Elon Musk's 'Elden Ring' Build Gets Fresh Round Of Roasting After He Posts Pictures Of The Whole Thing

May 25th, 2022 - 1:07 PM EDT by Adam Downer

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Elon musk posing with his elden ring build pictured.

As if Elon Musk didn't have enough problems with his contentious Twitter deal seemingly in flux and his sexual misconduct scandal, now he has Twitter roasting his Elden Ring build again after posting new images of the full loadout.

Two weeks ago, Musk described his player character in FromSoftware's beloved RPG, leading to raised eyebrows and scoffs from some gamers.

"Int/Dex build, so mostly mage with some weapon skills," he wrote. "Shield in left hand, staff in right with rapier & claws fast switch. Change armor from heavy to medium for fast roll or tank. Move talismans around a lot. Many small hits in a row to damage stack is important. Summon!"


At the time, Kotaku wrote a lengthy, albeit tongue-in-cheek roast of Musk's playstyle. The piece generated a little bit of controversy, as it seemed like a thinly veiled criticism of Musk himself and his various controversies, but it was ultimately a lark as players tended to agree a person could play the game however they want.

Now, Musk has announced he's beaten the game and posted photos of his in-game stats sheet. This time the reactions and memes are not as charitable, as many players have tended to agree that it is indeed very bad.


Musk describes his build as "Power Mage," indicating he intended to play as a tanky spellcaster with a katana on hand for close combat. He also notes his "Equip Load" will be lower if "fast rolling" is needed.

That Equip Load was one of several major critiques of Musk's Elden Ring build. In the Souls games, all items and armor have a certain weight, and if you give your character too much equipment, it will make their dodge roll clunky, slow and essentially useless. This is known by the community as "fat rolling," and is generally considered bad, as dodging is very necessary against the quick attacks of most enemies.

Musk's build indicates he'd rather accept the damage from hits and continue fighting without the invincibility frames granted by good dodging. This in itself would be a fine – if unnecessarily challenging – playstyle if Musk's Vigor stat (tied to the game's health bar), Endurance stat (tied to Equip Load and stamina) and Poise (tied to how you can "tank" a hit without getting stunned) weren't severely under-leveled.

While there is some debate among Elden Ring players on what should be a proper endgame level of Vigor, players generally agree it should be between 40 and 60, depending on build. Musk's is a paltry 31.

Furthermore, his Endurance stat has a similarly and alarmingly small value of 23. If he had put levels into Endurance, he could have increased his Equip Load and poise and forgone fatrolling altogether, or at least used vastly superior armor that would have allowed him to properly tank hits.

Observers also took myriad issues with how Musk leveled and equipped his character, saying he dumped too many points into Intelligence, used suboptimal talismans (items that boost various stats in the game), used two extremely similar shields and equipped three early-game summoning spirits when other spirits are much more effective in the end game. All of this combined even made some players doubt he'd beaten the game as he'd claimed.


Musk's Elden Ring build, once an amusing excuse to poke fun at the billionaire, has now become an object of fascination for some gamers, who are now very curious to see how he purportedly beat the game with this wild conflagration of stats and equipment.


Obviously, Elden Ring has given players tremendous freedom for building the character of their dreams. But if huffing and puffing between Sites of Grace and fat-rolling away from the Godskin Duo (let alone Malenia, who many assume Musk almost assuredly did not beat considering his endgame level) is the way Musk wants to play, perhaps he should dream bigger.


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