Elden Ring: How Players Beat the Game Without Taking or Dealing Damage

  

Elden Ring: How Players Beat the Game Without Taking or Dealing Damage

For many players, the thought of finding the time and patience to beat Elden Ring is daunting enough. However, some of the open-world saga's most dedicated runners are already discovering ways to finish the game without taking or dealing damage.

While "no hit" runs are a tradition in Soulsborne games, the idea of ​​playing the Elden Ring without taking a damage point from any source is one that scares even the best Soulsborne runners. As for an Elden Ring “pacifist” work… Well, this is a new concept for Soulsborne games that really showcases the various ways you can play (and eventually beat) this game.

Here's what you need to know about those stunning undamaged and pacifist Elden Ring runs:

Elden Ring: Explanation of No Damage Run

GinoMachino deserves a standing ovation for his final "no hit" Elden Ring run, but he still technically took damage a few times with his play. After all, even if Elden Ring players dodge each enemy attack, they can still lose health due to fall damage, environmental hazards, and certain skills and spells (for example, Bloody Slash Ash of War). Recently, however, Twitch streamer Seki finished the Elden Ring unscathed, beating the already impressive feat of GinoMachino.

As the title of the challenge suggests, this playstyle is particularly difficult than a hit run, as Seki tells Kotaku, as if he takes any amount of damage from any source he'll have to start all over again. In order to achieve his goal, Seki set out from the Prisoner class and chose Çatal Çömlek as his memory.. However, he quickly abandoned all of the starting armor of his chosen class (after all, what's the point of wearing armor if you don't plan to get hit). Seki then relied on a Dexterity/Intelligence character build with a few points invested in the Mind stat for Intelligence and the extra FP it provided. While Seki spent most of his journey on horseback and avoiding fights whenever possible, he relied on the Moon Veil Katana (especially the Temporary Moonlight skill) and the Rock Slingshot magic when war was inevitable. Seki would also throw knives when he needed to deal damage quickly.

According to Kotaku, Seki made numerous attempts to plan and execute his undamaged run; He may have only posted three hours of his success, but it took more than 130 hours of training to get there. Apparently, the biggest hurdle he faced was the final boss of Elden Stars (Elden Beast), one of his attacks, but it could be avoided by surprising the creature. Seki spent "dozens of hours" getting the timing right, and most of the time the spell struck him, forcing Seki to start over.

So what's next for Seki? Believe it or not, he thinks an "All Memorials No Coup" initiative is appropriate.

The description of Elden Ring : The Pacifist Run

Streamers like Seki show that it's possible (albeit incredibly difficult) to beat Elden Ring without taking any damage, but what if someone told you they beat the game without doing any damage? That's exactly what Iron Pineapple did.

Unlike an undamaged run, Iron Pineapple's Pacifist run had one simple rule: beat the game without attacking at all. To be fair, you could argue that the challenge is easier than an undamaged run, as Iron Pineapple doesn't have to start from scratch if hit. However, Iron Pineapple has still faced numerous roadblocks that it has overcome only through adaptation (and a little help from the occasional glitches).

Since Iron Pineapple couldn't rely on any weapon (until he got the Mimic Tear), he focused on Spirit Ashes and Incantations instead. He started with the Prophet class because of his High Faith, and also chose the Tooth Imp Ashes as a souvenir. Iron Pineapple put most of his initial points on Vigor and Mind and "killed" enemies by leaving them behind and healing them while allowing allies (both Spirit Ashes and summoned NPCs) to do all the heavy lifting. However, when that wasn't an option, he either passed by the opponents or crushed them. The cheese tactics in this example included tricking monsters into jumping off cliffs (or repelling them via Spell Denial), directing enemies into deadly geysers, and sometimes jumping over a fog gate to smuggle a boss' AI.

As the run continued, Iron Pineapple adopted new strategies to take advantage of different boss arenas and weaknesses. This included adopting technically innocuous skills (e.g. Fires of Slumber), summoning Rotten Stray to slowly kill enemies via Scarlet Rot, and even building a bleed structure so Mimic Tear could tank every boss.

While older FromSoftware games (probably) can't be beaten without attacking at all, the game's Spirit Ashes are a big part of the reason a pacifist run in the Elden Ring is technically possible. More importantly, Iron Pineapple demonstrated that Mimic Tear is one of Elden Ring's strongest Spirit Ash allies even after the Patch 1.03 nerf.

Given the sheer creativity of so many Soulsborne players, we'll likely experience even more mind-blowing Elden Ring runs in the future.