Elden Ring: Death Rite Bird (Academy Gate Town) Boss Fight

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.

Death Rite Bird is in the lowest tier, Field Bosses, and is found outdoors near the Academy Gate Town area in Liurnia of the Lakes. Like most lesser bosses in the game, this one is optional in the sense that you do not need to kill it in order to advance the main story.

If you think this boss looks familiar it’s probably because you have seen something similar before, namely its smaller and less dangerous cousins, the Deathbirds, which are encountered in several locations in the game.

This boss does indeed look a lot like a Deathbird, except that it has a frosty glaze to it that makes it obvious that this is no lowly bird to be trifled with, this is an extra cool bird with magical skills. But if you thought it was so cool that it wouldn’t use its cane to whack you over the head at any given opportunity, you would be wrong.

It will spawn out of nowhere, immediately become hostile and descend from the sky when you get close enough, so there is no way to sneak up on it or get in a few cheap shots to start off the fight.

This boss has all of the tricks of the regular Deathbirds, plus a few more. It has several different magical attacks, most of which will inflict Frostbite if you’re not careful. Many of them also have a quite large area of effect, so be careful not to stand still too much.

It will often fly up into the air and then come swooping down like some sort of vengeful chicken carcass of barbecues past, or it may fly away and hurl a bunch of spears at you, summon magical orbs and feathers that try to set you on fire, and it will even set the water on fire with some sort of white ghost flames.

As mentioned earlier and even though the Death Rite Bird has a lot of magical attacks at its disposal, it will also still happily use its cane to whack people over the head with, so watch out for that and keep your roll button within reach.

Fortunately, like most undead, it’s also critically weak to Holy damage, which for a very non-holy character like myself can be taken advantage of by using the Sacred Blade Ash of War to lay some pain on it. The bird would often fly away just as I was about to swing at it, so the Sacred Blade’s initial ranged attack came in very handy as well.