Elden Ring Update Nerfs Broken Build That Was Humiliating the Final Boss

Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree has released its latest set of patch notes, which fix a notorious boss position and severely nerf a build that’s gone viral for decimating the final boss.

At 4:00 am EST, Bandai released its second set of patch notes, which will have players cheering or booing, depending on their level of cheesiness. Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree is known for its brutal bosses that have even the most veteran players dying for hours on end. One of the most prominent complaints was about the optional boss, Commander Gaius, who is infamous for charging at you the moment you walk into the arena, giving players almost no time to react before being pummeled into the fog gate. This set of patch notes resets Gaius back to his original position as the first fight, giving players a chance to breathe. The same has been done for the Golden Hippopotamus.

The second mage change is the nerf to the Lightning Perfume build. This build utilizes the Ash of War Rolling Sparks and Wall of Sparks to do tremendous damage. So tremendous, in fact, that it spawned a wave of videos and TikToks showing bosses, including the final boss of the Shadow of the Erdtree, being one-shot or killed in under a minute. There was apparently a bug that caused the Ash of Wars to do more damage than expected and has now been fixed.

Beyond this, the patch notes have also adjusted the throwing range for some of the Smithscript weapons and increased the Intelligence scaling for the Carian Sorcery Sword while slightly decreasing its base damage. A not insignificant number of bugs have been fixed, too. Catch all the changes below in full detail.

  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 Flame
  • Discus 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 Dagger
  • Smithscript Cirque
  • Smithscript Axe
  • Smithscript Greathammer
  • Smithscript Spear
  • Golem Fist
  • Smithscript 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.

You can read the patch notes on the official Bandai site here.