The spells in Elden Ring can be some of the most powerful parts of a player's arsenal, but not every spell has taken a hold in the community across most casting builds. This has been the case for the spell Eternal Darkness, which has now been shown to have incredible utility when trying to survive in Elden Ring's PvP encounters.
In a recent post to the Elden Ring subreddit, user Jeeth24 shows off an impressive way to use the Eternal Darkness spell to hold off a barrage of magic and deliver a powerful counter. While this tactic might not be useful for every PvP build, especially when considering the high Intelligence requirement, it does show how Eternal Darkness could be an impressive part of a spellcaster's list of memorized spells.
The Eternal Darkness spell itself is a fairly simple sorcery that creates a large black hole over the player, drawing in any spells that are sent in its general direction and nullifying them. In the case of the utility in this video, Jeeth24 uses it after a barrage of the Stars of Ruin spell, one of Elden Ring's more powerful PvP spells, is cast at them. This results in Eternal Darkness neutralizing the barrage immediately, drawing the enemy player in closer only to be struck down with a two-part strike from a weapon art.
Fans commenting on the video have pointed out other ways to fight back against spells like Stars of Ruin, such as dodging towards the caster in order to incentivize not using the spell. This is while others noted that not using Eternal Darkness until the end of the fight might have helped to put the other player off their guard and allow for a quick victory in the end. Either way, the strategy used made for an impressive way to deal with magic in Elden Ring's PvP, which has quickly become one of the standard ways players jump into invasions and duels.
As for working Eternal Darkness into a PvP build for this type of situation, the spell itself does demand a heavy investment in the Intelligence stat, requiring a level of at least 35 in order to cast. However, as can be seen in the video, for any player already looking to make a high Intelligence build in Elden Ring, Eternal Darkness could make for an impressive choice of memorized spells. There are other ways to mitigate spell spamming without a magic build, such as the Crimsonwhorl Bubbletear or Barrier of Gold, but Eternal Darkness might be the best choice for fans of sorcerers.