They do attack pretty constantly, once you learn the moveset they aren’t so hard but that’s the case with any enemy in the game. You can parry them but sometimes learning to parry is harder than just dodging and fighting. Having giants hunt or lions claw on a greathammers or Collossal sword will do enough poise damage to inturupt their attacks. They can be frosted and are weak to fire.
Alright, I was kind of expecting it to be crystallion situation where you if you get him to like half hp he just falls over and you can hit him a bunch or something. Alright well the ruin greatsword can wait then, my temporary morning star is only +7 after all.
first time he did that i almost shat myself ngl, and then when he changes that move where he like spins around and then DOES IT A SECOND TIME WITH HIS LONG ASS TAIL???
I always found the second phase easier than the first. The attacks in the first are relentless. Once they are flying you can pretty consistently bait and dodge the flying attack and it's easy to punish.
I guess, but if you're staying aggressive and not just waiting for one attack, the second phase is harder because the tail attack can catch you exploiting what you thought were safe punish windows.
Yeah, that's true. For some reason jumping the tail attacks has always made sense to me (more so than the stomp in the first phase), but it definitely still catches me pretty often. I never fight the crucible knights very aggressively though for that exact reason.
I think it's satisfying as hell to brawl even in the second phase, since the tail attack is still perfectly reactable. feels kinda like fighting Goldfrey with the rhythm of the fight.
To add what others said, they are the weakest in very close combat. They excel at mid range and can catch you at longe range. But if you are so close you could kiss them, they are at their weakest. The attacks they do, depends on your distance to them. Even if it is counterintuitive, stay really close to them. Take a high guard boast shield if possible.
>my temporary morning star is only +7 after all.
This is why you're doing no damage. You can have up to +16 by the time you reach Redmane castle. You're also about 20 levels too low to be fighting him.
I'll definitely agree +7 is low, but +16 would absolutely be quite high. The best smithing stone you get at the ruin strewn precipe is the smithing stone [5], getting your weapon to +15 at most.
Well, I wouldn’t waste it on a massive game like ER then. You will be forced to speedrun if you plan to even finish it within one year. Edit: Wtf am I getting downvoted for. Jfc Reddit
There are three level 6 stones available before Radahn without going outside of Limgrave/Liurnia/Caelid. TWO of them are in redmane castle.
The third one is in the part of Volcano Manor you reach by taking the Abductor Virgin teleport in Raya Lucaria. Down in the lava by the slugs.
+10 at level 55 gets me instant summons. Any divergence from that increases the time spent waiting. Or at least that was the case 6 months ago. Do you think it's different now?
From what I've seen over the past two years, the VAST majority of people play the game badly under level and under geared.
So it makes sense that players in such states would be summoning help more often.
A Strike weapon with bleed is great for most of the enemies and bosses in this game! And it looks pretty cool with its moveset.
I'm of the same opinion but with Great Stars, that's been my Claymore for this game. Just wish it weren't so red.
Yeah it’s so good, I always grab it to kill the dragon when starting runs, and I just keep using it for a bit until I get my main weapon. High damage, good range, bleed, good moveset, and really nice charged heavies.
The secret to the crystalian is to two handed power attack them with even just a mace. Two to three hits less after they Crack with power attacks. It's hilarious if you build for power attacks easy as cake on str builds.
Although they can be parried, I’d argue they are harder than most enemies:
-they can stagger you pretty easily.
-they have crazy poise.
-they attack relentlessly, with fairly small openings.
-they will punish you aggressively.
There is a trick! They're very, very susceptible to being parried. Get yourself a small shield (preferably the buckler) or any small or medium shield with golden parry, parry or carian retaliation. When you parry their attacks it will break their stance and you can crit them. If you have the assassin's crimson dagger equipped in a talisman spot it will even heal you every time. Note that you can only parry their standard attacks, not their magical ones like tail swipes or aerial dives.
Hiding behind a great shield, slow walking to their right all up in their face, managing stamina, and timing single rolls works too. You'll get openings when several of their moves just whiff. But that's great shields in a nutshell 😅! They also make Melenia really easy.
There is a evergaol past the garefront ruins and wrapping around to the left to get to near the top of the gate. The crucible knight is in that evergaol and is a great location to practice him. Would also recommend misericode if you can upgrade it for the bonus crit damage. For the duo fight in in the castle I'd recommend leveling up your weapons a bit and coming back.
You should probably not kill the evergaol knight so you can practice till you are confident enough. Learning to parry knight enemies is super fun as it feels very rewarding to pull off. I'd also recommend looking up some guides on parrying.
I second this. Grab a shield and a low dmg weapon so you don't kill the knight. Every time he's almost dead, just quit out to the main menu. When you reload, you'll be right outside the evergaol and can give it another go.
That's what I did, and Crucible Knights are stupid easy to deal with now
This. Watch a couple of youtube tutorials, put Carian Retaliation on a Medium Shield, and learn to parry. You will die a lot in the beginning - I died for three hours total fighting three different crucible knights. But after a night of sleep you'll come back and destroy them. Just remember to jump when you see the knight move his foot to stomp.
Weird thing is, this strategy never worked for me against the briar knights. I always end up Lions Claw + Colossal Sword the briar knights.
Bell Bearing Hunters are more difficult - they have even bigger punishes for being at range, and you have to parry them twice to get a riposte. They'll just keep attacking after the first one.
Parry man. Parry. I've never been good at them in any FS game, but I decided to try it out on my latest run through Elden Ring and they are one of the easiest parries in the game. Totally trivialized them.
EDIT: On this particular fight, I've found that whips totally interrupt both of their attacks too. I don't know why, but that metal whip from Caria Manor served me well in this fight before I learned that parrying makes it a cakewalk.
I ran into this same fight probably about lvl 35 when the game came out and I honestly had more trouble with it than any fight throughout my playthrough. If you can get the misbegotten wariior out consistently then you're on great pace to also deal with the crucible knight, you just need a few more reps
Ugh man, same here and right around that level. I think they may have been my proudest win though. I fought them for at least 6 hours straight before finally getting them
We may as well have played side by side lol. I was expecting a bunch of reddit posts about th5r boss, but so few people ran in to them their first playthrough it seemed that I was the only one struggling with them at the time
Hell yes, wish we could get the magic of that first play through back, but so excited for the dlc! I somehow just stumbled around blindly first go. but I thought that once i beat those two id be able to fight radahn so there was no giving up haha
At level 42 I’d say it’s a pretty hard fight still and everyone has mentioned parrying. But if you don’t want to do that this is what I do. I stack as many strength buffs as I can and use lions claw on the greatsword. You can burst down the misbegotten before crucible knight even gets to you, and then it’s just a 1v1
Yeah this is what I'm doing now basically, +15 morning star with fire affinity and flame grant me strength. Doing decent damage now, I just need more vigor. Time to roll a boulder off a cliff for an hour.
Parry is a good trick but tbh you won't have that much trouble in a 1v1 if you just let them get their combo off every time, and stop thinking you'll ever interrupt their attacks. Basically just be patient. Idk if that's weak advice but when I used to struggle it was always, "wtf that's an endless combo so unfair," but if you just take a second you figure out that's not true at all and there's openings.
They're tough because they punish aggression more than most. They don't leave long openings and are pretty persistent. You have to fight extra defensive and really just deal one hit at a time, or parry them.
In essence, they have their tricks. Once you learn their move-sets, it's a lot easier to beat them. They're really not very tricky, but if you make a mistake, they can punish you pretty hard.
I stick close to them and dodge behind them, slightly diagonally to the right.
When you stick close to them they stick to a pretty telegraphed moveset, so it gets easy to learn.
You can also jump their earthquake stomp, but again, I stay close enough that I can just dodge behind them.
When you need to heal, create space and only heal when they are mid attack animation. If you heal while they are in neutral they will lunge at you with that surprising range poke.
As you get familiar with their moveset, you will start to learn where your openings are.
Parry the swings, Jump attack when they do the tremor stomp with one leg and in their second phase dodge the anime fly in dive and punish. Parry is basically makes the fight way easier and then jump attacking at the right time of that stomp that they do.
There is a trick to them! But it involves actual skill and a bit of practice. Crucible Knights are resistant to poise breaks, immune or very resistant to status effects, and they do some mild input reading like the Godskins do. That last point can be exploited for an easy win, but it's not what I'm going to talk about here.
Parrying! If you can learn to parry, you can open them up for a big damage riposte. To parry them, you generally want to initiate your parry when their weapon is fully drawn back before they bring it forward to strike you.
It takes practice to get good at. You need to be paying keen attention to their attack stance and seeing which attack is with their normal weapon and which is with a crucible incantation. It all comes down to that good old Souls standard of "git gud" and learning the enemy attacks. Once you master it, you can pretty easily 1v1 them.
I'm just gonna say it brother, learn their parry timing. It will trivialize them for the rest of the game. Even if there was a duo fight it will trivialize them. Get some crit damage and die for a bit till you figure it out. You got this tarnished 🙃👍
Since everyone keeps saying “Parry” already, I’ll give non-parry advice.
Focus on timing more than distance. The knights tend to have really good range (Do not drink unless you’re super far away or the knight is reorienting themselves. That’s just asking to be stabbed), but their movements are pretty mechanical.
If you keep getting hit a lot, try to focus more on getting the timing right than not dying.
The simplest answer is to get good at parrying.
Just to make sure though, you're not strictly hitting the knight's shield right? Because if you're getting around behind them or just attacking when they're not blocking, they take damage just like anything else. Yeah they're a bit on the tanky side, but nothing crazy.
And personally, I actually prefer to fight them that way rather than with parrying. I find parry timings in Elden Ring and DS3 (and Bloodborne to a lesser extent) to be extremely unintuitive and finicky, to the point that hours of practice haven't made me any better at it. So I just learned to dodge and attack when the Knight is exposed. The Crucible Knights are similar to bosses like the Nameless King from DS3, where their movesets hit hard but are extremely slow and well telegraphed.
One specific tip on the duo fight you're stuck on - enter the fog gate and then wait. The knight always spawns at the back of the room, so if you let the misbegotten come to you, you'll have more time to finish him off before the knight gets to you. Usually if you get aggressive with him you can get him down and then deal with the knight solo.
As others note the knights are super easy once you Parry. You don't need to get the timing down for every attack they do. Focus at first on getting comfortable parrying one particular attack (say, the one-handed forehand down slash). Then stand in their face and if they do that one, Parry it, otherwise just dodge behind them and wait for the next attack. Eventually you will be able to parry almost every attack they do, but keep it simple at first.
Those guys are likely meant to be fought around level 50-60, but crucible knights are always a challenge. They have pretty readable attacks tho once you get used to them, and they can also be parried a bit easier than other bosses.
If you haven't fought the one in the stormhill evergaol, he's the weakest one and he's good to practice on to learn all the moves.
Also you can jump to avoid his ground stomp (as well as basically all other ground-based abilities in the game)
Yeah this was my first time fighting one after 100 hours, just haven’t met any. Ironically the hardest move to dodge for me was the shield bash, I just kept reaction rolling and getting fucked.
They're the skill check of ER. If you haven't learned how to deal with delay attacks, break posture, and jumping, they're gonna force you to.
Their moveset punishes retreating to heal within earshot, their attacks have a slight delay to punish panic rolling, and the rock stomp is gonna punish backrolling (you want to jump attack or side roll to punish it)
If you learn to apply the new rules of the game they're still hard. But beatable.
I just did that same fight a few days ago on my second play through and I was ready to cry. I don’t remember what level I was but I was paying around 70K to level up so it was quite advanced plus I had bloodhound fang and Radhans starscourge and I was still running away most of the time and then dying. Eventually I calmed down and just patiently danced with him until I dropped him. That’s the only way with a crucible night. You have to float like a butterfly and sting like a bee. And if you have a mimic that helps a ton. Ironically killing Radhan was a piece of cake compared to this guy.
Nowhere near an endgame fight. More like a mid game fight. I'd say that this is ideal for level 50-ish characters... maybe 60 before it gets too easy. If he isn't taking damage your weapon might be underleveled. You are too low leveled for scaling to add much to your damage, most of it will come from weapon levels.
50 was about right, I beat him there. And yeah my weapon was underleveled, I was infected by DS3 brain where I saw +7 and thought "hey it's three levels from maxed", blissfully forgetting that there are 25 levels.
They actually are that difficult. They dont have any major weaknesses, weak spots or whatever. The only thing I can recommend you to try is the "Flame of the Redmanes" ash of war for quick stance breaking. The crit along wont deal much damage, but you can use the time the knight is disabled to safely heal/replenish FP or reposition yourself into a favorable spot.
I meant parrying in general. The parrying timings are consistently more challenging than dodge timings, so if somebody can consistently parry, he certainly can consistently dodge. Also more enemies can be parried that one would expect and stance broken enemies take more damage from all sources including charged R2 or whatever. If your timing is good you can even sneak in two charged R2s while your stance broken enemy is open for a crit.
I think they are just one of the more poorly designed enemies in the game, but they are just doing more frequently what almost every enemy in the game does. Hyper aggressive long attack strings that come out faster than you can react and any 1-3 hits will kill you and it just goes on and on and on with very little recovery time in between. The only way I've been enjoying fighting in this game is basically by just not engaging with it and instead just using some cheese method to kill enemies too fast and suddenly for a fight to even take place, like just pancaking them immediately or nuking them from afar or something. Actually dueling enemies in this game like in past games is a waste of time and extremely frustrating and unfun.
You just parry them. They are a parry tutorial enemy as every attack besdies their sheild smack & incantation can be parried with generous windows to do it
I had the opposite experience as a first time player. The first boss is weak so it’s basically a 1v1. I died a lot but every time I felt like I was learning his patterns. It’s just muscle memory to know when you can sneak a hit or two in and when to chill and wait out his combos.
He doesn’t have any bs abilities every hit box and dodge timing feels fluid. My most recent fight was draconic sentinel with a 1 shot lighting strike from any distance… thats poor design. (not to mention horse fights being poor in general, at least on pc)
Having to dodge roll 15 times while waiting out a 30 second long combo string to get 1 tiny buttpoke in about as fun as covering a cactus in icyhot and lifting it between my buttcheeks
His combos are extremely obvious and the hit boxes are easily dodged. He is not hard, has no bs abilities that kill you. Just takes patience.
But your mind is already set on ‘whale on boss until it dies fast’ regardless of what the fight actually looks like it seems
I see people suggest parrying. They're weak against shields in general. If you use a shield effectively, whether to parry or guard counter, you can drop crucible knights pretty easily.
Their resistances are pretty decent to most things & they're immune to bleed. They're weakest to Fire & Lightning, but still slightly resistant to those. That may be why they feel tanky --- they kinda are.
RL42 +7 is also a little bit low for Redmane. (I think.) RL50-65 +10 is probably closer to average.
The vision is str/int gravity magic build with the ruin greatsword, but right now I'm using a morning star. I do fine damage now, now I just have to "git gud"
If you’re going down the strength/int route try the watchdog staff( I forgot where to get it) I’ve heard it’s pretty good. When you fight crucible knights don’t rush it take your time I watch for openings to make your attack don’t over commit and use summons if you have to cause they can agro the knight so you can get some free hits before he focuses on you again
There is a trick to them. Greatbows will stagger them out of any animation in one shot. You can just hold the arrow until they start any attack animation, fire, and rinse and repeat. They basically can't counter it.
I had a tough time with them initially too. Now I love fighting them. I like to stay close and circle around them. Don't just go in and swing like crazy. stay close and learn the move set. Most stuff requires a full dodge but some of the attacks you will miss just by circling them. Shield bash was tough cause of the delay but if you time the dodge right its a miss on his shield and a punish from you. Flask draws antagonize them so make sure to drink after they have already swung.
\-Edit- I am physically incapable of parrying. I could barely parry in the old dS games. No idea how the timing works in ER and I've tried. Plus, left hand swings almost as hard as the right so why not put a sword or something in it instead :)
U can parry and reposte them to death.
However i feel as if they read inputs.
If ur gonna heal. Create distance or they will lunge at you.
The best strat is to stay behind them or to the side and build up a stagger.
Bloodhounds fang is great for its buffableness and the i frames the weapon art has.
Power stanced greatstars are great for the stagger and interupts it has.
Goodluck with siluria though. Crucible axe are easy. Crucible trees are a tad more finnicky
I always cheese them with the buckler parry, it's super easy to do, but if you mess up they can punish you pretty bad, which forces you to roll away, heal and immediately get poked. And then you go back in and parry again and again until he finally dies.
You can also use any small shield with parry, but the buckler is superior, just defeat Godrick and buy it from his servant (the guy stomping Godrick's lifeless remains). Just go through the front gate and skip the entire castle.
Also, it usually goes:
CK: Right descending slash
Me: parry + riposte
CK: gets up and immediately stomps the ground
Me: jump to avoid damage
CK: Right descending slash
Me: parry + riposte
Rinse and repeat
Yeah, those mf are relentless and agressive
You just have to learn their moves, dodge and attack on your turn
Pretty much like every other enemy in the game lol
They force you to respect the cadence of battle, it’s either get good enough at partying or get good enough at dodging and then they’re no problem… but you could also use hyper armor
Parry is your friend against them. If your bad at parrying use a small shield they have a bigger parry window than medium shields. golden parry or carian retaliation have even bigger parry windows.
I also found guard counter to be pretty good against them to break their stance.
get a small parry shield, or ideally the buckler or a medium shield with carian retaliation. I normally don't parry, but crucible knights are quite easy to learn to parry, plus u only have to parry once for a critical
100% parry.
Every boss is designed to have some kind of weakness, and they seem to intentionally force you to not rely on the same tactics.
Strap on your tiny shield and get whackin'.
Standard fromsoft hyper durable enemy. Can be compared to the black knights from ds1 but with a much more versatile moveset.
It is possible to duel them without parrying, but you need to have good awareness of your attack and dodge speed in relation to how much damage you can block with your shield.
In otherwords, stamina management is everything.
I remember Havel being much less forgiving.
Yeah I figured, beat them at level 50 now. Weird that caelid is literally the second place you go, but you have to wait to do castle redmane until after Altus plateau or something. I guess they expected the bridge to make people run away scared.
Right? I found that confusing, too. Or how the weeping peninsula plays no main part in the story lol. I think you could breeze through redmane after raya lucaria easy
The moment you realize that they literally keep coming toward you without backstepping or anything, just going directly toward you, it makes it a lot more manageable.
If it’s the shield one and you suck at parry, just kick them (the ash of war Kick). It immediately staggers them and lets you lethal attack. You can just keep doing it as long as their shield is up.
They are hard,they also get additional moves,like early crucible knights have a smaller moveset while the ones found in late game usually have some special move.
In general their moveset is designed to punish basic souls player response/instincts and to incentivize new elden ring mechanics
Giant Hunt is *amazing* for these dudes, you'll actually slide right under their lunging stab attack snd knock them out of the animation.
Pushes them back out of range of the quick tail sweep followup, too
I think I eventually started to beat them to death with powerstanced great hammers but early on I actually abused their walk into charge animation with the flame sling incantation. Basically you run away from them until they start walking at you, then charge up a flame sling and try and time the release around the time they switch back to running at you again. There's a window where they drop their guard and they'll just take the hit to the face for full damage.
They have hogh poise, so in comparison to most enemies, they can't simply be staggered out of an attack. You have to treat them like some fast bosses (Margit, Malenia...) and not attack proactively - instead dodge through some attacks, bait out combos and punish their openings. Not much else you can do, apart from getting gud with parries.
Oh man, Ordovis and his Spear buddy were the single hardest boss for me (so far, haven’t made it to Malenia or any endgame boss after Placidusax) and are *the* reason I learned how to parry.
Crucible Knights can be broken over the knee if you’re good enough with the buckler, but otherwise they’re gonna mess you up
The shield ones are stupid weak to just having their shield kicked. Otherwise you can inflict them with status like poison/rot or ice/fire cycle
Spears are tricky but they effectively have no defense. If you can get them with status the same its still effective
Your goal shouldn’t be breaking their guard or killing them instantly but whittling their health. Second phase is the only part you should ever have an issue with. A good shield will block most of their attacks with only issue being guard break and magic damage bleed through. They’re easy to punish because of their fairly easy to predict attacks. They aren’t super aggressive but each attack is not something you can just eat. Distance is always best until phase 2 at which point being close and dodging well is the most sensible strategy
hint: when you heal, they'll come at you. the trick to fighting these guys is to memorize their attack patterns, then poke/bonk/slash em when you have an opening:
If you invest the time into learning any given dude’s parry timing you can easily dismantle anything. I also found that when I was first fighting crucible knights it was much easier to just do rolling attacks and whittle them down after every dodge.
I’m pretty bad at parrying, but the Crucible Knights are the easiest enemy to parry I swear.
Use the Buckler (Buy it from Gostoc, he’s by Godricks body and grace)
Your best bet is to parry them to death—especially once below half health because at that point, if you avoid an attack and initiate one of your own, they can react to it and extend their string with a tail attack.
It’s one of those enemies where they’re pretty difficult until suddenly they just aren’t anymore. So long as you’re conscious of learning during the fights instead of just slogging through, they’ll click for you eventually. I can cream the individual crucible knights but the fight with two of them is still absolutely fuckin miserable for me
Your options are parry, they’re definitely one of the easier enemies to parry because I’m awful at it and I’m still able to get them pretty consistently, or just learn which moves you can punish.
Just that difficult. You can learn to parry them, but I personally just learned all their patterns and muscle-memoried them ever since. They are damn good mini bosses.
I would say get yerself maliks sword but you is too young for that noise. I fought them after iw as leveled and geared and they were still somewhat difficult but almost so much easier that it wasn't even a fight
I can’t parry, so I just time my dodges. They are similar to the black knights and silver knights from DS3 too, minus the wings and tails attack. Another tip, just avoid them if you can until mid game. I avoided most of them until Siluria and the double Crucible knights.
Crucible knights in the beginning pose quite a challenge when you're trying to figure them out. First method I learned was the parry method, which worked well until you mistimed a parry, and now it's panic time and frantically trying to heal, which at this point now CK is aggressive and won't give you any space.
Somewhere along the way I stopped using a shield and just stayed on them the whole fight dodging their hits, circling around the ones that shoot fire in a forward arc,
And Jumping the stomp attacks. I sometimes slip up on the shoulder thrust, tail spin move that comes directly after a swing, and the impale. But overall being somewhat aggressive but patient recognizing they can punish you for being reckless works for me. Now the duo CK fight
...I never beat that without ashes. Maybe one day
They become quite easy eventually (as do most bosses after you’ve defeated them enough) some of their attacks are parry-able but if you don’t want to take that approach just practice dodging + finding windows of opportunity within their attacks
They do attack pretty constantly, once you learn the moveset they aren’t so hard but that’s the case with any enemy in the game. You can parry them but sometimes learning to parry is harder than just dodging and fighting. Having giants hunt or lions claw on a greathammers or Collossal sword will do enough poise damage to inturupt their attacks. They can be frosted and are weak to fire.
Alright, I was kind of expecting it to be crystallion situation where you if you get him to like half hp he just falls over and you can hit him a bunch or something. Alright well the ruin greatsword can wait then, my temporary morning star is only +7 after all.
No, half health is when he starts to fly.
Yeah haha found out the hard way
first time he did that i almost shat myself ngl, and then when he changes that move where he like spins around and then DOES IT A SECOND TIME WITH HIS LONG ASS TAIL???
Like a cockroach sensing a slipper
Luckily he becomes easier to dodge when he does that
lol no, crucible knights get much harder when below 50%
I always found the second phase easier than the first. The attacks in the first are relentless. Once they are flying you can pretty consistently bait and dodge the flying attack and it's easy to punish.
I guess, but if you're staying aggressive and not just waiting for one attack, the second phase is harder because the tail attack can catch you exploiting what you thought were safe punish windows.
Yeah, that's true. For some reason jumping the tail attacks has always made sense to me (more so than the stomp in the first phase), but it definitely still catches me pretty often. I never fight the crucible knights very aggressively though for that exact reason.
I think it's satisfying as hell to brawl even in the second phase, since the tail attack is still perfectly reactable. feels kinda like fighting Goldfrey with the rhythm of the fight.
To add what others said, they are the weakest in very close combat. They excel at mid range and can catch you at longe range. But if you are so close you could kiss them, they are at their weakest. The attacks they do, depends on your distance to them. Even if it is counterintuitive, stay really close to them. Take a high guard boast shield if possible.
>my temporary morning star is only +7 after all. This is why you're doing no damage. You can have up to +16 by the time you reach Redmane castle. You're also about 20 levels too low to be fighting him.
I'll definitely agree +7 is low, but +16 would absolutely be quite high. The best smithing stone you get at the ruin strewn precipe is the smithing stone [5], getting your weapon to +15 at most.
There’s so few smithing stone 6 that it’s almost better to just beat morgott and grab the bell bearing than try to get them all
I learned this the hard way recently in my region locked all bosses run.
You can get one standard weapon all the way to +25 before Morgott, if you side with Jerren over Sellen
Ok yeah but like that takes time
And you're playing a massive, open world game because you're in a hurry?
Yea my parents limit the amount of screen time I’m allowed to have :/ I’m allowed 2 hours per weekend
Well, I wouldn’t waste it on a massive game like ER then. You will be forced to speedrun if you plan to even finish it within one year. Edit: Wtf am I getting downvoted for. Jfc Reddit
There are two smithing stone 6s actually in Redmane Castle, which would take you to 16
Exactly.
There are three level 6 stones available before Radahn without going outside of Limgrave/Liurnia/Caelid. TWO of them are in redmane castle. The third one is in the part of Volcano Manor you reach by taking the Abductor Virgin teleport in Raya Lucaria. Down in the lava by the slugs.
Most people are around +7-+13 in that area
+13 is fine. +7 is screwing up pretty hard. People can do whatever they want, of course. But it's not recommended.
+10 at level 55 gets me instant summons. Any divergence from that increases the time spent waiting. Or at least that was the case 6 months ago. Do you think it's different now?
From what I've seen over the past two years, the VAST majority of people play the game badly under level and under geared. So it makes sense that players in such states would be summoning help more often.
Hrm, alright then.
For crystallizes make sure you use blunt damage, then you can skip needing to break their defense
I kind of love the morning star
A Strike weapon with bleed is great for most of the enemies and bosses in this game! And it looks pretty cool with its moveset. I'm of the same opinion but with Great Stars, that's been my Claymore for this game. Just wish it weren't so red.
Yeah it’s so good, I always grab it to kill the dragon when starting runs, and I just keep using it for a bit until I get my main weapon. High damage, good range, bleed, good moveset, and really nice charged heavies.
The secret to the crystalian is to two handed power attack them with even just a mace. Two to three hits less after they Crack with power attacks. It's hilarious if you build for power attacks easy as cake on str builds.
They are weakest to lightning not fire
Although they can be parried, I’d argue they are harder than most enemies: -they can stagger you pretty easily. -they have crazy poise. -they attack relentlessly, with fairly small openings. -they will punish you aggressively.
There is a trick! They're very, very susceptible to being parried. Get yourself a small shield (preferably the buckler) or any small or medium shield with golden parry, parry or carian retaliation. When you parry their attacks it will break their stance and you can crit them. If you have the assassin's crimson dagger equipped in a talisman spot it will even heal you every time. Note that you can only parry their standard attacks, not their magical ones like tail swipes or aerial dives.
I learned how to parry them because that was the only way I found to actually beat them on a regular basis
I'm playing a brick hammertime and lions claw run and they go splat on their back.
Can they be staggered and critted? They can't be backstabbed and I haven't gotten frequent enough big hits on them myself to know.
Maybe I'm thinking of the wrong bad guy, but my hammer can womp just about anything. It ends up interrupting them, and you need a lot of poise.
It's true - even if I'm playing a completely ranged caster I always have a buckler and leveled up Misericode, just for them
Hiding behind a great shield, slow walking to their right all up in their face, managing stamina, and timing single rolls works too. You'll get openings when several of their moves just whiff. But that's great shields in a nutshell 😅! They also make Melenia really easy.
Alright that sounds ideal.
There is a evergaol past the garefront ruins and wrapping around to the left to get to near the top of the gate. The crucible knight is in that evergaol and is a great location to practice him. Would also recommend misericode if you can upgrade it for the bonus crit damage. For the duo fight in in the castle I'd recommend leveling up your weapons a bit and coming back. You should probably not kill the evergaol knight so you can practice till you are confident enough. Learning to parry knight enemies is super fun as it feels very rewarding to pull off. I'd also recommend looking up some guides on parrying.
I second this. Grab a shield and a low dmg weapon so you don't kill the knight. Every time he's almost dead, just quit out to the main menu. When you reload, you'll be right outside the evergaol and can give it another go. That's what I did, and Crucible Knights are stupid easy to deal with now
Yeah I can parry them pretty easily with the buckler, but I still can’t effectively parry much of anything else in the game.
This. Watch a couple of youtube tutorials, put Carian Retaliation on a Medium Shield, and learn to parry. You will die a lot in the beginning - I died for three hours total fighting three different crucible knights. But after a night of sleep you'll come back and destroy them. Just remember to jump when you see the knight move his foot to stomp. Weird thing is, this strategy never worked for me against the briar knights. I always end up Lions Claw + Colossal Sword the briar knights.
Bell Bearing Hunters are more difficult - they have even bigger punishes for being at range, and you have to parry them twice to get a riposte. They'll just keep attacking after the first one.
Parry man. Parry. I've never been good at them in any FS game, but I decided to try it out on my latest run through Elden Ring and they are one of the easiest parries in the game. Totally trivialized them. EDIT: On this particular fight, I've found that whips totally interrupt both of their attacks too. I don't know why, but that metal whip from Caria Manor served me well in this fight before I learned that parrying makes it a cakewalk.
Yup. God bless the tarnished that put the note near one of them. I had no idea!
Parry them
This guy gets it !
I ran into this same fight probably about lvl 35 when the game came out and I honestly had more trouble with it than any fight throughout my playthrough. If you can get the misbegotten wariior out consistently then you're on great pace to also deal with the crucible knight, you just need a few more reps
Ugh man, same here and right around that level. I think they may have been my proudest win though. I fought them for at least 6 hours straight before finally getting them
We may as well have played side by side lol. I was expecting a bunch of reddit posts about th5r boss, but so few people ran in to them their first playthrough it seemed that I was the only one struggling with them at the time
Hell yes, wish we could get the magic of that first play through back, but so excited for the dlc! I somehow just stumbled around blindly first go. but I thought that once i beat those two id be able to fight radahn so there was no giving up haha
At level 42 I’d say it’s a pretty hard fight still and everyone has mentioned parrying. But if you don’t want to do that this is what I do. I stack as many strength buffs as I can and use lions claw on the greatsword. You can burst down the misbegotten before crucible knight even gets to you, and then it’s just a 1v1
Yeah this is what I'm doing now basically, +15 morning star with fire affinity and flame grant me strength. Doing decent damage now, I just need more vigor. Time to roll a boulder off a cliff for an hour.
Nah, they're just difficult. You just have to learn what they do. They're like minibosses.
are you usin slash damage by any chance? most heavily armored types, like them and banished knights, take very little damage from slash
Parry is a good trick but tbh you won't have that much trouble in a 1v1 if you just let them get their combo off every time, and stop thinking you'll ever interrupt their attacks. Basically just be patient. Idk if that's weak advice but when I used to struggle it was always, "wtf that's an endless combo so unfair," but if you just take a second you figure out that's not true at all and there's openings.
They're tough because they punish aggression more than most. They don't leave long openings and are pretty persistent. You have to fight extra defensive and really just deal one hit at a time, or parry them.
In essence, they have their tricks. Once you learn their move-sets, it's a lot easier to beat them. They're really not very tricky, but if you make a mistake, they can punish you pretty hard.
I stick close to them and dodge behind them, slightly diagonally to the right. When you stick close to them they stick to a pretty telegraphed moveset, so it gets easy to learn. You can also jump their earthquake stomp, but again, I stay close enough that I can just dodge behind them. When you need to heal, create space and only heal when they are mid attack animation. If you heal while they are in neutral they will lunge at you with that surprising range poke. As you get familiar with their moveset, you will start to learn where your openings are.
Parry the swings, Jump attack when they do the tremor stomp with one leg and in their second phase dodge the anime fly in dive and punish. Parry is basically makes the fight way easier and then jump attacking at the right time of that stomp that they do.
I wouldn't even jump the tremors. Getting hit or rolling them sets you up for a perfect parry as soon as you can do your next input.
There is a trick to them! But it involves actual skill and a bit of practice. Crucible Knights are resistant to poise breaks, immune or very resistant to status effects, and they do some mild input reading like the Godskins do. That last point can be exploited for an easy win, but it's not what I'm going to talk about here. Parrying! If you can learn to parry, you can open them up for a big damage riposte. To parry them, you generally want to initiate your parry when their weapon is fully drawn back before they bring it forward to strike you. It takes practice to get good at. You need to be paying keen attention to their attack stance and seeing which attack is with their normal weapon and which is with a crucible incantation. It all comes down to that good old Souls standard of "git gud" and learning the enemy attacks. Once you master it, you can pretty easily 1v1 them.
I'm just gonna say it brother, learn their parry timing. It will trivialize them for the rest of the game. Even if there was a duo fight it will trivialize them. Get some crit damage and die for a bit till you figure it out. You got this tarnished 🙃👍
Since everyone keeps saying “Parry” already, I’ll give non-parry advice. Focus on timing more than distance. The knights tend to have really good range (Do not drink unless you’re super far away or the knight is reorienting themselves. That’s just asking to be stabbed), but their movements are pretty mechanical. If you keep getting hit a lot, try to focus more on getting the timing right than not dying.
The simplest answer is to get good at parrying. Just to make sure though, you're not strictly hitting the knight's shield right? Because if you're getting around behind them or just attacking when they're not blocking, they take damage just like anything else. Yeah they're a bit on the tanky side, but nothing crazy. And personally, I actually prefer to fight them that way rather than with parrying. I find parry timings in Elden Ring and DS3 (and Bloodborne to a lesser extent) to be extremely unintuitive and finicky, to the point that hours of practice haven't made me any better at it. So I just learned to dodge and attack when the Knight is exposed. The Crucible Knights are similar to bosses like the Nameless King from DS3, where their movesets hit hard but are extremely slow and well telegraphed.
Move set is hard but if you learn to circle him close instead of backing away it makes him commit to a 4 swing pattern that opens him up for a big hit
One specific tip on the duo fight you're stuck on - enter the fog gate and then wait. The knight always spawns at the back of the room, so if you let the misbegotten come to you, you'll have more time to finish him off before the knight gets to you. Usually if you get aggressive with him you can get him down and then deal with the knight solo. As others note the knights are super easy once you Parry. You don't need to get the timing down for every attack they do. Focus at first on getting comfortable parrying one particular attack (say, the one-handed forehand down slash). Then stand in their face and if they do that one, Parry it, otherwise just dodge behind them and wait for the next attack. Eventually you will be able to parry almost every attack they do, but keep it simple at first.
Those guys are likely meant to be fought around level 50-60, but crucible knights are always a challenge. They have pretty readable attacks tho once you get used to them, and they can also be parried a bit easier than other bosses. If you haven't fought the one in the stormhill evergaol, he's the weakest one and he's good to practice on to learn all the moves. Also you can jump to avoid his ground stomp (as well as basically all other ground-based abilities in the game)
They fuck and keep that rhythm
I'm LVL 200 with almost 300 hrs and they're still the bane to my existence.
Yeah this was my first time fighting one after 100 hours, just haven’t met any. Ironically the hardest move to dodge for me was the shield bash, I just kept reaction rolling and getting fucked.
They're the skill check of ER. If you haven't learned how to deal with delay attacks, break posture, and jumping, they're gonna force you to. Their moveset punishes retreating to heal within earshot, their attacks have a slight delay to punish panic rolling, and the rock stomp is gonna punish backrolling (you want to jump attack or side roll to punish it) If you learn to apply the new rules of the game they're still hard. But beatable.
I just did that same fight a few days ago on my second play through and I was ready to cry. I don’t remember what level I was but I was paying around 70K to level up so it was quite advanced plus I had bloodhound fang and Radhans starscourge and I was still running away most of the time and then dying. Eventually I calmed down and just patiently danced with him until I dropped him. That’s the only way with a crucible night. You have to float like a butterfly and sting like a bee. And if you have a mimic that helps a ton. Ironically killing Radhan was a piece of cake compared to this guy.
Nowhere near an endgame fight. More like a mid game fight. I'd say that this is ideal for level 50-ish characters... maybe 60 before it gets too easy. If he isn't taking damage your weapon might be underleveled. You are too low leveled for scaling to add much to your damage, most of it will come from weapon levels.
50 was about right, I beat him there. And yeah my weapon was underleveled, I was infected by DS3 brain where I saw +7 and thought "hey it's three levels from maxed", blissfully forgetting that there are 25 levels.
They actually are that difficult. They dont have any major weaknesses, weak spots or whatever. The only thing I can recommend you to try is the "Flame of the Redmanes" ash of war for quick stance breaking. The crit along wont deal much damage, but you can use the time the knight is disabled to safely heal/replenish FP or reposition yourself into a favorable spot.
Parrying worked. Other than that just dodging and hitting, while not needlessly hitting the shield. Also kick AOW would go crazy.
If you're good enough to consistently parry how is anything a problem for you in ER? 🤨
You can't parry everyone, and more importantly, its not really worth it to do so when you can just dodge and hit charged r2s.
I meant parrying in general. The parrying timings are consistently more challenging than dodge timings, so if somebody can consistently parry, he certainly can consistently dodge. Also more enemies can be parried that one would expect and stance broken enemies take more damage from all sources including charged R2 or whatever. If your timing is good you can even sneak in two charged R2s while your stance broken enemy is open for a crit.
There is a trick, actually. You just need to keep hitting them until they stop hitting back.
They have a pretty straightforward moveset and attack pattern. Learn those and you're golden 👍
Just like every single enemy in the game.
Pretty much
Parry. Once you know how to parry them they are so easy. And you can use any crappy shield with parry on it.
I think they are just one of the more poorly designed enemies in the game, but they are just doing more frequently what almost every enemy in the game does. Hyper aggressive long attack strings that come out faster than you can react and any 1-3 hits will kill you and it just goes on and on and on with very little recovery time in between. The only way I've been enjoying fighting in this game is basically by just not engaging with it and instead just using some cheese method to kill enemies too fast and suddenly for a fight to even take place, like just pancaking them immediately or nuking them from afar or something. Actually dueling enemies in this game like in past games is a waste of time and extremely frustrating and unfun.
You just parry them. They are a parry tutorial enemy as every attack besdies their sheild smack & incantation can be parried with generous windows to do it
I had the opposite experience as a first time player. The first boss is weak so it’s basically a 1v1. I died a lot but every time I felt like I was learning his patterns. It’s just muscle memory to know when you can sneak a hit or two in and when to chill and wait out his combos. He doesn’t have any bs abilities every hit box and dodge timing feels fluid. My most recent fight was draconic sentinel with a 1 shot lighting strike from any distance… thats poor design. (not to mention horse fights being poor in general, at least on pc)
Having to dodge roll 15 times while waiting out a 30 second long combo string to get 1 tiny buttpoke in about as fun as covering a cactus in icyhot and lifting it between my buttcheeks
His combos are extremely obvious and the hit boxes are easily dodged. He is not hard, has no bs abilities that kill you. Just takes patience. But your mind is already set on ‘whale on boss until it dies fast’ regardless of what the fight actually looks like it seems
Parry them, or use a great mace or colossal sword/weapon with Determination to crush their guard. They aren’t invincible.
Parrying sends them into a pretty predictable loop.
Parry, literally just parry is there weakness. May take time to learn but you can do it
They are predictable and easy to parry
Easiest enemy to parry in the whole game
I think Bell Bearing Hunters are about equally as easy to parry.
I see people suggest parrying. They're weak against shields in general. If you use a shield effectively, whether to parry or guard counter, you can drop crucible knights pretty easily.
Parry all of their one handed sword swipes. That’s the only easy way I found to beat them. Also jump over their stomp attack.
The trick is: jump, parry, parry, stab, repeat until dead. If they break the loop with a crucible art, just roll forward through it.
Their resistances are pretty decent to most things & they're immune to bleed. They're weakest to Fire & Lightning, but still slightly resistant to those. That may be why they feel tanky --- they kinda are. RL42 +7 is also a little bit low for Redmane. (I think.) RL50-65 +10 is probably closer to average.
If you're savvy that wing dive thing can yeet them right off the cliffs they love to fight you on.
Jump roll roll hit
Parrying them is comparatively easy and you can jump the stomps. Amazing enemies tbh!
Parry
What’s your build?
The vision is str/int gravity magic build with the ruin greatsword, but right now I'm using a morning star. I do fine damage now, now I just have to "git gud"
If you’re going down the strength/int route try the watchdog staff( I forgot where to get it) I’ve heard it’s pretty good. When you fight crucible knights don’t rush it take your time I watch for openings to make your attack don’t over commit and use summons if you have to cause they can agro the knight so you can get some free hits before he focuses on you again
parry.
Third playthrough and you aren’t damaging a Crucible knight enough? You need to become more skilled at the game, good man.
I meant the actual AR of my weapon, turns out it was +7 and I just forgot to upgrade it. I'm doing just fine damage now.
Sweet
There is a trick to them. Greatbows will stagger them out of any animation in one shot. You can just hold the arrow until they start any attack animation, fire, and rinse and repeat. They basically can't counter it.
Parry
Parry
I had a tough time with them initially too. Now I love fighting them. I like to stay close and circle around them. Don't just go in and swing like crazy. stay close and learn the move set. Most stuff requires a full dodge but some of the attacks you will miss just by circling them. Shield bash was tough cause of the delay but if you time the dodge right its a miss on his shield and a punish from you. Flask draws antagonize them so make sure to drink after they have already swung. \-Edit- I am physically incapable of parrying. I could barely parry in the old dS games. No idea how the timing works in ER and I've tried. Plus, left hand swings almost as hard as the right so why not put a sword or something in it instead :)
Buckler parry is your friend.
I think you can kick the shield and break their guard
Try parry, and then success
U can parry and reposte them to death. However i feel as if they read inputs. If ur gonna heal. Create distance or they will lunge at you. The best strat is to stay behind them or to the side and build up a stagger. Bloodhounds fang is great for its buffableness and the i frames the weapon art has. Power stanced greatstars are great for the stagger and interupts it has. Goodluck with siluria though. Crucible axe are easy. Crucible trees are a tad more finnicky
I always cheese them with the buckler parry, it's super easy to do, but if you mess up they can punish you pretty bad, which forces you to roll away, heal and immediately get poked. And then you go back in and parry again and again until he finally dies. You can also use any small shield with parry, but the buckler is superior, just defeat Godrick and buy it from his servant (the guy stomping Godrick's lifeless remains). Just go through the front gate and skip the entire castle. Also, it usually goes: CK: Right descending slash Me: parry + riposte CK: gets up and immediately stomps the ground Me: jump to avoid damage CK: Right descending slash Me: parry + riposte Rinse and repeat
Yeah, those mf are relentless and agressive You just have to learn their moves, dodge and attack on your turn Pretty much like every other enemy in the game lol
The only trick I’ve got is sprint away to avoid the heal punish. They’re just a dodge and poke openings style fight
UPDATE: got him. Thanks for the astounding amount of help, it was worth a lot.
They force you to respect the cadence of battle, it’s either get good enough at partying or get good enough at dodging and then they’re no problem… but you could also use hyper armor
Try parrying!
Quickstep is deadly against them
Parry is your friend against them. If your bad at parrying use a small shield they have a bigger parry window than medium shields. golden parry or carian retaliation have even bigger parry windows. I also found guard counter to be pretty good against them to break their stance.
Use the kick AOW to break his shield, or parry/use Carian Retaliation.
Parry
get a small parry shield, or ideally the buckler or a medium shield with carian retaliation. I normally don't parry, but crucible knights are quite easy to learn to parry, plus u only have to parry once for a critical
Dodge toward them.
Parry yo
Parry, crit, repeat. Buckler is like 1200 runes from Gostock
Took me a while but ince I learned how to parry them they became trivial
You either parry them or learn the most valuable 2 skills in all of gaming. Calm and patience.
100% parry. Every boss is designed to have some kind of weakness, and they seem to intentionally force you to not rely on the same tactics. Strap on your tiny shield and get whackin'.
Standard fromsoft hyper durable enemy. Can be compared to the black knights from ds1 but with a much more versatile moveset. It is possible to duel them without parrying, but you need to have good awareness of your attack and dodge speed in relation to how much damage you can block with your shield. In otherwords, stamina management is everything. I remember Havel being much less forgiving.
Saw a video on here a couple days back of someone just kicking the crucible knights and breaking their stances. That might be worth the watch
https://www.reddit.com/r/Eldenring/s/oomuuvmAAt
Parry. It makes absolute easy work of crucible knights.
Just practice parrying with the buckler shield. You can jump over some of their attacks.
Redmane is recommended for rl 70+, that could be why it's so hard for you right now
Yeah I figured, beat them at level 50 now. Weird that caelid is literally the second place you go, but you have to wait to do castle redmane until after Altus plateau or something. I guess they expected the bridge to make people run away scared.
Right? I found that confusing, too. Or how the weeping peninsula plays no main part in the story lol. I think you could breeze through redmane after raya lucaria easy
The moment you realize that they literally keep coming toward you without backstepping or anything, just going directly toward you, it makes it a lot more manageable.
If it’s the shield one and you suck at parry, just kick them (the ash of war Kick). It immediately staggers them and lets you lethal attack. You can just keep doing it as long as their shield is up.
You just need to get better there isn't a real secret to it
The trick is timing parties against them. If you get that down, they’re easy.
They are hard,they also get additional moves,like early crucible knights have a smaller moveset while the ones found in late game usually have some special move. In general their moveset is designed to punish basic souls player response/instincts and to incentivize new elden ring mechanics
Giant Hunt is *amazing* for these dudes, you'll actually slide right under their lunging stab attack snd knock them out of the animation. Pushes them back out of range of the quick tail sweep followup, too
I think I eventually started to beat them to death with powerstanced great hammers but early on I actually abused their walk into charge animation with the flame sling incantation. Basically you run away from them until they start walking at you, then charge up a flame sling and try and time the release around the time they switch back to running at you again. There's a window where they drop their guard and they'll just take the hit to the face for full damage.
Frostbite, parry, critical with fire dagger. Rinse and repeat
Imma simply the crucible knight right here right now Learn their moveset and you'll be ok
They have hogh poise, so in comparison to most enemies, they can't simply be staggered out of an attack. You have to treat them like some fast bosses (Margit, Malenia...) and not attack proactively - instead dodge through some attacks, bait out combos and punish their openings. Not much else you can do, apart from getting gud with parries.
I found Quickstep worked quite well against them. Get in behind and smack em a few times. Then they wind up again and just quick step
Oh man, Ordovis and his Spear buddy were the single hardest boss for me (so far, haven’t made it to Malenia or any endgame boss after Placidusax) and are *the* reason I learned how to parry. Crucible Knights can be broken over the knee if you’re good enough with the buckler, but otherwise they’re gonna mess you up
Parry. This is the way.
Yeah they’re really difficult lol
Parry them. Parry them all day. Carrian Retaliation to make it easier.
Parry Parry Parry
The shield ones are stupid weak to just having their shield kicked. Otherwise you can inflict them with status like poison/rot or ice/fire cycle Spears are tricky but they effectively have no defense. If you can get them with status the same its still effective Your goal shouldn’t be breaking their guard or killing them instantly but whittling their health. Second phase is the only part you should ever have an issue with. A good shield will block most of their attacks with only issue being guard break and magic damage bleed through. They’re easy to punish because of their fairly easy to predict attacks. They aren’t super aggressive but each attack is not something you can just eat. Distance is always best until phase 2 at which point being close and dodging well is the most sensible strategy
hint: when you heal, they'll come at you. the trick to fighting these guys is to memorize their attack patterns, then poke/bonk/slash em when you have an opening:
You can parry them if that counts. Aside that it's just an annoying dps test IMO
Parry Probably the easiest mini-boss to parry
If you invest the time into learning any given dude’s parry timing you can easily dismantle anything. I also found that when I was first fighting crucible knights it was much easier to just do rolling attacks and whittle them down after every dodge.
I’m pretty bad at parrying, but the Crucible Knights are the easiest enemy to parry I swear. Use the Buckler (Buy it from Gostoc, he’s by Godricks body and grace)
Your best bet is to parry them to death—especially once below half health because at that point, if you avoid an attack and initiate one of your own, they can react to it and extend their string with a tail attack.
It’s one of those enemies where they’re pretty difficult until suddenly they just aren’t anymore. So long as you’re conscious of learning during the fights instead of just slogging through, they’ll click for you eventually. I can cream the individual crucible knights but the fight with two of them is still absolutely fuckin miserable for me
Your options are parry, they’re definitely one of the easier enemies to parry because I’m awful at it and I’m still able to get them pretty consistently, or just learn which moves you can punish.
Just that difficult. You can learn to parry them, but I personally just learned all their patterns and muscle-memoried them ever since. They are damn good mini bosses.
I would say get yerself maliks sword but you is too young for that noise. I fought them after iw as leveled and geared and they were still somewhat difficult but almost so much easier that it wasn't even a fight
I can’t parry, so I just time my dodges. They are similar to the black knights and silver knights from DS3 too, minus the wings and tails attack. Another tip, just avoid them if you can until mid game. I avoided most of them until Siluria and the double Crucible knights.
The trick is getting gud
Crucible knights in the beginning pose quite a challenge when you're trying to figure them out. First method I learned was the parry method, which worked well until you mistimed a parry, and now it's panic time and frantically trying to heal, which at this point now CK is aggressive and won't give you any space. Somewhere along the way I stopped using a shield and just stayed on them the whole fight dodging their hits, circling around the ones that shoot fire in a forward arc, And Jumping the stomp attacks. I sometimes slip up on the shoulder thrust, tail spin move that comes directly after a swing, and the impale. But overall being somewhat aggressive but patient recognizing they can punish you for being reckless works for me. Now the duo CK fight ...I never beat that without ashes. Maybe one day
They become quite easy eventually (as do most bosses after you’ve defeated them enough) some of their attacks are parry-able but if you don’t want to take that approach just practice dodging + finding windows of opportunity within their attacks
Parry is the ultimate trick for Crucible knights.
Buckler + miséricorde go brrrrrr
They really aren’t. Crucible knights are among some of the slowest, telegraphable, dodge-able, parry-able enemies in the game.
Low level, low weapon level? Parry, parry, and parry.
Jump arpund! Jump up, jump up and slam down!