After 967 deaths, Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree player takes the 'no Scadutree blessing' challenge to the next level by beating the entire DLC on uncapped NG +1,000
Aug. 28, 2024Enemies could deal “millions” of damage
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If you thought Elden Ring:Shadow of the Erdtreewas hard, one player has taken it to the next level by defeating the entire expansion on uncapped New Game+ 1,000 – a terrifying, souped-up difficulty level that allows enemies to deal “millions” of damage.
WhileElden Ringgets progressively harder on New Game+ runs – with enemy health, resistances, and attack power increased –FromSoftwarecapped this scaling at NG +7, so there’s a limit in place when it comes to how hard things can get. Even if you went all the way to NG +100, it’d be no harder than +7. That’s usually the case, anyway, butTwitch streamer Skumnutdecided to release these shackles and give the game a go atNG +1,000. That’s four digits of extra difficulty, which, as the streamer explains on Twitter, gives every boss 500,000 health, ridiculously high resistances, and a lethal amount of attack power.
Just to make matters worse, Skumnut alsoopted to avoid using Scadutree blessings, which arecrucialto the DLC if you want to boost your own resistances and attack power, and skipping them makes the expansion painful even when you’ve not cranked the difficulty up so high. Granted, increasing your resistance might not matter much when bosses can kill you several times over in one shot, but the Scadutree attack boost is huge. Needless to say, you can understand how, by the end of the run, the streamer had managed to rack up 967 deaths, and unsurprisingly, many,manyof those were at the hands of the brutal final boss, Promised Consort Radahn.
You can watch Skumnut’s victory against Radahn in the clip below, but this is barely a fraction of the full fight. At the start of the battle, Skumnut summons certified cool dude NPC Ansbach, but the poor guy can’t even finish his dialogue before he’s taken out in a single swing of one of Radahn’s swords, and the streamer has to pull off a flawless no-hit run to avoid meeting the same fate. However, with such high resistances and health, it takes just shy of 16 minutes to chip down Radahn’s HP bar, which is a ridiculously long time to play without making a single mistake, even with Black Flame dealing HP-based damage toslightlyhelp offset the absurd enemy scaling.
We wrote about Skumnut’s NG +1,000 antics earlier this month, when a500,000-HP Messmer finally kicked the bucket. At the time of writing, the streamer had made it to Radahn and accumulated 540 deaths – a number which increased dramatically over the following weeks. I frankly can’t imagine the pain of fighting Radahn for so long, but props to Skumnut for sticking with it.
You can check out our guide toShadow of the Erdtree final boss Radahnfor some tips to help you take down Elden Ring’s toughest foe.
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I’m one of GamesRadar+’s news writers, who works alongside the rest of the news team to deliver cool gaming stories that we love. After spending more hours than I can count filling The University of Sheffield’s student newspaper with Pokemon and indie game content, and picking up a degree in Journalism Studies, I started my career at GAMINGbible where I worked as a journalist for over a year and a half. I then became TechRadar Gaming’s news writer, where I sourced stories and wrote about all sorts of intriguing topics. In my spare time, you’re sure to find me on my Nintendo Switch or PS5 playing through story-driven RPGs like Xenoblade Chronicles and Persona 5 Royal, nuzlocking old Pokemon games, or going for a Victory Royale in Fortnite.
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