A handful of Elden Ring dataminers went digging into the game's files recently. And in them, they found something quite interesting about one of the game's most notorious bosses.
elden ring malenia
As reported by GamesRadar, the datamine has revealed that Malenia, Elden Ring's toughest (at least according to a lot of players) boss, was actually even more difficult to beat than she is now. The dataminers found this out when they gained access to the files of the game's earliest version 1.0 released on console discs. Version 1.0 is the version of the game completely untouched by patches.
Here is a video detailing the dataminers' findings:
The toughest part about Malenia in Elden Ring 1.0 involves her infamous Waterfowl Dance attack. According to the dataminers, version 1.0 of the Goddess of Rot still has access to the "old" version of the Waterfowl, which isn't tied to her HP originally. If you've fought (and died to) Malenia multiple times post-launch, you're going to know that she can only do it once her health reaches 80%.
She can perform the move basically whenever she likes now, culminating into an extremely aggressive fighting style that will not give players much room to breathe. The so-called "old Waterfowl" also looks like it has a significantly better reach and could take down players in just three or four swings, max.
The Elden Ring dataminer says this is the "actual" Waterfowl Dance, and not really the flurry of sword swings she does now, post-patches. And this old ability is apparently called "Malenia's Blade," which was scrapped post-launch because it gives Malenia two flurry-style attacks that will not fit with the game's brand, writes PC Gamer.
But aside from her far more aggressive style, her defense is also up. In Version 1.0, she blocks attacks with way more regularity. So she won't be just dishing a ton of damage, but will also negate a good amount of your blows. As for her second phase, however, it seems to be a little easier to handle in Version 1.0. But that doesn't mean that it IS easy.
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The Bodies In Malenia's Wake
So with this Elden Ring datamine in hand, perhaps you should be a little thankful that FromSoftware decided to make things "a little easier" when it comes to their toughest (albeit optional) boss fight so far.
Nevertheless, too many Tarnished have still felt the cold taste of Malenia's blade. It is not out of the blue for players of FromSoftware's latest game to say that it took them hundreds of tries to beat the Goddess of Rot. A lot of players are even saying that it's part of the charm of the boss fight as a whole. That's because after trying for so many times, finally beating her just feels oh, so good.
Among these players is a Redditor who goes by the handle Durza. The player received a custom-made plaque from his roommate after taking an insane 206 tries to beat the boss. Here's a post featuring the plaque on the Elden Ring subreddit, which has now earned over 25k upvotes at the time of this writing:
In truth, we're far more impressed that they managed to actually count how many times it took Durza to take Malenia down. But how about you? How many tries did it take you to defeat her?
Related Article: Elden Ring Player FINALLY Beats Malenia After 30 HOURS Of Attempts
