Elden Ring: Decaying Ekzykes (Caelid) Boss Fight - BUGGED

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.

Decaying Ekzykes is in the middle tier, Greater Enemy Bosses, and is found outdoors close to the Caelid Highway South Site of Grace in Caelid. 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 progress the main story.

This boss is an old dragon who is apparently succumbing to the Scarlet Rot that covers the land of Caelid. You will find him sleeping in an open area very conveniently close to a Site of Grace. I know there’s an old saying about letting sleeping dragons lie or something like that, but an arrow to a sleeping dragon’s face is much more fun. The only problem is that it turns the sleeping dragon into a wide-awake dragon really quickly, and those are notorious for shortening the lifespans of unwary Tarnished, who may or may not have fired said dragon-waking arrow.

I want to say right away that this fight did not go as planned. I had done multiple attempts at killing this boss and was trying to come up with a strategy to defeat him when he suddenly and unexpectedly bugged out on me, making it really easy to win the fight.

When I said multiple attempts, I mean around thirty or so. So yeah, I was tired of him and not really in the mood for keeping on fighting him, but with that said, exploiting bugs is not usually something I do.

The strategy that I was trying to get to work was to place Latenna the Albinauric Spirit Ashes on a small hill overlooking the arena, hoping she would be able to nuke him from range in relative peace while I distracted him on horseback or melee on foot. After many attempts, I had been close to killing him a couple of times, but no matter how well it went, sooner or later his one-shot kill move with the Scarlet Rot would get me.

Anyway, what happened on the final attempt that you see in the video, was that he apparently got stuck in a climbing animation while trying to go up one of the small hills around the arena. At first, I fully expected him to regain his usual grumpy and deadly self after a few seconds, so I just took the opportunity to chip away at his health from range, but after a few moments it became clear that he was stuck for good. Even after his stance was broken two times, he still went back to the same stuck animation.

A better person than me would probably have run to the nearby Site of Grace and reset the fight at this point, but I honestly couldn’t be bothered anymore. I actually considered the fight good fun, except for that single one-shot mechanic, where his Scarlet Rot will kill you almost immediately. After so many tries, it just wasn’t fun anymore. And let’s remember, this is a game, it’s not work. If nothing else, it’s at least supposed to be fun, otherwise what’s the point?

Instead of doing the noble deed and giving the old dragon thirty more opportunities to kill me, I actually found it interesting to see if the bug would allow him to be killed easily or if he would in fact recover at some point. As I felt like I already had gotten as much fun as I could out of the fight and I didn’t really want to keep trying, I decided to just keep shooting at him and see if he would break out of it in the end. As it turns out, he didn’t, he just kept climbing and climbing while Latenna and I kept shooting arrows at him.

I have no idea if this bug is a common occurrence with him or not. I personally have no idea how I would make him do that again, as it seemed completely random to me. And as I rarely replay the same game, I will probably never get to try. But if I ever do decide to play New Game Plus, it would be interesting to see if I could reproduce it. It would be even more interesting to see if I would have a day with more patience and the willpower to reset him and keep trying until I kill him in a more honest way, but I think I already know the answer to that one. Too little time and too many bosses to fight to bother.

Another thing I noticed with this boss on my previous attempts was that if you drag him too far away from the arena – not much further than just beyond the ridge – he will de-aggro, disappear and then reappear in his starting position, but his health will not go back to full. This seems like another bug to me, as it can be easily exploited to defeat him with very low risk, by just chipping away at his health from range and then resetting him when it gets dangerous. At least I didn’t sink that low, but it was completely and reliably reproducible, so I could have if I wanted to.

I play as a mostly Dexterity build. My melee weapon is the Guardian’s Swordspear with Keen affinity and Sacred Blade Ash of War. My ranged weapons are Longbow and Shortbow. I was rune level 79 when this video was recorded. I’m not really sure if that is generally considered appropriate, but the difficulty of the game seems reasonable to me. I typically don’t grind levels, but I do very thoroughly explore each area before moving on, so I gain a good amount of Runes for buying levels and don’t rush through things. I play entirely solo, so I’m not looking to stay within a certain level range for matchmaking. I don’t want mind-numbing easy mode, but I’m also not looking for anything too challenging as I get enough of that at work and in life outside of gaming. I play games to have fun and relax, not to be stuck on the same boss for days ;-)