Yep, we're getting into saxophone no-hit run territory less than 30 days after the thing arrived, because FromSoft game.
Warning, spoilers for Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree lie ahead.
We've all be enjoying the inevitable array of challenge runs and unorthodox boss kills that've come out of Elden Ring's Shadow of the Erdtree expansion since it arrived late last month, and the good news is that it doesn't look like things will be slowing down for a little bit yet. As of right now, for example, there's a streamer casually prepping to try and deliver what we assume would be the world's first no-hit run of it using a musical instrument.
Yep, after beating Shadow of the Erdtree in regular fashion with their sax back on July 1, streamer DrDootPhD, formerly DrDecomposing, is now busy training to do a no-hit run of it using the instrument, having previously delivered the world's first musical no-hit run through the base game last summer.
How's that training going, you ask? Well, they've just managed to beat Messmer to death using their spiky ball fists without taking a hit, so I'd say pretty well, even if you can see by their reaction that they'd had to spend a fair a amount of time bashing their head against the fight during a three-hour stream.
"This is gonna be a HARD No-Hit Run, but thankfully these bosses are incredibly fun to practice," they declared in a tweet, and yeah, judging by the amount of times they got so close to beating the boss, only to have their single hit of health booped away at the last minute, I'd say that's an accurate assessment.
Starting to learn how to no-hit the Elden Ring DLC and tonight I (finally) beat Messmer HITLESS on a saxophone!!!
This is gonna be a HARD No-Hit Run, but thankfully these bosses are incredibly fun to practice. pic.twitter.com/FSXeaOTofu
Their build, in case you're wondering, is a blindfolded green person wearing nothing but underwear, who attacks using a pair of star fists - spiky balls that you can punch baddies with - because this is a FromSoft game, I guess.
Now, naturally, having seen this, I wanted to see where the community's currently at in terms of Shadow of the Erdtree no-hit runs, and as far as I can tell, there isn't even a separate category for the DLC live yet on the website of Team Hitless, a group dedicated to doing and cataloguing this particular type of run through a bunch of different games.
That doesn't mean people haven't been trying though, with one runner having managed to do it, but with the caveat of the run being segmented rather than done as one continuous thing, meaning it's not eligible to be considered a world's first according to Team Hitless' rules. Following that, the first DLC no-hit run that did follow those rules looks to have dropped on July 8, a casual 17 days after Shadow of the Erdtree came out.
If you're still battling your own way through Shadow of the Erdtree and need a bit of help just to complete it, whether you're allowed to take hits or not, make sure to check out our huge array of guides that should be able to aid you regardless of what you need a hand with.