Gamers have long embarked on an endless quest to find exploitable glitches in their favorite titles. This is as true of FromSoftware fans as any others, and Elden Ring is far from exploit-free. For example, one creative player recently discovered a way to skip a frustrating section of the Haligtree Area. That’s far from the only instance either, with players discovering an unusual way to explore the Volcano Manor.
One recently discovered glitch allows some Elden Ring players to run across lava. However, it is proving very difficult for other players to replicate, and it seems that not everyone is able to sprint across the waves of molten rock.
Reddit user Rhyfel kicked off the discussion by sharing a clip of their character running across the lava outside Elden Ring’s Volcano Manor. According to them, they achieved this by equipping the game’s Frenzied Flame body alteration, not to be confused with the similarly named Frenzied Flame Seal weapon. After removing the character’s armor to cut down on weight, Rhyfel runs across the churning lava as if the molten rock were any other patch of solid ground. At first, most commenters seemed to think that this was an intended function, though it appears to be a bug rather than a feature.
Commenters had different answers to how Rhyfel pulled it off, with Reddit user Lyberatis testing several and posting the results in the comments. Their attempts included adding or removing equipment to increase or decrease their character’s Load or having the Dancer’s Castanets item in their inventory. Why some thought an otherwise quest item might trigger the bug isn’t clear apart from its connection to the Volcano Manor's leader. Regardless, carrying it did not seem to have any effect. High Fire Resistance and Fire Poise don’t help either. Neither did killing all the Magma Worms at the Lava Castle. Lyberatis hypothesized that it could have something to do with Rhyfel’s character stats but ultimately concluded that a bug was responsible for this particular Elden Ring exploit.
Interestingly, comments indicate that many Elden Ring players can run across water while others cannot. This seems to indicate a common cause. Unfortunately, none of the Elden Ring players on the subreddit seem to have a good explanation for why this is happening. One hypothesis is that it requires an exceptionally high Vigor stat somewhere between 60 and Vigor’s hard cap of 90. It may also be a glitch with how Elden Ring’s engine handles fluid physics. It may even be both.
Elden Ring is available now for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.