“Boss mechanics? I think you mean ‘boss suggestions’.”
Just to cover all my bases, there will be spoilers for the final boss of Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree here—a final boss who has been causing no end of suffering for its player base, myself included.
Promised Consort Radahn is a two-phase fight, wherein the first phase is a challenging but fair-feeling brawl with a warrior in his prime, and the second phase is the world’s deadliest rave where getting hugged too many times will just kill you.
The second phase of this fight contains a barrage of attacks that are almost impossible to dodge roll without hours of trial and error, leading many players to don the Fingerprint Greatshield in resignation or, in the tradition of the first Souls Game, parry the sucker into the dirt. As if we needed to feel even worse for not devising Radahn’s build kryptonite, though, one player has managed to beat him in an “all-hit” run, and no, that’s not a typo.
“ALL HIT, NO DODGING, NO BLOCKING, NO FLASK” brags Reddit user Recjawjind_fmfb (which I’ll be shortening to “Recja” for my sanity’s sake) before posting a footage of the Lands Between’s most stubborn Tarnished.
Rocking up with twin Cross-Naginatas, Recja proceeds to employ a strategy so complex and nuanced that it’d make Sun Tzu weep. They run up to Radahn and hit him very hard until he dies.
It’s a thing of beauty, really. There’s no effort to avoid any damage of any kind, with Recja choosing to simply stand there and watch as Radahn’s iconic meteors try, and fail, to turn them into paste. “Boss mechanics? I think you meant ‘Boss Suggestions’,” they add in the thread’s comments. I think I’ve found my next motivational poster.
Recja doesn’t directly share their secrets, but eagle-eyed commenter Quetzal-Labs breaks it down. Essentially, the tank of all tanks is using Malenia’s Great Rune and the Godskin Swaddling Cloth talisman to regenerate health, alongside mitigation talismans like the Dragonscrest Greatshield and Spelldrake, alongside a couple of tank-related tears for their physick.
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The real stars of the show here, though, seem to be the Ashes of War “Endure”, which gives you a hefty poise buff and damage reduction boost, and the Radiant Baldachin’s Blessing consumable. You can only get one of these in a single playthrough, which is a tremendous commitment to the bit. This allows Recja to simply take Radahn’s bus-sized sword swings to their face as if they were light breezes.
Anyway, as much as I’m conflicted about the very specific builds needed to flatten this boss, the biggest inventions often come from trying times. Whether it be spritzing Radahn with perfume or saying “no, you move”, I’m excited to see what kind of nonsense the Elden Ring community produces in the days to come.