Elden Ring: Knight of the Solitary Gaol (Western Nameless Mausoleum) Boss Fight (SOTE)

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.

Knight of the Solitary Gaol is in the lowest tier, Field Bosses, and is found in the Western Nameless Mausoleum, which in turn is located in the western side of the Gravesite Plain in the Shadow of the Erdtree expansion. He is an optional boss in the sense that it is not required to defeat him in order to progress the main story of the expansion.

This boss was the first one I encountered in the Shadow of the Erdtree expansion. I hadn’t really figured out the new system with Scadutree Blessings at the time, but having just defeated Malenia, I felt like an unstoppable killing machine and fully expected to rampage through the expansion and have it all done in a couple of hours, but of course life and FromSoft games are never that good.

The Nameless Mausoleums are the equivalent of the Evergaols in the base game. They tend to contain singular humanoid bosses and it is not allowed to use spirit ashes to summon help inside them. That’s probably okay; even though I struggled a bit with him, I’m pretty sure Tiche would have completely trivialized the fight, although she generally seems a lot less formidable in Shadow of the Erdtree than she did in the Lands Between.

In the base game, I have had some of the toughest fights inside evergaols, and this guy did not disappoint. I found him to be annoyingly difficult with that annoying timing to his attacks that often got me rolling just a little too early or a little too late. Fighting him reminded me a bit of a mix between a Bell-Bearing Hunter and a Crucible Knight, but fortunately without the most annoying abilities of those two.

He has several annoying tricks to ruin your day. He will usually start out by using some sort of rapid-fire crossbow with flaming arrows, which are easy enough to avoid by running in a circle around him. On my first attempt where I wasn’t prepared for this, they quickly made me look like a flaming porcupine on the floor though. Both painful and embarrassing. Welcome to the Land of Shadow.

He also has some sort of long-range sword slash that can really hurt, but is also not too difficult to dodge. And then he will do jumping attacks and overall just hit really really hard with his sword. Especially after he does a jumping attack, there is a very brief pause that can be used to swing back at him, so try to bait those out.

Even though he is a proper boss with a big boss health bar and all, he behaves a bit like a red phantom invader in the sense that he will drink a healing potion when he’s around half health. He fortunately only has one potion, but it’s still annoying to have made some progress on him only to have him chug it all away. It feels a bit like he’s trying to use my own dirty tricks against me and I don’t like that.

I’m currently wielding dual katanas and I realize those aren’t the greatest for breaking someone’s stance, but even so, I found this guy particularly difficult to interrupt. After a number of attempts, I realized what worked best was to focus on avoiding his attacks and then take advantage of the very brief pauses to get a single hit in on him here and there. Any attempt at getting multiple hits on him would instantly be punished by him swinging back at me, not at all bothered by my onslaught. I guess he’s a fairly classic FromSoft boss in that sense, but it resulted in a slower fight than I expected.

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 181 and Scadutree Blessing 1 when this video was recorded. It was the first boss I encountered in the Shadow of the Erdtree expansion, so I think that’s reasonable; 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

Anime-style image of the Tarnished in Black Knife armor clashing swords with a glowing blue spectral knight in a dark dungeon. Click or tap the image for more information.

Anime-style fan art of the Tarnished in Black Knife armor seen partly from behind, dueling a bluish spectral Knight of the Solitary Gaol in a torchlit dungeon as their dagger and two-handed sword clash with flying sparks. Click or tap the image for more information.

Isometric anime-style fan art of the Tarnished in Black Knife armor fighting a bluish spectral Knight of the Solitary Gaol in a torchlit dungeon, their dagger and two-handed sword colliding with flying sparks. Click or tap the image for more information.

Anime-style fan art of the Tarnished in Black Knife armor clashing swords with a glowing blue spectral knight in a ruined dungeon. Click or tap the image for more information.

Isometric anime-style fan art of the Tarnished in Black Knife armor, seen from behind, holding a glowing dagger in one hand while dueling a bluish spectral Knight of the Solitary Gaol with a two-handed sword in a torchlit dungeon. Click or tap the image for more information.

Anime-style fan art showing the Tarnished in Black Knife armor battling a glowing blue spectral knight in a ruined dungeon from an elevated isometric view. Click or tap the image for more information.

Further Reading

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• Elden Ring: Loretta, Knight of the Haligtree (Miquella's Haligtree) Boss Fight