Elden Ring: Flying Dragon Greyll (Farum Greatbridge) 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.

Flying Dragon Greyll is in the middle tier, Greater Enemy Bosses, and is found outdoors guarding the Farum Greatbridge near the Bestial Sanctum in North-Eastern Dragonbarrow. 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.

This flying dragon feels somewhat different than the ones I have fought previously in the game, in that it doesn’t really fly very much. It seems to very much prefer to stay on the bridge and give approaching Tarnished a medium roast with its usual bad dragon breath. I guess it just likes enjoying the excellent view from the bridge while it munches on a free lunch of barbecued Tarnished, maybe with a side of coleslaw and some fries. That actually sounds pretty good, perhaps I’ll join the Dragon Communion after all ;-)

I’ve found that what works best for me against dragons is to use ranged combat, preferably on horseback, as it is often necessary to quickly move out of the way from dragon fire, and that is also the approach you will see me using in this video. Going melee against these huge bosses just makes it very hard to see what is going on and what they’re about to do, so I often find myself getting stomped on or getting eaten and that’s just no fun at all.

I still haven’t managed to get my Shortbow very well upgraded, so I’m again using my Longbow for this fight, although that means Torrent slows down a lot when I shoot. I hope to come across a dragon that has a huge treasure of stashed Smithing Stones soon, but so far, no luck. It’s almost as if the dragons don’t want me to upgrade my weapons and become better at killing their kind. I guess they too are forgetting who the main character of this story is ;-)

If you have watched any of my recent videos you will know that I have felt very over-leveled throughout Altus Plateau and Mount Gelmir, but that is not so much the case now. I’m probably still a bit too high level for Dragonbarrow, but everything seems to hit insanely hard now and kill me in two or three hits, so I can’t make a lot of mistakes. The dragon’s breath is one example of this; I found it very important to stay well away from it if I didn’t want to become the feast at a dragon barbecue party.

Apart from the fact that it doesn’t really fly much, this dragon seems very similar to the other flying dragons in the game. Same type of breath attacks, same type of melee attacks. Being on a bridge means that you have to move away from the dragon very quickly when it breathes, you can’t just run sideways like I would have done out in the open, which is why Torrent is essential for this strategy.

Like other flying dragons, this one seems to have two different patterns when using its breath attack. It will either shoot a very long-range straight stream of fire, or it will do a sweeping motion from one side to the other. Out in the open, I would say that the sweeping one is more difficult to avoid, but on the bridge it’s actually the straight one, because you have to gain a lot of distance very quickly to avoid it, you can’t just move a short distance to once side.

I was trying to drag the dragon off the bridge for a more interesting fight, and as you can see in the second half of the video, I did manage to do that once, at which point the dragon became even grumpier, knocked me off my horse and then reset. Apparently, it just loves sitting on that bridge, so I guess that’s where we have to fight it and endure a more close-quarters experience. Fortunately, in Elden Ring, bosses don’t regain their health when they reset on their own, so I could just ride back on the bridge and continue the fight.

I know it feels like a bit of an exploit, and I should probably have done the noble thing and properly reset the fight by visiting the nearby Site of Grace, but it’s obviously a design choice by the developers and who am I to say they’re wrong? Well, I’m the one to say they’re wrong every time they do something that is not to my advantage, but this boss not getting its health back when it decided to teleport back to its starting position was hugely to my advantage, so I definitely think the developers are right and making excellent decisions here ;-)

During this fight, I started thinking about how it’s actually a shame that you get teleported to Bestial Sanctum so early in the game. Imagine that you had to come here from the bridge direction instead. First you would face the dragon, then shortly after the Black Blade Kindred. At that point you would be wondering what the heck is so important that it’s guarded by two bosses, and then you would find a very hungry clergyman and be disappointed. Overcoming big obstacles only to face disappointment is what this game is all about ;-)

I could probably have sped up the fight somewhat by using Rotbone Arrows instead of being stingy and just using the regular vendor-bought ones, but that would mean I would have to go back to the Hell-hole known as Lake of Rot and grind the Hell-beasts known as Basilisks for the Hell-butterflies known as… well, Aonian Butterflies, but close enough. Lake of Rot was my least favorite area of the game so far and all types of Basilisks are just hugely annoying and one of the few monsters in the game with even worse breath than a dragon ;-)

And now for the usual boring details about my character. I play as a mostly Dexterity build. My melee weapon is the Guardian’s Swordspear with Keen affinity and Chilling Mist Ash of War. My ranged weapons are the Longbow and the Shortbow. My shield is the Great Turtle Shell, which I mostly wear for the stamina recovery. I was level 118 when this video was recorded. I think that’s probably still a bit too high for Dragonbarrow, but I’m definitely not feeling as over-leveled now as I was all the way through Altus Plateau. 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 ;-)