Elden Ring Highroad Cave Guide: How to Beat the Guardian Golem

The Highroad Cave in Elden Ring is one that you can go pillage realtively early on in the game, although it is rife with enemies. As you approach the end of the dungeon, you'll also have to face off with a Guardian Golem.

The cave is certainly worth paying a visit to early on in your playthrough so that you can acquire some Smithing Stones to upgrade your armaments with, and there's also plenty of crafting materials up for grabs too.

The cave is a little out of the way, so you won't necessarily find it naturally. If you do, though, you're in for a treat. While you may have more enemies to tackle, you'll find the cave to be surprisingly pleasing to the eye once you're inside.

Highroad Cave Items

• Arteria Leaf
• Land Octopus Ovary
• Cave Moss
• Golden Rune
• Smithing Stones
• Silver Firefly
• Furlcalling Finger Remedy
• Shamshir Curved Sword
• Blue Dancer Charm

How to get through Highroad Cave

The Highroad Cave can be found in Limgrave. From the Saintsbridge Site of Grace, head slightly south and use the Spirit Spring to have Torrent jump up and past the Land Octopus' foes. Just before the river comes to an end, the cave can be found to the left, as shown on the map below.

Collect the Site of Grace here, and you will now need to gradually platform your way down into the tunnels. The first platform will be on your right, and there'll be some Cave Moss to grab. You might want to have a lantern to hand, as its rather dark along the tunnels.

Once at the bottom, continue on into the cave. Ahead, there'll be a pit that you don't want to fall into just yet, and some wolves around the edges that you'll need to kill.

On the other side of the pit, there is a slope that you should now go down. Be wary, however, as there are more wolves ahead, including one that is guarding a Golden Rune.

Return to the pit from earlier, and look down to find more platforms you'll need to descend. Once at the bottom, there are two routes to go down. On the left, you will find a dead end with some Cave Moss. Meanwhile, on the right, you can drop down again and will need to fight more wolves.

Once again, there are two more routes that connect with each other, so it doesn't matter too much which one you go down. There will be more wolves to clear, as well as some Arteria Leaf and more Cave Moss.

Go to the right again to find one of the more beautiful caves of Elden Ring. Here, there is a waterfall and gigantic pillars, but also a lot of bats. Go left here until you can drop down, clear out the flying foe, and along the nearby path is a corpse that you can pillage Smithing Stone (1) from.

Drop into the waterfall and turn left. There will be four more bats and now, land octopuses, and another corpse with a Smithing Stone. Continue up ahead to find more octopuses and a Golden Rune.

Go back on yourself, hop down, and then jump across the gap in the waterfall - be sure to sprint jump.

Up ahead, you can loot the Shamshir curved sword from a corpse, but be wary of the bats.

From here, head left along the broken pillars first. Watch out for the land octopuses again and there will be a room at the top. Whenever you enter the room, the octopus on the ceiling will drop down, and you will want to defeat it to go into the tunnel behind it.

Afterwards, go through the small tunnel to the right that the land octopus obscured and collect the Furlcalling Finger Remedy. Continue right from here and hop down into the waterfall. In the room ahead, there will be lots of Silver Fireflies to pick up, and the yellow mist you'll need to now traverse to fight the Guardian Golem.

How to Beat the Highroad Cave Guardian Golem

The Highroad Cave Guardian Golem is no different to the others that you may have seen already. This ones weapon of choice is an axe, and most of its attacks are dependent on this.

One of the golems most common moves is to sweep its axe across the room in alternating directions. Because of how big this boss is, and how small the arena is, you're going to need to look out for this and be sure to dodge those sweeps. Otherwise, they're guaranteed to hit your HP bar hard.

Using its axe again, the Guardian Golem will also perform multiple ground slams with its axe that cause shockwaves through the floor. You can avoid these by creating a distance between yourself on the golem, or you can dodge them if you're feeling confident.

The most hard hitting of the axe attacks is when the golem performs an overhead slam using the axe. You have the opportunity to attack as the golem slowly raises their axe, but the shockwave for this type of slam is the largest, so be sure to run to the edge of the arena before this happens.

In addition, the golem can also breathe fire. This functions similarly to the Erdtree Burial Watchdog's fire breathing attack in Stormfoot Catacombs and Impaler's Catacombs. The golems AoE is much larger, however.

Avoid the fire breathing attack by running away until it is over. If you get hit by it, it isn't the end of the world, as it's not the most devastating attack.

Once you fell the Guardian Golem, they'll drop the Blue Dancer Charm. This talisman will raise your attack power the lower your equipment load is, so it's pretty neat if you're roaming around with no clothes on, I guess!

For more on The Lands Between, check out our Elden Ring walkthrough.