Shadow of the Erdtree's New Scented Weapons Are Seriously Broken and Really Fun

Imagine if those aggressive salespeople in the perfume department at Macy's put napalm in your face instead of Chanel No. 5: that's what it feels like to play with the new perfume bottle weapons. The Shadow of the Erdtree.

The first days after all The souls Game builds are always some of the best. Speedrunners and content creators have found the best/most broken builds, while developers haven't had time to nerf them yet. People are posting all sorts of crazy videos of bosses melting in seconds, falling so fast that they don't even have time to trigger their second or third phase. This happened in vanilla Elden Ring with Hoarfrost Stomp, and it happens again with ErdtreeThe perfume bottles of .

I'm not usually one for fancy builds. I like the way I built my character, using a mix of glowstone sorcery, dragon spells, and melee weapons with attack power that scales with my high intelligence. Such a build was good enough to get me through the base game, so it's should be good enough to allow me to complete the DLC. But it is not, or at least not good enough for my level of patience. And therein lies part of the problem with ErdtreeThe difficulty of.

In the base game, bosses were resistant to some attacks and weak to others, but nothing that meant they couldn't be defeated no matter your build. Rennala didn't knock me out even though she was very resistant to magic damage; I could still beat her to death with my sword instead of my staff. But I don't feel like the same philosophy was applied to Erdtree. In the expansion, some bosses feel like they've been over-optimized to resist certain builds no matter what, forcing players to either completely respec or keep throwing themselves at the boss in hopes of a lucky break. This happened with Rellana, Twin Moon Knight, and me.

She, like her base game counterpart of the same name, has high magic defense. But she is Also resistant to slashing damage, which completely blocks my two main sources of damage and, in turn, completely negates the way I chose to play. For a game like Elden Ring —with all its classes, weapons, spells, and gear to choose from—each build should be viable when combined with learning a boss's patterns. I would feel completely different if, while trying to defeat her, I felt like I was making progress against her. But even with a good number of upgrades to my attack power and finding a combination of weapons and spells that should I worked against his resistances, but I barely managed to reduce his health bar.

I heard the perfume bottles were broken Erdtree. I even had one in my inventory after going through one of the scarier prison dungeons, which has unfortunate consequences for our dear warrior friend Iron Fist Alexander. So I took a chance, figuring I'd use it for this boss and go back to my original setup.

I picked up the Lightning Perfume Bottle and Rolling Sparks War Ash and tweaked my stats to match, as I'd seen in the videos. For a test run, I sneaked up on one of those huge armored knights with the big shields and massive hammers – enemies I run away from simply because, like most elite enemies in ErdtreeThey're too deadly for the meager rewards you get for killing them. I aimed at his feet, unleashed Rolling Sparks, and… it was like the finger of God reached into the game's code and hit “delete” on this guy. He just disappeared. Here's what it looks like in action.

With my test having been successful, it was time for the real test: Rellana.

Needless to say, it worked.

I can't go back now. I don't to want to go back. Having that kind of power at my disposal has completely changed my approach Erdtree. I do not you have to sneak around, be afraid of every dark corner, or run after anything bigger than an electric sheep.

But I'm not entirely fearless. A good sneak attack or a careless boss fight will get me down. I'm also not all-powerful. I still tend to avoid womb monsters and big flame golems—I don't want smoke, you see. This build is also very finicky. To do the kind of face-melting stunts seen in videos, I can't lock on to aim at my opponent's feet while praying they don't move too much. Even though this build is pure, top-shelf cheese, it doesn't feel like I'm cheating. (Plus, according to game director Hidetaka Miyazaki, I'm supposed to use everything at my disposal anyway.) I still have to play Erdtree with the same healthy respect for strategy and my enemies as in the base game.

I know it won't last. Just like with Hoarfrost Stomp, I'm reasonably sure the scent build will be weakened to the point of being useless and I'll have to revert to my original build.

But for now, I'm thoroughly enjoying being a walking tactical nuclear bomb that smells amazing.