How to beat Leonine Misbegotten in Elden Ring (2024)

Leonine Misbegotten stands at the end of Castle Morne, one of the earliest fortresses players will explore in Elden Ring.

Leonine Misbegotten is a bestial enemy who’s something of a tricky customer. As an aggressive boss, this creature will happily leap across its arena to smack you with a giant sword.

Although this is an optional boss fight, you’ll have to beat Leonine Misbegotten to progress Irina’s questline and gain access to Edgar the Revenger. If you need advice on how to deal with this nimble lion, don’t worry — we’ve got you covered.

Leonine Misbegotten location

Image: Polygon via Bandai Namco

To get to Leonine Misbegotten’s location, you’ll first need to make your way through Castle Morne. This is a fortress located right at the bottom of the Weeping Peninsula, and Leonine Misbegotten’s arena is at the southernmost point of this.

You’ll need to get to Castle Morne’s ramparts by running through the courtyard, getting past a Mad Pumpkinhead, then ascending a ladder at the back. Navigate your way across the walkway and past the flying Misbegotten, then look for a way to drop down at the southern end of the castle. You should find a series of ledges and buildings here that you can use to descend towards the beach.

Make sure to activate the Beside the Rampart Gaol site of grace before attempting this boss fight, as this will allow you to respawn close to the arena. You can find this site of grace tucked around the side of the gaol building, before you cross the wooden bridge towards the beach.

How to prepare for Leonine Misbegotten

As one of the Misbegotten — a humanoid creature with animalistic aspects — it’s no surprise that Leonine Misbegotten has a ferocious fighting style. This enemy gets up close and personal, so it helps to use tools that can knock it back, or spirit ashes that can attract its attention.

Thankfully, it’s also very vulnerable to being staggered and having its stance broken, leaving it open to critical attacks. Read on to learn about the items in Limgrave that can help with this fight.

Gearing up in Limgrave

You’ll probably take some hits when battling Leonine Misbegotten, so one way to prepare is by improving the power of your Flasks, so we recommend gathering as many Golden Seeds and Sacred Tears in Limgrave as possible.

In terms of talismans, the Crimson Amber Medallion — which boosts your HP — is a good place to start. If you didn’t select this talisman with your starting class, you can buy it from a Nomadic Merchant on the Eastern side of the Weeping Peninsula.

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As Leonine Misbegotten’s stance can be broken relatively easily, jump attacks are a good tactic for this fight. A talisman to boost the power of your jump attacks called the Claw Talisman can be found in Stormveil Castle, near the Rampart Tower site of grace.

Guard counters are another great way to punish Leonine Misbegotten, and you can further strengthen these with the Curved Sword Talisman, which can also be found in Stormveil. For help finding these talismans, head over to our Stormveil Castle walkthrough.

A handy way to avoid being thumped by Leonine Misbegotten is to distract it with spirit ashes. One of the most useful ashes in the early game is the Lone Wolf Ashes, which summons three ghostly wolves. This spirit ash (along with Torrent) is given to the player by Renna at the Church of Elleh in Limgrave — try fast travelling to this location at night to get her to appear.

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If you missed Renna, don’t fret, as this spirit ash can later be bought at the Roundtable Hold from the Twin Maiden Husks. When used in the Leonine Misbegotten battle, the wolves should aggro the boss and distract its attention from you, giving you a chance to heal or use ranged attacks.

Meanwhile, if you’re struggling to avoid Leonine Misbegotten’s sweeping greatsword, there’s a weapon that can help solve this problem. The Whip can be used to stagger Leonine Misbegotten and disrupt his attacks. Rather handily, you can also find this weapon close to the boss arena: it can be found on a body in the building near the Beside the Rampart Gaol Site of Grace. It’s worth noting that whips cannot perform critical blows, however, so you’ll need to switch to a sword or dagger to land a crit.

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Leonine Misbegotten’s attacks require a huge amount of stamina to block, so a solution for shield users is to find the Barricade Shield Ash of War. This is dropped by the Night’s Cavalry found patrolling the Weeping Peninsula, who you can find by visiting the Castle Morne Rampart site of grace after dark. This Ash of War allows you to temporarily harden your shield to deflect heavy blows, making it more difficult for Leonine Misbegotten to break your stance.

Image: Polygon via Bandai Namco

How to get Leonine Misbegotten’s summon sign

If you’ve progressed through Irina’s questline to the point where you’ve delivered Edgar a letter, then you should be able to summon Castellan Edgar to assist you in this fight. It can be a little tricky to spot his summon sign, however, as it’s located in shallow water to the left of the boss door.

Once summoned, Edgar will use his halberd to jab and slice Leonine Misbegotten, and he can serve as another useful distraction to prevent the boss targeting you.

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Leonine Misbegotten strategy

The fight typically begins with Leonine Misbegotten rushing towards you, ready to land a strike. Thanks to the large size of the arena, this gives you a bit of time to launch a ranged attack or use spirit ashes.

From then on, Leonine Misbegotten will remain aggressive and repeatedly lunge towards you, giving you few windows in which to heal or launch attacks. This can be particularly tricky for mages and ranged characters to deal with. For these builds, we would recommend using summons or spirit ashes to pull the boss away from you. Alternatively, you can consider infusing a basic weapon with a magic Ash of War, and using this to quickly deal damage when the boss comes close.

Image: Polygon via Bandai Namco

Melee users will find this fight a little easier, as if you successfully dodge Leonine Misbegotten’s attacks, you can then typically land a hit or two. The good news is this boss’s stance can be broken easily — meaning it won’t require too many blows before you can land a critical hit. Parrying and Guard Counters are a good option here, as both will block Leonine Misbegotten’s attacks and bring it closer to a stance break. The only catch is: you’ll need to get your timing right.

Image: Polygon via Bandai Namco

Most of Leonine Misbegotten’s attacks can be dodged by rolling backwards, but to land hits you’ll want to roll towards this boss — just watch out for any sweeping blows that can hit you on the side. Similarly, to avoid Leonine Misbegotten’s large stomp attack, you’ll want to roll forwards. One of Leonine Misbegotten’s easiest attacks to predict is its roar, which means that it will soon do a large sweeping move with its sword. This gives you a little time to get out of the way, or prepare for a well-timed parry.

Something to bear in mind is that it’s very easy to deplete your stamina reserves in this fight: all this dodge-rolling, blocking and parrying comes at a cost. On some occasions, you may need to be patient and wait for your stamina to recover before going all-in on an attack, or else you could find yourself in trouble.

Image: Polygon via Bandai Namco

Remember that you can also use the Furlcalling Finger Remedies found in your multiplayer menu to summon other players who can assist you in co-op mode. You can also place down the Tarnished’s Furled Finger to assist other players, which is a great way to practice this fight without losing any runes. When fought in co-op mode, the boss will have a larger health pool — but we’d say it’s a worthy trade-off in order to have some assistance from friends.

Image: Polygon via Bandai Namco

Once defeated, Leonine Misbegotten will drop 3800 Runes, and the Grafted Blade Greatsword — a legendary blade that will help you progress Irina’s questline. And, well, it looks pretty cool too. After all, what could be better than one sword? That’s right: twenty of them stuck together.