Elden Ring Fire Giant boss guide (2023)

After dozens or possibly hundreds of hours spent in The Lands Between, you’re finally nearing the end of Elden Ring. But there’s one extremely large, cantankerous, and spicy obstacle in between you and the forge you’ll use to burn the Erdtree in the Mountaintops of the Giants — the Fire Giant boss fight.

This red-headed menace can be quite a challenge, but our Fire Giant boss guide will help you snuff his flame in no time.

Preparing for the Fire Giant fight

At this stage of the game, you likely have access to almost every area, and your equipment for this fight should reflect that. Must-haves are the Flamedrake Talisman +2, plundered from the Dragonbarrow Cave in eastern Caelid, and the Dragoncrest Shield Talisman +1, found behind a stonesword key gate in the Sainted Hero’s Grave in Altus Plateau. Fire Giant hits hard, but increasing your fire and physical defenses with these talismans can take the edge off.

Fire Giant is susceptible to both scarlet rot and poison. If you can manage to stack these two effects, you’ll be able to tick away his health while focusing on staying alive. Faith casters can use the Rotten Breath and Poison Mist incantations, which can be purchased at the Cathedral of Dragon Communion and looted from a scarab southeast of the Castle Morne Rampart site of grace, respectively.

Alternatively, characters of any build can apply these damaging statuses using good old-fashioned throwing pots. The recipe for Poison Pots is in Nomadic Warrior’s Cookbook [14], found in the Smoldering Church. Rot Pots, meanwhile, can be crafted with Nomadic Warrior’s Cookbook [22], located in the Lake of Rot; if you haven’t been there yet, check Polygon’s guide to Ranni’s questline, as it’s a bit of a trek.

In addition, bleed works just fine on Fire Giant, so the Rivers of Blood katana that you almost certainly looted from Bloody Finger Okina when he invaded you at the nearby Church of Repose is a great choice here.

Lastly, Fire Giant’s wiki entry has some solid suggestions, including the Swarm of Flies incantation for inflicting blood loss, and the Antspur Rapier for applying scarlet rot. The former can be found in a cave north of the Palace Approach Ledge-Road site of grace underground in Mohgwyn Palace, while the latter must be won from Maleigh Marais, a hostile NPC found west of Shaded Castle.

Don’t use Frost, as Fire Giant’s massive resistance to cold damage makes it all but useless.

Learn how to dodge the Fire Giant’s attacks

The Fire Giant fight comprises three distinct phases.

Phase 1

The first phase begins as soon as you cross into Fire Giant’s range. His attacks during this phase mainly involve slamming his feet or shield down in your general direction. They’re easy enough to dodge, once you get the hang of it.

Given the size of the arena, you might be tempted to summon Torrent and ride into battle. However, you shouldn’t spend the whole fight on horseback as it makes Fire Giant’s attacks difficult to dodge. You should really only use Torrent to close the gap between you and the boss, either at the very start of the fight or when he rolls away from you later on.

Fire Giant almost always opens with the same attack, dragging his shield along the ground to send a wave of debris your way. If you’re on Torrent, you can dismount as the attack reaches you — this acts like a dodge since you’re invulnerable while dismounting. If you’re on the ground, you can simply dodge through it — it’s actually quite forgiving.

By the way, if this attack is one-shotting you, you should consider leveling up or re-speccing to beef up your vigor and health.

If you’re applying status effects like rot or poison, feel free to get those consumables or incantations off as soon as you have an opening.

Beyond that, the only strategy that matters for phase 1 is to head straight for Fire Giant’s left leg. Clearly this big boy suffered an injury there at some point and the limb appears to be bandaged and splinted. Naturally, you should take advantage of this by wailing on it as hard as possible.

This is where a lot of players begin to struggle, as locking onto Fire Giant’s left foot makes it difficult to see what he’s doing and making it way too hard to dodge his attacks. For that reason, although it may be counterintuitive, you should avoid locking on for most of this fight. The foot is a massive target, so you shouldn’t need to use target lock to hit it. Meanwhile, with your camera free to move around, you can focus your gaze upward at the boss to see when he’s going to let loose on you.

With this small change in strategy, Fire Giant fight should go from frustrating to relatively straightforward. The boss’s attacks have incredibly long wind-ups and are quite easy to dodge, whether he’s stomping his feet one after the other or lazily swiping his shield at you.

Phase 1.5

There’s a slight wrinkle here, as Fire Giant will gain some new attacks once he takes enough damage. This generally coincides with you hitting that left foot enough times to stagger him. He’ll briefly crouch and clutch his ankle — use the opportunity to cause some damage. He’ll then roll away and reach into his stomach-mouth to light his hand on fire and launch a Flame of the Fell God fireball your way. It will explode when it gets close enough to you. Try to bait the fireball near and then dodge away, or summon Torrent and ride past it and then out of its range.

In addition, during this phase, Fire Giant will shoot fast-moving fireballs that you have to dodge, and summon fiery sunspots all over the ground. These cause damage and explode after several seconds; however, as long as you’re not standing directly on top of one, you’re generally safe to continue damaging the boss’s foot.

Phase 2

At about 50% health, Fire Giant will get fed up with that injured leg and extremely awesomely rip it off. It earns him a few new attacks, though this phase isn’t really more difficult than phase 1.

You’ll quickly notice that Fire Giant now summons two Flame of the Fell God fireballs at once instead of the previous one. The strategy for avoiding them remains the same.

The boss also rears back and spews flaming rocks from his torso like an angry volcano. There’s nothing to do about it except to put some distance between you and him — use the opportunity to heal, re-apply buffs, cast spells, or even chuck some consumables his way.

In general, your strategy during phase 2 shouldn’t change much. You want to stick under and behind him, and keep attacking his legs and feet.

Even though his hands are technically the weak point here, you’ll take a lot more damage if you try to get in front of him to attack them, and the slow-and-steady method is much safer.

Occasionally, he’ll also shoot more fast-moving fireballs at you from his hands, or spray flames in a torrent in front of him. These attacks are less common, especially if you manage to stick close to his backside. Keep in mind, you can also stagger him, but actually getting around to follow up at his weak point generally takes more time than it’s worth.

To Summon or not to Summon

As with all large bosses that let you ride Torrent in this game, you have to ask yourself whether you’d rather have co-op help, or the ability to ride your horse during the Fire Giant fight.

Torrent can be useful for closing the gap between you and the boss, but you can’t rely on him, as Fire Giants attacks are more difficult to dodge while on horseback. On the other hand, summoning help — whether in the form of other players, or Warrior Jar Alexander, whose summon sign can be found just inside the boss fog — adds to the boss’s health bar, making an already tanky opponent even harder to whittle down.

As is often the case, using a spirit ash for this fight is a good compromise, providing you a little bit of extra help without adding to the boss’s health bar. Whatever spirit ash you’re comfortable with at this stage of the game can work, although low-health ashes may get obliterated pretty quickly.

Whatever path you choose, using these strategies will help you make the Fire Giant extinct in no time.