Elden Ring: Putrescent Knight (Stone Coffin Fissure) 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.

Putrescent Knight is in the highest tier, Legendary Bosses, and is found in the Stone Coffin Fissure 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.

To get to this boss, you have to take a leap of faith and jump off a large horned statue head to get down to a shallow underground lake. There is a message on the ground hinting at this, and you can see me doing it at the start of the video. Even though there’s a long way down, you will not take damage from the fall.

Shortly after your landing, the boss will spawn and launch an attack. Thiollier is available as an NPC summon for this boss fight and I chose to summon him. As I’ve mentioned in previous videos, I rarely summoned NPCs in the base game, but then I often felt that I missed part of their story by not including them, so in Shadow of the Erdtree I’m summoning them when they’re available.

I also summoned my usual sidekick Black Knife Tiche because as it turns out, this boss is a legendary pain in the backside and Tiche is always good for some distraction and pain mongering.

The boss resembles a large humanoid skeleton with a strangely long and hanging neck. He rides a horse that has the same sickly grey color as himself, and swings at innocent cave explorers – who are definitely not there to steal all the loot – with a very large, curved sword.

Sometimes he will also shoot waves of shadow flames, and he can even dismount at which point the horse will charge around and attack on its own. Horses are generally not the most fearsome creatures in the Lands Between and the Land of Shadow, but this one is quite a handful and does annoyingly high damage when it charges you.

He does high damage and moves around quickly, so having a couple of other targets for his anger helps a lot in this encounter. He actually managed to kill Tiche, but somehow I managed to stay alive long enough after that to dispose of him. I suppose the randomness of my headless chicken running mode confused him.

After he is defeated, you will discover that he was guarding St. Trina’s cave, where Thiollier is now also hanging out, apparently in awe of all the poison. There is some nefarious plot that I haven’t quite figured out here going on, as you will die if you interact with St. Trina and drink the poisonous nectar, but you actually have to do that four times in order to progress Thiollier’s questline.

I had no idea about that, so I actually missed the remainder of the questline. I mean, fool me once with poisonous nectar, shame on you, but fool me twice, shame on me. And I had no idea I had to suffer the shame of being fooled four times. I guess life is really cheap in the Land of Shadow.

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 201 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

Tarnished in Black Knife armor facing the Putrescent Knight in a purple cavern just before battle. Click or tap the image for more information.

Over-the-shoulder view of the Tarnished in Black Knife armor facing the Putrescent Knight in a purple cavern. Click or tap the image for more information.

Wide view of the Tarnished in Black Knife armor facing the Putrescent Knight in a vast purple cavern. Click or tap the image for more information.

Tarnished in Black Knife armor facing the Putrescent Knight in a realistic purple-lit cavern. Click or tap the image for more information.

Isometric view of the Tarnished facing the Putrescent Knight across a purple-lit cavern pool. Click or tap the image for more information.

Further Reading

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• Elden Ring: Frenzied Duelist (Gaol Cave) Boss Fight
• Elden Ring: Mohg, Lord of Blood (Mohgwyn Palace) Boss Fight
• Elden Ring: Black Knife Assassin (Deathtouched Catacombs) Boss Fight