There’s a reason the runebears of Elden Ring kick your ass

elden ring throws all sorts of fiendish monstrosities at you, but few will stand your hair on end like a runebear does after picking up your scent. I’ve barely killed a few Runebears in the hundreds of hours I’ve put into FromSoftware’s open-world game; I would literally rather fight Malenia or more realistically run away screaming. Runebears’ outrageous difficulty might have seemed like an odd, hilarious discrepancy at launchbut months later we find out there might be a really good reason why they have such a knack for introducing us to Marika.

As a dataminer Zullie the witch points out when in a thought-provoking video elden ring was distributed as a “network test” beta, Players spotted an out of bounds rune bear. Oddly enough, when the Runebear was killed, it would drop a Dragon Heart. To elden ring was released, no Runebear in the game seemed to work that way, so most people sort of forgot about the heart thing. But upon closer inspection, it seems as if runebears may actually have a specific connection to dragons.

Have you ever noticed that a rune bear’s eyes match the reptilian shape and hue of a certain dragon? elden ring

exactly? This might seem like an odd thing to focus on, but it appears to be intentional. Finally, dragon hearts make the player more powerful. And larger creatures in the game all have names that suggest they’ve been beefed up in some way, probably runes, but what if bears took a different turn?

A YouTube commenter on the video points out that the rune bear’s chest also has spikes where one would expect a heart. They “look a lot like dragon scales” raloris

writes. “Especially the ones on the Dragon Hearts symbol.” I’ll admit I was too busy mimicking a headless chicken to ever notice that subtle detail. Maybe it’s gravel? Also, let’s not forget what current runebears are do Drop are Spell Dragon Charms that represent a “Blue Ancient Dragon”. For whatever reason, elden ring still binds runebears to dragons, even after the network test.

Continue reading: elden ring Creepypasta is real now, and it’s delicious

Now you can feel better about your bone-deep fear of Runebears. They’re not just bigger bears, sorry. They are dragon-powered bears, like that Of course they will throw you like it’s nothing.