Basilisk

Location

Drops

Health
NG	NG+
Varies	Varies

Souls
NG	NG+
Varies	Varies

For the Dark Souls II variant, see Basilisk (Dark Souls II).

The Basilisk is an enemy in Dark Souls.

Location[]

Basilisks are found initially in the Depths, then again in The Great Hollow and Ash Lake.

Description[]

Basilisks are slender, scrawny lizards. Upon seeing the player, it will frantically scramble or leap into position and exhale a grey mist that will quickly overwhelm the player with the Curse status, causing immediate death.

The bulbous appendages that appear on the basilisk are not its actual eyes. The basilisk's true eyes are the small yellow beads that appear right over its mouth.

General Information[]

The basilisk can only cause curse status; they cause no other effects or any direct damage in any form unless they jump directly on the player.

The basilisks in the Depths guard the Ring of the Evil Eye.

Strategy[]

Basilisks have low health and no poise, making them easy to kill with almost any attack. Their most dangerous move is the leaping curse breath attack, due to its low wind-up, while their standing curse breath is far more telegraphed and easily interrupted. With sufficient curse resistance and rapid offense even groups of basilisks won't prove too challenging as long as the player is mindful of the clouds.

Basilisks are deaf, meaning they struggle to detect the player unless they see or touch them. Even if they do detect the player, they are slow to turn around, often favoring simply running away before turning around, meaning that they struggle to react to the player getting behind them.

Critical[]

Hitting any part of a basilisk's face will deal increased damage. Because the face is the point that gets targeted when locking onto the basilisk, using thrust attacks will work exceedingly well against basilisks, as each strike will almost guarantee this bonus damage.

Melee[]

Basilisks have no melee attacks whatsoever. Combined with relatively low health, they can be quickly dealt with. However getting too close risks exposure to Curse and is ill-advised if they are in any significant numbers, or the player has low Curse resistance.

Considering their only means of offense are their Curse attacks, the player could equip a shield with high Curse block in order to take basilisks down more easily. Spears and Thrusting Swords are excellent for this strategy, as they can strike from behind shields.

Ranged[]

Basilisks stagger from just about any hit, and can easily be pelted with arrows without them being able to execute a single attack. This gives the added bonus of allowing players to pull one or two basilisks at a time, rather than have the entire swarm of seven or so rushing after them.