We all know that Elden Ring director Hidetaka Miyazaki love to poison playersbut apparently an inconspicuous wall exists in FromSoftware’s latest game that can inflict a toxic status effect just as well as any swamp.
As productive Elden Ring hackers Zullie the Witch show up her latest video, a specific section of the rock wall located below the temple of the volcano Eiglay (ie where most people will fight against their first Godskin Noble) is able to inflict a toxic status effect. However, it is easy to miss. I did not even know you could probably fall on a ledge nearby until I saw it pointing.
After seeing it for myself, I can understand how more daring Tarnished could have been confused. When you walk into the wall, it’s almost as if your character is stepping into the same rogue found elsewhere in the game, complete with appropriate sound effects. The poison even sticks to you if you roll, which appropriately causes the status to briefly continue to build up even as you leave the danger zone.
Zullie explains that the wall, which is toxic, has to do with something known as “hit material”, a chunk of code that essentially tells Elden Ring how a surface should interact with the player. Hit material indicates two things: what kind of footstep sounds the game should play when the character moves through different terrain, and whether the environment should inflict some form of damage or status effect.
Somehow that wall was labeled “hit material 25” underneath Elden Ring‘s development, and it’s this apparent typing error that makes the small part of the geography toxic to the player character.
As more time has passed since Elden Ring‘s launch, we continue to learn more and more about how it was created. Clearly, it’s hard to make games of all sizes, but it’s still fun to see how even something so rich and ambitious is barely held together by duct tape. Kudos for getting this one out the door in decent shape, FromSoftware.