How to Beat the Draconic Tree Sentinel (Crumbling Farum Azula) - Elden Ring Boss Guide

Rewards: Malformed Dragon Set (Armor, Helm, Gauntlets, Greaves), 28,080
Summons Available: No
Boss Location: Crumbling Farum Azula

This optional boss is found at the end of Crumbling Farum Azula, and guards the entrance to the fight with Maliketh. However, you can run past him and enter the boss fight with Maliketh, so he clearly isn’t a very good guard. This can be a challenging fight, as you cannot summon and the boss does lots of damage with almost all of its attacks. However, we’ve got some tips and tricks for you, plus an easy (albeit slow) method to cheese this boss.

General Tips

Armor with high Lightning and Fire defense can help you avoid dying to the boss’s ranged attacks.
The boss is fairly resistant to every damage type, but is especially resistant to Fire and Lightning.
While you’ll often end up staggered, bringing a shield to this fight can help melee characters learn the dodge timings without dying so quickly.

Strategies

Click a strategy below to expand it!

This strategy is incredibly easy to pull off, but takes a while — it’s a good idea to make sure you have your phone or a book to read. All you’ll need is the Poison Mist incantation found on the Weeping Peninsula, and a way to cast it. To cast it, you’ll need a seal — you can buy the Finger Seal (which only requires 10 faith) from the Twin Maiden Husks in Roundtable Hold. If you don’t have 12 Faith, you can use consumable Golden Runes and level up, or if that’s not enough you can always go respec at Rennala.

Swap most or all of your flasks to Cerulean to ensure you don’t run out of FP, and then once you have Poison Mist memorized and a seal equipped, you can head to the boss’s location. Ignore the boss and keep running southeast to the gold fog wall. Once you’re at the fog wall, quit to the menu before the boss kills you, and then reload your save. You’ll be behind the boss, and you can start sneaking downhill after it. It will eventually stop moving, and when it does you can get behind it and cast Poison Mist. The boss won’t start taking damage right away, so be patient and don’t recast the spell unless you’re sure you weren’t close enough.

draconic tree sentinel poison mist cheese gif elden ring

Now you just need to recast Poison Mist each time the boss stops taking damage, and eventually it’ll die!

Thanks to this boss’s relatively low poise, it’s possible to chain stagger it with the Ash of War: Flame of the Redmanes. You’ll want to bring a lot of FP flasks, and perhaps just a couple of health flasks. It’s best to attack with a charged heavy attack once the boss is staggered, and then cast Flame of the Redmanes twice to re-stagger the boss. You can be pretty greedy, since you’ll interrupt the boss with the second cast of the weapon skill.

Ranged characters have a simple — if not easy — time against this boss, thanks to its leash range. The Tree Sentinel generally won’t go all the way down the bridge, so you can pull him northwest until he won’t go any further. At this point, he’ll only use two attacks: the Fire Ball the horse shoots, and the Lightning Strike. The fire ball is easy to avoid, as you can just roll sideways when it gets close to dodge it. The lightning attack is tricker — you need to roll exactly when the boss brings his shield downwards. Running horizontally as he prepares to cast his spell also makes the margin of error a bit wider.

Sometimes the boss does seem to be willing to follow the player all the way down the bridge — if this happens, you’ll need to run past him and kite him uphill, then repeat once you run out of room again.

draconic tree sentinel dodging gif elden ring

Simply wait until you dodge an attack, then attack yourself with a ranged spell or projectile. You’ll want to find an attack that’s quick enough that you’ll recover in time to dodge the boss’s next attack.

This boss hits hard, which makes mistakes very punishing. Therefore, it’s a good idea to use a shield when you’re still learning the boss’s moves — you won’t be able to block many attacks, but it will let you learn the combos without dying immediately. You can then swap to two-handing or dual-wielding once you have the timings down.

Because this boss has a Downward Strike attack that’s incredibly fast, it’s actually never completely safe to attack after one of his normal combos. The safest time to attack is after avoiding the first move in a combo, or after dodging a projectile — you can do a rolling light attack out of your dodge. If you have enough health and flasks left, you can try to get slower attacks off, but you always run the risk of being hit by his rapid downward strike.

draconic tree sentinel melee gif elden ring

Because the timings are so tight, every weapon will be different, and you’ll have to experiment to find what attack windows are available for your weapon.

That being said, one of the safest times to attack the boss is when he calls in his Lightning Storm — avoid the spots on the ground that are electrified, and you can run up and get an attack or two in.