Beating Elden Ring with the WORST CROSSBOW in the game (Soldier's Crossbow Only Challenge)

[@ingeniousclown]

Check out the continuation where I take this build to the DLC! kzbin.info/www/bejne/nHjcZomLqthjjq8

[@leewhitley3091]

By the way the reason Fire Giant “cheats” with status effects is that P2 Fire Giant is a separate NPC stored under the map so when the transition happens the status buildup gets wiped because it’s a new enemy

[@yougosquishnow]

Yup. This is correct.

[@namethefifth7315]

Thats what i assumed

[@shadowrosegaming3566]

Or apparently his health will drain in 1 second depending on something but it is funny to watch p2 health bar instantly die

[@goblinphreak2132]

The whole game is cheating. NPCs have no stamina and no magical limitations like the player. They can infinite dodge and infinite cast magic. That aspec of the game sucks ass. If the game had proper stamina/magical limits on NPCs it would be more fun.

[@RizzyGyatt]

@@goblinphreak2132 is this satire

[@bee1364]

For anyone who was wandering about the double Waterfowl Dance in the Malenia fight, that only happened because he was using ranged weapons. It does have a 30 or so second cooldown, but Malenia can skip this cooldown by sidestepping a ranged attack. However, this also resets the cooldown of the move when going back to melee, so in a normal run you can dodge 1 Dance, attack for 20 or so seconds with melee, then back up and throw a pebble or any projectile at a safe range to dodge Waterfowl. Whether or not this is good game design is a different question, but it’s something to keep in mind if you’re struggling to react to it up close and don’t want to use freeze pots.

[@hestia8790]

wanted to mention this, you can bait the attack with ranged weapons, which is good when you need her to put it on cd so you can actually trade with her

[@skyfallen2775]

Basically. Just bullshit

[@sethescope]

​@@hestia8790 don't judge me but my exhausted tiny little brain was so confused by your use of "trade with her" because my immediate assumption was you meant trading cards like pokemon or MTG cards lmao I'm struggling today

[@jippy33]

I clipped through the terrain and saw a second fire giant once. Now I know.

[@blastortoise]

I would say it is good design. It forces a ranged player to think outside the box or forces them to figure out how to land their attacks, plus in co-op if you know this trick you can make an otherwise very tough boss do exactly what you want.

[@the_Red_Star]

"A weapon without scaling? Cool, does that mean anyone can use it well?" "NO! It means _nobody_ can!"

[@shirosaki97]

Last challenge run he said, take a break instead. Can't wait to see you kill Malenia by melee with a digger's glitnstone staff.

[@ingeniousclown]

No joke I was actually considering a "miner" run with magic scraps and stonedigger sorceries

[@DarkeWiing]

@@ingeniousclown I'd love to see that as a challenge run!

[@aclaymushroomwithaberet7084]

@@ingeniousclown please do that lol

[@shirosaki97]

@@ingeniousclown Honestly sounds like a lot of fun to give it a shot at some point :D

[@pandemonium2536]

Don't forget to use the flaming rocks

[@mitzi3262]

Personally if Melania did a back-to-back waterfowl on me man I'd just quit the game, no sir not worth it, I'll go fight the sekiro boss in sekiro thank you

[@ameshizen381]

The discourse on malenia made me dislike the souls community. Like I get difficulty is subjective and won't complain if a. Boss is hard. I will call out if that shit is cheap tho.

[@highlightermarca-texto3281]

@@ameshizen381 The souls community hates Malenia, from what I've seen. It's mostly the new people defending her who think souls games are supposed to be difficult, so the harder the boss the better it is.

[@ameshizen381]

@@highlightermarca-texto3281 yeah. Like artorias is a hard boss even with max poise. If he is buffed you will be one to two shot guaranteed. He doesn't have no aoes or delayed attacks just straight hands. In terms of superbosses. Nameless king is absolutely ruthless but again nameless is hard because his move kit is actually difficult. Malenia moves are dumb telegraphed and pretty bait. However her hyperarmor and special Moves are a coin toss. No amount of detailed rhetoric can convince me that phase 2 is a fair fight. Lmao

[@HieSpeed]

I have no particular problem with Malenia or her moveset. I see people complaining that its like putting a Sekiro boss in Dark Souls, something that has literally been done through mods, and in a game with less mobility and generally lower damage(that being the Ds3 early game). Although I do agree that waterfowl is kinda bs and some of her attacks are inconsistent and the healing sucks too, its certainly a bit much. But yeah, Sekiro boss in Dark Souls, its been done, and it was quite a fun fight tbh.

[@PoeticBanana3]

Tbh I find Melania fun

[@TheValiantBob]

I saw one person theorize that Malenia was supposed to be a boss for a Sekiro DLC that never happened, most likely Tomoe. And honestly I can see it, as her moveset would have fit in PERFECTLY with Sekiro's deflection-parry based gameplay. Anyway, interesting run and was fun to watch! Although...is it a bad time to mention that the spear talisman would have also helped with your damage since arrows and bolts count as pierce damage for the counter hits?

[@silasstryder]

Oof, yeah that's brutal he didn't know that because it helps A LOT since you're often times shooting while they're locked in an attack animation

[@madmanpecos]

In the first version of the game, she would block attacks with her katana. She absolutely was meant to be a sekiro boss

[@carljohan9265]

Isn't the effect of the spear talisman limited to melee?

[@TheValiantBob]

@@carljohan9265 Nope, as long as it is physical and pierce damage, the spear talisman will work. Same goes with the leo ring in all of the Dark Souls games too

[@RamadaArtist]

The clarity of your critique on Waterfowl Dance is immensely refreshing to hear. Malenia *would* be an amazing fight if this move were tweaked, and you touched directly on several straightforward ways of doing so, but as it stands the fight almost always breaks down to, "oh, here's this fucking thing again, and I was standing in the wrong place when she decided to start it so there's nothing I can do," and then eventually to, "fine, I'll equip a backup weapon with BHS for this *one fucking move* so that I can actually participate in the rest of the fight."

[@BlackBinderGames]

No, its good as is.

[@thezestfall1st107]

I wish poison worked like it does in salt and sanctuary. The more you apply it after you’ve gotten that first proc the stronger it gets. Keeps it distinct and not just a downgrade from rot, rot procs and it devastates, but poison you’d have to keep that pressure up to get comparable damage

[@Starlitsoul0359]

Yeah! You don’t get more resistance to poison if ya have a double dose after all, you’re more weak to it! Cause poison hurts! So more poison hurts even more!

[@BiggieCrescent]

The rivalry between him and Skumnut is starting to blossom

[@christianmontenegro1671]

I need that crossover

[@yurilopes420]

skumnut is literally the impersonation of every smelly highschool ever. repeating childish jokes, trend chasing, and in general literal 0 personality this dude's much more engaging

[@Ashenboi]

For those who are wondering about the status effects on the fire giant, there was a glitch in either 1.03 or 1.04 where applying bleed or frostbite to the fire giant to initiate the cutscene would one shot him. I'm assuming the devs fixed this by removing all status effects from the boss after the citscene and resetting any and all status buildup that had been previously applied.

[@StanleyG23]

Yes, the same glitch was present for the Godskin Duo fight.

[@Liamdrw]

This glitch was for any boss that had cutscenes for phase transitions which also means that you were able to skip malenia phase 2

[@1KBestK]

Actually, the phase transition removing status effects predates that bug. Pretty sure I remember it happening on release.

[@Ashenboi]

@@1KBestK really cause in similar runs people had trouble poisoning malenia in second phase due to status resistances and fire giant was the first noticeable boss yo not have that problem after the patch

[@1KBestK]

@@Ashenboi Pretty sure it has to do with fire giant's phase 2 being a different npc, which has always been the case.

[@narupiv]

You can actually dualstance crossbiws in ds2, it shoots both at the same time then reloads both (one at a time, very unsafe lol) but its actually a powerstance B team put in the game that A team seems to have missed.

[@keithcrews4509]

I loved the ds2 crossbow power stance so much. I really hope that they add it in the dlcs

[@maninblack3410]

B team doesn’t really exist anymore, right? I haven’t really looked at the credits or anything, but based on the fact that “B team” has only made ds2 I assumed they decided to never split the team again. Although, I guess they did make deracine and they’re apparently almost done with another game. Maybe B team does still exist and is just working on non-souls games?

[@TopMep]

@@maninblack3410 they probably stopped with the souls games due to the disaster they created with ds2

[@maninblack3410]

@@TopMep Aw that’s not fair. Ds2 is still a good game in spite of the obvious development troubles. It made a ton of ambitious calls and is a very comfy game for me. Uh… it is bottom of my souls list though…

[@Winasaurus]

Powerstancing dual pulley crossbows with poison/rot, then swapping to bleed/frost. Oof. I don't think there'd be any videos about it because of how strong it would be.

[@DPadGamer]

Crossbro no, what have you done... Great to see this video released :D

[@kaigdoa893rhkpp]

Took me a sec to figure out what you did there

[@fakedrek2191]

@@kaigdoa893rhkpp same

[@darthplagueis13]

One thing I've noticed about the run-up to Radahn is that your route plays a role. A lot of players tend to be drawn to the right side of him, due to conveniently placed summoning signs, but in my experience, that actually causes Radahn to spam his gravity snipe and arrow shotgun more, whereas staying right infront of him or slightly to his left whilst closing the distance will result in him using a arrow rain and then go into melee mode quite quickly.

[@darthplagueis13]

Side note: You probably could have made the Gideon fight easier by beating Malenia first. If you then talk to him, he'll gain the ability to do her Scarlet Aeonia which he likes to spam when he gets damaged and which provides a massive opening.

[@strikervx4435]

Well for Radahn you can just run far away from him so that he stops using the bow completely and starts the melee fight way quicker.

[@greyrgoose]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought I'd be done with Elden Ring after 1 playthrough, and am now finishing my 2nd and thinking about my 3rd's build 😅

[@lewispooper3138]

I’m sure most souls fans are on their 20th + play throughs just like all the other games. After the first ng, the game is only like 4 hours long

[@numbertwelve9359]

I think I might go all the way to ng+ 12 because, I like the number and on that run I will do all bosses

[@jamesonburford7400]

You need to do 3 separate play throughs if you're a trophy/ achievement hunter as myself, or if you're into it getting a double of a liked weapon so you can dual wield. I treat elden ring like Pokémon...gotta catch em all

[@aclaymushroomwithaberet7084]

Me too actually! I'm doing a challenge run for this one though. Summoned weapons only. For reasons (I feel weird about using ranged magic)

[@trevenmullen435]

That fact that he does this with such ease really emphasizes the fact that the other challenges he did must have been impossibly hard. Love you videos.

[@1cynicalsaint]

42:22 You may be unsurprised to be learn that using projectiles at range is a known method to bait Waterfowl Dance.

[@SpydersByte]

lol love the Soldier of Godrick lore youre building up. Was hilarious to see you firing at nothing claiming he was dodging everything :'D Another great challenge run, hats off to you.

[@user-uf7qf7mv6k]

5:13 There's a spot on Mount Gelmir (I think it's the Craftsman's Shack) with a herd of goats nearby, and a very convenient headless abductor virgin further up the path towards sorcerer Azur. This one in particular has a tendency to charge in circles around you, making it a decent method of farming bones without spending any.

[@TheSoldierOfGodrick]

Imagine doing a roll only Elden Ring run and only calling that you're training ark. I saw that and assumed there was nowhere left to go for challenge runs. Also, I look forward to our rematch in future runs. We actually trained soldiers to dodge by firing crossbows at them, so it was kind of unfair to you.

[@Navelofman]

I think I saw my message in Malenia's boss room in your video. It's on top of the little sand pile and just says "Holy, dung!", which is how I felt when I first beat her.

[@requiemagent3014]

Welcome to the club. I cannot stop playing Elden Ring either. I have three character now that have reached NG+8. For literally no reason. I cannot stop playing this game

[@mitzi3262]

I tried doing a bow only run and this made me realize how annoying or sometimes useless downtime is in Elden ring. I spent a lot of time just waiting on the boss to do something so I can get a shot in, but they were all too keen on doing the "lore walk". Downtime in other games gave you a chance to drink estus or a shot off, here it's just for calming you down I guess.

[@lewispooper3138]

If you think elden ring bosses edge walk too much, you haven’t played ds3

[@degurechaff4802]

Yh and thts what i like in it the bosses trying to kill you not to entertainme you

[@13buthead]

it's not that bad other than Radagon and Malenia. buy bones and stuff for bleed arrows.

[@ITBEurgava]

..."lore walk"?

[@highlightermarca-texto3281]

The annoying thing is that some bosses (Godskin Apostle, Malenia) will just stare at you waiting for you to press a button, then the moment you do, they'll hit you. I've had fights against Apostle where he'd legitimately stare at me for 10 seconds and not do anything, then the moment I pressed R1 he'd start a combo. That's not difficult, it's just boring.

[@octahedronlover]

On Fire Giant's poison and resistance reset: In multi-phase boss fights, From likes to do this thing where each phase uses a unique character model, sometimes sharing a health pool. During phase 1, the model for phase 2 is typically chilling out underground, and gets moved into place during the cutscene. This might have something to do with why the poison and resistance reset; they probably overlooked it and forgot to make it carry over

[@choty7066]

Melania starts waterfowl way more often if you use ranged attacks on her. I usually bait it with magic at around 60% health

[@stitchjuju7512]

The tiny crossbow icon in the upper-left weapon icon tells you if it's loaded or not. If the crossbow icon has just a line it needs to be reloaded. If the icon is open (triangular shape) it's ready to fire. No keeping track in your head and a simple glance is all that's needed. Edit: The icon dims when the crossbow needs to be reloaded. This makes it even easier to see and keep track of.

[@TheKingofGargos]

Great tip for sloping radahn’s arrow barrage, instead of going towards radahn at the start of the fight run in the opposite direction until he unrenders, after he derenders run back towards him and when he reloads he won’t try and use his bow again

[@Lady_Maria-2007]

The poison resets on Fire Giant and Maliketh because they’re actually different fights entirely, as shown by a randomisers, they just swap out one NPC for another

[@highlightermarca-texto3281]

Fire Giant resets his status in phase 2 because the legless Fire Giant is a new model. It's hidden under the arena in phase 1 and comes up during the cutscene. Each model has it's own status resistances. Also glad to see you calling out Malenia on her bullshit.

[@warlocke7065]

Hey ingenious, I just started watching your Elden ring videos and I love how good you are at analyzing boss fights for openings and keep trying till you inevitably find the right strategy. Taking out the duo with a crossbow is insanely impressive. Keep up the awesome content dude!

[@Nitnert1]

I love the banter between you and skumnut

[@Captain_Sanders]

I actually had a build revolving around the heavy crossbow and I modeled it after a medieval pavise crossbowman To those who don’t know pavise, A pavise is a large shield that was given to crossbows to act as cover when they had to reload. They can be placed on the ground or on their backs The icon shield is the closest resemblance of this beautiful piece of history

[@fusedpegasus2926]

Hey there's a hidden boss called the bell bering hunter basically the briar knight and there's one in limgrave at the war masters shack that allows you to buy infinite bones, one in the church of vows, and one at the isolated merchants shack in caelid. To spawn them consistently turn the time to night time and get up then rest again

[@somenerd4572]

you wrote this comment before finishing the video huh?

[@stickinittotheman1]

Seems that way ^ I appreciate the excitement and information anyway 😅 Have a good one folks, love and peace.

[@oneoranota]

What makes waterfowl dance frustrating imo is that you can't read the dodge. If you don't get divine inspiration, you can get owned by this attack a hundred times in a row. Having powerful bosses is not a problem. Giving them one-shot patterns is not a problem. The problem is how messy her dance is. The only way to learn how to dodge it is to look it up on the Internet. And if the player has to google stuff, it's kind of a miss on developer's side.

[@hughmongus6959]

Great video! Particularly rickety achievement! Personally, I like to stay locked on for waterfowl to time the roll through and backwards walk. Was a major problem for me and I had to learn it with youtube, but I'm reliably avoiding it now. Honestly, my only problem with Malenia now is her healing factor, punishing you double as hard for making mistakes. You lose both health and progress from getting hit! Never seen anything like it in any other videogame I've ever played haha If it weren't for that ludicrous healing, she would be my favorite boss in the game

[@Nightmare-pj4fg]

The key to reliably dodging Malikeths flurry is to not try and dodge the flurry itself. You dodge the initial sweep, and then just run and jump away from it. For the one that’s a spin overhead into the flurry, you just run past the overhead slashes and you’re behind him before the flurry even begins.

[@zkillyatt1738]

Fun Fact, although it doesn’t seem like it would, he can be rot procced fairly easily, and he takes a bit extra damage from it as well, speaking about Radahn.

[@ragnarok_time]

Fun fact about the fire giant posion reset. That is because of how they programmed the boss. The second faze is under the floor but its health is doubled. So when you kill the main one it will load up the half healthed second boss. This also means since its a new boss with the same name it has never been poisoned

[@user-ov7zo3pj1n]

please don't get burnt out on ER. I need more of these videos

[@Skillissue3993]

I never understood why people complained about godskin duo, the first time I killed them I was a pyromancy-type build. Tried to kill em a second time as a strength-dex build and got my ass beat. Finally, I understand.

[@AceArata]

Im absolutely juiced at the Trisection for Chapter 4. Stellar performance once again! Making me want to try a run like this myself, maybe not one punishing though (since I'm not doing it for a video) Also, for having such a painfully difficult build, I'm genuinely impressed at your Soldier of Godrick fight.

[@otakufreak40]

The fact that it wasn't mentioned throughout the video makes me wonder if you had learned at any point that shooting while jumping increases the attack speed.

[@izisvi]

part of why malenia has so much variance in waterfowl use is she uses it at certain health thresholds. If she manages to leech to back above a threshold, she'll have another opportunity to use the waterfowl. That isn't 100% of it because she still doesn't always seem to use it every run but if you have a particularly bad run with taking hits from a waterfowl, she'll be extremely likely to heal back above the threshold and do it again.

[@thestormkage]

The skumnut vs indigenous beef is hilarious

[@HampsterMD]

Quick note on the Fire Giant poison thing for anyone who’s curious - the reason why he doesn’t keep status effects between phase 1 and phase 2 is because technically they are different mobs sharing one health pool. The cutscene basically hides the pop-in of the game swapping the phase two mob out from under the arena. There is/was a bug regarding status effects between the phases though (been a while since I fought him, idk if it got patched). If you get him to phase 2 with a DoT status effect, phase one starts to take massive damage from it during the cutscene. This is why the health bar gets chunked when the cutscene gets skipped. Best guess is the phase one mob starts to take damage per frame during the cutscene instead of per second, leading to a massive damage chunk between phases.

[@ingeniousclown]

That's partially right, but the Fire Giant always loses 10% of its max HP during the phase transition.

[@darthplagueis13]

@@ingeniousclown True, but I've seen some clips where the fire giants literally just died after the cutscene if he got into the phase transition with a bleed or rot, so I guess they've patched it so all status effects just get cleansed if you hit the half waypoint.

[@cyrusgarretson7928]

Love your runs and style of video, so glad there's more to watch

[@Killerbot-jn6xi]

20:00 the reason the resistances reset and the poison stopped is because the second phase of fire giant is a different entity from the first phase

[@thomashuriez2948]

Nice vid, i particulary like the chapters you include

[@seafoodface]

i absolutely love the integrity of your runs, you always shy away from the meta choices the same way i do

[@carlosdario9810]

As a weak chin user myself, I can tell you that’s a greater challenge than using the xbow

[@jeydomo]

I'm glad you used the ff7 song for the final secret boss. Because I'm doing a run as Cloud, but early Soldier version and I ended up just wearing that armor set and still am.

[@Schyleonxbox]

Hints onto goldenfrey, Godfrey and Radagons stomp attacks, especially when Radagon jumps into the air and slams down to the floor, you can either roll into them, or jump to dodge!

[@Foostini]

I agree with you about Malenia. I think with any one of her gimmicks she'd still be an incredibly challenging boss but with all of them at once it's absolutely ludicrous. Or hell, even with some tweaks to her gimmicks like not healing if she hits your shield would be fine but blegh.

[@berkdiggler5299]

I've only played Elden ring for 10ish hours but I love watching your content, really well explained even for a noob like me! :)

[@carlosdario9810]

Man, I implore you to make a only fists challenge (bare fist, no fist weapon). That would be epic. Anyway, thank you for your content. I watch this video and the elden roll one almost everyday.

[@ingeniousclown]

Naw man, it's waaaaaay too weak.

[@carlosdario9810]

@@ingeniousclown Oh well, you are still the best man! Keep the great work

[@funkymachine]

>start crossbow/balista only to be a gigachad and potentially make a small video for my friends since there aren't many videos >get past rykard and fire giant >see "soldiers crossbow only" Jesus christ, what the fuck, madlad. Excited to see this Also i would potentially argue the worst crossbow is the light (nearly exactly the same damage), as while i may be crazy soldiers crossbow I think fires faster/has less recovery frames, at least I could dodge margit better with it than light/crepus. It ended up actually being my weapon for margit for this reason, since I didn't let myself sequence break for avlynn

[@dolparadise3040]

The reason fire giants poison is gone after the cutscene is this. If you’ve played a boss randomizer you know why, but essentially they are two different bosses, after the cutscene the previous fire giant is replaced by another fire giant. This is why is boss randomizers you encounter both p1 and p2 fire giant

[@blanketray6050]

Tip for hitting enemies that dodge: if you aim to their left or right, opposed to where they are, they’ll still dodge and move right into the way of the bolt. Kind of a 50/50 if you actually hit, though.

[@zapcV]

please do a challenge run using only sleep items/weapons! (sleep pots, st. trina's sword, st. trina's torch, possibly that one summon that only uses sleep arrows)

[@crecy_]

Nice use of Hornet's theme during the Malenia fight, that song fits her so well.

[@upset3rdweel952]

the mechanic where status is harder to build based on how many times its procced(I call it callousing) is applied to all enemies, but more noticeable on Fire Giant because I believe that the effect is enhanced(don't quote me on that)

[@ingeniousclown]

I love the term "callousing" for that mechanic!

[@upset3rdweel952]

@@ingeniousclown thanky'

[@replayarchive8758]

12:14 that glintstone moon beam combo has killed me so many times its infuriating

[@knightofthewolves6033]

Since I got covid I've been looking for an actual crossbow run without the pulley crossbow and you sir are the hero I needed, I was thinking of doing a crossbow run only for ng + 8 since I never really used them.

[@ingeniousclown]

Hope you feel better quickly!

[@luiscesarvianagomes970]

The problem with Malenia is that other bosses usually have 1 or 2 special characteristics, like healing, blocking, evading, massive damage attacks, nearly unavoidable attacks, etc.... Malenia has all of them... she heals with every hit, with bonus healing if she does damage, she can evade and block atacks, evade and counter your own counter (she is the only boss that does this by the way), need to be parried 3 tries to be open to a riposte and has not one but 3 massive damage attacks, being that one is absurdly hard to evade and the other two are hard if you dont know how to evade them. Plus the game mechanics bending that she has

[@RosuVT]

FYI Malenia's Waterfowl is much more likely to happen when you are attacking her from range. It's so much of an abusable bait that just having throwing knives can be more than enough to bait waterfowl from super far away.

[@kingzecromatic]

By the way, if you unlock radahn and ride in the opposite direction then it'll force him to go directly into melee. Very handy.

[@ValorShincie]

Bolts and arrows scale according to the stat of the element. So you have to have faith if you want to real solid fire damage

[@jedsanford7879]

really enjoying these challenge runs

[@mt2r-music]

I love this mans challenge runs.

[@grfrjiglstan]

The reason all your status effects reset during round 2 with the fire giant is because the two phases are two different entities. Once you enter phase 2, the initial version is swapped out for the Lieutenant Dan version. Nothing you did in phase 1 is carried over, except the damage, of course. With Fatboy & Stretch, it's the opposite. Instead of keeping 5 versions of each one of them in reserve, it probably makes more sense for them to keep bringing back the original ones over and over, as the title "godskin duo" would suggest. So this time, it remembers how many times you've procced each one with each status, meaning it's a bad idea to poison them right before they die of natural causes.

[@L4D1992]

Fun fact, you can actually interrupt her waterfowl dance by throwing a single frost pot, at least you used to. I haven't fought her in a bit but I don't see that being something they'd "fix". Granted you do have to throw it when she's in the air. I think the fact that people basically ignore consumables make a lot of little things like that got entirely unnoticed.

[@mrpersonhaha4126]

I never realised how difficult Melania was on my first run I just did a rivers of blood mimic tear combo and first tried her due to stun locks.

[@ilikespagett1514]

33:30 so glad someone finally noticed this, it annoys me how people immediately skip to niall's 2nd phase. he enters it anyways at half hp and despawns his summons so theres no reason not to

[@lunayre]

honestly I just find the second phase super fun, dodging the lightning and sneaking charge attacks under his retaliating thrusts never gets tiring

[@asherroodcreel640]

Fyi a steel cross bow like that was a very expensive peace of equipment and the men at arms who used them where paid far more then those who used longbows which had a far faster fire rate, range and impact, despite the far lower draw weight 60-210 pounds vs at least 700 all the way to 1400, the projectile on a long bow is more powerful because it is drawn back farther so more of the energy is transferred into the bolt. The reason they didn't make the arms on the crossbow go back further was because the metal at the time wasn't pure and the slang incursions could it to snap, think about a metal bar on a sting snapping with 900 pounds in it. If you take away anything from my tired ramblings it's that swords are the dexterity weapon, war archers are ripped

[@qwormuli77]

People, listen to this guy --this guy knows what's up.

[@kromadomezz1026]

Seriously good job. I don’t know whether to be impressed or worried that you are this into torturing yourself, especially with the malenia fight 😅.

[@BurritoInTheMist]

Hearing the Malenia bit at 43:20, here's my take on it: You can compare Malenia to Mohg and see a boss that embodies everything REALLY COOL about Soulsborne design (a single devastating attack as you put it that the fight revolves around); Delayed attacks, arena control that makes placement and conscious movement matter, combos that aren't INSTANT and require a frame of reaction-timing, and his phase 2 healthbar is just a little bit of healing from his NIHIL moves. Malenia though... all the regen, the Waterfowl's AWFUL movement in order to dodge it, etc. etc. It's rough. Frozen Pots (not usable in this run, but) apparently stagger her out of Waterfowl if you can throw them. Haven't tested it myself yet though.

[@nullmoon3058]

There are videos of the frost pot strat working on malenia but the problem is, its not a 100% solution depending on how many times she decides to use waterfowl dance. Because it starts to take more and more pots to stagger her out of wfd, if she decides she wants to spam it you are doomed anyway.

[@diamondrhino64]

I know you mentioned how you roll away from malenia's flurry on accident a lot, but one thing i noticed in a boss you said still gave you trouble, hoarah loux (and both godfrey versions) is that you roll away on all his ground stomps where he creates the shockwaves of spiked rocks, the move is specifically designed to punish rolling away to the best of my knowledge, i think rolling forwards works amazingly and i imagine rolling to the side would be a bit more consistent than back rolling

[@Pyromuffin]

you can also jump over it

[@jamiemanning4944]

I've been noticing the Nathan Fillian clips from Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog in your videos and I love it lol. That movie is amazing! Nice work I love your videos!

[@kindredhunter1887]

Believe it or not, light rolling away from the flurry while already walking backwards usually works in avoiding it. In fact walking backwards can nullify a lot of her move set in my experience

[@skyprior3866]

20:20 HAHA I finally know something, well this is because in the cutscene the fire giant roly poly electric boogaloo actually is a different entity from other fire giant with double hp, who after being killed gets dead, then this guy a ways away under the map, gets transferred to the location where the cutscene ends during the cutscene and so the resist was refreshed in a way, cause the resistances where never procked. There's that useless information you can't return it

[@BurningLance2]

nice also i think most if not all of the flowers needed for the various bolts etc for the special bolts respawns in jarburg and i think the only one that doesnt respawn is that weed thats been memed alot that you find in chests etc

[@qwormuli77]

All of the "exceedingly rare to find" described plants never respawn, including sacramental buds, both of the lilies and the much memed arteria leaves. Which means that rot cures are literally a limited resource across every run, outside of very obscure and specific farming. I don't know who though of that, but they did.

[@cowhidemusic8904]

I've been co-oping Melania and the number of phase II inst-death of the hosts is nuts. Even when I was host running under did not work, but it did when I was solo.

[@mohicanronin]

heres a tip when you spawn in for radahn fight immediately run away theres a single mound of weapons a short distance behind you, go around them and radahn will no longer use arrows he will instead charge towards you immediately skipping the bs arrow portion of the fight.

[@onkornix]

I was thinking recently as I grind for all the items in the game: elden ring but you can only use enemy drops. The only rule being: you can only use items, weapons, and armor that were dropped from normal field enemies; no boss, npc, or quest items. (Optionally that Includes no healing or torrent but that would be hell.)

[@viktoriyaforrest8265]

Probably, that Godskin Noble in Godskin Duo is one and only NPC and when it summoned, his HP got restored and it returned to the bossfight. This could explain the resistance to poison.

[@Vi4Valentin]

3:10 kick is base kit as far as fists go, kicking them down the ledge would kill I reckon, rule number one doesn't need breaking

[@jameseff]

I’m binging your challenge videos my boy, great sense of humor 😂

[@Schyleonxbox]

For Radahn, i suggest using Rot in your next challenges if possible! Its very very good against him, it only takes two setups of rot from rot breath to kill, so it may help!

[@Skarnercrystaline]

I can definitely sense some serious seethe from the Malenia fight from that long rant section.

[@justdirt]

As someone who beat Elden Ring with a bow and crossbow on ng+, any boss that was immune to most statuses were almost impossible to beat. The elden beast took so long to beat, I was going insane. The short bow is by far the best bow as the jump attack and fast fire rate outclass the other bows. The two heavier bows are awful. Yes, they scale and have special arrows, but the damage quickly falls off past mid game. Crossbows are better than the bows aside from the short bow, but not by much. The repeating crossbow is an amazing side weapon to have in your off hand

[@moogameslegend6701]

I thought the backlogs was gonna do this challenge but the video was awesome

[@ingeniousclown]

I binged a lot of his videos after finding them when doing the initial searches for Crossbow content. I bet he still will eventually, just to complete the cycle.

[@shaw2024]

Mr lemon says he doesn't like this game all that much but will be doing a firebomb run

[@mintyleafbois849]

I legit did the exact same thing with Niall but I just rotted him and then juked out sheild guy till second phase

[@borgchap1191]

As someone who used only crossbows on three playthroughs, nice job!

[@eldritch_whispers1654]

asking for justice for act man came out of nowhere but honestly it's more than appreciated. Justice for Act Man

[@adventuretv9111]

i Love fighting Fire giant ! i really like the calm strategic fight ! remember the Giant is trying to defende himself and not attack !!!

[@itsjustme8947]

Stumbled on your channel today. THIS was entertaining enough to earn you another sub. Thank you.

[@jimmyjams5038]

One thing that's easy to miss is that at the top left of the weapon window there's a crossbow symbol that indicates whether or not the weapon is loaded.

[@colorgreen8728]

That noble ain’t no pushover that’s for sure

[@RomanMina]

Now i dare you to enter you final Form for a challenge Briar armour, crossbow in left hand and shield in right! Would be a funny challenge to watch knowing context

[@phillipcraig1120]

Figaro Castle theme at stormveil Castle. Nice touch