Elden Ring: Onyx Lord (Royal Grave Evergaol) 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.

Onyx Lord is in the lowest tier, Field Bosses, and is the only enemy and boss of the Royal Grave Evergaol in Western Liurnia of the Lakes. 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.

Notice that in earlier versions of this game, the Royal Grave Evergaol contained an Alabaster Lord boss instead. I don’t know why they changed it, but I just wanted to mention it in case you’ve seen Alabaster Lord mentioned elsewhere and wonder where the mix-up is.

This boss resembles a tall, glowing humanoid. I actually found it to be a pretty fun fight with a good rhythm, so that’s something new in an evergaol. In my experience, they usually contain highly annoying enemies.

He fights with a sword, and he sure likes to hit people over the head with that thing. Sometimes he will drag the sword along the ground in a wide arc. This move appears to have some sort of homing element to it, because even if you move away from it you will often end up with an Onyx Lord’s sword in the face if you don’t make sure to keep moving away.

At other times, he will infuse the sword with lightning and slam it into the ground, which opens a portal that will spawn what appears to be several meteorites that come flying at you. I assume these are made of onyx, which would make this guy their lord and explain why they’re so eager to do his bidding. They hurt quite a bit, so make sure to move away from them and keep moving until you’ve gained some distance, as they will also light the ground on fire where they hit, and the smell of your own bacon roasting isn’t very motivating.

As mentioned, I found the boss quite fun to fight. Going melee with it had a nice rhythm to it, contrary to some other bosses where I just can’t seem to get the timing right and everything about the encounter feels awkward. The Crucible Knight I found in another evergaol comes to mind as a prime example of that.

Anyway, just for the sake of trying it out, I also tried to go ranged against the Onyx Lord at some point, but he’s very adept at dodging arrows, so he feels a bit like an invading phantom to fight in that sense. No point in wasting arrows on shooting holes in the air, so I decided to go back in melee.

If you stay ranged for too long, he may use a Gravity Well attack, which resembles some sort of void orb that he will hurl at you. If it hits you, it will pull you closer to him. He may also use it in melee range, but in that case, it will push you away. Talk about sending mixed signals. Strangely enough, he hit me with it at range, and it still knocked me away. I guess his Gravity Well is malfunctioning. That’s probably something he should get looked at. Or he should if he wasn’t dead at this point ;-)