How to Defeat General Radahn in Elden Ring

In this Boss Fight Guide, let’s discuss how to defeat General Radahn in Elden Ring. This mountainous and awe-inspiring General is one of the most difficult bosses in the game.

Despite being an optional boss, defeating him is required for a certain ending. Doing so also grants you some pretty great equipment including weapons and an armor set.

The ‘Cheese’ method

Because of his fight against Malenia, General Starscourge Radahn is now sick with the Scarlet Rot. He’s a mindless monster because of this condition. If you feel like using one of the cheesiest methods to defeat this giant, you can use his illness against him.

If you use Rot Grease on your weapon to inflict Scarlet Rot buildup on Radahn, you can easily kill him. He’s immensely weak to this status abnormality and you can kill him very quickly using Scarlet Rot. If you’d like to keep a safe distance from Radahn, you may use Scarlet Rot arrows on him with a bow or a crossbow.

The other (and easiest) way to kill him is to use Rotten Breath. This incantation is a Dragon Communion type of incantation. You must visit the Church of Dragon Communion and unlock this incantation by using one Dragon Heart. If you didn’t know, you can obtain Dragon Hearts by defeating dragons around the Lands Between.

In order to effectively utilize the Rotten Breath incantation, you must have at least 15 points in Faith and also 12 points in Arcane. Also, you should probably know that this incantation was nerfed substantially with a patch, and it’s not as effective as it was in the previous version of the game. But because of Radahn’s general weakness to Scarlet Rot, this incantation is still quite useful. Rotten Breath doesn’t inflict raw damage, but instead, it inflicts Scarlet Rot. And that’s just what the General is weak to.

If you’re really having trouble with this boss, using this method will grant you an easier win.

Summons

You cannot summon any of your Spirit Ashes for this fight, but there’s a good reason. The fight is not known as the Radahn Festival for nothing. And you don’t celebrate festivals by yourself, because that’s awfully selfish.

Radahn Festival is a great, big celebration where worthy champions get together and attempt to give this overwhelmingly powerful General his much-deserved rest. In a way, this is more of a final farewell to a hero than a downright assault against a villain.

Anyway, you can summon a total of eight characters to join you in your battle against the General. These summons include Blaidd the Half-Wolf, Iron Fist Alexander, Lionel the Lionhearted, Okina, Patches, Great-horned Tragoth, Castellan Jerren, and Finger Maiden Therolina.

Seven of these aspiring champions will do their best to aid you in your fight against General Radahn. One of them, that being our beloved Patches, will simply nope out of the fight as soon as he sees what he’s going to fight. You can summon these characters as many times as you’d like in this fight. So, if a few of them dies, you may summon them again.

Summoning them can be somewhat tricky because Radahn uses his gigantic Lion Greatbow to fire Greatspears at you with rattling speed. This is where our trusty steed Torrent comes in. You can summon him for this fight as long as you don’t use Co-Op summons. Do your very best to avoid Radahn’s arrows and run around the battlefield to summon your allies.

Getting hit with one of the arrows (or greatspears, if you prefer more suitable terms), you’ll be knocked to the ground. Be very careful.