Old Ring players recently caused a stir after the recent release of the Shadow of the Erdtree extension, with many believing it is just too hard. New enemies were (and still are) sweeping the floor with players, and numerous boss fights were (and still are) one-shotting people, right out of the gate. This makes the fact that a player seemingly has already managed to beat the final boss of the DLC without healing, dodging or blocking, even funnier.
Spoilers for the final boss of Shadow of the Erdtree to follow.
a poster on Reddit shared a clip of them battle against Radahnwhich players may recognize as one of the required battles needed to complete the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC. Despite Radahn’s return, his fight at the end of the DLC is very different, and he has an entirely new moveset that has made him a real pain in the ass for players to overcome. Of course, he’s no match for this chosen Tarnished, who manage to deal with Radahn like they’re some annoying bug that needs to be swatted.
Before entering the boss arena, the player will obviously be stocking up on spells that will help them pull off the incredible feat of not using any healing flasks, blocks, or dodges during the fight. These elements are crucial to the gameplay, let alone the numerous gripping boss fights, so doing without them will give you an impressive insight into the rest of the game’s mechanics and abilities.
Among the skills used are two spells, Blessing’s Boon and Golden Vow, which heal the player over time and increase their damage and defense respectively. They also make use of Malaysia‘s restorative great rune and pop their physick, a consumable that you can only use once per life and that can be mixed with two different effects. The one used here is a very well-known mix with the opaline and crimson bubbletears, which guarantee invulnerability with one hit and restore a significant amount of health when you are near death.
At that point, the player enters the battle and simply crushes Radahn. As one person put it in the Reddit comments, “I think this was Radahn’s boss fight against you, not the other way around.” Not only are they passively healed for the entire short battle, but each time they deal damage they also regain a fair amount of health. The player is almost consistently above 50 percent of their own health bar throughout the entire fight thanks to the use of the aforementioned incantations, and at a few points in the fight you can even see them swapping out talismans to reduce damage even further. I was stunned to see someone exert such command over the fight, considering that they are often expected to have the player on their back foot, not the other way around.
At the very end, they also use the Endure skill, which increases your balance and absorbs a certain amount of damage, and a damage-reducing aroma, to stand there and take Radahn’s ultimate meteor attack, and you can see the player’s health bar everywhere jump while their skills work after a while to passively restore them. They do it with just enough health to deliver the final blow and just like that, the DLC is done and dusted; the final boss reduced to a complete joke.
If recjawjind_fmfb can sort all this out by doing his utmost, the rest of us lowly mortals can probably get by with the bare minimum, especially considering the DLC that recently patched to be easier. So if you think that Old Ring or the DLCs are too hard, here’s proof that you can reduce the bosses of this game to absolutely nothing with a little bit of guts, ingenuity, and a few skill points in the Faith stat.