A brand new Elden Ring patch has blown in on the wind, bringing efficiency fixes together with buffs and nerfs to spells and abilities. Among the many casualties is the stupidly highly effective Hoarfrost Stomp Ash of War that gamers—particularly speedrunners—had been utilizing to destroy bosses and beat the sport in underneath half an hour.
Seeing the beloved stomp introduced low, one of many present prime speedrunners for Elden Ring tweeted “RIP Elden Ring speedruns,” however don’t be concerned, this one nerfed spell positively is not placing a cease to Elden Ring speedruns. It is a speedbump, at worst, and possibly even a ramp into extra ridiculous strats.
Rip Elden Ring Speedruns pic.twitter.com/cHzI91yEBXMarch 17, 2022
Distortion2, present holder of the file 28:29 minute any% speedrun for Elden Ring, was doubtless joking, in fact. I can confidently promise that nothing stops speedrunners, actually no single patch. I do not blame Distortion for lamenting the nerf on this explicit trick although.
Regole, one other Elden Ring speedrunner and a Speedsouls moderator, defined to me that this can be a fairly important setback, at the least for now.
“The nerf to the Stomp Ash of Conflict itself is not the first difficulty,” he says, “however [FromSoftware] additionally fixing the glitched utilization of Royal Knight’s Resolve that allowed you to switch the big harm buff to your Icerind Hatchet.” This Royal Knight’s Resolve exploit is what was really powering all that prime harm ice hatchet stomping. Each present route for speedrunning Elden Ring relied on that exploit.
“The reality, nevertheless, is that at the least for now, Hoarfrost Stomp is not going anyplace,” Regole says. As he factors out, speedrunners for all Souls video games do not essentially use the most recent patch. “Downpatching” or rolling again to an earlier recreation model, is a routine a part of speedrunning loads of video games. If patch 1.02 with the Royal Knight’s Resolve exploit stays the quickest option to beat the sport, that is the one which speedrunners will use to compete for data on Speedrun.com when submissions open on March 25.
After the patch notes, the Speedsouls neighborhood Discord has been a flurry with recommendations for alternate options to the boss-melting Hoarfrost Stomp. Regole means that different weapons just like the gnarly Reduvia dagger or Blasphemous Blade, that are handy to improve may develop into new favorites.
“Possibly somebody will discover one thing that’s even sooner than what we had been doing beforehand,” Regole says. “Not only a completely different weapon, however maybe even fully new glitches that weren’t doable or undiscovered on earlier patches of the sport.”
It is nonetheless early days for Elden Ring speedrunning, actually. Extra patches will come. New exploits will floor. Speedrunners might be digging up new methods on this one for years but. In the event that they do provide you with much more damaged methods of beating bosses than the dominant ice stomp, I am unable to wait to see them.
