Elden Ring: Royal Knight Loretta (Caria Manor) 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.

Royal Knight Loretta is in the middle tier, Greater Enemy Bosses, and is the main boss of the Caria Manor area in Northern 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, but you do need to kill it to proceed to the Three Sisters area and progress Ranni’s quest line.

The area you fight the boss in resembles a shallow lake with chairs all around the edge. The boss will not spawn until you run into the water, but since I noticed a fog door blocking my way, I knew that something annoying was about to happen.

The boss is a ghostly mounted knight that fights with a long polearm as its main weapon. It actually feels a lot like one of the Night’s Cavalry field bosses you have probably encountered out in the open world before. In addition to its weapon, it will also summon flying swords that home in on you and try to pierce you, so watch out for those.

I spent a few moments keeping my distance and trying to figure out her attack patterns before I noticed the symbol telling me that spirit ashes were available. Then I remembered how awesome my good friend Banished Knight Engvall is at taking the huff and puff out of annoying bosses. The conclusion that was really easy to jump to at this point was that I couldn’t be bothered to do a lengthy dance with this one, so I called in Engvall. If you look closely, you can see Loretta’s horse kicking him in the face just moments after he spawns. Assuming it would have been my face with hoof-marks on it otherwise, summoning Engvall definitely felt like the right decision at this point.

As always, everything feels easier with Engvall there, but I don’t really think this boss is so bad. As mentioned, it feels somewhat like Night’s Cavalry or perhaps the Tree Sentinel to fight. There’s a lot of charging and swinging at you, but just try to roll out of the way and return the damage when an opportunity presents itself. She has a lot of different attacks and her horse is not above kicking people either, but overall I found it to be a relatively easy fight.