2 years after Elden Ring's release, players are still surprised to find cheaters dropping 86 million Runes in PvP

Elden Ring
(Image credit: FromSoftware)

It's been over two years since Elden Ring was released, but some players are still surprised to find cheaters dropping up to 86 million Runes in PvP mode. 

If you've been playing the FromSoftware title since the beginning, you may remember seeing a pattern of players encountering the same "glitch." For a while after Elden Ring's release, there was an influx of players sharing posts with captions like "Gained 86 Million runes by killing someone in PvP, What do I do?" and "So I just invaded someone [...] with 0 Runes…killed him….and got 85899344 Runes." 

It was a confusing time for many Elden Ring fans, but eventually, it was put down to players who cheated to give their character the max level, as this would then give the person who slayed them a large percentage of their Runes. This sudden increase in funds made many panic and even resulted in one lucky/unlucky player restarting their save

Even today, though, it seems the same tactic continues to trip up players. Earlier this week, one member of the Elden Ring subreddit shared a clip they'd found via PSN—which shows another player collecting their surprise 80 million Runes—and asked the community if anyone had ever seen this. Surprisingly, there are still some Elden Ring players who have never encountered this.

On PSN someone just dropped 80M+ runes on death, Patches is set to retire in luxury. Anyone ever seen this before? (max level player should normally drop 355K) from r/Eldenring

Most people have figured out by now that this is a result of cheating/a bug in the game, but one thing that all players have said, whether it's this week or two years ago, is that merchant NPC Patches is set to have a good payday. "The real question is, what is Patches gonna do with all that bank?" one user has asked in the comments. "Patches is now Elden lord by accumulated wealth. He owns a majority stake in Erdtree resurrection," another has also suggested. 

It may have been two years since the FromSoftware title was released, but all that means is that the Elden Ring DLC, Shadow of the Erdtree, is right around the corner!

Hope Bellingham
News Writer

After studying Film Studies and Creative Writing at university, I was lucky enough to land a job as an intern at Player Two PR where I helped to release a number of indie titles. I then got even luckier when I became a Trainee News Writer at GamesRadar+ before being promoted to a fully-fledged News Writer after a year and a half of training.  My expertise lies in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, cozy indies, and The Last of Us, but especially in the Kingdom Hearts series. I'm also known to write about the odd Korean drama for the Entertainment team every now and then.