Elden Ring: Death Knight (Scorpion River Catacombs) Boss Fight (SOTE)
Published: January 16, 2026 at 11:17:42 PM UTC
Death Knight is in the lowest tier of bosses in Elden Ring, Field Bosses, and is the end boss of the Scorpion River Catacombs in the Land of Shadow. It is an optional boss in the sense that it is not required to defeat it in order to progress the main story of the Shadow of the Erdtree expansion.
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.
Death Knight is in the lowest tier, Field Bosses, and is the end boss of the Scorpion River Catacombs in the Land of Shadow. It is an optional boss in the sense that it is not required to defeat it in order to progress the main story of the Shadow of the Erdtree expansion.
I’m not going to say that this dungeon was the single most annoying in the game, but it’s at least in the top 10. Those flying eyes that inflict Deathblight on friendly visitors who are definitely not there to steal every piece of loot that isn’t nailed down and probably try to remove the nails and steal the loot that is too are just so annoying and made me feel rather unwelcome. Unlike the rest of the Land of Shadow, which always gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling.
Anyway, I’m not sure what I expected the boss of this horrible place to be, but I guess a Death Knight is suitable. Not sure why it’s necessary to emphasize the “death” part on this particular knight – every other knight I’ve ever met seems just as eager to inflict death on me, and most of them look like they’ve already died themselves. But this guy is the Death Knight, more deadly and more like death itself, truly a being to be feared and avoided. It’s starting to look like a façade really. I’m sure he’s just a scared little boy inside. But still wielding a huge halberd unfortunately.
Speaking of his huge halberd, he sure likes to attempt to split my skull with that. He will also sometimes summon some sort of yellow lightning spear that he will throw at random people in the vicinity. But when I’m the only one there, the random part tends to be very not-random and usually ends up with me getting zapped by the lightning spear.
I once again called in Black Knife Tiche for assistance as I was in no mood for enduring a longer beating than necessary. She did a good job of distracting the boss, but even so, he hit me really hard several times, so my own tender flesh was not completely spared from halberd-induced cuts and bruises. It’s so difficult to find good help these days.
I overall found it to be a fun fight – even though it at first seems like a fairly simple melee brawl, the boss has some annoying tricks up his rotting sleeve. And silly me for forgetting to swap talismans before the fight, so I was still wearing the ones I use for exploring.
And now for the usual boring details about my character. I play as a mostly Dexterity build. My melee weapons are the Hand of Malenia and the Uchigatana with Keen affinity. I was level 196 and Scadutree Blessing 10 when this video was recorded, which I think is reasonable for this boss. 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 ;-)
Fan art inspired by this boss fight
Further Reading
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