Elden Ring: Black Knife Assassin (Sage's Cave) Boss Fight

Published: July 31, 2025 at 11:21:01 AM UTC

Black Knife Assassin is in the lowest tier of bosses in Elden Ring, Field Bosses, and one of the two bosses of the Sage’s Cave found in the Western part of Altus Plateau. Like most lesser bosses in the game, this one is optional in the sense that you do not need to defeat it in order to advance the main story.

As you probably know, bosses in Elden Ring are divided into three tiers. From lowest to highest: Field Bosses, Greater Enemy Bosses and finally Demigods and Legends.

Black Knife Assassin is in the lowest tier, Field Bosses, and one of the two bosses of the Sage’s Cave found in the Western part of Altus Plateau. Like most lesser bosses in the game, this one is optional in the sense that you do not need to defeat it in order to advance the main story.

I re-visited this dungeon because I realized there was a second boss there that I had missed the first time. When you jump to the ledge near the waterfall, you will need to go down the ledge to the right instead of into the tunnel to the left to reach this boss.

I’m not sure if it’s actually this boss or Necromancer Garris that is supposed to be the real end boss, but this one is definitely the most difficult of the two, so let’s say it’s this one.

You have most likely faced other Black Knife Assassins in the game at this point, but this one is particularly nasty and annoying because it’s invisible most of the time, so it will sneak up on you and backstab you without you being able to see it.

One approach is to fight it in the water so you can see its footsteps approaching, but it can still be difficult to hit it because you can’t lock on to it.

Even though I’m feeling somewhat overleveled currently and am actually trying not to use spirit ashes too much, I decided that calling in my own Black Knife Assassin, namely Tiche, would even the odds and that worked very well too, as Tiche seems to have many of the same tricks. The boss drops the Conceiling Veil talisman, which improves your own stealth a lot while sneaking. A most fitting drop for an invisible boss.

And now for the usual boring details about my character: I play as a mostly Dexterity build. My melee weapon is the Guardian’s Swordspear with Keen affinity and Chilling Mist Ash of War. My ranged weapons are the Longbow and the Shortbow. I was level 108 when this video was recorded. I think that’s somewhat too high as the boss seemed to take high damage when I managed to hit it, but the difficulty of this encounter is mostly based on the boss being very hard to hit in the first place, so level doesn’t matter as much as on some other encounters. I’m always looking for the sweet spot where it’s not mind-numbing easy mode, but also not so difficult that I will be stuck on the same boss for hours ;-)

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