Elden Ring Patch Gets Rid Of DLC Boss Cheese Strategy

If Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree’s first patch was meant to make the DLC easier, this second one is out for blood again. Effectively, patch 1.12.3 issues a host of balance changes that weaken a bunch of Shadow of the Erdtree’s new weapons and Ash of War skills, including a popular build that players were using to kill the difficult final boss of the expansion.

While there are a slew of nerfs in the latest update, the most impactful changes affect the new perfume bottles and the specific Ash of War called Rolling Sparks. When used in tandem with the Lighting and/or Frenzyflame perfume bottle, the build was able to evaporate enemies pretty quickly, and in some cases, it’d even one-shot them.

Spoilers for Shadow of the Erdtree’s final boss follow.

This build became a particularly popular tool for players who were stuck on the DLC’s final boss fight against Promised Consort Radahn, who hits like a goddamn truck and kind of demands you use a cheese strategy—which are often dubbed cheap tricks because they rely on overpowered builds or exploiting something wrong with the game.

Now, players need to go back to defeating Radahn the good ol’ fashioned way. The update also nerfs the Swift Slash Ash of War (thank goodness) due to its over-effectiveness in PvP, as well as the new thrusting shield weapons, which began to take off in popularity. Guarding while attacking with them wouldn’t consume that much stamina, allowing players to spam attacks on the thrusting shields with little consequence.

While many new weapons were nerfed, the Carian Sorcery Sword actually had its Intelligence scaling tuned up higher, though its general attack damage was knocked down a bit. This should make it more powerful to use spells via the sword, while appropriately nerfing its raw damage, since that’s rarely the move for anyone prioritizing the Intelligence stat.

Though weapons are the focus of the balance changes in this patch, it also makes life a little easier as far as two of the DLC’s more demanding boss fights. Both Commander Gaius and the Golden Hippopotamus have had their spawn point fixed. Now, they should begin in a fixed point a fair distance away from the fog gate entrance, so as to not obliterate the player too quickly, which has become a common complaint among players for most of Shadow of the Erdtree’s boss encounters.

And so FromSoftware giveth, but it also taketh away. Given the cadence of these updates, I’d expect a few more balance changes over the next few weeks before the developer decides everything is in its rightful place. So if you’ve got a busted build and want to pop off, I’d encourage some haste, y’all. The full patch notes follow below:

PvP-exclusive balance adjustments

• Decreased the damage and damage animation of the shearing vacuum effect of the “Swift Slash” Skill.

General balance adjustments

• Increased the Intelligence scaling of the Carian Sorcery Sword and slightly decreased the base damage.
• Extended the throwing attacks range for the following weapons:
• Smithscript Dagger / Smithscript Cirque
• Changed the placement of the bosses in the re-fight against the Golden Hippopotamus and Commander Gaius bosses to be in the same position as in the first fight.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug that caused the Rolling Sparks Skill to deal more damage than expected.
• Fixed a bug that caused the Rolling Sparks and Wall of Sparks Skills to deal no damage while some special effects were applied to the player.
• Fixed a bug where some special effects of a right-handed weapon would also be applied to the following Weapon Skills when cast with the left hand:
• Feeble Lord’s Frenzied FlameDiscus Hurl
• Fixed a bug where successfully guarding while attacking using the Thrusting Shield weapon type would consume less stamina than intended.
• Fixed a bug that prevented players from cancelling the attack recovery of two-handed strong attacks by rolling for certain weapons of the Backhand Blades weapon type.
• Fixed a bug that caused the Lightning Perfume Bottle and Frenzyflame Perfume Bottle weapons to deal double damage under certain circumstances.
• Fixed a bug where the Arcane scaling of the Bloodfiend’s Arm weapon was higher than intended when setting an affinity. The status buildup of the heavy attack was also reduced.
• Fixed a bug where the Faith scaling of the Gazing Finger weapon was not being applied correctly.
• Fixed a bug where the damage animation of some attacks of the Fire Knight’s Greatsword against players was different than expected.
• Fixed a bug where the attack affinity of some attacks of the Fire Knight’s Greatsword were different than expected.
• Fixed a bug that caused some affinities for the following weapons to be higher than intended:
• Smithscript DaggerSmithscript CirqueSmithscript AxeSmithscript GreathammerSmithscript SpearGolem FistSmithscript Shield
• Fixed a bug that caused enemies to heal when the Maximum HP reduction gradual HP reduction effect applied by Black Knife Tiche wore off.
• Fixed a bug that caused summoned NPCs to behave differently than expected under certain circumstances.
• Fixed a bug that where the unblockable bite attack of the Golden Hippopotamus boss would connect with players more easily than intended.
• Fixed a bug that caused text to display differently than expected.
• Several other performance improvements and bug fixes.

Possible unstable performance fixes

• For the PS5 version of the game, unstable framerate may be improved by using the “Rebuild Database” option from the device’s safe mode.
• In some PC versions, Ray Tracing may be unintentionally enabled and cause unstable performance. Please check the Ray Tracing setting in the “System” > “Graphics Settings” > “Raytracing Quality” from the title screen or in-game menu.
• In the PC Version, the message “Inappropriate activity detected” may appear without cheating.

To fix this issue, please verify the integrity of the game’s files before restarting the game.

• In the PC version, unstable framerate may be caused by third party applications that control mouse behavior. Deactivating these third party applications may improve performance.

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