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The Homeward Bone can be one of the most useful items throughout Dark Souls 3. It's typical to find yourself in a situation where you're completely overwhelmed or stranded and need to use a bone to evacuate to Firelink Shrine or the nearest bonfire. However, since Homeward Bones are consumable items, it's possible for you to run out of these lifesavers and wind up losing all of your precious souls.
Wouldn't it be great if there was an item that did the same job as the Homeward Bone but could be used over and over again? Well lucky for you, that item exists. It's called the Coiled Sword Fragment and can be obtained by traveling through some optional areas within Lothric Castle. It won't be easy, but here's a guide to help to get your hands on this incredibly handy tool.
Where To Start Your Search For The Coiled Sword Fragment
To begin your quest for the Coiled Sword Fragment, you need to defeat one of Dark Souls 3's most difficult boss fights, The Dancer Of The Boreal Valley. You usually won't have access to this fight until you've beaten three of the Lords Of Cinder and taken their souls.
However, if you're really confident in your Dark Souls abilities, you can start this battle way earlier in the game by killing the NPC named Emma who's sitting in a chair in Lothric Castle on the opposite side of where you'll find the Vordt Of The Boreal Valley boss fight. In case you need help with this fight, we have a guide on how to handle The Dancer right.
Once you've beaten The Dancer and unlocked the bonfire that appears afterward, a ladder will descend from above. Climb that and you'll see three staircases: one in front of you, one to the right, and one to the left. Take the stairs to the left and head down some more stairs.
You'll have to defeat a tough enemy called a Consumed King's Knight to make it to the next section. If you manage that, you'll find an elevator through the doorway that the knight was guarding. Take it down and you'll now be in a new area called The Consumed King's Garden.
The Consumed King's Garden
The Consumed King's Garden is not a particularly friendly place. The ground is covered in black ooze that inflicts toxic status upon you if you spend too much time in it. Pus Of Man and Consumed King Knight enemies are wandering around along with Rotten Slugs that can make getting to the next part of this area pretty tough.
On the right side of this zone are some steps that lead to an elevator that can open up a shortcut. It should look like this:
You might want to unlock that as it's likely that you may die quite a bit here.
Keep heading forward past all the enemies and black toxic guck until you reach a fog wall. Depending on where you are with his questline, you may be able to summon Hawkwood The Deserter to help with the upcoming fight. Good news, you now get to meet the titular Consumed King who owns this garden. Bad News, he's a dragon man who's probably going to kill you.
Oceiros, The Consumed King has the appearance of a scaleless dragon who seems to be holding an invisible baby. He's not too hard to beat but he can pose a challenge.
His first form will see him attempting to smash you with his staff and performing some jumping attacks. After doing enough damage, he enters into his second form where he becomes far more ferocious. He'll get on all fours and run at you with swiping and spinning attacks. He also has a crystal breath attack that can do tons of damage and possibly curse you. Dodge a lot, attack him from behind, and you should be able to put him out of his misery.
Once you get past Oceiros, you'll light another bonfire and gain access to the next area. It'll look like a tomb filled with the corpses of Man Serpents. There will be a single living Man Serpent here for you to kill as well.
Continue forward and you'll come to a room with some chests and a suit of armor sitting cross-legged. The chests will have some Titanite Scales inside, while you can gain the Path Of The Dragon gesture from the armor. This is what you will need if you want to travel to Archdragon Peak. You can find more information about that area in our Archdragon Peak guide.
At the end of this room, you'll see what looks like a dead end with a chest. Hit the wall behind the chest with your weapon to make the illusionary wall disappear. Go forward, fall down the cliff ahead, and light the bonfire. You can now traverse the eerie zone that is The Untended Graves.
The Untended Graves And Firelink Shrine
The Untended Graves may look familiar to you. That's because it's essentially a carbon copy of the first area of the game. The big difference is that this place is shrouded in darkness and is filled with much tougher enemies such as Corvians and Black Knights.
There are a few ways you can go, but keep going forward if you want to reach the Coiled Sword Fragment. You'll eventually come to a spot that looks identical to the area right before you fought the very first boss, Iudex Gundyr. Go through the fog wall to find the much more difficult version of that boss.
The Champion Gundyr fight bears some similarities to the Iudex Gundyr fight, but this version of that boss can be trickier to deal with. He'll get up close and nail you with multiple attacks without giving you space to breathe. Try to put some distance between him and yourself in between your attacks. He can be parried, so if you can figure out the timing of that you might be able to make short work of him.
If you get past Champion Gundyr then you're in the home stretch of gaining your lovely new Coiled Sword Fragment. Activate the bonfire that spawns after the fight and continue forward. After fighting some tough Black Knights, you'll reach a building that looks suspiciously like Firelink Shrine. That's because it is. It turns out that this realm is in an alternate timeline/dimension where the Age Of Dark has begun - it may also be in the past or future, it's Dark Souls lore, who knows?
Enter this much darker version of Firelink Shrine and head to the middle where you would usually find the Coiled Sword bonfire that allows you to warp back here. In its place, you'll find the Coiled Sword Fragment, which is your reward for traversing across these difficult, optional areas.
You can now travel to any bonfire you desire without using Homeward Bones. Alternatively, if you don't mind needing to stock up on extra bones, you can drop it in Pickle Pee's nest atop the regular, more well-lit Firelink Shrine to net yourself a Titanite Slab.