With people who are constantly looking for hands off strategies in elden ringit was only a matter of time before someone figured out how to get to the end of the game without even fighting anything.
In his latest video Iron Pineapple—who running a great youtube channel dedicated souls and souls-like games – guided everyone through their attempt to beat elden ring as a pacifist. And while the playthrough eventually gets pretty complicated, involving both speedrun glitches and smart build synergies, Iron Pineapple never violated one simple rule: don’t deal direct damage to basic enemies and bosses.
“I think the entire run took about 45 hours,” said Iron Pineapple igamesnews by email. “I spent most of my time running around and getting ready, and I only got stuck on a few bosses.”
Lucky for wannabes elden ring Pacifists out there, the game gives you all the tools you need to start your journey. Iron Pineapple started out as a Prophet class for its healing properties and chose the Fanged Imp Ashes as its bonus item. See, his whole strategy was to use the game’s NPC summons and play as a support class of sorts. Since the summon does all the damage, Iron Pineapple’s goal would be to buff and heal it appropriately.
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As seen in the video below, Iron Pineapple ran into several dead ends, some of which took him down paths that ultimately proved fruitless.
For example, when the godskin duo in Crumbling Faram Azula got even his leveled Ashes in trouble, Iron Pineapple decided it was time to grab one of the best summons in the game, Black Knife Tiche. The only problem is that he would have to complete the Ranni the Witch questline to get Tiche’s Ashes. It wasn’t until he jumped through the many hoops and reached the boss that unlocks Tiche that Iron Pineapple realized he couldn’t summon help, preventing him from getting Tiche and making the entire detour pointless.
“I probably spent most of my time with the Godskin Duo,” said Iron Pineapple. “For a while I was convinced that if I healed well enough and got lucky with the attack patterns, I could do it. Of course, I ended up using the torch that inflicts sleep instead.”
Not surprisingly, Iron Pineapple also used the Mimic Tear, which acts as a copy of your character and is said to be one of the most versatile elden ring‘s subpoena also after its nerf in patch 1.03. Iron Pineapple spent much of its pacifist run focusing on other sources of damage, but when push came to shove, it was hard to overlook the ability to craft a highly customized sidekick. As such, he resorted to the Mimic Tear to defeat many of the difficult endgame bosses.
“I had a feeling from the start that the mimic was going to be very strong, so I consciously chose not to use it for variety,” said Iron Pineapple. “It was quite fun to showcase the different niches and strengths of some of the summons in the game, treating the challenges like puzzles to solve rather than just winning through raw stats. So in the end I was a bit disappointed with how strong the Mimic is even after the nerf.”
Iron Pineapple’s pacifist run is another example of this elden ring maintains the strategic openness of its souls Predecessor. With expert knowledge of the tools, skills, and resources at your disposal, it’s possible to beat the game with almost every tactic in the book. Sure, you might hit a brick wall here and there. Iron Pineapple certainly did. But if there’s a lesson to take away from a traditional elden ring Playthrough, it’s that anything can be overcome with a little stubbornness.
