Whether you’re the Chosen Undead, Ashen one, or Tarnished, almost everyone — and everything — in a Souls game is out to get you. In Elden Ring, that list of enemies is the biggest yet. Roaming around the open world, you will be beset by knights, dogs, bears, birds, and all manner of strange and eldritch creatures. Many of these enemies are grouped up, perhaps even roaming around in convoys, showing that they have at least some sense of awareness and intelligence to not attack their companions.
You will want and sometimes need to exploit every advantage you can get to make it through some of the tougher areas in Elden Ring. The difficulty of the enemies, and the almost maniacal placement of some ambushes, all are meant to test you every step of the way. What if you were able to turn the tides on the game, though? It’s never been possible, outside the use of very limited and rare items, to pit enemies against one another in Souls games, but with the open nature of Elden Ring, is it possible? Here’s the answer.
Further reading
- Is Elden Ring cross-platform?
- How to upgrade weapons in Elden Ring
- How to change your character’s armor and appearance in Elden Ring
Can enemies fight each other in Elden Ring?
The answer to this question is a little murky. On one hand, no, enemies will not, outside of scripted areas of the game, target one another instead of all focusing their aggression on the player. Unless you’re in one of these specific areas, such as optional castles in the open world, you won’t see any random enemies or groups engaged in battle with each other or even wild animals. There also doesn’t appear, at least as far as we’ve discovered, to be any items that will turn an enemy against their allies.
On the other hand, enemies can, and will, deal damage to each other if hit by a big attack. The most obvious example is with the giant enemies. If you’ve got a giant after you, plus some foot soldiers, you can easily bait out the giant to smash and slam on the other enemies to clear them out before taking the big guy on one on one. Getting normal enemies to hit each other is much more difficult unless they have some area of effect spells or something similar, so your best bet is still to try and draw single enemies to fight at a time rather than groups and hope that they chip away at each other.
A major exception to this seems to be bosses. Whenever there are two bosses in a single encounter, they won’t be able to hurt the other, even with giant swings or area of effect spells. Bosses can hurt summoned mobs, though, which is a nice concession at least.
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