One devious Elden Ring player has raised the bar for cheesy boss strategies by killing Commander Niall using a zillion arrows fired through a small gap that FromSoftware neglected to seal.
couldnt_beat_commander_niall_so_had_to_do_thefrom r/Eldenring
We can thank Reddit user H3NRY-56 for highlighting this cheese. As they explained in a post, they "couldn't beat Commander Niall so had to do the ultimate cheese," which honestly doesn't do this tactic justice. Killing a boss from out-of-bounds with arrows is one thing; Souls fans have been doing that since Demon's Souls, and Commander Niall certainly isn't the first Elden Ring boss to die before their fight even starts. But to cheese a boss by shooting arrows through a one-brick gap in a wall? That's just dirty.
Think about the legwork this cheese must've taken. H3NRY-56 presumably didn't die to Commander Niall for the umpteenth time and immediately know that this specific hole in the wall would be their ticket to victory. No, they'd need to scope the place out, find the right vista, and experiment with different bows, and that kind of research requires an admirable commitment to cheese.
In the amount of time that all that research must've taken, H3NRY-56 probably could have learned how to beat Commander Niall the intended way. Instead, they honed their craft and perfected one of the nastiest boss cheeses in Souls history. You've just gotta respect it.
It's often said that even the heaviest play-testing can't find all the cracks that players will exploit, and this is maybe one of the best examples ever. You can almost picture a designer at FromSoftware cradling their head in their hands, somberly and repeatedly muttering "One brick…" to no one in particular. If a future patch plugs the holes in the walls near Commander Niall, may this cheese be etched into the annals of Souls history.
It's not a cheese, but the Elden Ring Carian Retaliation PvP exploit is so busted that it feels like cheese.
