Scadu Altus (East) Essential Path Walkthrough - Elden Ring Guide - IGN (2024)

While the Scadu Altus is the second main region you’ll likely enter in Elden Ring’s Shadow of the Erdtree DLC, there is an eastern section travered by a hidden path that is home to a major side quest. This page contains an essential path walkthrough and guide to the eastern half of Scadu Altus (best done after completing the Ancient Ruins of Rauh), including important character questlines, powerful blessings, items, and weapons - and unlocking a path to complete a quest to the southwest along the coast.

Scadu Altus (East) Walkthrough

With the Scadu Altus region being as dense as it is, there’s a lot of secrets hiding in the eastern half of the region, including a major side quest hub, another entrance into the Shadow Keep, and an alternate path through a ravine that cuts through the region in the middle. Our essential path guide will lead you to each of these while finding important items and meeting special characters along the way.

To reach the eastern half of Scadu Altus, you'll need to travel to Moorth Ruins near the center of the western part of the region, where a Cross of Miquella and Dryleaf Dane are both located.

The ruins have collapsed into a large sinkhole to the south, which holds a hidden passage. However, if you try to enter the large hole, it's incredibly hard to navigate to the bottom without falling to your death. However, if you carefully look around the ledge into the pit, you can find a Shattered Stone Talisman.

Instead, look a bit to the northeast of the larger hole to find a smaller hole behind a ruined building that you can safely descend into.

Head through the tunnels to drop to the floor of the bigger crater, and you'll find a group of Inquisitors guarding a small room with a chest holding the Golden Arcs Incantation.

Past the room to the right, you can find a path leading to a rope ladder up a well, and into the Bonny Village, located far below the Moorth Ruins in the eastern part of Scadu Altus.

The Bonny Village is full of Shadow Undead and several Greater Potentate enemies. The Shadow Undead may not seem threatening, but in large numbers they can ambush you while you're dealing with the Potentates.

You can even find one of their Bonny Butchering Knife in the village, as well as three Hefty Cracked Pots.

A large ditch cuts through the middle of the village, and you can follow it north to an alcove holding a Revered Spirit Ash. The south path leads to a bridge heading to a small isolated area where the entrance to the Bonny Gaol Dungeon is.

Important Note: North of Bonny Village, you can find a lone statue that grants you the "O Mother" Emote. This will be an important emote later, so don't miss out on picking it up now.

Leaving Bonny Gaol by crossing two bridges to the east, be sure to look in the Whipping Shack for a disturbing Tooth Whip, before continuing along the road. You'll find many packs of wolves here, but not much else as the road curves north.

On the other side of a small tunnel, you'll be met with an imposing Furnace Golem. This one has armored legs, making it impossible to stagger. Instead, you'll need to use a nearby Spiritspring Jump to reach a high ledge level with its face, and lure it close before tossing Heavy Furnace Pots into its exposed top. If you don't have enough Furnace Visages to do so, you can also attack its face plate, but it's better to avoid for now until you can craft more pots to deal huge amounts of damage.

North of the Furnace Golem, the path will lead up to a mage tower called Rabbath's Rise. Note the sealed Spiritspring on the north side as you enter. You'll soon find that the lift can't be called down inside the rise, but the secret to the Spiritspring is nearby.

Look for a blank wall near the lift, and attack it to reveal an illusory wall leading to a balcony with a stone cairn you can attack to unseal the Spiritspring.

Now you can use the jump point to launch yourself to a much higher balcony, and at the top of the tower you can find Rabbath's Cannon, a large ballista weapon!

The Cathedral of Manus Metyr

Just to the southwest of Rabbath's Rise, you'll see a large looming cathedral in the distance. It's patrolled by many groups of Marionette Soldiers, but the interior of the cathedral is actually a safe zone.

Inside the darkened halls, you'll find a strange man named Count Ymir, a glintstone sorcerer who will welcome you wholeheartedly, and bestow two gifts upon you: A Hole-Laden Necklace, and a Ruins Map. He'll ask that you seek out the ruins and use the necklace there so that your fate might be "guided by the stars".

You can also talk to him again to get him to teach your various glintstone magic, which includes a brand new spell: Miriam's Vanishing.

After resting in the cathedral, you can also find a stoic warrior clad in black armor resting nearby. Jolan, the Swordhand of Night, won't have much to say to you yet, but you can ask Ymir about her.

Be sure to do a bit of exploring outside the cathedral itself, as you can find a few interesting spots:

Just south of the cathedral in the shallow waters, you can locate a Remembrance Duplication Coffin. It's in a peculiar spot, unlike the Wandering Mausoleums in the Lands Between, but can be used to duplicate boss remembrances in the Shadow Realm.

There's also a low cliffside path on the west side of the plateau where the cathedral is. Travel south along it past groups of wolves to the very end where you may hear the faint noise of a scarab.

Look for a cave along the cliffs and then look up to find the hiding scarab beetle, which you can shoot down to gain the Ash of War: Carian Sovereignty.

North of the cathedral, you'll find an alternate entrance into the Shadow Keep's Church District - which houses its own challenges, bosses, and secrets. However, it also leads to quest objectives further into Count Ymir's Questline, so we recommend saving it for just a bit longer.

The Recluses' River

Before you go off in search of the ruins Count Ymir has given you a map for, it's worth checking out the other major location in this region - the large river below Shadow Keep and Bonny Village.

This area has a secret entrance only accessed via Shadow Keep. If you missed it earlier, you'll find it just past the Main Gate, to the right of the drawbridge leading to Specimen Storage. Look for a hidden ladder going down into the inner moat.

A path will lead through a small waterfall into a small room with a collectible painting. If you strike the wall to the right, you'll reveal an illusory wall leading to a coffin that transports you out of the dungeon.

You'll arrive in the Castle Basin below the keep, featuring a large flooded area by the Ruins of Unte, and several broken Furnace Golems sporting many Furnace Visages to collect. Beware that one of the wrecks is actually alive, and will rise up as you start to move south.

Over to the southeast past the ruins, you can also find a headless altar holding the Revered Spirit Ash.

At the edge of the basin, you'll find a cliffside path above the river, with many Man-Fly ambushes along the way. This will lead to multiple paths either further along the cliffside, or down into the river itself.

If you head northeast from the Downstream Site of Grace, you'll find a cliffside path leading to a ledge guarded by Gravebirds, and a note from Dryleaf Dane about seeking his center in a waterfall.

Look for a ledge below to drop down, and you'll find his Dryleaf Seal.

Further down at the base of the nearest waterfall, you'll find the rest of the Dryleaf Set, and a path along the eastern river to the Eastern Nameless Mausoleum where the great katana-wielding Rakshasa awaits.

If you head upstream to the base of the first waterfall below the other Site of Grace, you'll find ruins filled with giant Poison Miranda Plants, and a Scadutree Fragment inside a broken coffin.

There's another cliffside path heading southwest from the Downstream Site of Grace, filled with even more Man-Flies, and a larger open area where another Curseblade Ascetic will try to ambush you.

If you look west from this area, you'll find a slope leading up to the Village of Flies. Far back against the western cliff base, you can find a headless altar with a Revered Spirit Ash to claim.

At the top of the "village" overrun with Man-Flies, you can find another altar that holds the Man-Fly Ashes.

If you climb down from the Downstream Site of Grace via the large stone tombstones in the wall, you can reach a large swampy basin to explore. Two giant Hippopotamus mini-bosses patrol the waters in different areas, and like the one in the Ancient Ruins of Rauh, each one will award you a Scadutree Fragment for defeating them.

Finally, whether you take the western cliffside path down from the Village of Flies, or climb down another series of tombstones by the last waterfall, you'll arrive at one last ledge leading to the Darklight Catacombs. It's a tough dungeon with an even tougher boss, but defeating him will allow access into the Abyssal Woods far below. We'll be going that way soon enough, but first, it's recommended we take a detour to find the source of Ymir's Ruins Map, which will take you to the Cerulean Coast in the far southwest, which is also the home of the next "minor" Legacy Dungeon - the Stone Coffin Fissure.