Elden Ring Black Knife Catacombs guide
Get ready for the fight of your life in the Black Knife Catacombs.
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If you’re a fan of dungeon crawling, Elden Ring has more than got you covered with a huge number of different tombs and catacombs to explore throughout the land. However, not all of these dungeons are created equal. Some will take you 2 minutes and give you some pretty meager rewards, while others will truly test your metal and give you appropriate rewards as a result. Black Knife Catacombs are one of these latter types of dungeon, so read on to get a bit of help making your way to, and through, this particular dungeon.
How to Find Black Knife Catacombs
You can find this particular dungeon in a very dangerous area of Liurnia of the Lakes. If you’ve not already discovered the Mausoleum Compound point of grace, then you’ll need to follow the road that leads from the east side of the lake about halfway up. The road twists and turns a few times, and will take you through a region filled with enemies who love firing powerful ranged attacks that are hard to dodge, so make sure you’ve spent all your runes before attempting the journey.
We’ve marked the route you’ll need to take on the map above. You’re looking for a cliff behind the Minor Erdtree that leads into the mountain slightly. As you approach the dungeon, you’ll see that it’s guarded by a headless soldier with a black fire weapon in hand. This guy is cheap as anything, gives almost no runes, and always respawn, so just ignore him. Bait him away from the door while on your horse then open the door. he can’t kill you while you’re in the animation anyway, so use that to your advantage. Activate the point of grace, then either rest at it if you have the time, or just let him kill you and respawn. Time to get started.
Elden Ring Black Knife Catacombs walkthrough
This dungeon is filled with those skeletons that just love respawning after you kill them, so your best bet is to have a weapon with occult or holy affinity if you have one. This will put them down easily, without needing to bother with attacking them twice. If you don’t have one of these weapons, just make sure that once you’ve put a skeleton down, you attack them on the ground to finish them off.
From the point of grace, head down the stairs to find a skeleton spawning ahead of you. They spawn pretty slowly, so when they come at you one at a time they’re pretty simple to take out. Head further down the stairs once you’ve dealt with the monster and activate the summoning pool. Head down the next corridor and take out yet another skeleton, then watch out as his mate rolls at you from the darkness.
If you have a Stonesword Key and you’re a melee/magic-user, you might want to open the mist door on your left. Inside there’s a skeleton archer on the left, and a skeleton swordsman on the right. Once they’re both dead, you’ll find a pretty baller ax that summons skeletons whenever you use the weapon art.
Trap Town
Leave the room and continue down the corridor to backstab the dude ahead of you. He’s just a normal enemy for once so you don’t have to worry about him getting up again. However, if you skipped the room with the ax, he will be waiting around the corner rather than standing with his back to you, so take him out and then step back a second to get your bearing.
This next room is filled with giant blades that suddenly slam to the ground, as well as two skeletal archers who keep peppering you with shots as you stand there. Enter the room, then keep moving left and right to dodge the arrows, you shouldn’t even need to use your dodge roll. As soon as the blade in front of you drops, move over the line in the ground. Keep doing this until you get to the first archer and take them out, then repeat with the second. Once the room is clear it becomes much more trivial to make it through the traps.
In the next room, watch out for a skeleton hiding around the right corner. Take him out and then proceed to loot everything in sight before making your way down the ladder.
I’ve encountered some kind of Cave Demon
If this basement area doesn’t make you at least a bit suspicious then your senses are slipping. While the craps that are hanging out here aren’t much of a threat, the two giant grabs hiding underground are. You can take them out easily if you can do enough damage, but they won’t leave the ground until you grab the Rune Arc waiting on the corpse around the corner, so feel free to explore a bit as long as you don’t attack the baby crabs. Other than some loot, there’s not a ton to do down here right now, but you might regret it if you don’t take out these grabs now.
Once you’ve had your fill of crab central, go back up the ladder into the blade room. You’ll find a skeleton up on a ledge that you may not have noticed before. Dodge his projectiles and make your way directly under him to protect yourself from his attacks. Wait for either one of the blades near the ledge to fall, then wait over the line to ride it up like a lift. Quickly jump onto the ledge and take out the flame-chucking guy. There’s another normal dude behind him so take him out too, but watch out for the archers in the next room.
Burial Watchdog statues are spooky
Luckily there are fewer tricks to this next room. Take out the two archers quickly, then prepare as another skeleton could come rolling around the corner like Sonic the Hedgehog. he might just get stuck on one of the burial watchdog statues though, so go and find him and take him out. There’s another normal bloke here, so finish him off too. In the next room there’s just a skeletal archer, so take him out quickly. If you approach the grave glowwart on the right of the room, a skeleton warrior will revive behind you so watch out.
There are two ways out of this room. There’s a hole near that grave glowwart that leads back down to crab town, but there’s also a hidden door at the back of the room that leads to an optional boss. This particular boss is a Black Knife Assassin, who you’ll also find in various other locations. If you’ve taken part in D. Hunter of the Dead’s questline, then you’ll find him available to summon for this particular fight. This boss isn’t too tough but does have a grab attack that does massive damage, so you might find our Black Knife Assassin guide helpful.
Return of the crabs
Whatever you decide, drop down into the hole once you’re finished. You’ll find yourself inside the chamber with the boss lever inside it that was behind a locked gate in the crab basement before. Don’t pull either lever just yet, as there is a skeleton hiding in the dark corners of the room. Take them out first, then pull the boss door switch. Finally, pull the other switch in the room to unlock the door, and either take on the crabs or sprint for the ladder out of there. At this point, you can make your way back to the entrance of the dungeon and rest up so you’re at full health and resources for the boss fight.
In this case, the boss is a cemetery shade, which shouldn’t be too tough for you if you’ve been using holy damage this whole time.
More Elden Ring content
We’ve been waiting to get our hands on FromSoftware’s Elden Ring for so long, we almost can’t believe it’s finally arrived and we have a massive amount of content just for you. Other than our Tier List, We’ll be here to walk you through every step of your journey through the Lands Between. Join us for all our Elden Ring content and guides over the coming days and weeks!
