Imagine if those aggressive salespeople at the Macy’s perfume counter shoved napalm in your face instead of Chanel No. The Shadow of Erdtree.
The first days after each Souls game release is always some of the best. Speedrunners and content creators have found the best/worst builds before the devs have had time to nerf them yet. People post all kinds of wild videos of bosses melting in seconds, falling so fast they don’t even have time to trigger their second or third phase. It happened in vanilla Elden Ring with Hoarfrost Stomp and it happens again with Erdtreeperfume bottles.
I’m not usually one to go for cheat builds. I like how I’ve built my character — using a combination of glowstone sorcery, dragon spells, and melee weapons whose attack power increases with my high intelligence. A build like that was good enough to get me through the main game, so Must be good enough to walk me through the DLC. But it isn’t, or at least not enough for my patience level. And here lies part of the problems with Erdtreeis a difficulty.
In the base game, bosses were resistant to certain attacks and weak to others, but nothing so much that they couldn’t be defeated no matter what your build was. Rennala didn’t phase me, even though she was highly resistant to magic damage; I could still beat her to death with my sword instead of my club. But it does not seem that the same philosophy has carried over into Erdtree. In the expansion, some bosses feel like they’ve been rewired to oppose certain builds no matter what, forcing players to either fully respect or keep throwing themselves at the boss hoping for luck. This happened to me and Relana, Twin Moon Knight.
She, like her similarly named counterpart from the base game, has high magic defense. But she is too resistant to slashing damage, which completely shuts down both of my main sources of damage and in turn completely negates the way I’ve chosen to play. To play as Elden Ring — with all its own classes, weapons, spells, and equipment to choose from — any build should be viable when combined with learning the boss patterns. I would feel very differently if, while I was trying to take her down, I felt like I was still making progress against her. But even with a significant number of upgrades to my attack power and finding a combination of weapons and spells, this Must working against her resistances, I was still barely able to put a dent in her health bar.
I have heard that perfume bottles are broken Erdtree. I even had one in my inventory after working my way through one of the prison’s torturous dungeons, which has some nasty consequences for our dear friend Iron Fist Alexander. So I gave it a shot, figuring I’d use it for this one boss and go back to my original build.
I took the Lightning Perfume Bottle and Rolling Sparks Ash of War and changed my stats to fit them just like I had seen in videos. For testing, I snuck up against one of those huge armored knights with big shields and massive hammers—enemies that I just run away from because, like most elite enemies in Erdtree, they are too deadly for the meager rewards you gain from killing them. I aimed at his feet, unleashed Rolling Sparks, and… it was like the finger of God reached into the game’s code and hit delete on this guy. He just disappeared. Here’s what this looks like in action.
With my successful experience, it was time for the real test: Rellana.
Needless to say, it worked.
I can’t go back now. I do not want to come back. Having that kind of power completely changed my approach to Erdtree. I do it no must sneak around, fearing every dark corner, or run past something bigger than an electric sheep.
But I’m not completely fearless. A good sneak attack or boss romp will get me out. I’m not omnipotent either. I’m still avoiding the womb monsters and the big fire golems — I don’t want the smoke, you know. The constitution is also very temperamental. To do the face-melting tricks in the videos, I can’t aim to aim at my opponent’s legs while praying they don’t move too much. Even though this build is pure uncut grade A cheese, I don’t feel like I’m cheating. (Besides, according to game director Hidetaka Miyazaki, I should use everything at my disposal anyway.) I still have to play Erdtree with the same healthy respect for strategy and my enemies as in the main game.
I know this won’t last. Just like with Hoarfrost Stomp, I’m pretty sure the perfume build will be overpowered to the point of uselessness and I’ll have to go back to my original build.
But for now, I’m deeply enjoying being a walking, stinking tactical nuke incredible.
