Elden Ring's world is full of freakish monsters and weird creatures who can overwhelm players trying out their first Souls-like title. It is one of the most challenging games currently available, similar to other FromSoftware titles like the Dark Souls series, Bloodborne, and Sekiro. Unlike the previous FromSoftware games, Elden Ring has an expansive open world that rewards exploration and is chock-full of brutal enemies like dragons, giants, trolls, bears, and much more.
While exploring the Lands Between, gamers will eventually cross paths with numerous Elden Ring bosses, most of which are optional and aren't required to defeat in order to progress the storyline such as Malenia - Blade of Miquella, Crucible Knight, Ancestor Spirit, and Magma Wyrm Makar. Another notable optional boss is Astel, Naturalborn of the Wild, who is a giant insect-like creature.
Players who choose to battle Astel often struggle against it, like Reddit user OdhranMuld. The user shared a video on Reddit that shows their encounter with the huge Elden Ring boss. The video begins with the player having a full health bar, whereas, Astel's HP bar is nearly drained. The user goes directly below Astel's giant body and performs the Bloodhound's Finesse Ash of War in Elden Ring, reducing the boss's health even more to almost negligible. From this point, it seemed that OdhranMuld had the fight under control and would soon emerge victorious after landing a final blow to Astel.
However, Astel recovers and performs a ranged magic attack which cuts down OdhranMuld's health bar by more than 50%. The odds are suddenly in Astel's favor as the user is out of Flasks of Crimson Tears, rendering them unable to heal themselves. The Elden Ring boss becomes highly aggressive and attacks the user again, depleting the health entirely and ultimately killing them. The post quickly grabbed the attention of the massive Elden Ring community on Reddit, who showed their appreciation via hundreds of upvotes and comments in a single day.
Most people criticized the original poster for being attack-minded and giving away an advantageous position. Meanwhile, others were sympathetic towards OdhranMuld as they believe giant Elden Ring bosses like Astel are tougher due to awkward camera angles and the boss's tendency to stay mobile. Some users pointed out they've faced this problem with other huge bosses like the Elden Beast, Fallingstar Beast, Dragonlord Placidusax, and many others. Players often face problems when locking onto these large enemies, causing them to miss their target.
Elden Ring is available on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.