Elden Ring has some incredibly tough bosses. You’re very likely to get wrecked by the many towering enemies roaming the Lands Between—unless you’re this one player, who decided to take a load off and do absolutely nothing against a rather challenging early-game encounter.
So, there’s this optional field boss in Limgrave called the Tree Sentinel. Apart from the multi-armed Grafted Scion that kills you in the beginning and the easy tutorial knight you fight before hitting the game’s first location, the Tree Sentinel acts as Elden Ring’s first major obstacle. You see him, clad in gold armor and atop a golden horse, just patrolling some nearby woods, looking for shit to kill. He’s hard, and this isn’t the only time you encounter him in the game. Thankfully, you can skip the Tree Sentinel entirely if you’re underleveled or don’t wanna deal with his stupidly big golden halberd just by running away.
YouTuber InfernoPlus, who makes meme videos about games and dives into popular discourses, didn’t appear too worried about the Tree Sentinel, though. In fact, in a recent Twitter clip, Inferno was so tired, they just plopped their butt on some rocks while their summons did the dirty work.
Inferno didn’t do anything until nearly the end of the fight. After summoning the Raya Lucaria Soldiers, a spirit ash you find in the Road’s End Catacombs that calls forth a trio of warriors, Inferno sat down and watched the squabble like some anime boss waiting for a fight to finish before taking on the contender. Inferno took one hit, but because their health pool was so high, it wasn’t a fatal blow. Once the Raya Lucaria Soldiers were dispatched, after almost killing the Tree Sentinel by themselves, Inferno went in to clean up shop with a quick series of spear thrusts. It was hilariously glorious to watch.
Not everyone understood that Inferno’s video was a joke. Because they wrote “Game is hard” with the clip, folks online were losing their minds over the implication that Elden Ring isn’t as hard as it actually is. (It is!) Some mocked Inferno for beating a “beginner boss.” Others shared their strategies for killing the Tree Sentinel, most of which consisted of returning after leveling up a bit. That’s the most likely explanation for how the soldiers in the video are able to take on the boss, too.
Kotaku reached out to InfernoPlus for comment.
I love cheesing enemies like this, and FromSoftware seems to encourage it with the ability to summon both spirit ashes and real-world players in the game. I did something similar when fighting the Tree Sentinel, calling upon my ghostly wolves while also getting help from a magic-based warrior. We totally destroyed him, but it wasn’t anything as effortless as Inferno’s method. Folks are getting good at Elden Ring, killing enemies in style. I, on the other hand, will probably never hit the credits.