Elden Ring dataminers have been more and more turning to the pre-patch, 1.0 construct of the sport seeking FromSoftware’s growth secrets and techniques. Earlier this month, dataminer kotn3l uncovered a model of secret megaboss Malenia (opens in new tab) who’s extra aggressive, blocks your assaults higher, and has a second variation of her signature transfer.
Love her or hate her (I like her!) Malenia is palms down one of many hardest bosses to seem in a FromSoft sport. She’s a grasp swordsman, with quick, various assaults, vampiric therapeutic on hit, a second well being bar, and the legendarily difficult-to-avoid anime samurai flurry assault, Waterfowl Dance.
I feel she took me as many makes an attempt as Bloodborne’s gnarly Orphan of Kos, however condensed over the span of some days as a substitute of weeks. Most of these makes an attempt met their finish towards Waterfowl Dance.
Kotn3l’s investigation revealed that the boss’ final skill appears to have been initially known as “Malenia’s Blade,” provided that’s the way it’s referred to within the 1.0 merchandise description of Malenia’s sword. Within the 1.0 construct, she has a second transferring flurry assault which traverses much less distance and does not have any lengthy pauses. Given its rhythmic, dancing high quality, kotn3l surmises that this was the unique Waterfowl Dance, with the run-ender we all know and love being Malenia’s Blade.
Within the post-1.0 variations of the combat, Malenia needs to be decreased to 80% well being for her to begin utilizing her flurry assault. Right here, she has no such restriction, and as her two completely different flurry talents are on separate cooldowns, she will use them back-to-back from the onset of the combat. She’s additionally more proficient at blocking assaults, will extra aggressively pursue gamers in her first part, and drops her Scarlet Aeonia assault extra typically within the second.
I like the animation used for Waterfowl Dance 1.0—it feels extra grounded, one thing nearer to a dueling approach than a superhuman spell, however I can simply see why it was reduce. Two anime flurry tremendous strikes might “dilute the model” a bit because it had been, and of the 2, Malenia’s Blade is a lot extra particular.
It appears to be like like kotn3l is ready to fairly handily outrun the reduce assault in his video, contrasting with the mastery of operating, dodging, and timing demanded by Malenia’s Blade/post-1.0 Waterfowl. As for the opposite adjustments, the ramped up aggression, Scarlet Aeonia spam, and lack of an HP threshold all look like they’d have simply been irritating, even for the Let Me Solo Hers (opens in new tab) of the world. I am pleased with the Malenia we received, my private favourite boss within the Souls collection, however it’s very cool to see this “in-progress” model supplied by kotn3l.