Back in April, FromSoftware releasedElden Ringupdate 1.04 which made quite a few extensive changes. It adjusted the tutorial, making it more obvious for newcomers; buffedColossal weapons, increasing their attack speed and lowering their recovery time; nerfed the Cerulean Hidden Tear, making it last shorter; added new phases to Patches’ quest; and more.
However, it seems there were two major nerfs to variousElden Ringbosses that were not listed on the patch notes and have gone largely undiscovered by the community. In short, key changes were made to some, but not all, of theElden Ringboss fights that feature more than one boss.
RELATED:Elden Ring Theory Explains Godwyn’s Strange Fishy Corpse
This change was highlighted by YouTuber Illusory Wall (and first reported by VG247) and deals with the AI of multiple-boss fights. As detailed by Illusory Wall, the chances are twofold. The first is that the boss not engaging the player becomes less aggressive, and as seen around the 10:55 mark below, this results in at least one of the bosses hanging back more. Secondly, the number ofElden Ringbossesthat can be considered “primary” attackers is reduced, meaning that multiple bosses should not attack at once.
This applies to multiple group boss fights inElden Ring, but not all of them. It seems the notorious Valiant Gargoyle Duo was unchanged, while a few of the bosses only received one of the two nerfs such as the Erdtree Avatar duo and the Crucible Knights duo. However, even receiving one of these nerfs is enough to change the momentum anddifficulty of theElden Ringboss fight.
Notably, Illusory Wall does not mention the Godskin Duo or show them in the video, seemingly implying they may not be changed either (like theValiant Gargoyles). It could be that this change was only applied to group boss fights where the bosses were a certain kind of boss, and not one of the bigger boss fights. Either way, it’s nothing something players will discover unless they play through it multiple times.
The open-world Souls game’s popularity is still going strong, but it should be noted thatElden Ring’s concurrent player counts—which are not as important with a single-player game as they are in a multiplayer game—have dropped significantly. Still, despite this, there are manyElden Ringplayers making their way through New Game Plusor starting new characters, so it’ll be interesting to see if players figure out exactly which boss fights were nerfed and which weren’t.
Elden Ringis available now for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.
MORE:The Fate of Elden Ring’s Melina and Demon’s Souls' Maiden in Black Hinge on the Player
