From Software provides at least one non-playable character that the player can summon, usually to defeat a boss, sometimes to go through an area with. These NPCs are all optional, some are tied to enticing questlines. Today’s list intends to discuss NPCs that can prove worthwhile to the player, and also lists some names the player may want to ignore. Note that this list does not intend to take questlines into account – while you may want to summon Benhart of Jugo or Lucatiel of Mirrah for their quests, this list will only analyze if doing so would actually help the player overcome parts of this game. In other words, NPCs will be judged by how weak or strong they are in actual combat.

Let’s begin

5th Worst – Benhart of Jugo

In order to finish Benhart’s questline, you must summon him for three base game boss encounters, and he must survive them. Good news? One of those encounters is with Prowling Magus & Congregation, arguably the easiest boss in the entire game. Bad news? You will probably need to farm this boss to finish Benhart’s questline, because he is useless on a good day, downright detrimental on a bad one. Summoning Benhart for Giant Lord in particular is playing the lottery, as Benhart will sometimes not even survive the random debris stemming into the actual boss fight itself. When he does arrive to a boss fight, his damage output sucks, and his middling armor gives him unspectacular survivability.

5th Best – Captain Drummond

This is the other option for a summon, opposite Benhart, to help the player with Giant Lord. Unlike Benhart, Drummond will arrive safely to the Giant Lord fight, ignoring the distractions along the way, reliably. Once there, his damage output is noticeably superior to Benhart’s, and he will fairly reliably survive the fight and be useful to the player in doing so. The game only allows the player to choose one of Benhart or Drummond for help with the Giant Lord, and the decision should be a pretty straightforward one every time unless trying to finish Benhart’s questline.

4W – Head of Vengarl

Man, I really want to like this summon more. He is hyped up quite a lot by the game’s lore, which labels Vengarl as the strongest warrior in all of Forossa. As well, his backstory is quite entertaining. This is a headless man fighting alongside the player and, unfortunately, his lack of a rock between his shoulders becomes quite apparent. Vengarl is content to swing his swords haplessly against any and all enemies who dare to exist in the player’s zip code. On paper, especially since Vengarl is a summon at Frigid Outskirts, this seems good. In practice, Vengarl will pick fights with annoying enemies that the player could have snuck past, and his actual performance in combat leaves a lot to be desired. He is fantastically and almost impressively useless as a summon vs Aldia in particular, where he will do astonishingly poor damage and get himself killed quickly by Aldia’s defensive fire wall.

4B – Jester Thomas

Yes, Thomas is only summonable for one single boss in this game. That said, Thomas is an absolute bad ass who can dish out some of the game’s nastiest Pyromancies, and he can actually take hits surprisingly well considering his lacking armor. If left to his own, Thomas can solo Mytha the Baneful Queen with astonishing ease, doing so even if the player did not burn the windmill to cut off Mytha’s aggressive self-heal. He can therefore be viewed as a great way for the player to turn their brain off throughout all of Earthen Peak, as they can simply summon him, along with another NPC we’ll be discussing soon, and then the player can put their controller down while the tandem go to work beating Mytha’s brains in senselessly.

3W – Carhillion of the Fold

Like Vengarl, I really wish Carhillion was strong. He is actually an NPC residing in Majula if the player wills it, so he has some kind of minimal narrative presence. Bizarrely, Carhillion is a summon for Fume Knight of all bosses, and he can only be summoned here. I have a challenge to issue to you, dear reader- summon Carhillion, and actually have him survive this fight. Better players than me could possibly achieve this, but otherwise, good luck. Carhillion does meager damage in this fight and, as a wizard casting spells, he clearly cannot withstand much punishment from Fume Knight in return.

3B – Masterless Glencour

Now this is a good early game summon, but not just for what he can do in PvE. Glencour is very useful in PvE, as a potential summon for both Heide’s Tower bosses, the Belfry Gargoyles and, in the DLC, he can help fight Aava the King’s Pet. Glencour is most well known for being an incredible summon in PvP though, of all places. He appears as a shade in Belfry Luna, an area serving as a hotspot for Bell Hunters PvP. Players often will be invaded here, and Glencour is an elite NPC at fighting real players. He can actually parry them, but even if he doesn’t, he is still very tough for invading players to defeat. As he could be summoned at Heide’s Tower, another place infamous for early game PvP, he could serve in this capacity here too. Overall, this is never a bad name to call upon as a summon in any context.

2W – Melinda the Butcher

Seriously, why is this even a summon? This summon is so bad for players that it’s actually funny how detrimental she is. She makes the run up to Ancient Dragon harder, by aggroing a swathe of enemies that the player ordinarily wouldn’t have to deal with. As well, she is laughably useless during the Ancient Dragon fight itself. I mean come on, it’s a dragon who spends half its time flying in the air, and your summon to help you fight it has nothing but an axe to do so with. Nobody from From Software has ever explicitly said this before, but it wouldn’t surprise me if Melinda’s presence here was actually a means to intentionally make the area and boss harder, not easier.

2B – Devotee Scarlett

Need a boss killer? A summon to help you through a long, ganky area? A summon to kill invaders, red spirits, PvP related functions? Scarlett has all of that and then some. She isn’t quite my #1, but if this list was rating summons based on how bad ass they can act, Scarlett would top the charts by a country mile. Scarlett is like playing with a dopamine hungry friend who has no filter. She’s a bit like Vengarl, in that she aggressively picks fights with enemies. But unlike Vengarl, she has a head that she can use, and will do so to prioritize defending the player over just fighting anything that breathes. She also does far better damage than Vengarl and even comes with Estus Flasks she can use to heal herself. Scarlett is amazing on the Undead Crypt, a challenging map in its own right, and she’s also incredible on Earthen Peak, with or without the aforementioned Jester Thomas fighting alongside her. Like with Glencour, there simply isn’t a bad or even anything less than a fantastic time to summon Scarlett.

“Dis”honorable mentions

Abbess Feeva – She is summonable in two places. One of them is Frigid Outskirts, where she can be okay. But the other is as aid to fight Sinh the Slumbering Dragon, where she is plainly horrible. She deals basically no damage to Sinh and wears robes, so she dies fast here.

Lucatiel of Mirrah – Like with Benhart, she isn’t very strong, but at least she will actually show up to a fight in one piece consistently.

Grave Warden Agadayne – This one is unfair, because Agadayne has this really cool moveset and does huge damage when fighting against him. Why can’t he do any of his cool tricks when he’s fighting as an ally?

The Worst – Steelheart Ellie

Steelheart Ellie sucks specifically because she is only available to help fight three DLC bosses, and her damage output is simply pitiful. There is no context in which summoning her does anything but make the situation harder for the player. People have made claims online that she can exclusively actually deny the Fume Knight the ability to enter his second phase. This is technically true, but good luck ever actually witnessing this firsthand. If she doesn’t do this, and she basically never will, she is a parasite on the player that makes them earn less souls and clear any fight she’s in more slowly and with more difficulty.

Honorable mentions

Bashful Ray – This guy would be a home run hitting pick for the top 5 if it wasn’t for his appearance specifically on the Black Gulch. Summoning him here doesn’t make the main area or even the boss itself harder, instead it spawns an extra, third Elite Giant under the Black Gulch that is now making the Forgotten Key deliberately harder to acquire. He is really strong in his summons elsewhere, but his appearance at the Black Gulch prevented me from including him on the main list.

Transcendent Edde – Edde and Feeva are your available summons for Sinh the Slumbering Dragon. Edde will, unlike Feeva, actually deal damage, take some hits, heal with Estus, and serve as a really effective distraction for the mighty dragon, giving the player dozens of opportunities to deal major damage in the process.

Manhunter O’Harrah – She is consistently just okay wherever she shows up, but she does show up in some areas where she’s pretty handy. She’s a useful Frigid Outskirts summon, and she can be really helpful as a summon to go through Tseldora and eventually defeat The Duke’s Dear Freja. She’s not as useful fighting the Iron King, but her large availability and the fact she’s always at least okay makes her arguably the most consistent summon in the game.

The Best – Bradley of the Old Guard

Not only is this guy strong, he’s also really cool and just fun to play the game with. He is the closest NPC to being a real person in the game, apart from maybe Scarlett. He emotes when he arrives in the player’s world, he can heal with Estus, he can even cast Miracles to heal the player with on occasion. In particular, this man makes a masterful appearance during the final boss of the entire game. Here, he will often even outlive real players against this trio gauntlet of bosses, while providing a very useful distraction and dealing reasonable damage in the process. He is, by a million miles, vastly superior to Vengarl and Benhart as aid for the last stretch of the game and if the player summons all three, Bradley will easily outlive the other two while being more helpful than they are when alive.

Perhaps the best part about Bradley is that his presence as a summon is treated as almost a reward of sorts by the game. He only appears at the Throne of Want if the player has, prior to arriving initially, unlocked Dark Souls 2’s “secret” boss fight. In Shaded Ruins where he can be summoned to fight that area’s boss, he only becomes available after the player has killed all the enemies in the area once. As such, using Bradley is akin to maintaining a really flashy car- seemingly random prerequisites with awesome payoff.