


Since this detail technically makes over half of the bosses skippable with ridiculous grinding, it is not taken into account when considering a boss "optional" or not. If you have a Soul Memory of 1,000,000 souls (NG), you can go directly to the Shrine of Winter, which in turn allows you to skip large portions of the game (This doesn't work on SoTFS PS4 Version).Defeating them grants you access to further areas, gives you special items such as Keys, and drops Boss Souls that can be used to acquire Boss Soul Weapons. List of all 32 bosses available in Dark Souls 2, and the bosses encountered in the additional DLC content.
