Skip to main content

Can enemies kill each other in Elden Ring?

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.

Recommended Videos

Further reading

Can enemies fight each other in Elden Ring?

Giant monsters move to attack in Elden Ring.
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.

Jesse Lennox
Jesse Lennox has been a writer at Digital Trends for over five years and has no plans of stopping. He covers all things…
Elden Ring just took pity on us and nerfed Shadow of the Erdtree’s final boss
A knight holding the moonlight greatsword in elden ring.

Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree's final, brutally difficult boss has gotten the nerf he deserves -- or doesn't, depending on who you ask.

Developer FromSoftware released update 1.14, which is now out across all platforms (PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PC). It's full of the usual bug fixes, but the focus seems to be on weapon and enemy balance in multiple areas of the game. However, the most impactful for players are the changes made to the final boss in the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC: Promised Consort Radahn.

Read more
Is Elden Ring cross-platform?
Multiple players dueling in Elden Ring.

By the time Elden Ring came out in 2022, the cult following FromSoftware had been building had breached the mainstream. The massive risk of going open-world paid off big time as millions of players have flocked to the game since release, even going back for seconds with the amazing Shadow of the Erdtree DLC.

Just like older titles, Elden Ring makes use of a (cryptic) multiplayer system, allowing you to explore the Lands Between with a buddy by your side if you find a boss or two a bit too challenging to take on alone. Even on our third, fourth, and fifth playthroughs of the game, we're not ashamed to say we rely on summoning a friend for a few bosses to this day. But is Elden Ring a cross-platform game, or are you stuck playing with folks on the same platform as you?

Read more
The best Syndicate rewards in Star Wars Outlaws
One character points a gun at others while gambling in a bar in the trailer for Star Wars Outlaws.

You will learn very quickly in Star Wars Outlaws that it isn't the Empire that runs things -- it's the syndicates. These crime families each fight for power over the various planets you will explore and all see you as a potential pawn in their schemes. Kay has a lot of useful skills and abilities they want to take advantage of, but it isn't a one-way street. If you can raise your reputation with a syndicate all the way to the max, you can earn yourself some valuable and exclusive rewards you won't find in any container you lockpick. Doing that many jobs for a syndicate takes time, but also tends to incur the wrath of other syndicates at the same time, making it very challenging to keep everyone happy. These syndicates have the best rewards that you should work your way through the ranks to get.
How reputation works

Each of the four major syndicates in Star Wars Outlaws has their own reputation meter you need to manage. These have five major segments: Terrible, Bad, Poor, Good, and Excellent. You raise that meter by doing jobs for a syndicate and lower it by either doing jobs that hurt that syndicate or by fighting or trespassing on their turf.

Read more