This genius Elden Ring build is powerful enough to one-shot most Shadow of the Erdtree bosses: “DLC too hard btw”

An absolute mad lad is running through Elden Ring’s notoriously difficult Shadow of the Erdtree DLC and one-shotting bosses with an incredibly overpowered build, and he’s not the only one.

In case you’ve been hiding from Shadow of the Erdtree for the past week or so, Elden Ring’s new DLC is incredibly hard, so much so that it’s reignited the age-old ‘is it too hard’ debate that’s lingered around FromSoftware releases since the original Demon’s Souls. Yet somehow, that hasn’t stopped streamer Bushy from crafting such a powerful build that the DLC’s most challenging battles are over in just a few seconds.

In a five-minute video, which was condensed down from a 13-hour – yes, 13-hour – stream, you can see Bushy one-shotting juggernauts like Commander Gaius, Messmer, Romina, The Putrescent Knight, The Divine Beast Dancing Lion, Rellana, and the Scadutree Avatar. No one is safe. 

It’s a sight to behold, and it wouldn’t be possible without a meticulously assembled build that stacks a bunch of unique buffs with aura and body buffs. From there, Bushy uses the new Lightning Perfume Bottle weapon with the devastating Rolling Sparks Ash of War to chew through massive, normally difficult bosses like they’re chump change.

If nothing else, Bushy’s build does a pretty effective job countering the narrative that Shadow of the Erdtree is hard just for the sake of being hard. It’s definitive proof that, even without mods or exploits, you can make your life a whole lot easier by playing around with your build to maximize DPS and minimize suffering. This is an unconventional setup, but you could easily splice some of these buffs into normal builds, and this also goes to show how far the right weapon or Ash of War can take you. This perfume is far from the only ridiculously strong weapon in the DLC, too. 

The famed Elden Ring community legend Let Me Solo Her recently echoed this sentiment and said “many people are just too harsh” about Shadow of the Erdtree’s difficulty and and should “use everything at their disposal”. Meanwhile, our own features editor Andrew Brown argues that Shadow Of The Erdtree isn’t “too hard” – it’s just that Elden Ring made us too comfortable.

Hidetaka Miyazaki says FromSoftware games “before and after Elden Ring” will show a “clear difference,” and hopes to see the studio work on “multiple projects” at once.