Elden Ring has a lot of tough boss fights, but one of the hardest is Malenia, Blade of Miquella. She's featured in the opening cut scene of Elden Ring and is also part of the Collector's Edition there's both a statue and a replica of Malenia's helmet. She's pretty much as close as Elden Ring gets to a mascot, and as such, she's a powerful symbol of the game's difficulty.
Malenia features a lot of long, sweeping sword attacks that are also lightning-fast and cover a lot of ground. Her Waterfowl Dance attack, in particular, can close any gap quickly and leave very little room to dodge. Proper timing and sufficient stamina is essential for surviving this attack, or just being far enough away that she can't quite reach.
Or you can do what Reddit user toxicBird7 and just throw a freezing pot at her whenever she performs the wind-up animation for her attack.
User toxicBird7 posted a video to the Elden Ring subreddit (via GamesRadar) showcasing the ease by which you can interrupt Malenia's most powerful attack just by tossing a pot at her face. Just throw it whenever she leaps into the air in preparation for her Waterfowl Dance move and she'll be stunned right out of it.
The hardest part of this strategy is just gathering the materials to make freezing pots. First, you need Glintstone Craftsman's Cookbook 6 for the recipe, and then you need both ritual pots and rimed crystal buds to craft freezing pots. Getting rimed crystal buds will require you travel southwest of the Inner Consecrated Snowfield grace location and then run around the base of the frozen pillars.
Once you have a few pots, you're ready for Malenia, but a word of caution. All bosses have escalating status resistance, so you'll only be able to throw two freezing pots at Malenia before she develops a tolerance to them. After that, it'll require two pots for the same effect. Sadly, two pots require far better timing than just the one, and you might be better off just learning the specific dodge timing.
We’ve got plenty of other tips to help you get through the Lands Between, so check out our Elden Ring guide here.