Elden Ring: Rykard, Lord of Blasphemy (Volcano Manor) Boss Fight

Published: October 13, 2025 at 5:35:20 PM UTC

Rykard, Lord of Blasphemy is in the highest tier of bosses in Elden Ring, Demigods, and is the main boss in the Volcano Manor area of Mount Gelmir. He is technically an optional boss in the sense that you do not need to kill him in order to progress the main story of the game, but he is also a shard-bearer, and at least two of the five shard-bearers must be defeated.

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.

Rykard, Lord of Blasphemy is in the highest tier, Demigods, and is the main boss in the Volcano Manor area of Mount Gelmir. He is technically an optional boss in the sense that you do not need to kill him in order to progress the main story of the game, but he is also a shard-bearer, and at least two of the five shard-bearers must be defeated.

After doing some assassination quests for Volcano Manor, you will eventually be asked whether you want to meet with their Lord. Agreeing to do that will transport you to a small cave with a Site of Grace and a fog door. At this point you may be thinking that you have finally found the one fog door in the entire game that doesn’t have something horrible that wants to kill you behind it, but then you’re probably forgetting what game you’re playing. Of course the Lord you have just been doing missions for wants to kill you.

Apparently, you can also get to the boss by going through a secret dungeon, if you don’t want to do the assassination missions. I did the missions because killing is kinda what I do in this game, and I didn’t know about the route through the secret dungeon back then. I guess they actually did a pretty good job of keeping it a secret then.

Going the mission route requires access to Mountaintops of the Giants before you can get the last target, whereas going through the secret dungeon will probably let you face the boss sooner. I have yet to do the dungeon part myself, but I have read that there are a couple of bosses there, so I will need to go and make sure they don’t feel left out by being allowed to stay alive. I’ll get back to that in other videos.

Anyway, I thought that being asked to meet someone’s esteemed lord would be a privilege and an honor, but instead it turns out to be an evil scheme to lock me in a cave with a giant snake. So giant in fact that it eats Demigods, unless its name is just a fake title.

Just inside the fog gate, someone very conveniently left behind a great spear called Serpent-Hunter. Considering that the boss in front of me was a huge serpent, even my severely lacking puzzle-solving skills were adequate in this case, so I promptly equipped the thing and prepared myself for glorious battle.

The main thing about the Serpent-Hunter is that it has a unique weapon art called Great-Serpent Hunt. That is basically a very long-range attack that takes a long while to wind up, similarly to the lightning on the Bolt of Gransax, but even slower to fire. The weapon art apparently only works in this encounter, so if you want to try it out, this is the only place to do it. And you can’t put a huge spear with a unique and deadly skill in front of me and expect me to not try it out. Actually, the spear does keep its weapon art after this encounter, but in a much weaker version.

The spear scales mostly with strength and to a lesser extent with dexterity. It can be upgraded, but I’m not sure if it’s worth it. As mentioned, outside of this encounter the weapon art will be much weaker, so I for one didn’t want to spend materials on it. Your mileage may vary.

Considering that the boss resides in the middle of a pool of molten lava, I think it’s reasonable to assume that it’s supposed to be fought ranged, otherwise they should have left a pair of asbestos underpants instead of a long-range spear. I hear those things are awfully itchy though, so probably better to just keep one’s sweet behind out of the lava.

Staying at range and using the spear to shoot at the boss makes the fight simpler, but takes a while. The boss also has several long-range attacks that you need to watch out for. The one that got me the most was when the snake snatched me up and tried to eat me, but I must taste awful since it always spat me out again. This is another case of do what I say and not what I do, because I got snatched up like that a lot of times and it wasn’t until near the end of the fight, I got reasonably good at avoiding it.

I’m not sure if you’re actually only supposed to use the ranged attack on the Serpent-Hunter to fight the boss. I guess other weapons could work as well, but since my only other options for ranged combat are arrows (which do pitiful damage at this stage in the game) and the Bolt of Gransax, I decided to go with the tool designed for the job and just use the spear. It consumes less focus than Bolt of Gransax, but still enough that I had to be careful not to run out.

On one of the previous attempts, I had tried teaming up with Black Knife Tiche, but she didn’t seem to dominate the boss as much as she usually does, and she costs a lot of focus to summon, so I figured it would be better to spend the focus on shooting with the spear instead. In hindsight, I’m not sure that it made a lot of difference, as the boss seemed to go down rather slowly on my final and successful attempt, so perhaps Tiche did more damage to it than I realized.

Anyway, this is one of those annoying two-stage bosses, where just when you think you have won, it will get up again with a new and completely full health bar. In this case, the big snake reveals its true face and that it is in fact Rykard, Lord of Blasphemy. You would think that would be a better look than a snake, but you would be wrong. A snake with a Lord’s face on it is even creepier.

Phase two of the fight is similar to phase one, in the sense that the big snake will still try to snatch you up and eat you, but now it also has a Lord’s face and a huge sword that it tries to smack you with. It seems that this concept of trying to smack people with large objects is a recurring trend among bosses in this game. As if being bitten and eaten by a huge snake wasn’t bad enough, oh no, let’s give it a sword so it can smack people too.

At some point, the boss will also summon a lot of flaming skulls. I’m not sure exactly what triggers it. Perhaps it’s when the floor is almost entirely lava, perhaps it’s just because I’m really slow, or perhaps it’s just a boss being as annoying as usual. In any case, I suggest just moving around and focusing on avoiding the skulls, as it’s not for very long and they explode for a lot of damage if they hit you, so just let the boss do its boss thing on its own while you stay alive and live to get sweet revenge on the snake.

After the skulls are gone, some of the expanding lava floor will be solid again, making it easier to move around. The boss is still biting with the snakehead and swinging his sword at every opportunity, so you can’t relax yet though. Or maybe you can. I hear these things are very different from person to person, but I personally find it difficult to relax while a snake is biting and a sword is swinging at me in a cavern full of lava.

When the boss finally dies, it will claim that a serpent never dies. The fact that I just killed it would suggest otherwise, but I’m certainly not a veterinarian, so far be it from me to declare a snake dead. But considering that lying is the one thing talking snakes are known for, I tend to take such proclamations with a grain of salt.

If you go back to the main hall in Volcano Manor and talk to Tanith, she will confirm that Rykard is immortal and will return stronger someday. Fortunately, that’s a problem we won’t have to worry about until new game plus and maybe we won’t even do that, so for now I consider it problem solved. She also says that everybody will leave Volcano Manor. I guess they all really liked the old snake, but then they probably shouldn’t have sent me to have a conflict with it.

Overall, I found it to be a fun and unique boss fight. If only using the provided ranged attack as I did, I would say that it would probably be wise to try a little bit harder to avoid the boss’s attacks. There are clear openings when it’s possible to wind up the slow attack, but I would often get caught in the middle of it because I was too impatient and just wanted to hit it harder and faster. Even so, I managed to get through it, but it could certainly have been done more elegantly.

And now for the usual boring details about my character. I play as a mostly Dexterity build. The melee weapon I used in this fight is the Serpent-Hunter, which is found just before the boss. I only used its ranged weapon art, Great-Serpent Hunt. My shield is the Great Turtle Shell, which I mostly wear for the stamina recovery. I was level 139 when this video was recorded, which I think is a bit high, but I still found the fight to be reasonably challenging. 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 ;-)

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