Elden Ring Alexander Questline: Every Step and Reward

Kill Iron Fist Alexander any time before Crumbling Farum Azula and the jar drops the Warrior Jar Shard, a talisman that raises the attack power of skills by 10%. Let him finish his journey and beat him in the duel he asks for at the end, and he leaves the Shard of Alexander instead: 15%, the same 0.9 weight, plus a key item a young jar in Liurnia is waiting for. Fandom files the two talismans as variants that cannot be equipped together, so on any one Journey you are choosing between them.

The questline between those two outcomes is long and mostly optional. Alexander turns up at eight places, from a pothole in Stormhill to a floating ruin in Farum Azula, and Fandom's questline list marks five of them optional. The other three are not: a conversation after Starscourge Radahn dies, a lava pool on Mt. Gelmir, and the duel itself.

There is a calendar reason to learn his route now, too. Bandai Namco's Community Quests post, dated 1 September 2026, schedules a third questline called Path of the Elden Lord for 2 to 28 November, and one of its four community-wide goals is to summon Warrior Jar Alexander 50,000 times. Both wikis list two places his summon sign appears, and both are below.

The whole questline in eight stops

Fandom's and Fextralife's Alexander pages walk the same route:

Fextralife's walkthrough adds two conditions. At stop 4 he must be talked to, with all his dialogue exhausted, for the questline to continue. And he will not appear at stop 8 until the Fire Giant is dead and the story has moved on.

That makes Radahn the hidden requirement. He is optional for the main path, where Rennala can supply your second Great Rune instead (see the boss order guide), but stop 4 only happens after his death. No dead Radahn, no Shard of Alexander.

Stormhill: the first pothole

Alexander starts the game stuck. Fandom places him in a pothole atop a cliff southwest of the Saintsbridge Site of Grace. Fextralife gives directions from the other side: north of the Agheel Lake North grace and west of the river. He calls out for help as you get close.

Choose "Help him out", then get behind him and hit him. Fandom says he bursts free once you have dealt enough damage, and Fextralife says any weapon will do. Hit him from the front and he complains that you are hitting his face.

Freeing him pays twice. Both wikis' gesture listings give you Triumphant Delight for getting him out, and Fandom says exhausting his dialogue afterwards gets you an Exalted Flesh. Fextralife's numbers for the flesh are +20% physical attack for 30 seconds, or 15% in PvP. It is a Body buff, so it replaces rather than stacks with other buffs in that slot; the buff stacking guide has the rules.

Then he tells you where he is headed: a festival of combat at Redmane Castle, on the southern edge of Caelid.

Gael Tunnel, the festival and the morning after

Stop 2 is optional. Fextralife's Gael Tunnel page finds him beside a closed wooden door near the tunnel's Limgrave-side rear entrance, and Fandom puts him by the Rear Gael Tunnel grace. He has decided the tunnel is a dead end. The door only opens from the far side, so Fextralife's route is to clear Gael Tunnel from its Caelid entrance and open it, after which he sets off for Caelid. Fextralife also says that if the Radahn Festival has already been triggered, he skips the tunnel and goes straight to Redmane Castle.

Stop 3 is the festival. Once it is running he stands in the Redmane Castle plaza with the other champions, and Fextralife says he turns up there even if you have never met him. He is one of the champions you can summon against Starscourge Radahn. The Radahn boss guide covers how to start the Festival, the full roster and how many summons can fight at once.

Stop 4 is the one that matters. After Radahn dies, Alexander is just south of the Starscourge Radahn Site of Grace in the Wailing Dunes, picking through the dead. He admits a single hit from Radahn cracked him and that he hid for the rest of the battle, and he means to refill himself with the warriors' bodies scattered across the dunes. Exhaust this dialogue. Fextralife's walkthrough says the questline does not continue without it.

If you are running Diallos's questline as well, this conversation also has a side effect in Jarburg. That is covered in the Jar-Bairn section further down.

Liurnia: the second pothole needs oil

Stop 5 is optional and comes with a puzzle. Alexander is stuck again, this time on the cliffs above Jarburg, the hidden village of living jars he left to become a champion. Fandom places the hole south of the Artist's Shack grace; Fextralife says to follow the path south from that grace, just south of the Carian Study Hall.

Hitting him is not enough this time. After a few blows he begs you to stop, says his lower half is caught on something, and wonders aloud whether he could be made slippery. Throw an Oil Pot at him (Fextralife says a Roped Oil Pot works too), talk to him again, then go back to hitting him from behind.

If you have no Oil Pots, the recipe is in Nomadic Warrior's Cookbook [17], which both wikis say the Abandoned Merchant in Siofra River sells for 1,000 runes. Each pot takes one Melted Mushroom and an empty Cracked Pot.

The reward is more Exalted Flesh, three of them per Fandom. If you skipped Stormhill, this is the other place Triumphant Delight comes from. Fandom's gesture page records how it can be missed: trigger the Radahn Festival before freeing him in Stormhill, then reach Mt. Gelmir after Radahn before you find him here.

Fextralife says the whole stop can be skipped by heading to Mt. Gelmir after the festival. Jarburg itself sits below the cliff, reached by climbing down the huge gravestones that jut from the eastern cliff face, per Fandom's Jarburg page.

Mt. Gelmir: the lava pool and the Jar

Fandom's list does not mark stop 6 optional, and neither wiki offers a way around it. Alexander is sitting in a lava lake south of Fort Laiedd, near the Seethewater Terminus grace, behind a Magma Wyrm. Fextralife says he left a message pointing to the spot, on the cliff to the right of the Volcano Manor entrance, and that you can speak to him from the rocks in the lake. Fandom's tip is to ride Torrent onto the sloped rock in front of him and dismount there, so you are not standing in lava while you talk.

He is trying to bake himself hard enough never to crack again. Exhaust his dialogue and he hands over a helm he made for you on the road.

Fextralife adds that the boost does nothing for the debuffs pots inflict. It is a helm for a pot-throwing build, and Fextralife suggests pairing it with the Companion Jar, the talisman at the end of the Innards chain covered below.

The lava turns out to be lukewarm. Before you leave, he quotes an old saying about a flame of ruin above the icy giants' peak, which points at the Mountaintops.

Where to summon Alexander

Both wikis list two summon signs:

The Fire Giant sign is the unusual one. Fextralife's Fire Giant page says it sits a short way past the upper-elevation fog gate, and to use the southern chain-bridge entrance nearest the Foot of the Forge grace rather than the other gate. Its Alexander page says either chain works. Take the southern one and both pages are satisfied. Fextralife also says he is immune to fire in this fight and deals high stance damage, which its Fire Giant page recommends him for, and that summoning him costs you Torrent for the fight.

One conflict to know about. Fextralife's walkthrough says the Liurnia stop can be skipped and that he joins the festival even if you never met him in Stormhill, but its trivia section warns not to leave him stuck in either hole if you want him as a summon. Freeing him wherever you find him costs one Oil Pot and makes the conflict irrelevant.

The November community goal

Bandai Namco's Community Quests post sets Path of the Elden Lord for 2 to 28 November 2026, open to any player on any platform. It has four community-wide goals:

The listed rewards are commemorative artwork, still to be revealed, and a Warrior Jar Alexander Twitch chat badge. Progress updates go out on the official ELDEN RING Discord server. The post does not say how a summon is counted; the two signs above are the ones both wikis list.

Crumbling Farum Azula: the duel

Stop 8 needs the Fire Giant dead and the story moved on, per Fextralife. Then he is waiting in Crumbling Farum Azula, on a floating ruin that Fandom places near the Dragon Temple Lift grace.

Getting there costs two Stonesword Keys. Fextralife's Stonesword Key page says two open the imp statue whose lift goes up to the Dragon Temple Lift grace, and its Farum Azula walkthrough reaches that statue after the Godskin Duo, at the top of a staircase beside a Somber Smithing Stone [9].

From the grace, Fextralife's directions run like this: go past the plaza full of undead and up the flight of stairs, turn right to two archways shaped like square brackets, jump onto the left one (the one nearest the sleeping dragon), and cross the crumbling tower to the flat open area where he stands. Its walkthrough adds a way to check from a distance. From the Tempest-Facing Balcony grace you can see that ruin, and a Farum Azula Dragon sits on it instead if his questline has not reached its last step.

Talk to him and he asks you to undertake his ordeal. Talk again when you are ready and the duel begins.

Leave the fire build at home. Fextralife says that if you lose, he lets you challenge him again until you win. When he falls, Fandom's walkthrough has you exhaust his last dialogue and pick up the Shard of Alexander and Alexander's Innards.

Kill him early, or wait?

The figures match on Fandom and Fextralife. At full value, 1.15 divided by 1.10 means the Shard of Alexander makes each skill about 4.5% stronger than the early shard would. Fandom's Warrior Jar Shard page frames the choice as an immediate skill boost against 4.5% more later, and adds a point against the early shard: when you first meet Alexander you will most likely have zero or one Talisman Pouch, with strong talismans such as the Green Turtle Talisman already competing for those slots.

The Warrior Jar Shard is not a now-or-never item either. Fextralife's New Game Plus page lists talismans as carried over and NPC questlines as reset, so a player who finishes the quest on Journey 1 can still kill him early on Journey 2. With the two unable to share your slots, there is little reason to. The plan that wastes nothing is to finish the questline. The talismans guide covers where a 15% skill boost fits in a four-slot build, and the New Game Plus guide covers what else resets.

Alexander's Innards and Jar-Bairn

The Innards are a key item with one use. Jar-Bairn, Alexander's nephew, lives in Jarburg, and patch 1.03 added him; Fandom notes that before then the Innards did nothing.

Jar-Bairn's questline is tangled up with Diallos's, so here is the short version:

• Meet Alexander first. Fextralife says Jar-Bairn just sleeps and mumbles until you have met or freed Alexander at least once.
• Do not break any jars in Jarburg. Fextralife says smashing any of the village's living jars angers Jar-Bairn and closes his questline.
• Diallos changes the middle. Fextralife's Jar Bairn page says that once Diallos has moved from the Volcano Manor to Jarburg, exhausting Alexander's post-Radahn dialogue is the trigger for a poacher raid on the village. Diallos is found mortally wounded afterwards, and his mask and Hoslow's Petal Whip are left in the middle of town.
• You can avoid the raid. Fextralife's alternative: never engage Diallos, complete Alexander's questline, kill Rykard, then hand over the Innards. The poachers never come and you still get the talisman, but not Diallos's gear.
• Finish it. Once Jar-Bairn talks about leaving to become a warrior jar, give him the Innards, exhaust his dialogue and reload. Fextralife says the Companion Jar is left where he used to sit.

Fextralife suggests pairing it with the Jar helm. Jarburg also has three Cracked Pots and two Ritual Pots lying around, per Fandom: more containers for the throwables both items boost.

What patches changed

Fextralife's compilation of the patch notes from 1.02 to 1.17 has three entries that name Alexander, his two shards or Jar-Bairn, all from 2022:

No later entry in that compilation names him. Bandai Namco's notes for 1.17 (27 August 2026) and 1.17.2 (20 October 2026) do not mention Alexander, his talismans or Jar-Bairn, and the one-line 1.17.1 note (8 September 2026, as quoted by MP1st) covers only a multiplayer DLC-item fix. If he seems stuck at a stop, check the basics first: exhaust his dialogue, reload the area, and look at the conditions in the table below.

What can go wrong

Quick Action Checklist

• Free him in Stormhill. Choose "Help him out", then hit him from behind for Triumphant Delight and an Exalted Flesh.
• Summon him against Radahn if you want the help. His second sign is at the Fire Giant.
• Talk to him south of the Starscourge Radahn grace after the fight. The questline stops there otherwise.
• Carry an Oil Pot into Liurnia. Nomadic Warrior's Cookbook [17] costs 1,000 runes from the Abandoned Merchant in Siofra River.
• Find him in the lava south of Fort Laiedd on Mt. Gelmir for the Jar helm.
• Use the southern chain bridge at the Fire Giant. His sign is inside the arena.
• Bring two Stonesword Keys to Farum Azula for the lift up to the Dragon Temple Lift grace.
• Leave fire out of the duel. He is immune to it.
• Do not kill him early unless +10% now is worth more to your run than +15% later.
• Take the Innards to Jar-Bairn for the Companion Jar, and do not break any jars in Jarburg.
• Path of the Elden Lord runs 2 to 28 November 2026 if you want your summons in the community total.