Elden Ring: Flying Dragon Agheel (Lake Agheel/Dragon-Burnt Ruins) Boss Fight

I apologize for the picture quality of this video – the recording settings had somehow gotten reset, and I didn't realize this until I was about to edit the video. I hope it's tolerable, nonetheless.

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.

Flying Dragon Agheel is in the middle tier, Greater Enemy Bosses, and can be found near the Dragon-Burnt Ruins in Western Limgrave, out in the Lake Agheel area. And no, I don't know if the lake is named after the dragon or the other way around.

So. There I was. A young and inexperienced Tarnished, out to see if it would be possible to scrape together a smidgen of loot and perhaps just enough runes to not have to go to bed hungry. Oh, what is that I see in the distance? Near those ruins? Something shiny? I'd better take a look.

But wait, there are enemies there. Oh, it's just those zombie things and not too many of them. No problem, I'll put them out of their misery and see what that shiny thing is, just need to get a little bit clo... Ouch! Where did that fire come from?!

A dragon! Landed right on top of me, the evil overgrown lizard! And now it seems to have set up camp way too close to that shiny thing I wanted to take a closer look at! How rude and inconsiderate!

This pretty much sums up my first encounter with Flying Dragon Agheel, probably only a couple of hours into the game. Not one to forget about shiny things in the distance so easily, I of course spent a couple of attempts on killing him back then, but soon realized that it would be better to go do something else, level up a bit, scrape together some better gear and then come back and get my terrible revenge on him later. In the meantime, I figured the shiny object would be safe enough with a dragon guarding it.

The first time you encounter this dragon, it's not at the ruins, but instead it will come swooping down on you when you get close to them. Afterwards, it will stay grounded at the ruins until you engage it and can be seen clearly from quite a distance away, mocking you with its presence.

After brooding, plotting, scheming and rubbing my hands together while cackling manically for several in-game days at the thought of my sweet, sweet revenge on the dragon, I finally got my act together and went out to kill a bunch of defenseless sheep and birds in order to gather materials for arrows, as I figured a giant, flying, fire-breathing lizard would be a prime target for some ranged goodness.

After that was done, I was out of excuses and had to stop procrastinating, so once again, I was off to the Dragon-Burnt Ruins to check that my shiny object was still there, and to hopefully achieve glorious victory in heroic battle over the evil dragon that had kept me apart from my precious for so long.

As mentioned before, I had decided to go ranged combat for this boss because that seemed to offset the rather huge advantage it had over me by being able to fly, which put it conveniently out of range of my spear.

We all know that dragons breathe fire, but did you know they bite too? Well, they do. A lot. And hard. And if you let them, they will first give you a medium roast from high above, then land on you with their big feet, and then bite you. It's like a Swiss army knife of being uncool.

When going ranged, the by farm most dangerous attacks this boss has are the two varieties of breath attacks.

One of them has it staying on the ground and breathing fire at you. It will follow you and it has extremely long range, so the best way to avoid it is to sprint sideways. And by "sprint", I don't mean sneak sideways and get caught in bad lizard breath, like you'll see me doing in this video, because I'm apparently all thumbs while fighting dragons, and accidentally pressed the sneak button at a very inopportune moment.

The other breath attack has it flying up high and covering a large part of the vicinity in fire. While this one looks very dramatic, it's actually easier to avoid, because you just have to sprint towards the dragon and slightly to the side to end up behind it, where you can grab the golden opportunity to put a few arrows in its hide before it's ready for the next round.

And of course, it will try to land on you, claw at you, swing its tail at you, and bite you as well, so keep your roll button within reach and ready to go.

A trick I learned about halfway into the fight is to stay near the little rock formation in the middle of the area, as that one can be used as cover against the fire breath and it's easy to run to and hide behind. Even when accidentally sneaking. Yes, it happened more than once.

One good thing about all the fire breathing is that you don't have to worry much about all the other mobs in the lake joining Team Dragon in the fight, as they will be nicely roasted to a crispy finish because they're not nearly as athletic and awesome at rolling as you are. That just leaves all the picking up loot to you after the battle is over, but I think that's a reasonable division of labor and only fair considering the dragon wouldn't have been breathing fire in the first place if it wasn't for you.

When you finally manage to kill the grumpy lizard, you can loot its heart, which can be consumed at the Church of Dragon Communion to obtain some cool new dragon-based incantations, if you're into that sort of thing. Beware that consuming too many dragon hearts will eventually change the color of your eyes, signifying that you are slowly turning into a dragon yourself. As far as I know, this change will never become more than a change of eyes in the game and it's only cosmetic. I guess it's true that you become what you eat. But if you prefer to stay pretty while slaughtering for profit, it's something to consider ;-)