Elden Ring: How to Defeat Bayle the Dread

Where to Find Bayle

You’ll find Bayle the Dread in the Jagged Peak area, which is on the far eastern side of the map. Right after the Foot of the Jagged Peak Site of Grace, you’ll come across a field boss Dragon called Jagged Peak Drake. This fight pits you against two dragons, but it’s only required if you want to do the Igon side-quest (which you might as well).

Once you pass or defeat the Jagged Peak Drake, just keep heading up. You’ll pass some slipstreams to help you go upward, some of those rolling rocks trying to take you out, and then another field boss–Ancient Dragon Senessax (not required for the main story or Igon quest-line).

From there, it’s really a simple route to Bayle. Just keep heading up the mountain until you reach the top. There’s luckily a Site of Grace right by Bayle called the Jagged Peak Summit, so it’s easy to leave and get back to if you want to switch your build up.

Recommended Weapons & Resistances

Bayle has 40 damage negation in all damage types (according to the wiki, which also explains that the damage negation number represents the percentage of that damage type Bayle will absorb). This means that no weapon type really has an advantage against Bayle. However, it is possible to affect him with poison, scarlet rot, bleed, and cold/frostbite effects.

Personally, I was a big fan of the Lightning Perfume Bottle build that I found online shortly after the DLC came out, which utilizes the Perfume Bottle’s unique Ash of War, Rolling Sparks. I can’t take credit for that one since I found it elsewhere, but it is certainly a really powerful build. I found that combining that with the Mimic Tear makes this fight trivial, as Mimic Tear is actually really good at spamming weapon arts, so it gets a ton of damage in before dying. (I wasn’t able to get Mimic Tear to survive phase 2, but maybe you’ll have more luck.) I also liked using Cold / Frost build-up weapons against Bayle, even going as far as to put Hoarfrost Stomp on my Nagikaba before ultimately returning to the Lightning Perfume Bottle.

There’s also plenty of room for heavy strength weapons here, even if they aren’t as strong as against other bosses. While the colossal weapon types don’t seem like the best play here to me, if you prefer them, go for it. Since he has so many attacks that you basically have to dodge, though, I would say that it is very important to be light in this fight. If your build makes you medium or especially heavy roll, you might want to make sure you have some really good armor.

How to Fight Bayle

The most important part of any boss fight is learning how to avoid the enemy’s moves. Bayle has a variety of moves, but none are more deadly than his grab. As always, it feels like every boss ends up with some near-full-HP grab combo that threatens to end even a perfect run.

Other than that, Bayle does the standard moves you might expect. He has some fireball / fire breath attacks that are annoying to dodge thanks to the always-frustrating fire hitboxes. Once you figure out how to dodge through them at the right angle it gets easier, but they’re very hard to dodge consistently. There are also multiple “walk forward and punch/swipe” moves, which require you to dodge away or in towards him.

Once he transitions into phase 2 (which he does by jumping up and spawning lightning bolts which attack you for quite a while), he’ll be more aggressive and use more lightning attacks. He does some big AOE attacks, too, but for the one that he starts by punching the ground, you can just jump up in the air to avoid it. During phase 2, you have to make sure and pay attention to his lightning attacks and the AOE ones. Don’t be too aggressive and try to get four or five hits in when you realize he’s charging the AOE–it’s not worth dying over. Phase 2 is really just more of the same but more aggressive and with more annoying attacks, so you really don’t have to change your playstyle too much.

How to Cheese Bayle

If you want to beat Elden Ring bosses as easily as possible, no matter how long it takes, then Bayle is one of the best bosses in the DLC. If you use a spell to make yourself invisible/undetectable, you can just walk around the edge of the boss arena once you enter and get up right behind Bayle. Then you can use a poison or scarlet rot spell to make him start taking damage without ever officially starting the fight. It takes forever, but you can definitely defeat Bayle for free just by doing this.

I’m not going to say I’d recommend the cheese method over the normal, but it’s definitely a funny way to do it. This fight is fun enough that I honestly think it’s just worth doing normally, but hey… if you get the rewards anyway, why not do it this way?