Elden Ring Starscourge Radahn tips and strategy

How to prepare for Starscourge Radahn

Preparing to face off against Starscourge Radahn, we'd simply recommend you take an armor that protects you against physical attacks, but keeps your overall weight below the 40 marker. This means you can still sprint forward with some speed, and you're about to find out why that's really important in this boss fight.

Torrent can be a key part of overcoming the boss fight, so make sure you've got the spectral steed easily reachable on your items. Don't use the horse immediately though, as Radahn will simply shoot you off it with a well-placed arrow.

Starscourge Radahn tips: How to beat Starscourge Radahn

Brace yourself, this is one hell of a fight. As soon as you spawn into Starscourge Radahn's arena, you need to immediately sprint forwards to the glowing markers on the ground straight ahead of you.

These are actually summon spots for AI companions, most of which you will have just met at the festival in Redmane Castle dedicated to Starscourge Radahn.

Summon in all the AI characters you possibly can as you advance towards Starscourge Radahn in the distance. All while you're doing this though, Radahn will be firing an elemental arrow straight at you, so either hide behind the debris on the battlefield, or roll straight through the arrow, as strafing or rolling around it is unfortunately impossible.

Starscourge Radahn might switch out the elemental arrow in favour of a host of regular arrows. When Radahn fires a cluster of arrows up into the air, they're about to make their way down to towards you in a column, which you've got to immediately run around to the side if you don't want to end up stuck full of them.

When you or one of your comrades gets close to Starscourge Radahn, he'll give up firing arrows and press the physical attack. One of the boss' favourite tactics is to slide around on his comically small horse, circling you while holding his swords ready to strike.

Hold your nerve for as long as possible in this phase, because the later you dodge roll through his strikes, the more chance you have of dodging his attacks entirely.

Ideally, summoning Torrent is best when Radahn starts these physical attacks. If you summon the spectral steed too soon, the boss will shoot you off of it, so it's best to hold back here and wait.

Additionally, we've found Starscourge Radahn is particularly weak to magic-based attacks like bolts, so it's a really good idea to use a staff on the back of Torrent to cast ranged attacks.

Radahn can pull out elemental attacks similar to his arrows. The boss can charge his blades up with purple lightning, and if he holds them above his head, he's about to bring them crashing down to the floor immediately in front of him. Don't get close to him now though, because a second after the attack lands he'll sneakily bring both swords back up from the ground in another slashing move, catching out those who get too close to him.

In this electric-based phase, Starscourge Radahn can also cause a massive area-of-effect attack in front of him, by slamming the blades down to the ground in a similar fashion.

Another attack has the boss summoning orbs that'll hone in on you, and the only advice we can really give here is to back the hell away from the boss very quickly, because there's no way of dodging the blast if you're too close, but it is relatively easy to roll around the orbs flying at you in a cluster.

At roughly half health or just lower, Radahn pulls out a really mean move. The boss will disappear into the sky, and stay there for roughly four second, before he comes screaming back down to the ground in the form of a blazing comet.

Keep your eye on the sky when Radahn's in the air, and position yourself on the opposite side of the hill to where the comet is coming from, as you can shield from the blast if you've got the hilltop between the two of you. If you're on Torrent though, simply sprinting with the horse in a diagonal line adjacent to the hilltop stands you a good chance of avoiding the attack.

After the comet, Starscourge Radahn gets even tougher. He now has lightning orbs floating around him that can strike you if you get too close, and he can pull of a shockwave-based attack with his magic-infused swords.

In this phase, Torrent is paramount, because you can keep circling the boss just out of reach of his physical attacks, while also double-jumping over the shockwaves just as they're about to hit you.

Finally, one mean attack to look out for in this phase is when Radahn jumps into the air and hangs their for a few seconds.

He's about to come at you in a force of pure lightning, so if you're not on Torrent now, mount your spectral steed and back off, as when Radahn's finished his swooping motion down to you, he finishes the attack by dropping to the ground and letting off a huge area-based attack.

It's really important to note you can repeatedly summon characters back in this fight against Starscourge Radahn. If an AI character bites the dust (and trust us, they're going to do that a lot), all you need to do is approach their summon sign again to get them back in the fight straight away.

We'd recommend taking stock of the situation, and if you find yourself down a few pals, summon your allies back in during Radahn's second phase, after the comet has struck.

Starscourge Radahn reward

At the very end of the fight, you'll net yourself a grand total of 70,000 Runes. You'll also get Remembrance of the Starscourge, which can be used for Runes or exchanged with Enia at the Roundtable Hold for new items, as well as Radahn's Great Rune, which raises maximum HP, FP, and stamina.

Now that Starscourge Radahn has finally been felled after all these years, it's time to forge ahead with the story of Elden Ring.