Dark Souls 3 – Beat the Crystal Sage

When you make it through the structure in the middle of the Road of Sacrifices, you encounter a boss battle against the Crystal Sage. The first phase of the Crystal Sage boss battle is fairly simple. The Crystal Sage has a few attacks that are relatively easy to avoid. She creates a purple crystal that floats toward you slow enough that you can run or dodge to avoid it. This is telegraphed by the Crystal Sage holding her orb above her head and channeling her magic to create the crystals. She will generally shoot several of these one after another.

When you see several small circles surround the Crystal Sage’s head, she’s about to fire several magic missiles toward you. Stay on the move to avoid these attacks. If they start to get too close, dodge to get a bit more space or to simply avoid the impact. The Crystal Sage will also fire a line of crystal magic toward you, which is telegraphed and shouldn’t be too difficult to avoid. All of these magic attacks can be blocked if you hide behind one of the trees in the area.

Your best course of action is to wait for the Crystal Sage to channel her magic, then rush toward her and attack relentlessly. If you move closer when she’s not channeling magic she will pull out a sword and attack with it. Once you’ve damaged her enough she will disappear into the ground and small areas will be marked all over the boss arena indicating a crystal shard is about to appear. Avoid the glowing spots on the ground signaling where the shards will appear, then look around the arena to determine the new location of the Crystal Sage.

Once the Crystal Sage has disappeared a couple of times, she will reappear with several clones scattered all across the arena. Each of the clones have the same abilities as the Crystal Sage which makes this very difficult if you don’t handle the clones quickly. You can either attack the real Crystal Sage to make her disappear again and remove all of the clones at once, or you can attack each clone individually. The clones die very quickly, but the longer they’re around the more attacks you’ll have to dodge.

While it can be difficult to determine which Crystal Sage is the real Crystal Sage, the one creating multiple purple crystals is the real Crystal Sage, while the others are firing blue magic missiles. Either way you should attack them as quickly as possible to make this portion of the fight easier. As the fight is drawing to an end you should be able to finish off the real Crystal Sage before the clones and do much damage.

Defeat the Crystal Sage to obtain the Soul of a Crystal Sage, then light the Crystal Sage bonfire nearby. At this point you can take on the optional Cathedral of the Deep area, or head directly to Farron Keep. It’s recommended to tackle the Cathedral of the Deep first so you’re leveled up a bit before you go into Farron Keep, but if you want to get straight to the next main area, head to the Farron Keep bonfire you passed earlier in this walkthrough and continue on to our walkthrough of Farron Keep.

If you wish to tackle the optional area first, stay at the Crystal Sage bonfire and continue on to our Cathedral of the Deep walkthrough, otherwise move on to our Farron Keep walkthrough or head back to our full Dark Souls 3 walkthrough and guide for more helpful tips and walkthroughs of other areas.