Elden Ring: Demi-Human Chiefs (Coastal Cave) Boss Fight

As you may know, bosses in Elden Ring are divided into three tiers. From lowest to highest: Field Bosses, Greater Enemy Bosses and finally Demigods and Legends.

The Demi-Human Chiefs in Coastal Cave are in the lowest tier, Field Bosses, and are the end bosses of the small Coastal Cave dungeon.

As most of the lesser bosses in Elden Ring, they are optional bosses, but you will encounter them very early in the game and they can be useful for some practice in boss fights.

The Demi-Human Chiefs are a pair of two identical bosses who gang up on you, as they have obviously been to boss school and learned to never play fair. They also have a few regular non-elite helpers with them, so all in all you're going to have your hands full.

There is a phantom available for summoning for this fight, namely Old Knight Istvan, and although I usually do boss fights without summons, I decided to call him in for some assistance as I was still very new to the game when I encountered these two and I struggled a bit with managing so many enemies at the same time. Also, if they call in help, why shouldn't I? ;-)

Apparently, it is possible to aggro only one of the bosses at a time, which would certainly make this a much easier fight, but as usual when I get pressed, I run around like a headless chicken and attract all sorts of attention, so I had the entire cave aware of and rather grumpy over my presence.

Fortunately, Old Knight Istvan does a marvelous job at keeping their attention and taking a beating, so even a headless chicken can get some pecks in and lay some pain on the bosses while they're occupied.

Individually, they're fairly simple melee fighters and the typical strategy of waiting for them to pause after a long attack chain before getting up close and doing some damage yourself, works very well against these as well. Most of the difficulty in the fight comes from so much going on at once, but either staying close to the entrance to aggro less enemies at a time, or to make use of Old Knight Istvan's assistance offsets this difficulty a lot, so you should be able to get them down without too much trouble.

Try to not be a headless chicken like me ;-)