Elden Ring has a number of sides bosses that are tricky to find. Dragonlord Placidusax is a perfect example of this. Hidden beneath Crumbling Farum Azula, the boss fight with Placidusax is one of the most visually beautiful fights. After watching an alluring cutscene, the player is thrown into a massive arena with a two-headed dragon curled up like a ball. Facing the boss is optional, meaning that players can kill him anytime in their playthrough.
The boss has different and unique mechanics from other dragon fights, making it feel fresher to all players. Here is all you need to know about Dragonlord Placidusax.
Dragonlord Placidusax Overview
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Dragonlord Placidusax Overview |
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Location |
Crumbling Farum Azula |
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Optional |
Yes |
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Summons |
Players and Spirit Ashes |
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Drops |
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Weak To |
Physical Thrust Damage |
Dragonlord Placidusax is a Legend Boss residing in Crumbling Farum Azula. Fighting it is optional and will not alter any of the endings. To reach the boss, you will have to go back from the "Beside the Great Bridge" Site of Grace. Go down the stairs and take the elevator. Exit the building and go straight towards the cliff. Below you can see several platforms. Jump down from one platform to the other to reach the interactable area where the boss fight will begin.
Defeating the boss will get you 280,000 Runes that you can spend on leveling and the boss's Remembrance. You can turn in the Remembrance to Finger Reader Enia at the Roundtable Hold for Placidusax's Ruin (Incantation) or Dragon King's Cragblade (Heavy Thrusting Sword), which has a very extraordinary-looking skill that does a lot of damage and breaks poise.
Dragonlord Placidusax Attacks
The boss has a mixture of lightning and fire attacks that he performs from time to time. A lot of his attacks deal a high amount of damage, and some can even one-shot you if you are unable to dodge them. The attacks to look out for the most are all of his attacks in the second phase.
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Dragonlord Placidusax Attacks |
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Ancient Dragon's Lightning Strike
Dragonlord Placidusax roars, causing red lightning to strike at random areas of the arena.
Counter: You need to get out of the areas where you can see lightning is about to strike. You can either roll or run to the sides to avoid it.
Dragonfire
The boss breathes golden fire from its mouth in front of him. The fire persists for a few seconds before going away.
Counter: You can roll through the fire breathing attack; however, the fire remains, causing damage to you and knocking you down. A good way to avoid this is to run away from the boss when he starts to breathe fire.
Lightning Claw
Dragonlord Placidusax charges his hand and performs a lightning claw attack. If he raises his land hand, he will do a horizontal sweep. If he raises his right hand, he will slam it down vertically.
Counter: You have to be aware of which hand the boss has his claws on. If he raises his left hand, you need to roll towards the attack. For the right-hand slam, you can dodge to either side as the hand comes down.
Side Attack
The boss slams his wings or sweeps his tail at the player if the person is at the rear or behind him.
Counter: Roll towards the boss to avoid both attacks.
Lightning Claw Air Dive
As soon as the second phase starts, the boss disappears. A giant cloud of lighting appears, and the boss reappears from the cloud and comes flying at you to strike you with his lightning claw. This attack has a different variant where the boss travels around the arena inside the cloud and comes at the player with his claw. This variant is much deadlier and can take out your entire health bar.
Counter: For both of these attacks, the best way to avoid them is to roll into the attacks. After performing the first variant, the boss can disappear again. However, if you manage to roll through the second variant, the boss stays neutral on the ground for a couple of seconds before getting up, giving you time to get a few hits in.
Placidusax's Ruin
Dragonlord Placidusax starts to breathe golden fire, which turns into a large laser beam coming out from both heads. These beams travel around the area, causing wide AOE damage. This attack can one-shot you if you fail to avoid it as the beam does not let up.
Counter: Getting away from the boss during the dragon breath is the only clear option to avoid this attack. You can also roll towards the boss and get to his backside. This will get you free hits, but it is risky as you might take damage from the dragon fire.
Strategies
There are two main strategies for Placidusax, one of the first Elden Lords:
Melee Strategy
For the melee strategy, bringing a thrusting weapon can be very helpful. The boss has the lowest resistance against physical thrust damage, so going dual-Rapiers is a very good choice. Affinity-wise, the boss is strong against all of them, but Scarlet Rot is quite useful in this fight.
If you have the required stats for Rotten Breath (Incantation), then memorize the spell and use two to three full breaths at the boss to inflict the Rot. This will make the boss's health bar go down slowly for a long period of time.
Your dodges need to be precise for the flying attacks as the boss can one-shot you with most of his flying lightning claw attacks.
As the boss has a massive hitbox during the fight, you might not want to use the lock-on for this fight.
If you are near the rear side of the boss, you can spam attacks while moving your camera towards the boss to tell which animation he is doing.
Ranged Strategy
For the ranged strategy, if you are going for Mage Build, then bringing Rock Sling is vital as it deals a lot of damage and breaks poise relatively quicker. Summoning Mimic Tear or other good Spirit Ashes can help you split the boss's threat while spamming Sorceries on the boss.
You can also use Carian Retaliation on your staff as a Sorcery or the Ash of War version on your shield. The Sorcery can be obtained by Preceptor Seluvis for 9000 Runes at Seluvis' Rise, and the Ash of War can be purchased by Pidia at Caria Manor.
Once you obtain Carian Retaliation, all you have to do is use the Wraith Calling Bell and use your shield's skill to reflect it. This will make three Glintstone Blades appear on your head. These travel at a very fast pace and deal massive damage to the boss. After all the blades deal damage, you can summon and reflect another wraith and keep damaging the boss until his health bar goes out.
Being at a distance is also important as you can still use most of your sorceries and avoid most of his deadly attacks like Lightning Claws and Fire Breath.
General Tips
- Be Lever 90-95 or Higher.
- The arena for this fight is massive. Make use of this to avoid most of his ranged attacks with ease.
- Envoy's Long Horn's skill is an excellent weapon for Strength-Faith build players as all of the bubbles hit the boss's large hitbox.
- Cerulean Hidden Tear is useful for ranged players making FP consumption zero for a short amount of time.