Elden Ring: Night's Cavalry (Gate Town Bridge) 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.

Night’s Cavalry is in the lowest tier, Field Bosses, and is found outdoors near the Gate Town Bridge in Liurnia of the Lakes, but only at night. Like most lesser bosses in the game, this one is optional in the sense that you do not need to kill it in order to advance the main story.

If you think this boss looks familiar it’s probably because you have seen it before, as these black knights patrol at nighttime in several places throughout the Lands Between.

Now, at the start of this fight I could tell you that I wanted to show you a lot of the attacks this boss is capable of, which is why it takes me ages to kill it, but the truth of the matter is that I’m just not very good at judging the distance to fast moving targets, so I slice a lot of holes in the air in this one.

I’m sure that the Night’s Cavalry bosses are supposed to be fought on horseback and as you can see in this video, I did start out that way, but I just don’t seem to be able to get the hang of it at all and I really don’t enjoy it. It feels awkward and like I’m in much less control of my character than when I’m on foot, so I prefer the latter, even if it’s sub-optimal in many situations.

The various members of the Night’s Cavalry you will encounter in the game carry different kinds of weapons, and this particular one is wielding the Nightrider Glaive, which has an unpleasantly long reach and seems to have an uncanny ability to home in on my face.

As usual, the boss will charge around on its horse and make a huge fuss, so if fighting it on foot like I do, you generally have to wait for the boss to come to you as you can’t chase it down. One strategy that I have used several times now is to kill the horse first, at which point the rider will fall to the ground and be vulnerable to a critical attack that will make a really nice and large dent in its health pool. It’s probably not the fastest strategy, but it is hugely satisfying and being slow matches my shield.

And okay, calling it a strategy is perhaps a bit much, it’s more along the lines of me swinging my weapon around wildly, missing the boss and hitting the horse instead. But if it works it works and there is no such thing as a bad win.

If you do manage to dismount the boss, be careful not to get too far away from him, as he can and will summon a brand new horse and chase after you again if you don’t stay in melee distance. I guess he’s too high and mighty to stay on his feet and fight fair.

In this particular case, I didn’t manage to get the critical hit in when he was down, but I did manage to backstab him just as he got up again, and I suppose that’s the next best thing ;-)