Welcome to the Elden Ring Walkthrough for the Nokron, Eternal City region! Nokron can only be accessed after defeating Starscourge Radahn, which causes a falling star to blow a hole in the ground in Limgrave, leading into this area that is above Siofra River. You are required to come here to continue Ranni’s questline, obtaining an item for her in Night’s Sacred Ground. It also contains two optional bosses, with one of them providing one of the possible routes to enter Deeproot Depths.
For all other regions refer to Elden Ring Walkthrough.
Nokron, Eternal City
Progression Order:
- Nokron, Eternal City
- Mimic Tear
- Ancestral Woods
- Night’s Sacred Ground
- Regal Ancestral Spirit
- Aqueduct-Facing Cliffs
- Valiant Gargoyle
- Great Waterfall Basin
Nokron, Eternal City
After defeating Starscourge Radahn, there is now a large hole that is blown open in Limgrave, allowing you to enter Nokron.
Go to the north part of the crater, then there will be a path that you can follow down on some large floating rocks.
A short way down you’ll go through a wall and enter an interior. From here you need to carefully drop down the lower levels to reach the door on the far side.
You now enter the first part of Nokron. Make your way down the rooftops, following the path continuing to the north side.
Follow the final rooftop to the path along the building wall, then you will be entering an open window to the left.
In this room, you will need to carefully drop down again to the lower area (on the far left by the wall is where you should aim for) then continue through the doorway to find the first site of grace inside Nokron.
You can continue out into the courtyard, and you are reintroduced to the being inside Nokron. Make sure to pick up the Ghost-Gloverwort Picker’s Bell Bearing [1] from the body by the structure in the middle, then you can go through the archway on the far side to continue.
Continue forward down the steps and make your way towards the gold fog wall ahead, but don’t go through until you do some preparations.
Mimic Tear
Reward: 10,000 Runes, Silver Tear Mask, 2x Larval Tear
This boss functions as a mirror fight against an enemy that copies all of your items and equipment. The trick then to make the boss fight very easy if you want, is to just unequip everything before entering the boss area, meaning all of your weapons, armor, and consumable items. This then causes the boss to copy this exactly, so they have no armor and equipment, and just attempt to chase you around and punch you. Once the boss has spawned, you can quickly re-equip your main weapon and armor, then easily slap the boss around.
Once it is defeated, make sure to re-equip all of your items, then activate the nearby site of grace.
Continue down the bridge (you can now use Torrent again to get around) and then you will turn left to exit the bridge, arriving in an area similar to the Siofra River area below you.
This area leads to two possible optional bosses, as well as the area you need to go to for the item to continue Ranni’s questline. That will be where we’ll head first, so enter the area and follow the cliff on the left, until just past the Ancestral enemy singing on the hill where you can find the next site of grace on a cliff leading back towards Nokron.
Ancestral Woods
Looking over the cliff you can see some lower rooftops that jump onto, then drop to the ledge on the next building and follow it around to the right.
From there you can jump down again to another lower rooftop and follow it around.
Jump to the dome rooftop ahead, then across to where the enemies are. Watch out for some of the Tears in this area, as they will transform into human form and attack you with normal weapons, though they don’t have armor so aren’t too tough to deal with.
Continue following the path ahead, then drop down to the lower structure and walk across and enter the open windows on the building on the other side.
To continue you need to drop down to the lower area, but don’t do that yet. First grab the Black Whetblade from the body in front of the altar, then you want to go to the left where there is a hallway, leading to a Stonesword Key door. If you don’t currently have one, you should really go obtain one then come back. Through this door there is one enemy, but more importantly you can open the chest at the end and obtain the Mimic Tear Ashes.
These are the ashes that allow you to summon a mimic of yourself in exchange for 600 HP. The mimic copies all of your currently equipped items and armor, and then fights alongside you using your abilities, and is easily the best summon Ashes in the game.
Head back out to the main room, then you will need to drop to the lower area to progress. You might have noticed the large metal ball in the center of the room that can be targeted, as it is an enemy.
It will slowly chase you around this lower room once you are on the same level, attempting to roll over you. If you want to kill it before continuing, a relatively easy way to deal with it is to move over to the areas behind the pillars on the south and west corners of the room. It can’t roll through them, so will just get stuck and you can attack it from safety.
When you’re done in the building, head outside and down the stairs to where you can find the next site of grace on the left.
Night’s Sacred Ground
Start making your way towards the end of the area. The only enemies in your way are a number of Silver Tears. An early one will transform into human form, then the final one at the end will transform into a Troll. Deal with them all, then continue up the steps towards the giant corpse.
Enter the structure under the corpse and open the chest inside, where you can find a Great Ghost Glovewort along with the Fingerslayer Blade, the item you came here to find for Ranni.
You can then interact with the portal just outside to automatically be taken back to the Ancestral Woods site of grace.
With the main story item in the area obtained, you can start working through the optional bosses if you wish. The first is the Regal Ancestral Spirit, which is very similar to the Ancestral Spirit you could fight in the lower area of Siofra River, even in how you activate the fight. On your way through you will have probably spotted pillars similar to the ones in the lower area, and you need to activate these in the same way to make the boss accessible.
This time though there are only 6, spread around this smaller forest area. Activate them all, then head over to the Hollowhorn Grounds where you can interact with the corpse to head to the boss area.
Regal Ancestral Spirit
Reward: 24,000 Runes, Remembrance of the Regal Ancestor
This is a 1:1 copy of the Ancestral Spirit in Siofra River, with the only addition being that it will heal itself regularly so the fight drags on for longer. The main difficulty is finding this boss. In Nokron Eternal City (available after Radhan boss), you must light the 6 flames. It’s a bit tricky to get there, see the video for the exact path. Then you can interact with a dead elk at Hallowborn Grounds in Ancestral Woods. This teleports you to the boss. The fight itself isn’t too difficult, the Ancestor Spirit is a big elk and has a limited moveset. Other than its charge attack the rest of its attacks don’t hit very far, making it an easy fight if you play as a mage. Its attacks are relatively slow and it leaves big breaks between attacks, and it doesn’t do long combos, so there are plenty of openings for melee chars here too. It will heal itself a few times and there’s nothing you can do about it, just keep attacking it when it heals as it will be defenseless.
Once defeated, interact with the teleport point in the middle of the area to return to Nokron. Now you can head to the final area, with the second optional boss. To the left of the Hallowhorn Grounds, go past the enemies there and into the trees towards where you can see a number of Spectral Jellyfish. Continue to the cliff edge, where you can drop down to a lower area and follow the path further down the cliff.
Just past a couple of Jellyfish in the tunnel, you can find the next site of grace.
Aqueduct-Facing Cliffs
Continue through the cave towards the structures ahead. On the right you can spot a Crucible Knight walking back and forth along the walkway, which is a tough opponent to fight in this area if you alert it. To continue, drop down onto the strut connecting to the building, then drop onto the ledge below.
Continue forwards towards the large building where the water is coming from. There is another Crucible Knight standing looking out from the waterfall, though this one doesn’t move unless you go near it so you can normally ignore it if you want.
Go north through the aqueduct and into the area on the right. You can then go up the stairs through the next archway to reach the next boss area.
Valiant Gargoyle
Reward: 32,000 Runes, Gargoyle’s Greatsword, Gargoyle’s Twinblade
Valiant Gargoyle is a double boss of 2 giant gargoyles. After taking half the health of the first gargoyle, a 2nd gargoyle will spawn. They use a variety of melee attacks, poison gas, and and some ranged shockwaves, as well as flying attacks that will home in one you from anywhere. Kill the first Gargoyle before damaging the 2nd one. The faster you can kill the 1st one the easier it will be. When you have to dodge both of them at the same time it can be tricky. The good thing is that the arena is huge and their attacks are very slow and easy to dodge once you learn the timing. You have to dodge in the last moment before their attacks hit, not when they are starting their attack, otherwise you will get hit. Don’t dodge right away when they are preparing for their attack, dodge when they start moving their weapon. For the shockwave on the ground (only used by 1st gargoyle) you must dodge sideways. For everything else you can dodge backward 1-2 times. If you play a mage, it’s not worth summoning Ashen Remains, the mana is better reserved for using spells and carrying some more health flasks (about 6 health flasks and 5 mana flasks will suffice). After evading an attack you can cast 1-3 spells, or in the case of melee chars land 1-3 hits. Dodge, attack, repeat. When a gargoyle spews poison get away to not get hit by the poison cloud – this is also a perfect time to spam them with a few spells from afar, they will just stand there and be defenseless. While fighting both Gargoyle you need to watch what the 2nd gargoyle is doing. Keep your distance to it, but get ready to dodge when it comes flying towards you. As long as you otherwise keep some distance between the 2nd gargoyle it can’t hit you, only when it flies at you from afar it can hit you.
After defeating the pair of Gargoyles, head over into the corner by the waterfall to activate the site of grace.
Great Waterfall Basin
After defeating the Valient Gargoyle you can go over by the waterfall to find a coffin. Entering this coffin transports you to the Deeproot Basin area.
If you are aiming to progress Ranni’s questline, you can now return to her at her tower. Meet her at the top and she will have new voice lines. She will first automatically take the Fingerslayer Blade from you, as that was what you were obtaining for her in Nokron. Speak with her until she stops talking to have her give you Carian Inverted Statue, and you now have access to Renna’s Rise, the tower to the north.
Go in here and you can find a chest containing Ranni’s gear set at the top of the ladder.
You can then climb to the top of the tower to find a portal that takes you to Ainsel River, the next area you need to go to for Ranni’s questline.
Sites of Grace Summary
Nokron, Eternal City
Mimic Tear
Ancestral Woods
Night’s Sacred Ground
Aqueduct-Facing Cliffs
Great Waterfall Basin
Continue with the next region Altus Plateau.
For all other regions refer to Elden Ring Walkthrough.
Mike says
the walkthrough for this part isn’t complete. you left out the whole step about having to obtain the Cursed Death Mark. You can’t access Renna’s Rise until you get it.
Mark says
you can. you just have to activate the grace in renni’s tower after she leaves
Kurt says
I have been following your great walkthrough.. however. Ranni did not get any finger severer from me. Is that normal?
She will first automatically take the Finger Severer from you, as that was what you were obtaining for her in Nokron.
Hope i did not mess it up. But I got the carian inverted statue from her
Crmotagua says
Same for me but i’ve been continuing the quest and everything is going as expected so don’t worry
Mike says
Correction on my last statement: So I did the step by step for this section and when I went to Renna’s Rise it was blocked. I then had to go to Seluvis’s Rise to find Seluvis dead. Looted him, went upstairs looted the chest. Went back and visited Renna’s Rise to find it accessible. Not sure if the act of looting him, or the chest or the combo of both made Renna’s Rise open.
PowerPyx says
Probably bugged.
I never got Cursed Death Mark and got the Age of the Stars ending. 100% not needed, the tower opens up immediately after returning to Ranni. I never ever looted Seluvi, didn’t even know you could. Those things are normally not needed.
ADS3630 says
Hi…. LOVE YOUR GUIDES!
I got the inverted statue but was still locked out of rennas rise… went back to renni and she was gone but there was now a rannis chamber site of grace there. I activated it and went back to rennas rise to find I now had access.
leandroxpto says
Renna rise was also blocked shut following this steps. Only returning back and activating the grace like others said worked