Black Knife Catacombs |
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The dreaded catacombs holds many skeletons that can revive until properly killed, but also holds the Black Knifeprint, a key item in a certain quest. |
Black Knife Catacombs is a Location in Elden Ring. The Black Knife Catacombs is found in the north east part of the Liurnia of the Lake region. The entrance to the catacombs can be found by heading north east from the Ruined Labyrinth Site of Grace, past the Minor Erdtree. The entrance is guarded by a Mausoleum Knight.
Black Knife Catacombs Map
All NPCs and Merchants in Black Knife Catacombs
- No NPCs in this area.
All Items in Elden Ring's Black Knife Catacombs
Upgrade Materials
Elden Ring Black Knife Catacombs Creatures, Enemies, and Bosses
Field Bosses and Bosses
Black Knife Catacombs Walkthrough
The Black Knife Catacombs features many skeleton enemies and multiple moving guillotines throughout its chambers. The sewers are infested by crabs, with 2 giant crabs waiting for unsuspecting prey. This catacombs even has 2 bosses found in different rooms and with different loot, the Black Knife Assassin fight is not necessary for the player to advance through to find the lever that opens the doors to the Cemetery Shade fight.
Many of the skeletons that are found in this Catacombs exhibit a strange behavior of rolling at the player, and attack quite rapidly. Players should be careful when fighting these enemies as they can be very fast to close the gap and attack. Some of the skeletons are also special in that they cannot be killed by themselves, instead, one has to defeat the nearby necromancer which kills the skeletons automatically and permanently (until you rest or die). Going down the stairs from the Site of Grace there will be one such skeleton half way down. You can watch how this skeleton moves and attacks to learn what to expect from them later on, move back up the stairs to make the fight more manageable.
Once at the bottom of the stairs you will find the locked doors of the catacombs, flanked by 2 statues. These doors will open when you use the lever found at the end of the catacombs, the doors lead to the final boss fight of the catacombs. On the left is the way forward down a short flight of stairs. At the bottom of these stairs are 2 more skeletons, one at the crossroad and one further down the tunnel who will start rolling towards you rapidly once they spot you. Again, moving up the staircase can help with the fight to bring them into a wider fighting area or help with kiting them.
The first left on this tunnel is the room sealed by an imp statue, use a Stonesword Key here to open the room. Inside you will find 2 skeleton enemies on the left side, on the body leaning against the tombstone in the room you will find the Rosus' Axe.
Heading forward will bring you to the room with multiple guillotines, as well as 2 skeleton archers. Running past this area will lead you to a corner room with another rolling skeleton and a ladder to go down to the sewer level. In the sewer level there are many small crabs that are non-hostile, they will drop crab eggs when killed. From here you can also see the lever below the lit statue kept behind the rusted bars, the way to get behind the bars is elsewhere. Going forward will trigger the Giant Crabs to rise up from the ground, one in front but also one behind the player. A Rune Arc is found at the end of the sewer area.
To advance in this Catacombs, the player has to go to the room with the multiple guillotines and then ride a guillotine blade upwards to land on the platform above. Kill the skeleton archers in the room to stop them interfering. In the tunnel connected to the platform above are 2 enemies in a small space, carefully dispatch them to proceed to a long and large room with many statues of Erdtree Burial Watchdogs and multiple enemies. Keep following the path and the wall at the end of the path will disappear when attacked, revealing the golden veil for the fight with the Black Knife Assassin. There is a Golden Summon Sign before the fight that will allow you to summon D, Hunter of the Dead to cooperate with you for this fight. There are certain conditions for the summon sign to appear: It seems you must be on this stage of Rogier's quest, have completed D's quest and then have spoken with D about Rogier's quest.
On the right side of the room with the vanishing wall is a small shaft behind a Grave Glovewort. Falling down this shaft will put the player at the lever to open the locked catacomb doors. There you will find the Ghost Glovewort as well as two skeleton enemies and the lever to open the rusted gate to lead you out.
BOSS BATTLE: BLACK KNIFE ASSASSIN
For this fight, using the Golden Summon Sign and bringing D will greatly ease the fight by having another character tanking and being focused by the boss. The Black Knife Assassin boss is fast moving, dodging many attacks as they move. They have 2 distinct attacks that are easy to predict and dodge. When their arm glows red they will fire out a red projectile at the player, they also occasionally jump up high with a large jumping attack that is easily sidestepped. Defeat this boss to obtain the Assassin's Cerulean Dagger as well as the Black Knifeprint and 3150 Runes.
BOSS BATTLE: CEMETERY SHADE
The fight with the Cemetery Shade features multiple skeleton enemies that assist the boss. The fight can get very dangerous when surrounded by them and hit with the green projectile from the boss, binding the player in place. The Cemetery Shade boss also has short blinks that allow it to dodge attacks as it approaches the player to attack in melee. Position yourself around the pillars to use them to absorb the binding projectiles as these move quite fast and may be hard to dodge naturally. Defeating this boss will reward you with the Twinsage Sorcerer Ashes as well as 3500 Runes. There is a chest in the room with a Deathroot found inside.
Elden Ring Black Knife Catacombs Gallery and Notes
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AnonymousAbsolutely unreal there is no Stake for the Black Knife Assassin, after the bogus blade platforming... necromancers... I really don't mind hard boss fights even a little, but the pure tedium in parts of this game is absolutely unreal. I can't tell if it's intentional or just incompetence or both?
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
Tip: those skeleton will not be re summoned if killed by holy pot (even if there summoners are alive)
- Anonymous
Chuckled when i tried to ride the guillotine and took a fire bomb to the face. I sympathize with people stuck on these spots but those old school “deal with it” moments in From games always make me smile.
D's summon sign didn't appear for me and I was able to fix it by progressing other things. I have updated the description with what appears to be the conditions:
"There are certain conditions for the summon sign to appear: It seems you must be on this stage of Rogier's quest, have completed D's quest and then have spoken with D about Rogier's quest."
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If you have holy slash use it while your blade is golden you instant kill skeletons and they don't respawn
- Anonymous
TRennala'sfull moon instantly killed the cemetery shade instantly
- Anonymous
Throwing a holy pot at the unkillable skeletons kills them instantly.
- Anonymous
Uhh, so.. the shadow boss bugged for me, i went in, killed the black knife, then went to the boss and killed the skellys, but the boss didnt move, just rotated looking at me, i killed it but it remained still, reloaded the game and it died lol
- Anonymous
The skeletons that help the cemetery shade aren’t perma killed by using sacred order for some reason. I still had to kill their spirit like I was using a normal weapon
- Anonymous
Looking at the comments, I was quite apprehensive to go inside, but the best advice was to get a supply of Holy Water Pots to toss at the immortal skeletons, especially in the guillotines room. Close the distance shield up, get rid of these pests, boom, those stupid necromancers are just sitting ducks now
- Anonymous
DO NOT kill skeleton archers in the guillotine room. They will not die without killing the necromancer above them.
- Anonymous
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I just used orders blade but the damn Archer skeletons ARE SO ANNOYING
- Anonymous
just use ash of war sacred blade with sacred infusion, skeletons one shotted ez
also the cemetery shade is weak to holy so ez fight as well
- Anonymous
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For D's sign, you must have met Gurranq and may need to have exhausted D's subsequent dialogue.
- Anonymous
MOTHER****ING SKELETONS WITH THEIR MOTHER****INBG REGENARATION
- Anonymous
Holy water bombs permanently kill the necromancer skeletons
- Anonymous
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Just do the right thing and nerf this trash dungeon already.
Skeleton have no business dealing so disgustingly much damage.
- Anonymous
True strategy for yall, summon a +5 fanged I'm and hit him with blood grease double slash katna,
- Anonymous
I've just gone back for the black knife assassin boss but I wasn't able to use a spirit summons is this correct? I know I used the Raya Lucaria soldier ashes for the cemetery shade a while back so does that stop me from summoning a second time? I was going to try the dung puppet for the first time, it is upgraded to +10 does being fully upgraded put restrictions on which dungeons and bosses it can be used for? the gold sign to summon D hunter of the dead wasn't there either.
- Anonymous
"At the bottom of these stairs are 2 more skeletons, one at the crossroad and one further down the tunnel who will start rolling towards you rapidly once they spot you. Again, moving up the staircase can help with the fight to bring them into a wider fighting area or help with kiting them."
This two skeleton can't be simply killed. Their remainings cant't be destroyed, they keep on resurrecting. There should be a necromancer nearby, but where?
- Anonymous
Inseperable sword ruins the skeletons 1st time, no resurrection
- Anonymous
I only learned you could stand on the guillotines after seeing a skeleton that kept getting spawn killed by one accidentally step onto it. Definitely luck that I discovered it; without my inability to hit AoW: Sacred Blade, I wouldn’t have found out.
- Anonymous
A bit of a nightmare to kill skellies that are near walls. They collapse and I can't hit them to finalize them - keep hitting the wall they are against. Guess I need to arrow them.
- Anonymous
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"To advance in this Catacombs, the player has to go to the room with the multiple guillotines and then ride a guillotine blade upwards to land on the platform above." I might not be the sharpest, but I have no idea how I was supposed to think of that myself.
- Anonymous
Use litany of a proper death to kill the skellies outright no respawning. Then use golden arrows to kill the ranged skellies at a distance no respawning. Then just take out the necro’s at your leisure. Easy peasy.
- Anonymous
I one shot them all with a moonveil ability. The hardest part was just finding ho to get there.
- Anonymous
D Hast perished long ago, and the gold light in his stone faded long ago. couldnt summon
- Anonymous
died more times trying to get to the assassin than i did to the assassin. not that she didnt kill me a lot either
- Anonymous
Rotten stray ashes +1 and night maiden mist made the cemetery shade dead in one mist spell thrown.
- Anonymous
Adulas moonblade waxed the floor with the black knife assassin. Between that and the summon’s ash of war the match was over in a minute
- Anonymous
killed the necromancer in the guillotine room and it doesn't stop the skelly from being re-animated ad nauseum
People still misunderstanding, holy damage doesn't stop the skeletons from respawning. Holy magic does. You'll need to use sacred blade or the holy water pot in order to kill the skeletons without having to kill the necromancers first.
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Summoned D, but that ******* didn't enter the fog gate and I died fighting 2x health pool mob. Rip another no-death playthrough.
- Anonymous
For summoning D I had to kill the timber Marina and meet the Beast cleric first
- Anonymous
It should be mentioned that spirit ashes are unusable for the Black knife fight. It says it on the assasins page but not here.
- Anonymous
This catacomb is a pain, and the wiki is incomplete. They should probably add that a good deal of the skeletons don't die unless you kill the torchwielding albinaurics. D wasn't an available summon either.
- Anonymous
I wish those commoners would drop their Black Flame Torchpoles.
- Anonymous
Add torch/summoner commoners to enemies list. Not sure why they arnt on it yet.
They keep skeletons alive.
- Anonymous
Use holy weapons to permanently kill skeletons for people having a hard time with them regenerating. I put Sacred Blade ashes of war in a leveled Uchigatana and used the skill then kill skeletons as long as blade glowing gold.
- Anonymous
Needs an edit to add Rosus' Axe to listed equipement & weapons, behind the imp door requiring 1 stonesword key
- Anonymous
The guide says to kill the skeletons on the room with the guillotine traps, but you literally can't. They just respawn and I can't find a second summoner.
- Anonymous
No D summon sign for me at the Black Knife Assassin. Of course D is still alive and I have not fought Rennala yet.
When I went to the Assassin area I had already killed the Shade boss so that may be why there was no summon sign.
- Anonymous
Try to focus down the Shane it has very little ho and counts as the necromancer
- Anonymous
There’s another enemy other than the crabs and skeleton, some dude at the start with a hood, maybe a page I’m not sure
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
Forgot the necromancers, also I wish those necromancers would drop their torchpole
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
Just tried this, no summoning sign for D outside the assassin mist. Checked the whole room, wandered around to see if it was just not visible, even reset the dungeon twice. Nothing, no summoning sign, and from the sounds of it some people on the reddit cannot find one either. It may be a bug or it may have to do with where you are in a questline somewhere. In mine, I've already given D the dagger and he's disappeared,
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
Holy pots kill the always-resurrecting skeletons permanently, no need to find a necromancer!
- Anonymous
Does anyone know if it's possible to get the torch pole wielded by the necromancers in this catacomb?
- Anonymous
Holy weapons stop the skeletons from respawning after death. I went into the dungeon with the Golden Epitaph, and all the undead enemies dissolved upon defeat.
- Anonymous
Sacred blade ash of war made this area a breeze compared to some of the other catacombs
- Anonymous
Although those skeletons cannot be killed in the normal way, until the necromancer is killed, holy pots stop them respawning and kill them in one hit. Holy pots will make this a lot easier
- Anonymous
FYI throwing a HOLY WATER POT will perma-kill the skeletons in 1 hit, regardless of your FAI stat. This works for both the self-rez 1-hit ones and the necro-companion ones, and in most cases can be thrown before they get within attacking range. For comparison, it takes 2 glintstone cometshards (and 38 FP) at 50 INT for a temporary kill, but a single jug-o'-jesus from a faithless*, degenerate prisoner is an insta-perma-kill.
*Truthfully, I have 6 pts of faith, but all that faith is in horse, but hole.
- Anonymous
What was the Cemetery Shade Boss? I literally just stabbed it thrice and it died. Granted I'm a bit overleveled for this place by now, but it was still confused as hell to have the fight literally conclude in less than 5 seconds lmao.
- Anonymous
The entrance shuts behind me and I'm locked in. I beat the bosses and the door is still locked and I can't even teleport out of the dungeon. Guess i'm never playing this game again since I can't even leave this place :(
- Anonymous
The entrance shuts behind me and I'm locked in. I beat the bosses and the door is still locked and I can't even teleport out of the dungeon. Guess i'm never playing this game again since I can't even leave this place :(
- Anonymous
those were necromancers?
I thought they were just poors
what kind of necromancer stands in front of their skeletons?
- Anonymous
This dungeon could use a stake of marika, you spend more time running back to the boss room than actual attempts on the boss.
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
Several reviving ads in a boss fight feels pretty frustrating.
- Anonymous
This was a fun one. I was the idiot that lost ~2k souls because I couldn’t get it through my head that the skeletons don’t die unless you kill the necromancers... so, if you’re reading this kill the necromancers. There’s only a couple skeletons that you actually kill. One is the very first one you fight and there’s two more right outside the assassin’s golden seal. The other two are in the basement. Good luck all, and remember “be wary of ambush”
- Anonymous
Just parry the shade right at the beginning and ignore skellies. Crit does 80% of his health.
- Anonymous
The archers shouldn't be doing nearly as much damage as they do.
This is just cheap BS.
Fromsoft should have been able to do better than this garbage.
Sacred Blade doesn't even last nearly long enough either.
- Anonymous
This dungeon is weird for all the confusion, no stake of marika
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
To escape the wombo (if you can survive a few hits) you need to roll toward the boss as they keep attacking and stepping forward. There's a blindspot right in front where they can't hit you, so in general the closer you are the better!
The price of this knowledge was 40,000 souls.....
- Anonymous
Litany of proper death works fine. Even as a last hit after whittling them down with melee. They don’t get back up.
- Anonymous
Don't be a pepeg like me. D died in my playthrough cause the deathbed maiden killed him since i have his dagger back. DON'T GIVE HIS DAGGERR BACK IF YOU HAVEN'T FINISHED THIS DUNGEON
- Anonymous
YOU HAVE TO SMACK THE SKELETONS WHILE THEY ON THE FLOOR DEAD TO KEEP THEM DEAD. UNLESS A SORCERER IS ENCHANTING THEM, THEN YOU JUST HAVE TO KILL THE SORCERER TO KEEP THEM DEAD. hope this helps :)
- Anonymous
I've been using sacred blade ash of war because I got it early in the game and it's made the skeletons and shades and phantoms the easiest thing
- Anonymous
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Appearantly, using Holy skill/ Holy Incantation blessing will RIP the skellys, they can't revive.
- Anonymous
Holy f*cking sh*t, just lost my 40k runes at the shade boss, he one shot me twice with the bs chain combo and cocoon bs.. Actually malding after the fact that the mofo only takes 1 or 2 hit to kill smh
- Anonymous
I have tried 4 types of incantations to keep the skeletons down. Black flame, fire, holy, lightning. In addition to bleeding physical. Non of the above worked.
- Anonymous
Don't understand how to keep the skeletons dead. Used a holy weapon and an occult weapon and they just kept raising.
- Anonymous
Using holy magic of any kind to kill the unkillable skeletons will put them down for good.
- Anonymous
While the skeleton raise themselves to no end, holy damage put them to rest for good
- Anonymous
Not even seeing the gold summon option for the Assassin. No statue of Marika or Grace before it either.
- Anonymous
of course my least favorite mini dungeon has two bosses, ffs
- Anonymous
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I really wish they would make up their minds about where you can and can't summons spirits.
- Anonymous
Gave up on this a few days ago. Now that I'm severely overlevelled, let's see if I can beat the assassin.
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
D, Hunter of the Dead will not go through the assassin's fog wall for some reason.
- Anonymous
stop mixing up ghost and grave glovewort, it's annoying and just worsens your already bad reputation
- Anonymous
What a dungeon my friends! It was the first time in Elden Ring that I felt like throwing away the controller. It brought me back to the DS2 feeling. But apparently, I'm one of the few who liked this dungeon.
if the skeletons are giving you trouble use storm stomp, it turns them into pieces when hit and you can use it to kill the ones that had their hp depeleted
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