Rykard and the God-Devouring Serpent is the final boss encounter in Elden Ring’s Volcano Manor. The Demigod is a two-phase fight and you will need to deplete two sets of health bars to finally take them down.
The God-Devouring Serpent is the one you will face as soon as you make your way into the boss arena. Once you defeat it, Rykard, Lord of Blasphemy will emerge as the Demigod’s true form.
The Rykard encounter in the RPG has a gimmick to it. While you can choose to beat him by normal means, an easier course of action will be to pick up the Serpent-Hunter and spam its blade of light.
Rykard has high resistance to all elements and attack types. To make matters worse, he stands in a pool of lava, making it very difficult to approach him with a melee weapon. Hence, you might not want to try to take down the Demigod through the more traditional means.
But once defeated, Rykard will drop 130,000 Runes, Rykard’s Great Rune, and Remembrance of the Blasphemous.
Contents:
- Rykard Elden Ring boss overview
- Where to find Rykard?
- Rykard movesets and counters
- Rykard weakness and resistance
- How to beat Rykard
Rykard boss fight overview
Location:
- Mt. Gelmir, Volcano Manor
Optional:
- Yes
Summons:
- Other Players
- Spirit Ashes
Boss Drops:
- 130,000 Runes
- Rykard’s Great Rune
- Remembrance of the Blasphemous
Weakness:
- Frostbite
Resistance:
- Magic (High)
- Fire (Very High)
- Lightning
- Holy (High)
- Standard
- Slash
- Strike (High)
- Pierce
- Madness (Immune)
Rykard, Lord of Blasphemy is an optional fight in FromSoftware’s RPG. You do not need to kill him to complete the game, however, it’s recommended that you take him out for the Runes and the Remembrance.
As he is a gimmick fight, you will have a much easier time when equipped with the Serpent-Hunter. The weapon is a Great Spear that you pick up from a corpse as soon as you enter the arena.
It has a special interaction with the boss where you shoot a blade of light every time you swing it. The blades do a lot of damage to him, and you will be able to spam it from a distance.
Even if you don’t meet the stats to properly wield the weapon, don’t worry. Just two-hand it and keep swinging. The blade of light will appear and hit Rykard for big chunks of his HP.
There are two phases to the fight, with you facing the God-Devouring Serpent in the first one and Rykard revealing himself in the second. There will be a lot of variations in movesets between the two phases, with Rykard even bringing a huge sword to the fight once he makes his appearance.
How to find Rykard in Elden Ring
To reach Rykard you will need to come to the end of the Volcano Manor legacy dungeon. You will find a waygate on a balcony, right after the room where you find the Man-Serpent Ashes. The waypoint will teleport you to the audience Pathway Site of Grace which is right outside the boss room.
An alternate way of reaching Rykard will be to complete all three of Tanith’s contracts. Once you finish her side quest, you will need to talk to her and when you agree to see the lord of the manor, you will be directly teleported to the Audience Pathway Site of Grace.
However, if you have picked the second option, you will not be able to use Rykad as a shardbearer to get into Leyndell. As you will need to beat two Great Rune-carrying bosses to enter the Royal Capital, Rykard will, unfortunately, not be one of them if you reach him through Tanith.
Rykard movesets and counters in Elden Ring
As mentioned, Rykard has two phases to his fight. There will be considerable variations between his movesets between the two. Below is a list of all of Rykard’s abilities in Elden Ring and how you will be able to counter them:
Phase 1: God-Devouring Serpent
Snake Bite
- Move: The serpent will jump at you from one side and then jump again from another.
- Counter: Just dodge towards the direction of the jump.
Grab Attack
- Move: The serpent will jump at you again. However, th animation is going to be a bit different. It will raise its head up high before lunging. If you are hit, the snake will grab you and slam you twice. You will only receive the damage of one slam.
- Counter: One of the harder moves to counter. Dodge into the lunge, but be precise about it.
Poison Spit
- Move: The serpent will spit multiple poison gobs. It will spread out and leave a pool on the ground for some time. It has high poison build-up.
- Counter: This move will come out if you are far away. So stay at medium range to prevent it from using this ability. Also make sure that you are not standing in the poison puddle.
Magma Slam
- Move: The boss will raise its head, and tilt it back as far as possible. It will then slam it’s chin on the ground, sending out magma as a result. The magma splash will do a lot of damage and send out a wide arc infront.
- Counter: As soon as the splash is out, you can dodge through the magma.
Lava Upheaval
- Move: The serpent will raise its head once again and plunge its face into the ground. After some time it will pull its head out causing an eruption of magma. This will splash directly infront of it.
- Counter: You can either choose to block the incoming magma or dodge through it. The latter will be harder to execute.
Magma Thrash
- Move: The serpent will thrash and spin around the magma in a 360-degree motion. I will sweep its tail making magma splashes everywhere.
- Counter: Run away as soon as you see it raising its head and starting to thrash. You do not want to be in the splash zone.
Phase 2: Rykard, Lord of Blasphemy
Sword Combo
- Move: This is Rykard’s bread-and-butter combo. He will swing his sword from left to right, then right to left (can delay this hit by slamming the sword’s edge on the ground). He can follow up with a third hit which is a forward stab and then a fourth one which is to raise the sword after the stab to make the ground below erupt.
- Counter: Keep dodging into the attack. The feint on the second swing and the stab’s hitbox can throw you off-guard. So keep that in mind.
Stab Combo
- Move: Rykard will now hold his sword to his side like a fencer and then quickly stab the ground where you are standing. He will usually doe it three times, however, there can be a fourth thrust which will make the ground he strikes erupt in a big AoE.
- Counter: The best way to avoid this attack will be to run away from it instead of dodging through each individual thrusts.
Sword and Snake Bite Combo
- Move: Rykard will swing his sword from the left, and make the serpent give you a headbutt from the right. He will then lunge and hit you with the serpent’s head, but this time the attack will come from the left.
- Counter: Just dodge towards the direction of the attack. Make sure you are not accidentally stepping into the lava when dodging in.
Lava Leap
- Move: Rykard will either jump forward or backward and will send out splashes of magma in random directions once he lands.
- Counter: Just keep your distance. As the magma’s flight path is random, you can get clipped if you are in the AoE.
Groundshock
- Move: Rykard will take the serpent’s head and plunge it into the ground. After some time he will pull it out, sending out a shockwave of magma. The attack comes out in an AoE cone infront of him.
- Counter: This ability is very hard to dodge. The only way to deal with is will be to either pre-emptively run to the sides, or block it.
Rykard’s Rancor
- Move: Rykard creates a small flaming skull which soots out and creates a fire trail along its path. The fire trail will explode in a cascading fashion dealing a lot of damage. After this move is executed, some skulls can periodically appear from the ground.
- Counter: Run away from the trail. The skills deal a lot of damage, so always be on the look out and dodge through them.
Rancor Storm
- Move: Rykard raises his sword and then manifests a lot of flaming skulls that rain down on the arena. The skull will track you and follow you. They will explode after they hit you or the ground and create a small AoE blast which deals a significant amount of damage.
- Counter: You can either run away from the skulls or dodge through the explosions that they make. The attack has a pretty long recovery period which you can punish. Alternatively, you can stun Rykard when he is channeling this move by using the Serpent-Hunter’s weapon skill.
Taker’s Flames
- Move: This move comes after a Rancor Storm, and if you have not stunned him during that move. Rykard will raise his sword again, channel some fire into it, and then bring it down cleaving the ground with explosive damage. The blast travels a long while and has a sizeable AoE.
- Counter: Either sprint to the side when he starts channeling or dodge through the blast as soon as he brings his sword down.
Rykard Resistance and Weakness in Elden Ring
Resistance:
Rykard has good resistances to all physical damage types as well as elements. His resistances are particularly higher towards Fire so if you are looking to bring him down with Fire-based Incantations it will take you a very long time.
When it comes to status effects, he has standard resistance values for Scarlet Rot, Poison, and Hemorrhage. So if you are looking to take him down via traditional means, you can exploit these statuses a couple of times in the fight.
Weakness
While Rykard has high resistance to Fire, he is quite weak to Frostbite. Abilities and weapons that make frostbite build-up will be quite effective against him.
How to beat Rykard in Elden Ring
Rykard will be one of the easier Demigods to beat in Elden Ring if you are using the Serpent-Hunter. Taking him down the normal way will take you an incredibly long time and the lava will make things significantly more difficult for melee builds.
Here are a few tips and tricks for taking down Rykard in Elden Ring.
General tips for beating Rykard, Lord of Blasphemy
- Pick up the Serpent-Hunter from the corpse as soon as you enter the arena. Equip it and two-hand for it to be more effective.
- Use a mimic tear to make the fight more manageable. Make sure you call the summon after you have equipped the Serpent-Hunter on your character. This will make sure that both of you are spamming the light blades at him.
- Use the Serpent-Hunter skill to stun the boss. This will give you some room to get a few hits in. Use the skill especially when he is charging up his Rancors as it will interrupt his cast.
- The boss battle does not begin as soon as you enter the arena. You will need to get closer to the God-Devouring Serpent for it to aggro you. So you have time to teleport to the Round Table Hold, upgrade the Serpent-Hunter, and come back. This will help the weapon deal much more damage.
- Make sure to stay out of the lave as it will constantly start to tick away at your health.
Ranged build tips for Rykard
If you are going for a normal way of beating him then look to go for lightning-based Incantations. While Rykard has some resistance to Lightning, it is not as high as the ones for Fire, Holy, and Magic.
INT and Arcane-based builds can go for Dragon Communion spells that inflict status ailments. Inflicting Frostbite early on will increase the amount of damage that you deal and then you can inflict other statuses like Scarlet Rot.
Bow users will need to depend on status effect causing arrows. You will be able to proc Frostbite, Hemorrhage, and Scarlet Rot a couple of times during the fight.
Melee build tips for Rykard
Go for weapons that build up Bleed and Frostbite. Make yourself tanky enough to not let the lava be too problematic for you. Talismans and Physicks which reduce the amount of fire and physical damage you take will also make things considerably easier.
Once defeatedm Rykard will drop 130,000 Runes, Rykard’s Great Rune, and Remembrance of the Blasphemous.
