The Bell Bearing Hunter is a repeating optional boss in Elden Ring that is found randomly at night near some of the merchant shacks in the game. Their appearance is indicative of a new feature for Elden Ring as FromSoftware’s first truly open-world game, namely, the random world encounter. There are a few bosses like this which will only appear under certain conditions in specific parts of the game’s world.
The various Bell Bearing Hunter bosses are some of the many easily missed secrets in Elden Ring due to their specific requirements to appear. But players exploring the world of Elden Ring thoroughly are likely to come across Elemer of the Briar in The Shaded Castle, who the Bell Bearing Hunters are duplicates of.
The Bell Bearing Hunters pose a difficult challenge to players due to their long-range sword attacks coupled with the fact that the player may not be leveled enough to fight them by the time they are randomly encountered. This makes the Bell Bearing Hunters some of the most difficult world bosses found in Elden Ring. However, the Bell Bearing Hunter does hold one of the most visually striking armor and weapon sets in the game, and now this iconic look has been captured and shared by an artist on Reddit named DePietro_Draws. The art captures the boss in the middle of its red sword swing, this is its most powerful attack which many players may be unfortunately familiar with.
The Briar Armor set captures perfectly the dark fantasy aesthetic FromSoftware games are famous for. It is a bulky medieval knight bound in rusted barbed wire, which is called briar in Elden Ring. The barbed wire even extends down the length of the Bell Bearing Hunter’s sword which should indicate to the player that this boss will do bleed damage. All of these elements are perfectly captured in DePietro_Draws’ artwork, but what is perhaps most impressive is how the Reddit user captures the mood of where and when a boss fight against the Bell Bearing Hunter takes place.
As Bell Bearing Hunters only appear at night and do not have a closed boss area, the background for the boss fight is the dark and moody landscape of the Lands Between. This has been perfectly captured in DePietro_Draws’ choice of atmospheric colors, along with the imposing forest tree line in the background.
Looking again at Elemer of the Briar’s armor design does make one notable design feature stand out. Elden Ring explains a lot of its fantasy elements away through Outer Gods and magic, but the real-world items in the game are clearly medieval in design. Barbed wire, however, was only invented in the 19th century, which surprisingly could make Elemer of the Briar’s rusted armor the most advanced real-world item found in Elden Ring.
Elden Ring is available for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
