The Dragonscale Blade is one of the more unique katanas in Elden Ring. It’s one of the game’s only sources of cold lightning. Unfortunately, actually acquiring the weapon is one of the worst experiences in the Lands Between, as you need to not only reach one of the game’s worst areas, but you also have to beat a boss surrounded by scarlet rot.
Nevertheless, this Elden Ring guide will give you all the tips you need to get the Dragonscale Blade with relative ease. If you want to know how to get rid of scarlet rot, we have a guide for that right here.
How to Get the Dragonscale Blade Katana
The Dragonscale Blade is a reward for killing a Dragonkin Soldier world boss in the Lake of Rot. We covered how to get to the Lake of Rot in a standalone article and in our guide to Ranni’s questline, so check those out if you want to know how to reach this awful place.
From the Lake of Rot Shoreside Site of Grace, head slightly southeast, and you should see the Dragonkin Soldier sleeping in the lake.
Your best bet is not to try and beat it on your first attempt. Instead, get close to the boss — awaken it even — then die. Rather than reviving at the Site of Grace, respawn at the Stake of Marika when given the option.
The Stake rests on a small platform with an obelisk, and you’ll appear right next to a button on the ground. Pressing that button causes three large platforms to rise out of the lake around the Dragonkin Soldier, giving you solid ground to fight on and keeping you from constantly being afflicted with Scarlet Rot.
How to Beat the Dragonkin Soldier
Fighting the boss is a fairly straightforward process. Most of his attacks are slow and easy to dodge. By this point in the game, you should be able to do 400-500 damage per attack, so killing it shouldn’t take too long. If you spec’d into Faith, fire magic is incredibly effective. You can always respec if need be.
Otherwise, rotate counter-clockwise and stay at the boss’ backside. It doesn’t have zone-traversing attacks like the lower Ainsel River area version, as it only has one phase. This Dragonkin Soldier also mostly sticks within its starting area, so while it will move to chase you for a while, like all world bosses, it will eventually teleport back to its spawn point if you give it enough space.
Defeating the Dragonkin Soldier immediately awards you 58,000 runes and the Dragonscale Blade, which comes with its unique Ash of War called Ice Lightning Sword.
The Blade’s Ash of War does the same thing as Lightning Blade — charging the blade with electricity and then slamming it down in an AoE — but the weapon also applies Frostbite buildup for additional damage as long as the buff is active.
Now that you’ve got the Dragonscale Blade in your arsenal check out our other Elden Ring weapon guides on the Blasphemous Blade, the Twinblade, and the Dark Moon Greatsword. We’ve covered tons of other Elden Ring topics here, too, so head to our guides hub for all of them.
