Elden Ring: Glintstone Dragon Smarag (Liurnia of the Lakes) Boss Fight

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.

Glintstone Dragon Smarag is in the middle tier, Greater Enemy Bosses, and is an outdoor boss found northeast of the Temple Quarter in Liurnia of the Lakes. It is an optional boss in the sense that you don’t need to kill it in order to advance the story, but it does guard a rather important key item that you will need to get access to the Raya Lucaria Academy. Which to be fair, is also optional, but is involved in several quest chains.

Okay, so there I was, peacefully exploring the beautiful shallow lakes of Liurnia, picking up a piece of loot here, bashing in an enemy’s skull there, overall just minding my own business really.

But then suddenly, I came across a very large castle-like structure in the middle of the lake. As we all know, if it looks like a castle, it probably is a castle, and castles tend to have thick walls to protect the extra fat loot inside.

Unfortunately, castles also tend to have gates that are pains to open for people like me who would like to collect said loot, and this one was no exception.

Upon approaching the gate, it became clear that it was locked by some sort of magical barrier. Fortunately, there was also a dead body right next to it with a treasure map showing the location of the key needed to get through the barrier. How convenient and suspiciously easy.

Matching the found treasure map to my own map of the area was easy enough and I quickly deduced that I needed to go to a rock formation off the west coast of the giant castle. On my way there, I pondered the possibility of having to dig up a treasure or perhaps fight some sort of guardian. Fighting is much more fun than digging and considering how easy it had been to find the way there, I figured it would be an easy fight as well.

But the key turned out to be guarded by a dragon. A sleeping dragon, but still a dragon. Of course. Anything less would obviously have been too easy.

Not a stranger to the troubles grumpy dragons can cause when you get up close and personal with them, I decided that this would be a good opportunity to dust off my longbow. The problem is that dragons have quite a few ranged attacks themselves and can fly too, so I would also need some sort of cover to hide behind, preferably made of something fireproof to avoid getting too much of a medium roast myself.

Once again, suspiciously convenient, I found a smaller rock formation just in front of the dragon, perfect for seeking cover between firing arrows. This is the kind of good fortune that reminds me who the hero of this story is ;-)

Anyway, there are many good ways to wake up a sleeping dragon, but my favorite is an arrow to the face. Judging from the reaction, it’s definitely not the dragon’s favorite, but when it’s guarding my access to what I assume is a castle full of shiny loot, it doesn’t get a say.

To be honest, going ranged against this dragon turned out to be a bit cheesier than I expected. I thought it would fly around a lot more, breathe fire a lot more, force me to switch positions a lot more, and generally be a huge pain in my sweet behind before handing over the key, true dragon-style.

It did do all those things, but for the most part it stayed fairly still and apart from a lot of huffing and puffing and occasional breath attacks, it was pretty easy to shoot arrows and then seek cover behind the rocks.

Many of the mechanics of the fight are very similar to Flying Dragon Agheel in Limgrave, but when I fought that one, it involved a lot more running around, and the fight took place over a larger area. But perhaps it was just my inexperience with dragons at the time that made me switch to my default headless chicken mode when in danger or in doubt.

The dragon’s head is its weak spot, and it will take increased damage if you manage to hit it there. You can lock on to the head, but as it moves around a lot, it’s not easy to hit with ranged attacks. I found it overall more effective to lock onto the dragon’s body instead – even though each individual arrow does less damage to the body than to the head, a lot more of them will actually hit. And arrows that don’t hit don’t matter.

Anyway, when the dragon was finally down after I had spent a small fortune worth of arrows, the path to the sweet treasures it was guarding was open and I could collect the key to the castle, which turned out to not be a castle at all, but rather an academy for some supposedly very smart people. You know what that means. Books. I would have preferred a castle full of gold or something. I can’t believe I actually fought a dragon over access to a library! ;-)