How to Beat the Mad Pumpkin Head Duo - Elden Ring

Rewards: Visage Shield (inside of a chest), 6 300
Summons Available: Yes

This is yet another encounter where you’ll be fighting 2 bosses instead of one, though their well-protected heads might make it a bit trickier for spellcasters.

General Tips

The Mad Pumpkin Head (Flail) has more openings, making it easier to kill him while his buddy is distracted by your summons.
The bosses’ heads take reduced damage
The Mad Pumpkin Head’s (Flail) attacks inflict the Hemorrhage status effect even if you try to block them.
You are able to use your mount inside of this small room.

Melee Strategy

For melee characters, this fight should be pretty straightforward. This isn’t your first time fighting this type of enemy, the only difference here is that there is two of them in a fairly small room. We recommend using summons to distract one of the bosses while you focus your attention on the other one. The Mad Pumpkin Head (Flail) has shorter chain attacks than his Hammer counterpart, which makes him quicker and easier to kill. If you go after the Hammer one, it’s more likely that you will not be able to kill him before your summons expire, which will force you to deal with both at the same time.

Other than that, while both enemies have fairly slow attacks, their head slams are much quicker and harder to avoid. They will however leave the bosses vulnerable to attacks for a short time, though you will have to move to the side or the back as the armored head can serve as a shield.

If you find yourself in a situation where you have two bosses to deal with at the same time and your summons are dead, run around the edges of the room while keeping both of the bosses packed together as this will ensure that you do not get flanked. Wait for openings to throw in a quick attack or two, and continue kiting around. Additionally, you can try to sprint towards both of the bosses to have them attack at the same time before running out and waiting for them to stop, to go in for a quick attack of your own. Doing so will ensure that you do not get attacked by the other boss while you try to punish the one you hate the most (it’s the Flail one, you really hate that one).

Lastly, fighting these bosses while on horseback will allow you to run in for an attack or two before sprinting away and attacking the other boss. The added mobility while on horseback makes this fight much easier.

Ranged Strategy

Here, playing ranged is a bit trickier as attacking from the front will often result in your attacks dealing very little damage because of the Pumpkin Helm. While a few attacks will be able to damage the boss, you will not have many options to deal good damage with your spells. However, the Hammer boss has a few attacks where swinging the two-handed hammer will spin its body around, giving you an opening to throw spells at its unprotected side or back.

Alternatively, you can throw your spells at the boss that focuses his attacks on your summon. While doing so will allow you to avoid the armored head, you will still have to run away from the other boss, all while dodging its attacks.

Lastly, even if your character heavily specializes into sorceries or incantations, you still have ways to deal damage in melee:

Carian Slicer is an easy to get sorcery that allows you to quickly attack in melee.
Both Catch Flame (purchased in Roundtable Hold) and O, Flame! (purchasable after acquiring the Fire Monks’ Prayerbook) are good ways to quickly deal fire damage in melee for incantation focused characters.
Using ashes of war that change your weapon scaling such as Sacred Blade or Chilling Mist, will allow you to deal decent damage in melee even with a low investment into Strength and Dexterity.

Even if you’re not comfortable playing in melee, fighting on horseback will allow you to quickly run in for a couple of attacks before sprinting away and avoiding damage. You can always wait for the end of an attack or attack chain before punishing the boss.