There's a random wall in Elden Ring that inflicts poison damage if you touch it, and somewhere in Japan game director Hidetaka Miyazaki is laughing at our pain.
In reality, the poisonous wall seems to be a glitch, but it sure does sound like something FromSoftware and Miyazaki would add deliberately. After all, Soulsborne games are known for their poisonous swamps. But as Elden Ring hacker Zullie the Witch explains in a YouTube video, this otherwise inconspicuous poisonous wall is likely the result of misplaced coding known as "hit material."
Hit material is used to define various surfaces in video games with effects specific to each one, like sounds and damage. For example, if the floor of a fancy castle is made up of granite tile, the developers would likely add hit material to that surface that makes a muffled tapping sound when players walk across it. With a lava pool, hit material is what would make your character's feet make an awful sizzling sound as they presumably melt into the ground (unless you're wearing Breath of the Wild's Flamebreaker armor, of course).
In the case of this poisonous cliffside wall, which is located below the Temple of Eiglay in Volcano Manor, it seems FromSoftware simply goofed and applied the wrong hit material, making it coat players in deadly poison. But also... that's a likely excuse, no? We're on to you Miyazaki.
In all seriousness, this seems like an easy fix and it's likely to be patched out in a future update. The latest micro-update addressed Malenia's lifesteal attacks, which were accidentally broken in a previous patch.
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