Since its launch, Elden Ring has seen massive success in its sales, player numbers, and reviews of both critics and players alike. Most likely due to its reinventing of the classic Souls gameplay, Elden Ring's success can be attributed to its jack-of-all-trades nature. Between an enormous open world that invites all manner of exploration, incredibly challenging fights, and the option to play alone or with friends, the game has something to offer everyone.
Because of this, the game invited players from all sorts of communities as shown by the Elden Ring Metal Gear reference message. This melting pot of players redoubled the efforts of the already tight-knit FromSoftware community, further adding to the cooperation and camaraderie of its members.
Of course, the best place to find an example of this is in the multiplayer. In the game, multiplayer is triggered through summoning, and summoning is always done with a goal in mind. For example, Elden Ring's Bloody Finger item allows players to invade other worlds with the intent to kill. To this end, one player invaded another world only to find the world's host gone and a blue hunter standing alone. This is because the host was hiding in a near-impossible-to-reach area, attempting to sit back and farm souls from invaders.
Normally this strategy would not work, but there is a certain area in Limgrave that allows the host to "hide" from invaders, and with a certain combination of multiplayer items the host can sit back as players invade and are slain by blue hunters. This leads to the host collecting free Runes, Rune Arcs, and Furlcalling Finger Remedies without them even needing to pick up their controller. This was the predicament Reddit user PeppersWasTaken warped into, but it was also the beginning of an unlikely alliance akin to a helpful Elden Ring invader showing a player through a dungeon.
Having called a truce with the blue hunter, perhaps due to the hunter's own frustration over the rune farming strategy, PeppersWasTaken hatched a truly brilliant plan to flush the host out of their hiding spot. Finding that the host was hiding underneath the map on the side of a cliff, PeppersWasTaken leaps off the edge. Normally this would be an instant death, but using one of the incantations acquired from Elden Ring's Church of Dragon Communion or the corresponding cathedral, PeppersWasTaken instead stopped in mid-air to deliver a destructive breath attack on the host, instantly killing them.
Not only was the move absolutely incredible and unexpected, it was certainly justice well done on a player attempting to exploit their way towards free runes at the expense of other players. Props must also go to the blue hunter, who stood aside allowing an invader to punish an annoying strategy.
Elden Ring is now available for PC, PlayStation 4 and 5, and Xbox One and Series X/S.