A crafty Altus Plateau and Deeproot Depths give even the most skilled FromSoftware veterans a challenge, but one of Elden Ring's endgame struggles can be easily overcome through subterfuge.
As FromSoftware's first open-world soulslike title, Elden Ring gives players the ability to explore The Lands Between at their leisure. The start of the game brings the Tarnished player character to the lush land of Limgrave and points them towards the massive Stormveil Castle as their first major objective. However, players are free to explore other areas of Limgrave before heading to Stormveil, and the area can even be entirely circumvented if players instead visit neighboring regions like Liurnia or Caelid. This freedom of exploration is also reflected in optional Elden Ring bosses, many of whom simply roam The Lands Between rather than waiting for the player in an arena.
Elphael, Brace of the Haligtree is one of Elden Ring's deadliest endgame areas, but Reddit windermere_peaks managed to completely skip a majority of the Legacy Dungeon. Like past FromSoftware titles, Elden Ring dungeons feature shortcuts that let players easily return to areas they have already conquered. However, windermere_peaks reveals that one elevator shortcut can instead let gamers skip most of the area. Throwing themselves down an elevator shaft kills the player, but their corpse is able to activate the switch that sends it to an earlier area. Once windermere_peaks respawns they are free to use the now-unlocked elevator, which takes them down to the end of Elphael.
While windermere_peaks leapt down an elevator shaft to skip Elphael, another Elden Ring player recently used a cliff to defeat a boss. Two Elden Ring gargoyle bosses are found in the game's underground Siofra River region, and the dynamic duo can pose a challenge to even the toughest Tarnished. However, the gargantuan creatures are fought at the top of a cliff, and they can both be tricked into falling to their death. This makes the gargoyle battle trivial, but FromSoftware veterans know that any strategy is fair to use in battle.
Many careless Elden Ring players have died falling down elevator shafts, but windermere_peaks has turned the accident into an actual strategy. Activating an elevator with their dead body allows the Tarnished adventurer to avoid most of Elphael, Brace of the Haligtree, which saves a lot of time and frustration. Unfortunately, no amount of elevator trickery will give windermere_peaks an advantage over the godly boss waiting at the end of Elphael.
Elden Ring is available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and PC.
Source: windermere_peaks/Reddit
