Abandoned Cave Dungeon Walkthrough - Elden Ring

While the enemies in this Caelid dungeon aren’t particularly threatening, the high amount of Scarlet Rot makes it challenging to navigate.

Unique Rewards:

caelid abandoned cave location map elden ring

The main difficulty throughout this dungeon will be the Scarlet Rot. As such, we recommend visiting the Siofra River dungeon first if you haven’t, as you will be able to grab the Armorer’s Cookbook [6] which will allow you to craft Preserving Boluses, as well as the Nomadic Warrior’s Cookbook [17] that allows you to craft Soap. Additionally, the Flame, Cleanse Me incantation is a cheap and easy way to remove the rot buildup without burning through your crafting material reserves. Whatever you end up choosing, make sure to have a way to remove Scarlet Rot as you’re unlikely to go through the whole dungeon without taking damage from rot. Additionally, armor with higher Immunity will slow down the rot buildup, though it will not reduce the damage taken.

With the necessary precautions taken, you can grab the site of grace and start heading through the dungeon. As an introduction to this dungeon’s atmosphere, the path forward entails jumping down into Scarlet Rot waters. Once you’re down, you will have to quickly move through these waters while rot is steadily building up inside of you. While you have to head north, make sure to wait out the rot geyser as you will otherwise take ticking damage moving through it. Lastly, rolling through these waters will cover you head to toe in rot, which will cause you to keep building up rot even when you’re out of the waters. However, if you have Soap on you, you can use it clean yourself up. With all of that in mind, head north to the small piece of land with the disabled Iron Virgin to take a breather and remove the rot buildup.

caelid abandoned cave jump down elden ring

caelid abandoned cave safe spot elden ring

To the right of this maiden, you can grab some Dragonwound Grease. While there is some more rot in-between, you can jump on the nearby rocks to safely cross to the item without getting infected.

Whether you grabbed the grease or decided it’s not worth it, you can now go left which will take you deeper through this place. You will quickly reach another room with even more rot. There, in front of a broken down maiden, you will be able to grab the Serpent Bow. Before going for it however, you should first take care of the enemy standing near the path that leads deeper through the dungeon.

caelid abandoned cave sneaky enemy elden ring

Either use ranged attacks or a plunging attack to deal this with enemy before jumping down, grabbing the Serpent Bow nearby and heading through the tunnels that this enemy was guarding. You will then reach a pitch black room with two hidden enemies. If you try to lock on to a target, you should notice a rat in front of you, as well as another enemy up on a ledge. If you sneak up to the rat, you’ll be able to kill it without leaving it any time to react. With only the humanoid enemy remaining, you can easily dispose of it.

Past where the humanoid enemy was, you’ll find another set of tunnels continuing through this cave. On the way through there, you’ll stumble upon 2 rats guarding some Fire Grease on your left, which you should confiscate before continuing further.

Upon reaching a room with a giant flower enemy in the middle, you should first head to the right to dispose of the enemies that are standing on top of a ledge.

While fighting them, you will notice another tunnel nearby that leads to a boss room. There is however one more thing we need to grab before dealing with this dungeon’s boss. Behind the flower enemy, you can climb the remains of several Iron Virgins to reach another ledge with the Venomous Fang weapon. If you decide to fight the flower first, keep in mind that it doesn’t drop anything special, and that it’s vulnerable to fire. However, you can also just grab the Venomous Fang and head to the boss room instead.

All that’s left now is dealing with this dungeon’s boss: Cleanrot Knight Duo.