Full Elden Ring Fia questline walkthrough for the Age of Duskborn ending

The Elden Ring Fia questline is needed for the Age of Duskborn ending, a massive journey for the Deathbed Companion in which you'll slay an undead dragon and cross the world of Elden Ring to make things a little more necrotic. The climax is a battle with the Lichdragon Fortissax, a great challenge worthy of any tarnished warrior, but if you can crack it, you'll get one of the most unique (if gloomy) of all the Elden Ring endings set up for the finale.

To help you master this process, I've played it through and assembled a full walkthrough for Fia's questline, with all the key locations, tips for all the major challenges, and how to get all the key rewards involved too!

Complete Fia quest walkthrough for Elden Ring

The Elden Ring Fia questline for the Age of Duskborn ending can be broken into these distinct steps and locations:

1. Talk to Fia the first time you reach Roundtable Hold
2. Talk to her again and hug her after reaching Altus Plateau
3. Talk to D, Hunter of the Dead
4. Kill two Shardbearers and talk to Fia
5. Come back to the Roundtable Hold to enter the locked room
6. Access the Deeproot Depths by any method
7. Kill Fia's Champions
8. Hug Fia in Deeproot Depths
9. Retrieve the Cursemark of Death from Liurnia
10. Bring it back to Fia and reload the area
11. Fight and kill Lichdragon Fortissax in a boss fight
12. Obtain the Mending Rune of the Death-Prince
13. (Optional extra) Give D's brother the Twinned Armor

Clearly there's a lot to this, so if you're confused, you can either scroll down or click on any of these points for more information about how it's accomplished. You can also check the maps we've attached, though the reality is that the vast majority of this quest takes place either in the Roundtable Hold (steps 1-5), or in one single arena in Deeproot Depths (steps 7-12). 

There's actually a lot of very simple steps to this quest - but then you hit stage 6 onwards and things get very complicated very fast. Don't worry though - we'll take you through every phase of the quest to make sure you're never lost or confused along the way.

1. Talk to Fia upon reaching Roundtable Hold

This is the easiest one - the first time you reach Roundtable Hold, head to the bedroom next to Smithing Master Hewg and speak to Fia, Deathbed Companion, sitting on the bed. You don't even need to cuddle her and weigh up the pros and cons of the Elden Ring hug debuff, just have some dialogue so she knows that you exist. After that, you can forget about her for quite some time…

2. Embrace Fia after reaching the Altus Plateau for the Weathered Dagger

After resting at any Site of Grace on the Altus Plateau (usually reached after you figure out how to use the Grand Lift of Dectus in Elden Ring), or by completing certain events like Rogier dying of his illness (which ones trigger it are still unclear), come back to Fia and this time, definitely hug her. As you do, she'll have some new dialogue, and offer you a special key item called the Weathered Dagger. She wants you to bring it to its rightful owner - surely a vast and challenging quest!

3. Give the Weathered Dagger to D, Hunter of the Dead

Or not, as the case may be. Head into the main room and talk to D, Hunter of the Dead - and give him the dagger. He'll have some more flavour text, but all it comes down to is that he knows who the dagger belongs to and will pass it on to them. There's no benefit to keeping it - the dagger is a key item, not a useable weapon.

4. Kill two Shardbearer demigod bosses and talk to Fia

The next bit is pretty open - after killing two "Shardbearer" bosses, you need to come back and talk to Fia. Shardbearers are any boss who have a Great Rune - Godrick, Rennala, Radahn, Morgott, to name a few. After doing so, talk to Fia and she'll offer you a map to something called a Black Knifeprint. You don't have to follow it though - it's a part of Rogier's questline, not Fia's, but it does seem to open up the next vital stage.

5. Find Fia in the locked room in Roundtable Hold

Reload the area and come back, and you should see Fia is gone - specifically, she's in the locked room at the end of the hall, left from Hewg. The doors are now open and Fia is over somebody's body - a parlour murder mystery, perhaps? Nah, it's pretty clear who's responsible and nobody cares either way. Loot the body for the Twinned armor set, talk to Fia and next time you reload the area, she's gone - quite a long way away, as it turns out.

6. Make your way to the Deeproot Depths

This is the first really tricky bit - the Deeproot Depths is a whole underground city beneath the Erdtree, and players need to get there to meet Fia again. There's two ways of going this - either kill the Valiant Gargoyle dual boss fight in Northeast Siofra Aqueduct and rest in a coffin in their arena to be carried there, or head down through the Subterranean Shunning-Grounds beneath Leyndell until you find a hidden path next to the Cathedral of the Forsaken Grace that takes you further down the Erdtree roots. 

Once you're there, the specific location you want to reach is the big arena on the upper-Northeast side of the city. Ride or walk up the giant roots in the main town area, to the East of the Nameless Eternal City Site of Grace, all the way up to the ridge (we've shown the route on the map). There'll be a gap in the cliffs with Fia's arena beyond.

7. Kill Fia's Champions

Once you're in the arena, head to the opposite side and you'll have a boss fight start up with Fia's Champions - five NPC invaders who attack in waves. First you fight one of them, then another, then the last three all in one go. Individually they're not too tough, but the last step is difficult when you risk getting hit from all sides by multiple attackers you can't all defend against. Summons will definitely help here, but you should also invest in a shield for easy defence, while spellcasters keep their distance and use AOE attacks. Meanwhile, faster melee fighters should go for those precious, precious backstabs.

8. Hug Fia at the Prince of Death's Throne

Once Fia's Champions are dead, a Site of Grace will appear nearby called Prince of Death's Throne, and resting at it will cause Fia herself to appear nearby. She tells you to kill her - don't! Hug her instead with the option "No, I want to be held" and she'll offer the next stage of the quest - find the Cursemark of Death. This actually intersects with somebody else's mission too…

9. Find the Cursemark of Death at the Divine Tower of Limgrave

From this point you actually need to progress the Elden Ring Ranni questline and secret ending, as the Cursemark of Death is only found in the Divine Tower of Liurnia, and Ranni is the only one with the special key that lets you access the Tower via the Carian Study Hall! Progress Ranni's quest until step 5 to retrieve it. 

10. Return the Cursemark to Fia and reload the area

Once you have the Cursemark, take it back to Fia, who now permanently hangs out at the Deeproot Depths. Give it to her and you'll get the Radiant Baldachin's Blessing - then reload the area and Fia will be asleep. Prepare yourself for a big fight, then interact with her to enter the Deathbed Dream.

11. Beat the Lichdragon Fortissax boss fight

Once you do, you'll be teleported to a boss fight with the Lichdragon Fortissax, a large undead dragon. Fortissax is closer in combat style to Placidusax and the dragons of Farum Azula than the more common kind, so sadly knowing how to beat Flying Dragon Agheel in Elden Ring won't have taught you much for this fight. Here's some nifty pointers though:

• You want to be around level 80 before taking on Fortissax, with weapons of +16 and up.
• Fortissax is very resistant to Lightning and Holy damage, but a little weak to Piercing.
• Attacks to Fortissax's head do double damage, so hit it if you can, though it's not mandatory.
• Most of Fortissax's attacks are a mix of Physical, Lightning and Fire damage, so armor up against those.
• Fortissax uses a lot of AOE attacks that hit all around him, but don't reach too far. Spellcasters should keep their distance, while melee fighters should stay agile and abandon shields in favour of rolling through his attacks.

12. Pick up the Mending Rune of the Death-Prince off Fia's body

When you kill Fortissax, you'll reappear next to Fia, and discover she died while you were gone. However, there is an item on her that you can pick up - the Mending Rune of the Death-Prince, an artificial Rune created by Fia that'll fix the Elden Ring, but infuse it with certain ideas of death that it didn't have before. This is the item you need for the ending - which we'll address a little further down.

13. (Optional extra) Give the Twinned Armor to D's Brother

Just outside the arena to the Valiant Gargoyles is a mopey NPC; D's unnamed brother. Give him the Twinned armor set you got off the body back in stage 5. Then head back to Fia's corpse and the brother will be there, having a bit of a monologue. Reload the area and he'll be gone, leaving behind the armor for you to get again, and a new weapon - the Inseparable Sword. Doing this earlier risks ending the Fia quest out of nowhere, but by doing it afterwards, you don't lose anything and gain this unique Greatsword in the process.

How to get the Age of Duskborn Ending with Fia

Now that you have Fia's quest completed, you have the main item you need - the Mending Rune of the Death-Prince. This doesn't necessarily lock you into Fia's ending, it only provides you a potential option when the choice for endings comes around. So theoretically, you could complete Fia's questline, get her Mending Rune, then not do anything with it and get a different ending altogether. If you want to know how to obtain Fia's ending though, we've got it laid out in our Elden Ring endings page, including how to get all the others!

Fia's questline rewards

Fia's questline comes with numerous rewards along the way, some minor, some major, some incidental. We've listed all the noteworthy ones below, as well as why they're so good - and this doesn't even include rewards that players might get in the process of achieving these steps, like those for killing the Valiant Gargoyles if they take that path to Deeproot.

• Twinned Amor set (obtained from the body in step 5): A decent middling-weight armor that can be obtained fairly early on and works well against most attacks, with a very… unique aesthetic.
• Fia's Mist (Reward for killing Fia's Champions in step 7): A special sorcery that generates a fog in front of the caster, inflicting Death Blight on anybody who steps through it.
• Radiant Baldachin's Blessing (obtained from Fia in step 10): A unique consumable that cannot be obtained again, this Blessing costs FP to use, but boosts the player's poise significantly for a short period. It also doesn't debuff health like the standard Baldachin's Blessing.
• Remembrance of the Lichdragon (obtained by killing Lichdragon Fortissax in step 11): Like all Remembrances, this can be given to Enia for one of two prizes. In this case, they choose between two Incantantions - Fortissax's Lightning Spear, or Death Lightning. Both are good, though the Lightning Spear is considered especially powerful.
• Inseparable Sword (obtained from D's brother in step 13): Assuming players take the last optional step, they'll also get the Inseparable Sword, a strong Greatsword that does extra Holy damage on every strike and scales well to Faith.

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