Ranked at peak, forms listedlands between · shadow of the erdtree
Shards,InheritedThe Elden Ring power ranking
Elden Ring prints two numbers and neither one measures anybody. Runes are money and experience at once, so a boss's worth is a pacing decision. The Great Runes look more promising — a shard of the Elden Ring itself, the highest claim to authority the setting has — until you notice who holds them. Seven people do. One of them is Malenia. One of them is Godrick, whose shard grants five points to every stat and who is grafting other people's arms onto himself in the first castle you visit. The shard records an inheritance, not a measurement.
The short answer
Everything here follows from one act. Marika broke the Elden Ring, and the Shattering is the reason there are demigods with shards, a war over them, and a Tarnished being called back to clean it up. She is ranked first for the same reason a demolition ranks above the rubble — and the entry has to hold both her and Radagon, because the game's late revelation is that they were never two people.
Continuity
Rank 21 and below carry a name, its tags and its sources, and no paragraph. Not a lower standard of evidence — every one of them still cites — but a different amount of prose, kept where the disagreement is.
EvidenceCrowdΔ
Tier 00 · not on the scale
Outer gods
They act through people and never arrive. Each has visibly changed the world and none has a body to fight, which is a claim the ranking has no way to hold.
It installed the entire order and then went quiet. The Greater Will sent the Elden Ring, made Marika its vessel, and appointed empyreans to succeed her — and by the time the game begins its messengers have stopped arriving and its chosen have started refusing the job. Off the scale because every one of its acts is delegated: it has never been in a room.
statedElden Ring · 2022
Established the Golden Order through Marika as its vessel and appointed empyrean successors.
The only outer god in the game that offers you a job. The Frenzied Flame wants everything returned to a single undifferentiated mass, it is sealed under the capital rather than worshipped in it, and the ending it grants burns the Lands Between to nothing. Unranked for the same reason as the Greater Will and with better evidence: it needs a person to do anything at all, and the person it is trying to recruit is you.
shownElden Ring · Cathedral of the Forsaken
Sealed beneath Leyndell; grants the Lord of Frenzied Flame ending, which burns the world. — 2022
Tier 01 · apex
They held the Ring
Elden Lords and the thing the Ring becomes when it needs a body. What separates these from the shardbearers is that they held it whole.
Queen Marika the Eternalvessel of the Elden Ring, and the one who shattered it
Radagon of the Golden Orderthe same body, trying to mend what the other half broke
Lands Betweengame
KillsNo confirmed kills.
She broke it. Marika was the vessel the Greater Will installed, and the single act the entire game is downstream of is her shattering the Elden Ring herself — after sealing Destined Death away in Maliketh's blade, which is the other reason nothing in this world dies properly. The revelation that she and Radagon share a body is the game's structural joke: the champion sent to repair the Ring is the person who broke it.
statedElden Ring · 2022
Named as the one who shattered the Elden Ring, beginning the war among her descendants.
shownElden Ring · Erdtree Sanctuary
Marika and Radagon are revealed to be one being. — 2022
The Elden Ring given something to fight with. It is the last thing between the Tarnished and the throne, it is fought inside Marika's own body after Radagon falls, and the game presents it less as a creature than as an order defending itself. Contested because almost nothing is said about it: it has the largest position in the story and the smallest amount of text.
shownElden Ring · Elden Throne
Fought immediately after Radagon as the incarnation of the Elden Ring itself. — 2022
He was Elden Lord before the Erdtree existed, in service to a god that has since gone, and he is still waiting in a place that has come loose from time. The entry ranks here rather than lower because his claim predates the entire Golden Order — and lower than Marika because the order he served is so thoroughly gone that the game will not name it.
statedElden Ring · Crumbling Farum Azula
Named as an Elden Lord of a previous age, awaiting a god that no longer exists. — 2022
Godfrey, First Elden Lordconsort to Marika, and the golden lineage's founder
Hoarah Loux, Warriorwhat he was before the title, and what he returns to
Lands Betweengame
KillsNo confirmed kills.
The first consort, exiled when his purpose ran out, and the one demigod who comes back through the front door. What earns the placement is the second phase: he discards the Elden Lord entirely and fights as Hoarah Loux, the warlord he was before any of this, which is the game stating plainly that the title was the smaller half of him.
shownElden Ring · Elden Throne
Discards the Elden Lord's armaments mid-fight and continues as Hoarah Loux. — 2022
Tier 02 · the greats
The Shattering's children
Seven shards and the family that fought over them. Ranked on what each did with the piece they got, which varies more than the pieces do.
Starscourge Radahnthe general who arrested the stars
The Radahn of the festivalrot-eaten and mindless, at a festival staged to give him a death
Promised Consort Radahnreturned in the DLC as Miquella's consort, and the last fight in the game — the one version of him that is not diminished
Lands BetweenShadow of the Erdtreegame
KillsNo confirmed kills.
He stopped the sky. Radahn mastered gravity specifically to hold the stars in place, which froze every fate tied to them and is the largest single feat any demigod is credited with. What you fight is what the Scarlet Rot left of him — a champion who kept his horse and lost everything else, and who is being held together by a festival built to give him a good death.
statedElden Ring · 2022
Mastered gravity magic and halted the stars, arresting the fates bound to them.
shownElden Ring · Redmane Castle
Fought after the Scarlet Rot has destroyed his mind, in a festival staged for the purpose. — 2022
Malenia, Blade of Miquellathe duel with Radahn, and the rot released to end it
Malenia, Goddess of Rotwhat she becomes when the rot finishes the job
Lands Betweengame
KillsNo confirmed kills.
She fought Radahn to a standstill and then set the rot loose to break the tie, which took Caelid with it — an entire region is still red because of one duel. Born with the Scarlet Rot inside her and told she was its vessel, she is the clearest case in the game of power and affliction being the same thing. She also, in her own words, has never known defeat, and the game invites you to take that personally.
statedElden Ring · 2022
Her duel with Radahn ends in the release of the Scarlet Rot, devastating Caelid.
The cocoonhow the base game holds him — asleep and fought over
Miquella ascendantwhat the Land of Shadow is for
Lands BetweenShadow of the Erdtreegame
KillsNo confirmed kills.
The most consequential absence in the game. Miquella's charm bends everyone who meets him, his unfinished works run through half the map, and the base game keeps him in a cocoon for its entire length while three separate factions organise around possessing him. The DLC says what it was all for: he sheds his flesh and his fears up the Divine Gate to become a god, and raises Radahn as his consort to hold the throne beside him. The charm was never a side effect. It was the method.
statedElden Ring · 2022
An empyrean whose charm compels devotion; held in a cocoon and contested by several factions.
shownElden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree · 2024
The Land of Shadow is the site of his ascension, pursued deliberately across the DLC.
Marika's son, given a serpent and a crusade, and then removed from the record along with the entire realm he conducted it in. The Land of Shadow exists as a place because what he did there had to be put somewhere — the only demigod whose feat is large enough that the setting's answer was to hide the evidence rather than the person.
shownElden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree · 2024
Led the crusade that burned the Land of Shadow, which was subsequently sealed away.
Beast Clergymanwhat is left of him when you find him
Maliketh, the Black Bladewith Destined Death drawn
Lands Betweengame
KillsNo confirmed kills.
Destined Death was sealed inside his sword, which makes him the reason nothing in the Lands Between stays dead and the reason everything about the setting is stuck. He is not the strongest thing here and he is holding the most dangerous object in the game, and the plot cannot advance until somebody takes it off him.
shownElden Ring · Crumbling Farum Azula
Holds Destined Death sealed within the Black Blade; its release restores death to the world. — 2022
Margit, the Fell Omenthe disguise he meets you in, at the first castle
Morgott, the Omen Kingat the capital, defending it
Lands Betweengame
KillsNo confirmed kills.
An omen kept in the sewers under the city he then spent the war defending on behalf of the family that put him there. Every other shardbearer is pursuing something; Morgott is the only one holding a line, and he holds Leyndell against all of them until a Tarnished walks in.
shownElden Ring · Leyndell
Defends the capital as its last king; revealed to have been Margit throughout. — 2022
RykardPraetor of the Volcano Manor, before the serpent
Rykard, Lord of Blasphemyfused with the God-Devouring Serpent
Lands Betweengame
KillsNo confirmed kills.
He let something eat him on purpose. Rykard went into the God-Devouring Serpent to become it, and his plan — devour the gods, then the order that made them — is the most direct assault on the setting's structure anybody attempts. Ranked here because the method cost him the ability to do anything else: he is enormous, immobile, and stuck in a volcano.
shownElden Ring · Volcano Manor
Consumed by the God-Devouring Serpent by his own design, intending to devour the gods. — 2022
The other omen, and the one who went the other way. Mohg took an outer god as a patron, built a dynasty under the world, and stole Miquella — which is the single act with the widest consequences of any shardbearer's, and the reason the DLC exists at all. He never manages to wake what he took, and that is the ceiling on him.
shownElden Ring · Mohgwyn Palace
Abducts Miquella and attempts to raise a dynasty around him. — 2022
A shardbearer whose shard does something no other does: hers is the Great Rune of the Unborn, and what she offers is rebirth — the game's respec, in the fiction, as a service. Ranked lowest of the seven because by the time you reach her the war has passed her by entirely and she is holding an egg in a library, grieving a man who turned out to be a god.
shownElden Ring · Raya Lucaria
Holds the Great Rune of the Unborn and grants rebirth; abandoned by Radagon. — 2022
Tier 03 · everyone else you'd name
Everything the map puts in your way
Giants, dragons, saints and one very determined stargazer.
Ranni the Witchthe doll she moves in, after abandoning her body
Lands Betweengame
KillsNo confirmed kills.
An empyrean who was offered the job and refused it by destroying her own flesh, which is the only successful escape from the Greater Will's plans anybody manages. The Night of the Black Knives is hers, and its purpose was to sever herself from a destiny she had not agreed to. Ranked on execution, not force — she never fights you at all.
statedElden Ring · 2022
Destroyed her own body during the Night of the Black Knives to escape her empyrean role.
He maimed Placidusax. Bayle's war against the Dragonlord is the reason that entry is missing what it is missing, and the DLC frames him as the dragon other dragons organise against rather than a beast on a route. The only beast here whose defining feat is against something ranked above it, and he did not come out of it whole either.
statedElden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree · Jagged Peak
Fought Placidusax and wounded him; opposed by Florissax and the remaining dragons. — 2024
The final survivor of a war Marika won before the game starts, kept alive and chained to a forge specifically so the flame he guards is never used. He is on this page because the plot requires burning the Erdtree and he is the only obstacle to it — a whole species reduced to one locked door.
shownElden Ring · Mountaintops of the Giants
Last of the giants, bound to guard the Flame of Ruin used to burn the Erdtree. — 2022
The first demigod to die, killed in soul but not in body because Destined Death was only half-loose when it happened — and what grew out of that half-death is the Deathroot spreading under the entire map. Contested and placed on consequence alone: he never acts in the present tense, and he is still one of the largest ongoing problems in the game.
statedElden Ring · 2022
Slain in soul during the Night of the Black Knives; his body persists and spreads Deathroot.
Godrick carries a piece of the world's order, exactly as Malenia and Radahn do. That is the entire argument of this page in one entry: the man in the first proper castle, sewing other people's arms onto his own body to make up the difference and mocked in his own boss dialogue as a lesser inheritor, holds the same class of artefact as the hardest fight in the game. His Great Rune is the most generic of the seven: five points to every stat.
shownElden Ring · Stormveil Castle
A shardbearer who grafts limbs onto himself; his Great Rune grants +5 to all attributes. — 2022
Melina is the reason the plot moves, and she has no combat presence whatsoever. She offers to become the kindling the Erdtree needs and follows through — the only character who volunteers for the thing every demigod on this page is fighting to avoid. Contested because what she actually is remains unstated, and ranked because the burning is decisive and she does it.
shownElden Ring · 2022
Offers herself as kindling and burns the Erdtree, enabling the endgame.
It fell out of the sky and the Eternal City stopped existing. Astel is credited with destroying Nokron outright, which makes the last of the argued entries a creature with no faction, no plan and one of the largest recorded kills in the setting.
statedElden Ring · Lake of Rot
Named as the destroyer of the Eternal City of Nokron. — 2022