ELDEN RING

Astel is the final boss of the Ranni questline. So there are several steps that need to be taken to be able to get to this point.

You can find a full guide for the whole questline here:
Ranni the Witch Questline

By following this questline, you should also earn yourself:

and


Astel can be found by the Grand Cloister area. To get here you must first gain access to Nokstella, Eternal City. From here try to navigate your way to the Lake of Rot, which at the other side of the lake you will find the Grand Cloister.

Once at the grace make your way down to the ground floor and follow the small rot canal on the left to the end, where you will make a left turn to a coffin at the end of the canal, at the edge of a waterfall. Get in the coffin and take the plunge. After the cutscene you will be one fog wall away from Astel.

EDIT: Here is an interactive map if you are having trouble navigating the area.
Interactive map of Nokstella and Lake of Rot

Astel is resistant to Magic. But if you spent some good time leveling up and upgrading your weapons before hand, you should be fine. I went in with a Bloodhound's Fang+9 with about 55 Dex and managed to take it out in roughly 10-15 swings.

Astel will also drop 80k runes and Remembrance of the Narutalborn upon defeat.

The other guide does a fantastic job at explaining how to get to this boss but I figured I'd add a guide on how to actually fight this boss by focusing on how to deal with all of his attacks.
In reference to difficulty I was solo at lvl 80 with a +12 Golem's Halberd. It felt...maybe slightly more challenging than intended, but still doable.

Astel's Regular Attacks

"Imma Firin Mah Lazer"

Astel charges a small magic field in front of him that fires a lazer-like, beam. This is a ranged attack and will pretty much always be at the start of the fight. The rolling through timing takes some getting used to, but the audio buildup does give a subtle tell. It takes about a second after it's head lowers. You can block it if not feeling confident, but it will chip through your shield and cause pushback.

Tail Smack

Another ranged attack is his tail. Unlike the logic of how tails work, he swings it over his body and slams it down onto you. Be wary of the delay! It acts like a whip and therefore will have a delay from when you see it coming to when it lands. He will do this twice. If you run towards him, and roll through the first tail slam, the second will likely be over you by now. Though roll if it makes you feel better. Who needs stamina anyways?

B*tch Slap From Space

When close-medium range, Astel has a variety of ways he can swing his arm around but they all do the same thing. Minor damage if it hits you, but it leaves a cloud of pretty star mist :D .... that explodes. So do not stay in it! The hand will glow when this attack is occurring.

Slam Dunk!

Astel makes some magical [basket] balls and slams them onto the ground, often telegraphed by an upwards bending of the body or floating. Upon landing they cause an aoe pulse around him that grow in size after each pulse. You can roll through the pulses but unless you can fast roll it's unlikely you'll make it through all of them. It is therefore best to make distance as soon as you see this attack coming. If you cannot get out, block to at least minimalize the damage. This attack can range from 2-4 pulses.

Pinch Pinch!

At close range Astel can use its pinchers as a weapon. Take it like a normal sword attack, roll or block. He will quickly pinch them around a few times before he attacks making it easy to see coming,

Rocks. Just, rocks...Falling from the sky

Astel looks to the sky and a nebula forms around him. It really is pretty, until it summons a crudton of rocks hurling down at you. I found it best to run to him immediately and try to get under him, as the rocks seem to fly in random directions around him.

Portal...but deadly

A pinkish glow forms around Astel. After a few moments he will teleport away. The portal will do damage if you are within it so get away from him when he does this. Astel will reappear far away making you vulnerable to his ranged attacks. However he can also teleport into a grab attack (see below).

Astel's Grab Attacks

Do you love a boss that has an unblockable grab attack? Great! Cuz this one has three.

Teleport Grab

Being the most likely reason you looked up this guide, this attack is very easy to get grabbed on and with 35 vigor it was a one-shot for me. After Astel teleports you'll want to scan the room very quickly to find out where he appears again. If he's at a distance, nothing happens, but if he teleports close to you, he will try to hug you. But the hugs in this game have always been a lie so to avoid it, roll towards him. This will ensure he goes over you every time. But the crucial piece of nailing this is being able to track him down quickly after he does a teleport to determine if you must act.

Glowy Pinchy Grab

Sometimes Astel's pinchers will glow. This indicates a grab attack that will do less damage than the teleport one but is still best to avoid (unless you wanna see what it looks like...it's kinda cool). But again, to avoid it simply roll towards him as he lunges at you.

Gravity Grab

Around Astel will be a subtle white glow and rocks will be magically floating. It has a long range of grab so you need to run away from him as soon as you notice this starting. When he's ready, those not out of this aoe will be pulled up into the air, stunned, and slammed onto the ground. I do think if you roll right at the moment of the "pickup" trigger you can avoid it but this needs to be confirmed. Ideally, get out! But actually you should get grabbed by it at least once because it's a really cool animation to see xD

Final Notes

• This boss can be staggered. The spot for a crit will be the eye in his skull's forehead, which will fall to the ground. Get right in front of him and press
• Might need to be confirmed, but it seemed to me like this boss takes more damage for hitting his skull than any other part of its body.
• After your victory of felling this legend, congrats! Don't forget to go to the finger reader at the roundtable hold to trade in the memory for a unique item!

If you're playing a melee build and you find yourself unable to do significant damage to Astel thanks to its gimmicky mechs, rest assured, there is a relatively simple solution to it.

Make sure you get Latenna's spirit summon. She's an archer with absurd distance and amazing accuracy. However, her damage is very mediocre. After finishing previous zones you should have more than enough resources to upgrade this spirit to at least +6 (you can do this using Husks' shop after delivering bells). I did +9 but it shouldn't make a difference. I was using full cleanrot armor with 40 vigor, Radagon's Soreseal (so +5 to vigor but increases damage received by 15%) and a HP talisman. More than enough to even survive the gravity attack which is just plain unfair.

Start the fight by roll dodging forward so you avoid the beam. Summon Latenna. Your job is to make sure Astel stays on you while Latenna slowly but steadily reduces Astel's HP. Stay in mid-long range so most of its close AOE aren't going to reach you. You should only have to avoid the tail attack/whip (attacks twice, roll dodge to the side couple of times), meteors (dodge away) and the beam (dodge forward). If Astel goes after Latenna, follow it and start attacking so the aggro is back on you. The fight took me about 5 minutes, I did probably 300-400 damage while deaggroing it from my summon and used 2 health pots. It's relatively safe to be the target man if you don't try to be a hero by trying to help with damage. Just let the summon do the job for you.