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Not to brag, but I was pretty young when I worked out that the whole Santa Claus thing might be a hoax set up by parents. I began to question the logistics of flying reindeer around the age of 25, and the shock of that revelation has scarcely been matched. But a recent discovery in Elden Ring has come pretty close. And by discovery, I mean I finally learned something that almost everyone else apparently already knew, like a Civ player discovering agriculture while the other players have already unlocked nuclear weapons.
Frostbite does not slow enemies down in Elden Ring. I thought it did. Let me explain.
The cold lie
A few days ago, I wrote a quick article about community hero Let Me Solo Her's transition to Let Me Solo Them, a worthy challenger to the final boss of Elden Ring's Shadow of the Erdtree DLC. In that story – which has since been edited, lest I inflict my misunderstandings on the masses – I ran through the status effects that Let Me Solo Them used to take down the boss: Scarlet Rot, bleed, poison, and frostbite all working in concert. Rot does tick damage, poison does tiny tick damage, bleed does chunks of damage, and frostbite does a chunk of damage while also applying a lasting debuff. That debuff, I thought at the time, causes enemies to take more damage and move slightly slower. Reader, it does not do one of these things.
One commenter – thank you, Exploresque – was understandably confused by my read of frostbite and posited that it does not, in fact, slow down enemies. Perplexed, I began to, for the first time in over 200 hours of Elden Ring, actually stop and look into this status effect. The damage is very real, and thankfully the primary reason I've always used frostbite, otherwise this article would be a lot sadder. But based on everything I've read online – my eyes bloodshot, my desk covered in scrawled ramblings and half-melted ice cubes – that perceived slowdown was all in my head.
Well, not just my head. To drag our Features Editor Andrew Brown under the bus with me, he also thought frostbite causes enemies to move slower and shared my pain when I told him I was going to write a very stupid article (which he is now editing, realizing I've sold him out). This begs two questions: how many other people were also wrong about frostbite, and are we the flat Earthers of the Lands Between?
I didn't even question this until a few days ago. It was an ironclad fact to me: frostbite slows enemies. Not a lot – it was maybe a 10% slow in my mind. Nothing game-changing. But personal Mandela Effect or no, it really felt true. This isn't the most scientific explanation, but it just kind of looks like it does, you know? Enemies get all frosted up and stuff. And, like, it's video games, right? Cold equals slow. I've played a video game in my day, and that's how video games work. Therefore that must be how the cold works in Elden Ring. Case closed.
Oops
It's hard to say when or how I came to this wrong assumption in a vacuum devoid of FromSoft science, but as someone who hates getting anything wrong in articles, I have seriously tried to reverse-engineer my mistake here, and I do have some theories. See, frostbite does affect stamina recovery, and it has for a long time, or at least as early as Dark Souls 3. When frostbitten, you immediately lose a chunk of health, and for a short time you take more damage and regain stamina slower. The thing is, enemies don't have stamina bars in the same way players do. They have similar poise, for instance, but players and enemies are very literally built different. They can just keep attacking without worrying about whether they'll be able to block or dodge, the cheaters. That said, I think it was the combination of this stamina debuff, mixed with my gamer brain's interpretation of coldness as a mechanic, that, blended together, became the idea that frostbite slows enemies.
While I'm futilely trying to wipe the egg off my face, there's one other thing, too. FromSoftware has, on occasion, taken a sledgehammer to the principle of anticipation in animation. Plenty of players have observed this phenomenon: some Elden Ring bosses will dramatically wind up an attack but then arbitrarily hold the peak of their stance until the heat death of the universe, only to abruptly unleash that attack in what feels like half a frame. These are the attacks you can't comfortably see coming, meaning dodging them reactively is exceedingly difficult, so instead you might end up proactively memorizing the timing. I find this style of attack annoying simply because, as I've shouted at my TV many times, nothing moves like this, but I do appreciate that it can bring some spice to the flow of combat and give bosses personality. Yet somewhere in my mind, I think I was giving FromSoftware the benefit of the doubt here: these animations only looked so unnaturally slowed because frostbite was making them slower. Not so, it seems.
Now we're getting to the shame of all shames. It's not like I use frostbite sparingly and therefore had few opportunities to realize my misunderstanding. I have used frostbite almost exclusively for the entire playthrough of my most-played Elden Ring character, who has over 210 hours logged. My all-time favorite weapon is the frost-equipped Dark Moon Greatsword. I have multiple frost-attuned katanas and great spears and longswords, not to mention the new light greatsword Milady. My favorite spells are the frosty duo of Ranni's Dark Moon and Adula's Moonblade. I never take these spells off, in part because this character is basically a soft RP of a Ranni devotee, to the point that I've never even seen another ending apart from Ranni's.
Which is to say, reader, that I am practically drinking frosties on a throne of ice in an igloo in the Consecrated Snowfield. I am first and foremost a frost enjoyer. Maybe that's what really happened: I'm so into frostbite that I just gassed it up in my mind. "Yeah, it slows bosses, dude, it's cool as hell." I shared this realization with my friend Wes Fenlon at PC Gamer, and his response was withering: "SMH this guy is a one-trick pony and doesn't even know how the trick works."
