NOTE: not to be confused with Commander O’Neil.
Defeating Commander Niall in Elden Ring is a challenge for many who stumbled across this secluded warrior. Beating him requires you to be watching his every move as he moves a lot faster than his friend Commander O’Neil but he’s still manageable.
Commander Niall is located in the back of Castle Sol beyond the Church of the Eclipse site of grace.
There will be enemy summons crawling all over the area but it’s best to ignore them as you learn the fight. Head out the back of the church, up the stairs in the neighboring building, and you should see the fog wall ahead.
While any build will work for this, you might consider using a weapon that you can use quickly. This will increase the times you can get a strike in and you won’t have to wait for Niall to use certain moves to have the appropriate time to strike. If you’re running an Intelligence build and have 60 points dumped into Int, you can use Comet Azur to deal huge damage to Niall when he first spawns and easily kill him if you have Cerulean Hidden Tear in your Wondrous Physick for infinite FP for ten seconds.
The fight begins with Niall summoning two allies. One is dual-wielding two swords while the other has a sword and a shield. It’s best to go right up to the right of Niall and begin hitting or using ranged attacks on the dual-wielding knight as soon as it appears. If you’re strong enough, you might even be able to defeat it before Niall or the other summons begin to move.
Now, whether you were able to take out that first knight right away or not, you need to lead the summons away from Niall. They move a lot faster so this isn’t too hard, but you always want to make sure that while you’re fighting them that Niall is far enough away that he won’t interrupt.
Both summons use charged combos that will leave them open for several seconds. Wait for these moments to take them down efficiently.
Once you defeat the two summons, you only need to deal with Niall, but this is where the real fight comes in. He will use different combos with his halberd but these moments between swings aren’t as open as they might appear. Often, if you strike at the wrong time, Niall will follow up with a quick lightning stomp that is incredibly difficult to dodge when you are busy swinging at him.
Instead, it’s best to walk around the arena and wait for him to do one of the following moves.
First, there’s the thunder stomp that also has a small whirlwind circling around it. This should send Niall high up in the air where you can roll underneath him and get a hit in when he swings. If you are able to perform a jumping attack moving toward his right side, his follow-up halberd attack shouldn’t hit you and you can even get in a second hit here.
The other move to watch out for is the whirlwind dash, which is when Niall moves his weapon once and begins to dash at you very quickly while cloaked in a cyclone. He’ll strike with the halberd but it’s very slow and easy to dodge. When you come out of the roll, it’s the perfect moment to strike but you’ll need to be ready to roll away again as Niall performs a small AoE wind attack. You can watch for this by looking at the halberd’s positioning. If it’s moving downward, roll away.
There is also the charged version of the whirlwind dash which has Niall performing a large AoE wind move before quickly dashing at you like before. He then quickly follows that dash with another swing, but he’ll be much more fatigued after this move so it’s a great time to whittle him down.
Unless you’re super confident in your abilities or have a ranged weapon, avoid attacking Niall when he’s only swinging his weapon as he’s more than likely going to thunder stomp if you get close.
This fight is all about patience, but as long as you use his bulky weapon and slow movement speed against him, the battle should be no problem at all. For your troubles, you’ll be rewarded with 90,000 runes, Veteran’s Prosthesis, and access to a half of the secret Haligtree medallion.
Elden Ring is available on PC, PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X & S, and Xbox One.
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