Summons, do your thing
Legendary Souls-like player Iron Pineapple is at it again, this time with an Elden Ring pacifist run, with receipts. Note that this video is a truncated run-through of the entire game, which includes boss spoilers! Other than item and summon names, our recap below is spoiler-free.
Here’s how they completed an Elden Ring pacifist run:
- For starters, the pacifist run includes all enemies in the game, not just boss fights. Now if enemies walked to their death of their own accord, that doesn’t count, as Iron Pineapple was just not complicit in killing them. Toward the end of the run they skirt close to the line of pacifism with pushing enemies via Rejection, of their own admission.
- They used summons (specifically the fanged-imps, then the rotten stray, then the Radahn Soldiers, then the Greatshield Soldiers and a spoiler summon (which was the MVP of later bosses even after a nerf), the Ancestral Follower, and this spoilery summon, then Lhutel the Headless, then the Demi-Humans) to deal all the damage, and played a faith-based build that buffed said summons.
- They picked up the Commander’s Standard from a miniboss (spoilers), which is a banner that buffs minions even further.
- To farm runes to level up, they used a clever method in this location (spoilers).
- From there, they used great heal to support their minions and party members, acquired from the same path/questline as the above rune farming, and picked up the Radagon Icon, which shortens the casting time of their incantations.
- Further upgrades include the Deathbed Dress, Blessing’s Boon, and Blessing of the Erdtree.
- Iron Pineapple also openly shows/states that at least one boss was cheesed by knocking them off a cliff (a second boss that could have met this same fate was patched), and another was cheese-attempted using a very strange bug (spoiler), followed by another warp skip bug. St. Trina’s Torch was used on one boss fight, which can put enemies to sleep and does zero damage.
Essentially, they served as a bard/cheerleader for their “party,” who did the dirty work for them.
It was easy enough to get started with the first few bosses, as they have special NPC summons that assist you on top of the fanged-imps Iron Pineapple was using. When they swapped to the rotten stray, their aim was to proc scarlet rot: a damage over time debuff that slowly kills its prey. In the words of Iron Pineapple, all they needed to do is “sit back and watch scarlet rot finish the job.” They use this method on several mid-bosses/bosses.
By the time they finished that second boss, the path to victory was even clearer. Summons get exponentially stronger in the mid-game, and with buffs, they can last a long while. While this sounds unbelievable at first glance, when looking at the raw numbers and the items they’re using, it all makes sense.
They didn’t get to use this extra little tip in the run, but explain in the video that the Cursed Blood Pot can be utilized to get summons to target specific enemies. The reason why they opted to avoid it is because the pot itself actually does one damage (thus voiding the pacifist run) if thrown directly at an enemy: but you can avoid that damage if you toss it at the ground and it explodes around them.