, so I could possibly have sped things up by afflicting him with some poison.

When using this approach, you need to be careful to not fall off the cliff behind the large tree, and not to aggro any of the huge dogs that are roaming on the other side of the shack. I recommend riding around the area where you plan to fight the boss and get a feeling of it before starting the fight as you can quickly find yourself in the wrong place in the heat of battle. And no matter how many times the boss hits an aggroed dog, it will keep being focused on you until either you or it is dead. I had hoped I could get a dog to fight the boss, but no such luck.

As you will see a few times during the video, I do get too close to the boss and is almost knocked off Torrent, but I just barely manage to get away from him. He hits insanely hard and would generally kill me in two hits, so I was living a bit dangerously there. It’s easy to underestimate how fast he moves and how long reach his telekinetic attacks have though.

I found what worked best was to make sure to gain sufficient distance while he was doing his telekinetic attacks and then put one or two arrows in him. As long as he’s walking toward you it’s probably safe to shoot again, but once he starts running you will have to get on the move too.

Make sure to watch your stamina as both sprinting on Torrent and firing arrows drain a lot of it. And you really don’t want the boss close to you with you not having enough stamina left to sprint.

This approach overall worked very well for me, although it takes some time. So much time in fact that I have prepared a series of jokes to roast the Bell-Bearing Hunter as he runs around chasing me.

That’s the Bell-Bearing Hunter. Comes out at night, steals from merchants, and somehow still can’t afford a personality.
They say he collects bells… which explains why he’s always so jingly when he runs away from a decent fight.
He lurks in the dark to ambush merchants. Because apparently, working retail wasn’t depressing enough.
The armor’s intimidating… until you realize it’s just there to hide the shame of his KD ratio.
That’s not a sword, that’s overcompensation with a hilt.
He only comes out at night. Probably because the sun can’t stand to look at him either.
They call him the Bell-Bearing Hunter. I call him the Bell-End Bearing Hunter.
He thinks hunting merchants makes him a big deal. Personally, I think it just makes him the world’s worst coupon collector.

I’m usually not one to start rumors, but I’m definitely also not one to not repeat particularly juicy ones about bosses that are as annoying as this one. Apparently, this Bell-Bearing Hunter guy is the laughing stock of many a merchant around the Lands Between.

Some say the Bell-Bearing Hunter stalks the lonely roads for coin. Others say it is only to hear the sound of his own jingling, the sole company that will have him.
A knight once sworn to honor, now reduced to rifling through the pouches of roadside traders. Even the rats turn their noses up at such scraps.
Though his blade is great, his courage is not — for he strikes only when the moon is high, and no witnesses remain to mock him.
The shack he haunts was once a place of trade. Now, it serves only to shelter his pride from the storm of his own disgrace.
They say he hunts for bells to present as trophies. If true, then it is the saddest war collection ever assembled.
An armor-clad wraith of the night, who mistakes cruelty for purpose and plunder for glory.
The Bell-Bearing Hunter’s greatest foe is not the Tarnished, nor the merchants he stalks — but the memory of the man he once was.
His victims are many, yet none speak his name aloud. Not for fear — but because they cannot be troubled to remember it.

Okay, no merchants really said those things, I may have just completely made it up. But a made-up story is still better than no story, right? ;-)

Speaking of made-up stories, it is said that one moonless night, the Bell-Bearing Hunter mistook a wandering figure for easy prey — a lone merchant, silhouetted against the road. With his usual flourish, he leapt from the shadows, sword raised, armor clattering like a cheap wind chime.

Alas, the “merchant” was no merchant at all, but a wandering troll carrying a barrel of pickled fruit.

The troll, taken entirely by surprise, responded the only way a troll knows how: by hurling the barrel directly at the intruder’s face. The impact was tremendous. The Hunter was flung several feet, landing in a roadside ditch, half-buried in mud and pickled plums.

When he came to, the troll was long gone, his “prey” unplundered, and his helmet reeking of vinegar. Worse still, the bells he’d stolen earlier that week had vanished — whether dropped in the mud or taken by the troll remains unclear.

From that day on, the local merchants whispered of the night the hunter rang no bells, save the one in his head.

Okay, I’m done making stuff up now, I just had to pass the time with something during this lengthy video. I’m sure I’ll come up with more embarrassing and totally made-up details about the past exploits of the next Bell-Bearing Hunter I meet though, but we’ll see about that in another video ;-)

And now for the usual boring details about my character. I play as a mostly Dexterity build. I used the Longbow for this fight with just regular arrows from vendors. My shield is the Great Turtle Shell, which I mostly wear for the stamina recovery. I was level 124 when this video was recorded. I’m not sure if that’s generally considered too high for this boss. He certainly felt difficult enough for me, so I think it’s reasonable. 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 ;-)

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