Dragon’s Pit Dungeon Walkthrough – Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree

The Dragon’s Pit dungeon in the eastern part of Gravesite Plain serves two purposes: being an awesome dungeon with dragons, and acting as a path to the Jagged Peak. This dungeon is a challenge, though, so don’t take it lightly.

Unique Rewards:

• Dragon Heart (drops from Magma Worm)
• Ancient Dragon Smithing Stone (drops from Magma Worm)
• Dragon-Hunter’s Great Katana (drops from Ancient Dragon-Man dungeon boss)

Dungeon Location

You have to have access to the eastern part of Gravesite Plain, so you will first need to find the Castle Front site of grace, then follow the road down to the entrance. Be sure to stop at the Pillar Path Waypoint site of grace on the way. From there, go down the right path to the Dragon’s Pit entrance.

As soon as you enter, there will be the Dragon’s Pit site of grace. Make sure you select it so you can respawn there, because you’re probably going to get skeletoned. That’s right, this dungeon is crawling with lizard (or maybe they’re baby dragon?) skeletons. You’ll find that out early in the first room, as you’ll immediately see a skeleton (of the bigger variety) admiring a statue with its back turned to you.

Don’t rush down and attack the big skeleton — because it’s a trap! There is another enemy directly below you under the ledge, and another around the corner just up ahead. Try to lure the big skeleton up to you with a ranged attack, so you can fight it one on one.

The bigger skeletons do strong basic attacks and a large area-of-effect fire breath attack. Luckily, all their moves are slow, so you should be able to easily roll behind them and do a critical attack. You can also wail on them while they’re getting up for more damage. Once a skeleton dies, though, you’re not done! Their bodies will glow, and they will resurrect themselves. To stop this, you have to hit them while their body is glowing, then they will be truly dead.

The smaller skeletons are much easier, and you can usually just spam light attack to kill them (because they will flinch from light attacks). When you drop off the ledge and kill the small skeleton, take the tunnel that leads under the entrance to grab a Smithing Stone [1].

If you haven’t killed him, yet, don’t forget about the skeleton waiting for you around the corner when you continue down the tunnel. The next room is a big cavern that has a drop-off to the right and enemies to the left. This fight can get tricky. There is a crossbow skeleton on the far side, and a big skeleton in the middle.

The best strategy is to roll past the big skeleton’s first attack, then run to quickly kill the crossbow skeleton so it doesn’t mess with you while fighting. Afterward, while you’re fighting the big skeleton, don’t go past the two white pillars as that will spawn two more smaller skeletons fighters that are protecting a Shadow Realm Rune [2]. After you’ve dealt with these enemies, head through the passage that the skeleton crossbowman was by.

Now you will be on a rocky slop that is overlooking a slanted path below. A skeleton crossbowman will spawn up on the slop with you; kill it, then use a ranged weapon or spell to coax one of the two skeletons below up to you. Fighting them one at a time is much easier, and they have a hard time fighting on the rocky slope. After they’re dead, head down and kill another smaller skeleton that will spawn.

With the path clear, you can head up to fight the Magma Wyrm. This is a tough fight, but it’s also very easy to cheese it (slang for exploiting). If you feel that you have something to prove, then you can fight it straight up, without any gimmicks. If you need help in that endeavor, check out Magma Wyrm boss guide for tips (it’s literally the same boss, just in a different location).

However, if you don’t mind using the terrain to your advantage, then you can simply retreat back to the tunnel you entered from and attack it with ranged weapons until it dies. Its body is so massive that it can’t follow you into the tunnel. You still want to be as far away from it as possible while attacking, since some of its moves can still reach you in the tunnel.

Once it’s dead, you’ll receive a Dragon Heart and Ancient Dragon Smithing Stone. Then you can exit the wyrm’s cave from either direction to end up in the previous area with the path. Follow the path down to the sublevel of the dungeon that you could see from before.

There aren’t any enemies here, but there is a message on a block when you first enter, “Be brave. Show no fear.” This is referring to the misty plummet into the chasm in front of you. When you walk off the ledge (walking straight, don’t jump off to the side you weirdo), you’ll fall a long ways, but land safely in front of the boss’s door. All you speed runners out there might be thinking, “I could have just jumped off the ledge from the top room.” We tried it, and we didn’t clear the bottom floor, so yeah…don’t try that.

When you’re at the boss’s door, turn around and loot the Smithing Stone [4] from the corpse in the corner. Now it’s time to take on the boss, the Ancient dragon-Man. Traverse the mist, and you’ll see the same bloke that you fought outside the dungeon. He’s quite a bit stronger this time, and has at least one new move, so don’t take him lightly. If you need help with this boss, consult our boss guide!

After beating him, you’ll get the unique Dragon-Hunter’s Great Katana. Also, a thingamabob will appear that asks if you want to travel back to the dungeon’s entrance. Don’t do it! Instead, push open in the big doors and continue on to the Jagged Peak.

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The Jagged Peak [WIP]