Make sure you’re obtaining scadutree fragments so you can level up your scadutree blessing at sites of grace. It increases your damage dealt and decreases your damage taken so it’s essential for keeping up with the increased damage and hp of the dlc enemies.

Go get the Scadutree fragments. They are the DLC's power progression system, and the bosses are scaled to them. If you can't find any, you can look up a guide online.

I started the DLC this week after creating a new character, which took me 80 hours just to get to it. First impressions are that this is practically Elden Ring II, and has some of the best areas and exploration that from have created.

The DLC has a unique levelling system for both summons and yourself. It's genious as it gives that constant progression feeling even with a high level character, and doesn't spoil the main game if you've not finished it.

Don't try attacking the giant flame golem unless you know what you're doing (I don't).

The first gaol optional mini boss in the start area is an arsehole. My build is a light blue dancer doll/dagger/buckler and he is a bitch for me.

Scadutree Fragments are your best friend. Welcome to the best DLC ever mate

When you say first boss are you talking about the knight or the obvious big boss with a cutscene (trying to not spoiler)

If it's the knight, you really have to focus on his attacks and decide if you play safe and punish the crossbow or go hard and get rekt from his sword over and over like me.

If it's the other, good luck, he's really hard or medium depending on build and weapon.

45 Vigor is a glaring issue. Should be at 60.

Take points out of other stats to put into Vigor. Namely Strength and Endurance.

Dragoncrest Shield is the weaker version of Dragoncrest Greatshield- replace with this.

Crimson Amber Medallion +3 exists, can replace with this. Or use something else like Crimson Seed +1 for stronger healing flasks (won't need to waste an extra flask getting closer to full health from critically low)

Re-spec and use a shield. Or just get good.

Summon the troll and use heal from afar. He can solo radahn for you

Personally, I find my PCR loadout to be fun as hell and a very viable way to beat him.

Miseriecorde w/ bleed on right hand
Messmer soldier shield on left hand with Carian Retaliation

Dragoncrest greatshield talisman
Golden braid
Dagger talisman
Double headed turtle talisman

With this loadout I learned to parry him and kill him with critical hits. Holy hell it’s fun

Stay right near their ass crack so that most of their attacks go over your head. Being short has it's perks!

Carefully, single attacks, no panic rolls, and don’t heal immediately after being hit unless you’re safe. Usually being all up in their personal space at all times too. 

Getting their hp to 0

Honestly, high.

Night comet and mimic tear with heavy armor. Don’t need to dodge when you can get out five comets before they turn toward you

The water throwables help too.

I got him the other night. And honestly it didn't take too many tries..maybe like 10 or so.. which isn't too bad

At first he was going crazy on me..but then I picked up on a few things that made it a ton easier.

PHASE 1

• If you brink guard his combo you can stun him without actually fatiguing him yet..it's even better than fatiguing him and usually leads up to one..cuz he gets into a stunlock phase with each hit.

• The delayed boot stamp, don't watch the boot..listen for the audio queue. He does a mini shout/roar right before it happens and it's much easier to time it like that than a visual queue.

PHASE 2

• When he start flame spinning rotate left, clockwise, around him cuz that's the direction the flames come down and you'll have less to dodge through.

• When he grapples to get away from you to fie, rush him rush him rush him. And get used to dodging his shots as if you're right on top of him. The idea is to get at least 1-2 swings on him..this will force him out of his firing phase. Otherwise if you keep your distance and dodge .. instead of having to dodge only 1-2 shots..you'll end up having to dodge 4-5-6-7-8 shots sometimes..it gets ridiculous.

Now having fire resistance is handy..but even just like 1 ring or 1 necklace with 150 fire resistance, is enough..just make sure you have some fire cleansing potions..Those are wayy more important than resistance IMO.

Whoever is reading,If you follow this and what OP says, you should have him down to phase 2 with maybe taking 1 hit at most..all your potions..then you just need to follow him when he grapples so he does less shots..and get good at dodging a few large slams..but even with missing those your potions should save you.

Whatever you do, don't let him go far and stay far..cuz he will give you hellfire

I'm surprised the ol' Antspur Greatshield setup didn't work for you, that's what got me through my first playthrough of the DLC. Still, despite the stress this is causing you, I at least commend your tenacity in hanging on.

I'll run you through a few things off my head. I don't know what you've done so far, so sorry if some of these are repetition:

Have you messed with the Deflection Hardtear at all? It's nifty, and lets you perfect guard attacks in order to reduce stamina costs, chip damage, and retaliate with an improved guard counter if you attack. I started using it the moment I found it, and while it took me a long time to understand it, I eventually fell in love with it for block styles.

Resistances. Naturally, buffs reduce damage taken, but the Consort fight is so long that your buffs will run out. Still, I'm a big fan of Old Lord's talisman, making Lord's Divine Fortification last closer to 90 seconds. The catch is that there's almost no time to rebuff during this fight, I would rebuff just Lord's Divine during the phase transition, which usually meant I got smacked by the next attack, which was usually the big sky beams... but, you know, cut by 65% more than usual, and that's if I didn't avoid the attack completely with...

Vow of the Indomitable. I was running a fat roll build, so rolling was often a desperate last measure, and while it's true that fat rolls could still avoid the Bloodflame swings (that explosion happens from behind me, so can't be blocked -- in hindsight, I could have free-aimed to block it?), Vow had a longer immunity duration than fat rolls and recovered more quickly and kept me in place to retaliate with pokes. The other attack Vow works well on are the meteors; had no idea how to fat roll those and I'm not protected vs. magic, so they chipped too hard, but Vow avoids them all and gives a good attack window if I'm underneath. Raptor of the Mists is also one of my favorites for similar reasons, though for Consort, I didn't really want to be jumping up.

Rot Grease, including Drawstring, can also help to ensure a proc. I didn't use it because, well, my particular stat distribution involved a Flame Art Antspur, but that can work too. I did use Rot Grease at multiple points during the DLC, I just don't think I did it for Consort.

While my style was mostly focused on perfect guards and guard counters when I learned the safety windows to use them, I have to admit I resorted to good ol' stupid shield pokes when I had the stamina to spare.

Most options of fighting are available for all builds, so you can find a combination of them to use

Damage buffs

Low requirement Defense buff / food

Parry

Deflecting Crystal Tear

Blocking (even just a medium shield for one hit)

Counter

There are people who did it by face tanking (no shield, no roll) in NG+7, while that's a little extreme, half of that preparation can surely make dodging / parrying / deflecting lot easier

I know how you feel. The final boss took me 187 attempts, more than all the other major bosses in the DLC combined. It was really discouraging and I couldn’t understand what was wrong with me. I finally got him with a bleed build. I didn’t even feel good about it when it was over, just relieved.

There are way more qualified people on here that can give you advice. I just wanted to say that I know what you’re feeling. Just hang in there.

For the attempt that worked for me, I used mimic and backhand blades not really optimal at all but it worked for me.

I'm a bit surprised you're struggling both being high level and also trying the shield and spear strat, but sometimes bosses really just make you struggle while others breeze through.

A really nice ash of war, and the one I used was raptors of the mist. For the big holy attack he does at the start of the 2nd phase, you can run right up to him and do the AOW to dodge the attack while also getting a hit in. Can give that a go and see if that helps dodge that attack.

100% real, even for how hard people said Malenia was I beat her pretty swiftly because she has flaws (easily staggered and low poise, weak to bleed) I just feel like with Radahn he has no flaws.

as a pure caster build summoning spirits is a must lmao. otherwise bosses stick to you and dont let you cast a shit. but i like how they balanced things out because summoning a strong spirit like olleg eats up your fp flask which you need to deal damage

It smell like b*tch in here.

Me and mimic ash, so me and me I guess ?

Dingleberries

I beat boss then I put my summon sign down if I want to farm some runes 10k per clear ?

Keep hitting him until his HP is zero, while not getting hit and keeping your red bar as full as possible. /s

OK, jokes aside, either try to learn his moveset to get better at fighting him, cheese him with poison mist, or go somewhere else until you leveled up some more.

Not sure what your current build is, but is there anything you struggle with in particular?

The fireball dodge timing is pretty easy - roll through it towards him. You can often get a hit on his front side just from going through his fireball spam.

The lightning dodge timing is harder but still consistent with a little practice. Learning that delay will make the fight a lot easier.

His jump attack is an easy dodge and is usually punishable. If playing safe, I would try to roll so that I ended up tight behind him, and just take one hit and moved back out to midrange.

Staying at midrange will mean mostly just dealing with those two ranged attacks & the jump. Later in the fight you’ll have to roll through a lightning wave after his ground smash, it’s not too hard though.

Prioritise learning the fireball & lightning dodges, it’s a much more manageable fight from there.

im surprised this is not the top comment. cliff parry is a very consistent speedrun strat for this boss.

Short answer: get good

Long answer: summons, player summons, he's weaker to magic, holy, pierce, strike and bonks.

Do a death run, where you know your going to die, instead of trying to beat him focus on learning his attacks.

General consensus is that the end game bosses in Elden Ring are significantly harder than even Friede or Nameless King, though of course it's all subjective and personal

In my opinion, the 3 “main” bosses leading up to the final one are some of the best in the whole series!

There are some cavalry bosses very similar to those two throughout Elden Ring (including some rematches!)

Can you clarify what you mean by "how are they" / "like that" / "worse"?

Are you just asking about people's overall experience with the difficulty?

It's all opinion. Some bosses later are the worst things of their lives. Those same bosses are some other fan favourites. You have the series experience. Keep playing and see what's up.

Boss fights were seriously affecting my enjoyment of the game so I did something I almost never do…I turned down the difficulty for them.

Seriously, the boss fights were at complete odds with what was making the game special to me as a puzzle exploration game; once I changed the dynamic difficulty, the game as a whole was much better. Sure, I’d try at normal difficulty for 5-10-15 times even but after awhile, nope!

If you have any dynamite that helped me a lot since it’s a small arena and it’s easy to hit with it.

If worse comes to worse, just go to the options menu and fiddle around with the difficulty. For instance you can turn off stamina loss I believe, allowing you to roll and shield more.

Have you checked the manual? Specifically pages >!18 and 19!<?

I would say spend the first few attempts looking at their attack patterns, each boss has a particular set of attacks that you can figure out how to best react to.

Also it's bit counterintuitive (as someone who doesn't play many games with difficult combat) but my partner showed me that dodging TOWARDS the boss was very often helpful instead of trying to dodge side to side; they miss you and you end up close enough to hit them and some of them can't hit you well when you're under their feet.