Elden Ring Crucible Knight Boss Guide

A dedicated guide explaining how to find and defeat the Crucible Knight Boss in Elden Ring – attack types, boss mechanics, strategy and tips!

How to get to the Crucible Knight

The Crucible Knight is located in the Stormhill Evergaol up on the left cliff as you’re facing the Stormgate from the Gatefront Ruins.

In order to access it, you’ll need to make your way past the encounter at the Stormgate and make a u-turn as soon as the cliff levels out with the path. It is possible to take a much longer route that doesn’t require passing through the Stormgate encounter, but if you can’t beat those enemies, you aren’t ready to fight the Crucible Knight yet.

Crucible Knight Boss Mechanics and Strategy

I want to reiterate that you can technically fight the Crucible Knight long before it’s really feasible to beat him. The boss doesn’t have any sort of weird balancing with his health or damage output, so I recommend waiting to fight him until you’re able to deal an acceptable amount of damage and can survive 2-3 hits from him. I didn’t have too much trouble fighting him after I had finished Stormveil Castle and explored part of Liurnia.

The Crucible Knight isn’t too different from your typical shield and sword-wielding knight, though it is a boss, so it does have a few more attacks than a regular enemy.

The Shield

It’s pretty pointless to attack while the boss is blocking since the shield will mitigate almost all the damage. Even spells only manage to do about 30% of their regular damage against the Crucible Knight’s Shield.

Thankfully, the Crucible Knight opts to two-hand his sword for most of the first half of the fight, so you don’t have to worry about his shield all the time. While the boss has his shield out, he tends to move a lot more slowly compared to when he’s two-handing his sword.

Rock Spikes

When the Crucible Knight is two-handing his sword, he will only summon rock spikes from the ground in a frontal cone (or at least that’s all he seemed to do against me). I don’t think you’ll be able to shield the attack since it comes up from the ground.

How to beat the Crucible Knight boss - Rocky Spikes Attack

The telegraph is fairly quick, the boss just points his sword up and lifts his front leg. As soon as he does this, prepare to dodge.

Since the attack is a cone, you’ll want to dodge to the side if you’re in melee range and if you’re at range, you’ll need to dodge backward.

The Crucible Knight follows up his rock spikes with a downward slice, further reinforcing the notion that you’re supposed to dodge either backwards or to the side depending on your proximity to the boss.

You should already be out of the way of this slice, and it has a fairly long end-lag giving you a good amount of time to attack or drink from your flask. As soon as you’ve dodged the rock spikes, you’re clear to attack.

Sword Attacks

The Crucible Knight has a pretty long sword, and he really tries to make the most of it. Almost all of his sword attacks have pretty long range and he typically lunges or rushes at you while swinging.

If you’re using a ranged build, you really need to make sure you’re at max range or you can easily find yourself getting hit by the Crucible Knight’s Sword.

Phase 2 Transition

When the boss drops below half health, he’ll do a fast pulse of light. I’m not sure if this animation deals damage since I was at range, but as the boss gets close to 50% HP, I would recommend staying further away or only use fast attacks so you can quickly evade the pulse if you’re using a melee-oriented build.

How to beat the Crucible Knight boss - Phase 2

The only differences in phase 2 are the introduction of a new flying attack and a lot more time with the shield out.

Flying Attack

One of the two major differences I noticed in Phase 2 is the introduction of a flying charging attack. The Crucible Knight will sprout wings, flap once to push off the ground, do a slight pull away in the air and then charge at you.

You don’t have to worry until he actually starts charging at you, though the closer you are, the less notice you’ll have to avoid the attack. He moves so fast through the air, it’s pointless to try to attack him during this attack, just focus on avoiding the damage.

You can either dodge to the side or leverage immunity frames to dodge forward through the attack. Either way, he will end up behind you and end on the ground with his shield out.

Tail Attack

The other new special move the Crucible Knight boss adds to its arsenal after 50% HP is a 360-degree attack with his magic tail. He turns around and swings his tail in a full radius around his body.

There are two versions of that attack. The first one is mid-range, but the second one has a very long range. I noticed that he either does only the mid-range attack or the mid-range immediately followed by the long-range attack.

You cannot block it with a shield. Roll backward and try to keep your distance for a few seconds.

The Crucible Knight does that attack usually when you are close to him and especially after he lands from the Flying Attack.

Crucible Knight Rewards

Defeating the Crucible Knight gives you 2,100 Runes and an incantation called Aspects of the Crucible: Tail. This is actually the “Tail Attack” he uses in Phase 2 of the fight.

Aspects of the Crucible: Tail costs 32 FP to use and requires your character to have at least 27 Faith Stat to properly use this spell.

Later in the game, you will meet this type of enemy again, though there it will not be a boss, just a “regular” foe. Of course, you will be much stronger by then, so the level of challenge should be much lower.

You can find more Elden Ring Boss Guides in our collection. The Crucible Knight is certainly not a foe for new players, but do take a look at our Starter Guide and How to fight Bosses Guide. You may find interesting and helpful tips there still.