Bandai Namco and FromSoftware have posted some pretty cool statistics regarding Elden Ring, as the players are still hesitating to determine which field bosses have claimed the most Tarnished lives. The official ELDENRING account on Twitter came up with a graphic showing the top three field bosses with the highest player body count, but it didn’t take long for die-hard gamers to notice an enormous and very conspicuous exclusion that is now a raging topic of debate in the gaming community.
What is going on, then? The tweet talking about the ‘unending war’ and letting the past fights clear the way to future battles was the one that unveiled the three most deadly field bosses in terms of player deaths. In first place is no other than Draconic Tree Sentinel, the heartless golden knight that stands right at the entrance of Leyndell. Quite frankly, that is not surprising at all. Draconic is not going to let unworthy players pass through. Following him is Loretta’s ghostly form, the Knight of the Haligtree. Again, he is so frustrating—the casting of her spells while having a fight with her in that place is really overwhelming, to say the least.
And in third… the Erdtree Avatar. Yes, the primary tree spirit that is basically the Dark Souls 1’s Asylum Demon re-skin. This is when the comment section started raging. Players are really confused. ‘I can’t believe the erdtree is 3rd place,’ one user known as yokai exclaimed. Another one was just as bewildered: ‘How come you all are dying to the Erdtree Avatar? He is just Dark Souls 1’s tutorial boss with more power.’
The confusion is real. But the bigger mystery, which is actually the hottest topic in town, is not who IS on the list but who ISN’T. The drawing only shows three bosses. As a result, the immediate reaction from dozens of replies was a single, burning question: ‘…so who is the 4th deadliest??’ as user OwllBoi put it. The tweet says ‘Let the insights of your past battles forge the path ahead,’ pointing to a site with further data, but the visual just goes as far as three. It’s like a cliffhanger, only it’s about pain.
And the community already knows who is the one. They have all gone through it, or more precisely, they have all been killed by it. The comments are a symphony of one name: the Bell Bearing Hunter. That knight who is scary, silent, and teleporting and sometimes pops up at the merchant shacks during the night hours. ‘The 4th can only be Bell Bearing Hunter 💀,’ yannjapon commented and they were not alone. User Kamusaru even posted a screenshot from the linked website verifying it: ‘He’s there! Number 4 🤣. Couldn’t be out of this ranking.’
Why is he not shown in the main graphic? Gamers have a theory and it’s, like, really funny. The Bell Bearing Hunter is so infamously and mercilessly tough that the majority of players simply do not confront him. ‘It’s probably bc everyone avoids him,’ said Karatay038. Another player, papadoge108, concurred: ‘BBH being skipped makes sense.’ Thus, the stats might be skewed since the only ones fighting him are the masochists, whereas the Erdtree Avatar is a more or less early roadblock that countless new players faceplant into. The thing is, it’s a statistics game, but to the veterans, it feels wrong.
The replies are filled with hot takes and community in-jokes. Some even claim that the rankings are totally off. ‘The trolls should be 1,’ claimed عبدالملك, referring to those pesky Pot Trolls. ‘Pot-troll should be #1, so annoying lol,’ cheeksdewliciouz echoed. Others were taken by surprise that the Death Rite Bird was not even higher. ‘I thought death bird would be way higher and avatar way lower,’ replied DayDay.
And there is the typical FromSoftware player arrogance mixed with real confusion. After NuclearFungus joked about maybe people die to the Avatar because they try to kill it early for runes, then Genesis | Riad replied: ‘If you played Elden Ring at a decent level you should be able to kill it at level 1 lol it shouldn’t even hit you.’ It is that beautiful Soulsborne mix of ‘git gud’ and community confusion.
A couple of gamers were thrilled for a second, imagining the mysterious tweet might be signaling a new feature. ‘From the text i thought this was a boss replay mode for elden ring like sekiro’s😭,’ lamented prevay. Sorry, buddy. Not today. Just data. Painful, confusing data. What does all this imply? It implies that the game is also popular on PlayStation and Xbox platforms.
