Facing Everdark Caligo in Elden Ring Nightreign might be a nasty surprise for many who fought the original Fissure in the Fog boss. Similar to Everdark Augur, the ice dragon Caligo has a tendency to fly around all over the arena, making the battle a bit of a chase. You also have to contend with endless frostbite as the dragon summons frozen crystals and blasts icy projectiles at you.
Thankfully, I don't think Caligo is actually that hard provided you spend your expedition well, acquiring resistances and a nice fiery weapon, or an added fire affinity that'll let you hit her weakness. Here I'll run through the best strategy to beat Everdark Caligo, attacks to watch out for, and what you get as a reward.
How to beat Everdark Caligo in Elden Ring Nightreign
Everdark Caligo doesn't have as big a gimmick as Everdark Augur did, in fact, she basically just summons a lot more frost and her attacks deal more damage. When you enter the arena, you'll fight the usual phase two Caligo, but once you get her to around 75% health, she summons icy armour around her body which makes her more resistant to damage.
You can smash this armour on individual parts of her body (head, torso, tail as far as I can tell), which deals a chunk of damage and gets you a full-on stun if you do them all. Beyond fire and pure damage, though, there isn't any secret to smashing each part that I can see.
Since Caligo's weakpoint is still basically her head even with the armour (as with most dragons), and she's quite a tanky boss anyway, it's not like this massively alters the fight. I think the best way to beat Everdark Caligo, unlike Everdark Augur, is actually to spend your expedition time well, acquiring frost resistance, fire weapons, and pure damage to deal with her tankiness.
As mentioned below, the Shifting Earth: Mountaintop event is peak here (literally), as it provides frost resistance and an anti-dragon effect to your weaponry based on the bosses you kill and what you do. You'll want to make sure that you:
- Defeat the Flying Dragon boss fighting the Snow Troll in the centre of the mountain area and select "Attacks possess anti-dragon effect" from its rewards.
- Defeat either the two Snow Trolls in the east (close to where the night two boss is), or the Demi-Human Swordsman in the north, and select the Improved frost resistance" option from the rewards.
- Grab the blue crystal in the north of the mountain to get the "Favor of the Mountaintop" buff and complete the event. This halves frostbite damage and buildup, making it by far the most important.
If you don't have the mountaintop event active, remember you can use the Collector Signboard to activate it for the cost of one Sovereign Sigil, and it'll stick around for three runs. Depending on the speed of your squad, you'll want to do this event on the second day. I personally did it on the second phase of the second day and that gave plenty of time, though we did have two Wylders in the party.
All in all, this is definitely the best thing you can do to beat Caligo, mitigating the damage done by frostbite and slowing the frost buildup from attacks.
Everdark Sovereign Caligo tips
Besides the above, Everdark Caligo has some mean attacks to watch out for. These are:
- Enhanced icy meteors: While first phase Everdark Caligo still does the same icy meteor attack, as she flies around hailing you with them, she now has a new variant in the second phase. She'll summon icicles that hover around her and fire these at you like missiles, dealing big frost damage. While the strat is still rolling incessantly, these projectiles are a lot bigger, so it's easier to try and dodge each one more individually.
- Nuke crystal smash: Caligo puts her wings together, firing a beam that creates an ice crystal, before exploding it with the same beam. This creates an expanding wall of frost similar to Everdark Augur's wave or Everdark Gaping Jaw's storm (though much smaller), so simply keep away from it.
- Breath attacks: So many breath attacks. As anyone who's fought a FromSoft dragon will know, positioning is 90% of not getting blasted, but in-particular, watch out for when Caligo breathes straight down, especially if you're distractedly smacking away at her legs or body. Some of Caligo's breath attacks are now coupled with charges or swipes, too, similar to Oceiros in Dark Souls 3, so you'll want to be wary of not getting one-two hit by those.
- Crystal tail slam: Caligo breathes ice in a circle, creating a bunch of crystals, and then slams her tail down after a short delay to explode them all. This one might catch you out if you're not aware of the follow-up, but it's quite distinctive since it's the only time she spins and uses a breath attack at the same time.
- Ice armour charge: This is the attack that begins the second phase, as Everdark Caligo charges up and creates her frosty armour. As far as I can tell, you can actually stagger her out of this with something like Wylder's ult, but your best bet is running away. After she finishes charging, she'll create a big frost AoE that lingers and does a lot of buildup.
However, there's certainly a lot more you can prepare to counter Caligo in comparison to the previous fight with Everdark Augur.
- Use the Collector Signboard to activate and run the Mountaintop event
As mentioned above, the Shifting Earth: Mountaintop event is one that actually provides a useful buff for Caligo. If you've defeated an Everdark Sovereign, you can pay a Sovereign Sigil at the Collector Signboard to activate the event and then run it on your way to fighting the new boss. The reason this event is so good for Caligo is because it gives you both reduced frostbite and adds an anti-dragon buff to your attacks.
Simply defeat the two Snow Trolls fighting on the east side of the mountain to get reduced frostbite, and then beat the Flying Dragon in the middle of the mountain to get the anti-dragon effect. You can also get the Favor of the Mountaintop buff if you complete the event by interacting with the ice crystal at the top, halving frostbite damage and frost buildup, and giving you an attack boost for nearby frostbite procs.
- Bring or acquire fire
Everdark Caligo is still weak to fire, being an ice dragon, and fire is one of the easiest elements to find or bring with your relic setup. Every player should have the Night of the Beast relic, unless you somehow managed to get this far without beating Tricephalos, and that grants fire to your starting armament. Simply level the weapon with a couple of smithing stones and you're good to go. You could even bring relics with Fire Attack Power Up if you want a little extra, but bringing fire or fire infusion via skill is the main thing.
- Build frostbite resistance
It might seem obvious at this point, but just to reiterate: bring frostbite resistance if you can. Frost buildup and taking damage from frostbite are going to be the things chipping your health here. The mountaintop event is the best source of that, but you can also be on the lookout for more in the form of boss reward buffs, talismans, or even get it by chowing down on the Thawfrost Boluses you can find in frost ruins.
- You don't have to bring Wylder, but…
Wylder is already such a great damage-dealer, but if you've got his unique affixes on some relics, he also becomes one of the best characters for doing massive amounts of fire damage. This comes in the form of a fire DoT effect after activating his art, and a fiery follow-up to his grapple skill. If you don't have either, fear not; you can buy the Grand Drizzly Scene from the Collector Signboard shop, which gives his ult the fire DoT damage, along with changing your armament's skill to Flaming Strike, and Fire Attack Power Up+2.
It's worth mentioning that Wylder's fiery grapple follow-up also imbues his greatsword with fire as an added affinity, so if you also take the affix that gives him an additional skill use, he can have 100% uptime on this. Wylder's grapple skill is also amazing for maneuvering out of the way of Caligo's breath attacks.
Everdark Caligo reward
As usual, you'll get around 20 Sovereign Sigils for defeating Everdark Caligo, as well as unlocking a special relic you can purchase called Dark Night of the Miasma. This has:
- Frostbite in vicinity conceals self
- Starting armament inflicts frost
- Improved physical damage negation
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