Elden Ring is huge and brimming with all sorts of terrifying creepy crawlies that are apparently designed to make your stay in Elden Ring Runes the Lands Between as unsettling as possible. However, the creatures that keep making me most nervous are also the most common.

It occurred to me as I was dispatching Elden Ring boss Astel, Naturalborn of the Void--a "malformed star capable of calamitous destruction" which looks a lot like the Mr. DNA mascot from Jurassic Park was reimagined as an eldritch abomination--at the climax of the game's infamous Lake of Rot swamp. I'd identified the timing on the only really dangerous attack in its arsenal, but was just doing the rounds before I realized that I was having an less trouble overcoming this terrifying creature than during the battles against Elden's authentic nature.

Okay, sure, "realistic" might not be the most appropriate word to describe monster bears that look as Popeye and the Sailor Man, alpha wolves that use magic soul arrows, and birds with swords strapped to their feet however it's the closest thing Elden Ring has to regular animals, aside from those hilarious sheep that roll around that I mentioned earlier, so let me give you some time.

Astel as a paper is a much more formidable issue. It's a tough one, in one sense, situated near the end of one of the most challenging environments. Secondly its unnatural design makes it much harder to comprehend. As with Dark Souls and Bloodborne before it, success in Elden Ring often comes down to being able to recognize attack patterns; one might think that common creatures like wolves, bears and even birds would be easier to understand because of their analogies to buy Elden Ring Runes reality, however that's not always the case.