Fellow Tarnished, grab an Estus Flask and pour one out for DementedEnjoyer, a headstrong grinder who recently lost a 10 million Rune investment to the cruel fate assigned to them by the Elden Ring community: beating the game at level eight using only a bow.
This all started 10 days ago when DementedEnjoyer alerted the Elden Ring subreddit to their latest achievement: farming four million Runes at level eight "for no specific reason." They asked the community what they should do with their newly obtained XP stockpile, and the top-voted replies were not kind.
"Maybe with four million runes a bow build is viable," danhaas speculated.
Twisting the knife, Future-Patient5365 proposed: "Challenge, beat the rest of the game without spending those runes or losing any."
I've wasted nearly an entire day of my life grinding to 4 million runes on a lvl 8 character for no specific reason, tell me what I should do with it all. from r/Eldenring
A glutton for punishment, DementedEnjoyer lived up to their name by combining these two suggestions into one unholy challenge: beat the whole game without leveling up while using the worst weapon type and carrying a useless fortune in their back pocket. "This is exactly the kind of depraved shit that I live for," they said in a reply to an even worse suggestion.
"I like this suggestion, mostly because it involves even more farming after I'm done with rune farming and I'm a sicko who's very much into that," they said to one user who proposed maxing out their Arcane stat and then farming rare item drops with their boosted drop rate.
As players showered DementedEnjoyer in what we'll generously call encouragement, they only gained momentum. "This is the kind of support of my all-consuming obsessions that my therapist just doesn't give me, thanks guys," they said after the first day.
While Elden Ring fans were busy cooking up the cruelest challenge imaginable, DementedEnjoyer was still farming. See, they'd blitzed their way to the Mohgwyn Palace to access its famous bird farm using a basic bow – which I assume is what inspired the bow run, in a monkey's paw twist – so they could get a lot of Runes even at such a low level. It would still take a while, but it beats the other low-level farms.
What were they doing that whole time, you ask? Other than culling the local bird population, "listening to the Silence of the Lambs audiobook and occasionally watching a Dark Souls livestream."
UPDATE POST from the tarnished who wasted an entire day farming 4 mil runes at lvl 8 from r/Eldenring
They returned the next day with a progress report of sorts. For reasons that can't be explained by any God and science, they'd more than doubled their Rune savings, leaving them with a staggering 10 million Runes. "Starting to slow down and see flashes of a giant, rotting bird in my peripheral vision. I'm afraid to sleep, for I know it waits for me in my dreams, too," they said as they approached the 10 million mark. This would've been enough XP to take their level eight character all the way to level 167, but thanks to the Elden Ring community, they could only stare longingly at these Runes as they nocked arrow after arrow after miserable, depressing arrow.
Their next and final progress report arrived two days later bearing somber news. In a shocking twist, the no-level-up bow build had not fared particularly well. To DementedEnjoyer's credit, they did make it all the way to what looks like Caelid before losing their hard-earned fortune to a combination of gravity and FromSoftware's iconic death mechanic.
"We all knew it was going to end this way," DementedEnjoyer said of their saga. You absolutely hate to see it.
FINAL UPDATE from the tarnished who wasted two days farming 10 million runes on a lvl 8 character and refused to level up until he beat the final boss from r/Eldenring
An evil modder has combined Elden Ring's worst boss with Dark Souls' best.
