Perched along the cliffside in southwest Scadu Altus is the imposing Fog Rift Fort. This is a smaller dungeon that has some notable loot and lots of explosions. It likely acts as a storehouse where Messmer’s soldiers keep the explosives they use to burn surrounding villages.
Unique Rewards:
Serpent Flail
Arrow’s Soaring Sting Talisman
Greater Potentate’s Cookbook (3)
Black Steel Greatshield (Boss)
Fog Rift Fort can be seen on your map, but can still be tricky to discover. You’ll want to head to the Scadu Altus, West site of grace. Immediately northwest of the site of grace is a cliff that will have ledges below it, heading down to the fort.
When you jump off the cliff’s ledge and onto the fort’s tower, you’ll notice that the sign for summoning spirit ash’s will populate. This first part is easier to do solo, because you can just blow up barrels and your summons might get caught in the collateral damage.
From the top of the tower, use a ranged attack to lure the two spear men forward, then use either a fire spell or some fire arrows to ignite the barrels to take out the enemies in one bang. If you don’t get them all, it’s not a big deal; Massmer’s Soldiers aren’t the toughest enemies, but you’ll want to be careful as they’re more dangerous in groups (like all enemies).
Once you’re done, take the x10 Fire Arrows from the corpse that was by the barrel you blew up. These will come in handy for more explosive barrels. The rampart will lead to a room that has two soldiers lying in wait. You can easily deal with them by getting their attention, then walking back out onto the ramparts and blowing up the barrels in the room when they try to follow you.
After that room, you’ll see a soldier to your right, turned away from you. You can either sneak up on him and do a critical attack, or blow up the barrels next to him. From this outlook, you’ll see that there are more soldiers below you on a wooden bridge, and a rare item across it.
Lucky for you, there is another fire barrel at the foot of the stairs leading to the bridge. You can blow it up to quickly deal with the spearman, but the two soldiers behind him will be throwing firebombs at you, so be careful. If you deal ranged damage to the soldiers, they’ll switch to melee and rush you. You’ll want this to happen because fighting them when you’re safely on the ramparts can’t result in you falling off the bridge. The item across the bridge is the Greater Potentate’s Cookbook (3).
Back across the wooden bridge and up on the ramparts, you’ll see another path leading across a stone sky-bridge. However, there’s actually a unique weapon below this bridge that we want to grab first. If you look down into the fort’s grounds below, you’ll see a whole host of Messmer Soldiers. If you specialize in ranged attacks, then you can simply kill all the enemies from the ramparts above.
Even if you’re strictly a melee user, you’ll still want to use some ranged items like arrows or cracked pots to at least kill some soldiers manning the turrets before heading down the ladder and fighting the rest. When you’re fighting them, don’t run around and get all the enemies’ attention; get the aggro of one enemy, then lure them back to duel them before repeating the process.
If you’re having trouble, then you can always summon your spirit ashes to help, but they’re best saved for the boss. In the back of the grounds is a chest containing the Serpent Flail. Once you’ve grabbed the weapon, head back up the ladder. After you cross the fort’s sky stone-bridge, the boss will walk out of the bastion in front of you. For details on beating this boss, reference our Black Knight Garrew guide!
After you’ve defeated the long-tongued foe, there are two items to grab in the vicinity. To your right, you can follow the ramparts to a couple soldiers that are protecting a Somber Smithing Stone [2]. Again, there are lots of explosive barrels you can utilize against them.
The more secret talisman item can be found by heading to the left of the bastion that housed the boss. There’s a little gap between the building and cliff that leads to a shelf behind the fort. Follow it and climb the ladders to the top of the tower, where you’ll find a chest containing the Arrow’s Soaring Sting Talisman.
Kelson is a spud head from out west. He is most happy when holding a milky tea with too much honey and playing a sprawling role playing game or reading a fantasy novel. His video game tastes vary but his main genres are looter shooters, RPGs, and real time strategy games.
