Summary
A luckyElden Ringplayer inadvertently verified that a hilarious-looking strategy involving emotes to avoid attacks from Malenia, Blade of Miquella still works. As one of the toughest boss characters inElden Ring, Malenia has terrorized the game’s huge player base with her sweeping sword strikes and challenging attack patterns.
Even three years after its release,Elden Ringcontinues to fascinate new players, thanks to its blend of the challenging combat and gameplay from developer FromSoftware’sSoulsseries and open-world exploration. Players old and new quickly grow to love thehistory of the Lands Between,Elden Ring’s original setting, making fan art not just of the game’s characters but of its locations. FromSoftware and publisher Bandai Namco have also not slept on keepingElden Ringat the top of the news cycle, thanks to the release of major expansions likeShadow of the Erdtreeand the upcoming multiplayer spin-off,Elden Ring Nightreign. As a result, new players are still exploring the game years after its arrival.
One of those new players is Reddit user wildstargazer, who discovered while playing the game for the first time that using theElden RingBalled Up gesturecaused most of Malenia’s attacks to miss completely. They demonstrated with a shared video clip, in which the player curled up with the gesture, causing every hit in Malenia’s first-phase slash combo to miss. After almost a minute of fruitlessly slashing the air above the character, Malenia finally connects with a jumping downward slash, hitting them and transitioning to her grab-and-throw move.
Useful Elden Ring Gesture Cheese Continues to Help Players Fighting Malenia
Explaining how they stumbled upon thehilariousElden Ringstrategy, wildstargazer said that they were playing the game the first time with their boyfriend in co-op. to preserve the new game experience for wildstargazer, the boyfriend would emote to commit suicide when they died to a boss rather than finish it off themselves. During the Malenia fight, they attempted the same move, only to realize that the Balled Up gesture causes the player’s hit box to shrink just below the strike zone for most of Malenia’s fearsome horizontal strokes.
AmusedElden Ringplayers in the subreddit congratulated the pair on discovering a funny strategy, making jokes about how the Balled Up emote reflects the feelings of most players during the Malenia fight. Others pointed out that wildstargazer may be making a mistakeplayingElden Ringin co-op. Since bosses have increased health when faced in multiplayer, wildstargazer’s boyfriend may be making the game harder by being present during the fight. Additionally, they also mentioned that Malenia specifically can be a difficult boss to tackle with friends due to her health-restoration gimmicks.
However players choose to tackleElden Ring’s stiffest challenges, the game’s sense of variety is clearly still effective despite the game being fairly well-known. One can only hope that future FromSoftware projects likeElden Ring Nightreignpreserve that sense of discovery and wonder.
