Soulsborne titles do not spare their player base one bit. At every corner, there is a challenge, from enemies with insane hitboxes to bosses with complex movesets.
Elden Ring is no exception to this norm. With harrowing bosses and mini-bosses littered all across its sprawling world, surviving in the Lands Between is quite challenging.
Amongst its countless challenges is Necromancer Garris, a well-hidden optional boss found in Altus Plateau. Players have struggled with this boss, but you should defeat it with ease with our guide.
Necromancer Garris Overview
Necromancer Garris is an optional humanoid boss armed with a flail and a staff. It uses the Sage Set and sorcery to crush you in battle. But the trickiest part about it is dealing with the skeletal serpent snails it summons throughout the battle.
Health: Necromancer Garris has around 7340 HP on your first playthrough.
Types of damage: Garris can inflict physical, bleed, and elemental (death magic) damage.
Weapons: Necromancer Garris wields a flail and a staff.
Weaknesses: Garris is weak to fire and bleed damage. Additionally, you can break its poise to deal critical damage.
Parry: You can parry the flail attacks of the Necromancer Garris.
Location: There is only one Necromancer Garris in the game, and he can be found in Sage’s Cave, Altus Plateau.
Movesets:
- Flail Melee: Garris performs a series of regular melee attacks at short range, followed by a dodge roll. You can also easily block and interrupt the attacks, allowing you to follow up with your attacks. Step back to avoid it.
- Homing Skulls (Death Magic): Using its staff, Necromancer Garris casts a hoard of skulls that slowly home in on your location. If you avoid them long enough, the skulls disappear, but the best option is to hide behind an object or interrupt the move by attacking the boss.
- Skull Snail Summon: These summons perform small melee lunges and cast homing skull spells. You will need to constantly clear them out lest they start gathering in large numbers.
Pre-fight Preparations
Before a fight, your preparations determine your chances of coming out with spoils. Here is what you need to do before the fight.
Equip Mimic Tear Ashes.
Mimic Tear ashes is a summon that creates a replica of you possessing the same weapons, armor, skills, and everything.
The summon should distract Necromancer Garris while you chip away at his health.
Use a bleed weapon.
Like the Rivers of Blood Katana, Bleed weapons deal chunky damage over time, thanks to their Bleed damage.
As the boss is vulnerable to the bleed effect, going out of your way to get a bleed weapon can be quite helpful. You can get Rivers of Blood Katana from the Church of Repose after an invader encounter.
Equip Flame Sling.
As the Necromancer Garris is also weak to fire damage, having something that can inflict that damage from a distance would be quite useful.
Flame Sling is a great fit for doing just that. You can easily obtain the Sling from Brother Corhyn at the Roundtable Hold for 800 Runes.
This strategy, however, is only handy if you have invested some pints in Faith.
Fight Strategy
You have come prepared. It is action time now.
Deal with Skull Snails first.
Necromancer Garris will summon Skull Snails throughout the fight, some of them falling from the ceiling. Never let them gang up on you. You need to take them out as soon as they spawn, as their melee and death magic attacks can be fatal.
Look out for his flail.
Try to avoid being hit by its flail as much as possible, as his flail attacks can build up your bleed meter. Your aim should either block the flail attacks or stagger the boss mid-combo. With just a few consecutive hits, it will cause blood loss.
Be quick with your attacks.
Although Garris can build up bleed quickly with its flail, you can do it with your attacks. If you use a weapon like the Rivers of Blood Katana, you can use quick slashes to interrupt the boss’s combos.
Don’t let it break your poise.
The Necromancer Garris acts like a typical NPC invader. Therefore, you can expect it to roll dodge and avoid being stunlocked or counterattacked. But more importantly, if your poise gets broken, it will try to land a critical strike, removing a large chunk of your health.
Therefore, if your poise is on the edge of breaking, take a step back and recover.
Be cautious of the arena size.
As this arena is an enclosed space, you will have difficulty tackling Necromancer Garris’ attacks.
Do not stay in one spot. It is best to keep moving to avoid being cornered.
Rewards
You can expect to get the following rewards after beating Necromancer Garris:
- 9000 Runes;
- Family Heads: A flail with 87 physical damage scales with Dex, Strength, and Intelligence. This flail can only be acquired by beating Necromancer Garris.
With that, you know everything on how to beat Necromancer Garris. This boss may not be as easy as Patches or as tough as Sanguine Noble, but it can pose a challenge.
Do you have anything to share to help with fighting Garris? Did we miss out on any tips? Let us know in the comments section.
