Elden Ring: Mad Pumpkin Head Duo (Caelem Ruins) 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.

Mad Pumpkin Head Duo is in the lowest tier, Field Bosses, and is found in the underground part of the Caelem Ruins 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 advance the main story.

First of all, the boss is not really called Duo, I just call it that because there are two of them. Yes, two bosses at the same time. Prepare for headless chicken mode.

One of them attacks with a hammer and the other wields a flail. No matter, they both really really like to whack people over the head with whatever they’re holding, but fortunately they move somewhat slowly and are not that difficult to avoid. But even though it’s not difficult, I can obviously still screw it up, so I ended up taking quite a beating in this one.

I decided to give Banished Knight Engvall a rest on this one, as he managed to get himself killed during the last boss fight and is therefore obviously completely unreliable and currently in bad standing pending possible termination of his contract. If only he had a contract. And he doesn’t get paid either. Yeah, we all know I’m going to keep him; I just like to let him stew in uncertainty for a while.

Contrary to most enemies in the game, these bosses do not have a weak spot on their head. In fact, they seem to take significantly less damage if you hit the head instead of the body. Which I guess makes sense considering they’re wearing huge helmets and very little else, but it takes a little getting used to and they also like to try to shield their bodies with their huge heads, so try to work around that.

As usual in fights where there is more than one enemy, the best approach is to try to focus one of them down as fast as possible, as the fight becomes much more manageable when there is only one. I wouldn’t exactly call what I’m doing here “fast”, but for a lone headless chicken against two huge brutes, I think it’s okay ;-)