An Elden Ring player just completed a staggering pacifist run, here’s how they did it

destructoid.com:

Legendary Souls-like player Iron Pineapple is at it again, this time with an Elden Ring pacifist run, with receipts. Note that this video is a truncated run-through of the entire game, which includes boss spoilers! Other than item and summon names, our recap below is spoiler-free.

Essentially, they served as a bard/cheerleader for their “party,” who did the dirty work for them.

It was easy enough to get started with the first few bosses, as they have special NPC summons that assist you on top of the fanged-imps Iron Pineapple was using. When they swapped to the rotten stray, their aim was to proc scarlet rot: a damage over time debuff that slowly kills its prey. In the words of Iron Pineapple, all they needed to do is “sit back and watch scarlet rot finish the job.” They use this method on several mid-bosses/bosses.

By the time they finished that second boss, the path to victory was even clearer. Summons get exponentially stronger in the mid-game, and with buffs, they can last a long while. While this sounds unbelievable at first glance, when looking at the raw numbers and the items they’re using, it all makes sense.

They didn’t get to use this extra little tip in the run, but explain in the video that the Cursed Blood Pot can be utilized to get summons to target specific enemies. The reason why they opted to avoid it is because the pot itself actually does one damage (thus voiding the pacifist run) if thrown directly at an enemy: but you can avoid that damage if you toss it at the ground and it explodes around them.