Come, sit down and let me tell you the story of a really weird hidden door in the massive open-world RPG elden ring. You may have to smack it 50 or more times to open it, they say. There seems to be more doors, although this could all be a weird bug that could be fixed one day. While fans are still trying to figure out exactly what we’re dealing with here, footage of the phenomenon has caught the attention of thousands of gamers and added one more wild thing to think about while enjoying the mysterious adventure of FromSoftware plays.
On the morning of March 18th Reddit user teristam uploaded a video to the elden ring Subreddit shows something wild. In their video, they approach a nondescript wall in Volcano Manor, a supposed late-game location, and smash it with a sword. After 50 hits, the wall will go blank, revealing a new hidden path that it seems no one has encountered before. The video quickly exploded on Reddit as it seemed to imply an absurd riddle that no average person would find without such prompting or data mining. If that sounds outlandish, well, the game is full of esoteric puzzles and unexplained mechanics, and FromSoftware builds game worlds geared towards rewarding players for exploring and experimenting – and trolling. Intentionality didn’t seem entirely out of the realm of possibility.
And so other players quickly began checking and verifying that the fake wall was indeed real and in-game. The hidden door only became more famous and attracted more attention when it was popular Dark Souls YouTuber Iron Pineapple shared the Reddit Clip on Twitter.
However, while many assumed this was just another troll secret hidden in a game full of similar mysteries, this story now seems to be more.
According to another Reddit user who replied to the original subreddit post, there is actually another similar and fake wall near the viral door seen in the original video. They included a picture of it and some spoiler-like details about its location, which you can read here. It appears that this fake wall can be removed the same way, with a few hits from your weapon of choice. But it doesn’t require nearly as many hits, depending on your stats, some players claim.
To be clear: the idea of secret fake walls is not what came up elden ring player excited. Strange walls that hide secrets are a well-known part of elden ring. These so-called “illusory walls‘ are already fairly well documented and understood. What makes this (and the other similar) hidden wall so weird is that it doesn’t behave like the other illusory walls in the game, which on disappearance lacks the same sound that returns when you rest in a place of grace and takes dozens and dozens of hits to open. While the footage initially led to the belief that the door might have been intentional, some players and pundits are now speculating that this strange wall could be a bug or oversight that the developers left in the game.
Very famous Dark Souls hacker zuli apparently confirmed this theory – that it was a bug left by the developers – on March 18th via a short Twitter thread. They explained that after digging through the game files and digging in the fake wall, they claimed that the door reads 9999 hit points. This apparently resembles some unbreakable objects in Dark Souls with 999 hp. However, these objects are Even had 999 defense, meaning they never take damage from attacks and can only be broken by in-game triggers or events written by the developers.
“The [Elden Ring] Wall is set as a destructible object, but has 9999 HP and no fade animation, means it should very likely be destroyed by an event script.” explained Zullie on Twitter. “Although it’s not obvious if they faked it or it’s bugged. It should definitely have 9999 defense though.”
Illusory Wallanother popular one Dark Souls expert who too theorized that the fake wall was unintentionalsupported Zullie’s discoveries, agree with her thoughts on the wall.
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Of course, we can’t say for sure until the developers FromSoftware or Bandai Namco officially clarify whether this fake wall and other similarly hard-to-crack mysteries are intentional tricks or unplanned bugs. igamesnews contacted Bandai Namco about the fake wall and if it’s a bug that might be fixed by another major update one day, like the recently released patch 1.03.
But even if that wall is explained away as a weird glitch or oversight, it will undoubtedly leave many players hitting everything in sight for weeks, months, or even years as they endlessly search for every last secret, hidden room, unlockable gear, or Weapons. Sure, that fake wall might not be on purpose. But what if there’s a fake wall or cave hidden deep in the game that hasn’t been found yet, and maybe it takes more than one hit to find it? And what if it hides an incredible secret?
In most games I would roll my eyes and laugh at the fact that this is even possible. But in elden ringwell… anything, no matter how frustrating it may be, seems possible.
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