Elden Ring's chilled out group fights of Patch 1.04 (Patreon)

While working on scripting out a video about unlisted changes found in the patches so far, we just got a really interesting one from Patch 1.04. A bunch of duo/ group boss fights (but NOT all of them) were nerfed. KingBore first identified that this was going to be a thing through datamining, having combed the AI scripts for new flags.

He found that the following all had new flags for increasing Team Effectivity:

• Crystalians
• Mad Pumpkin Heads
• Abductor Virgins
• Erdtree Avatars

Basically what this means is that these bosses previously put zero consideration into the fact that they were attacking in a group. Now they're cognizant of this, and they're asked to be less aggressive when they're further away from the player. The end result is more standing around or strafing from these bosses, and the above clip shows some examples from a duo Crystalian fight, the Mad Pumpkin Heads, and a trio Crystalian fight.

I haven't yet had a chance to check the Abductor Virgins and Erdtree Avatars to see if the update to their AI is actually working properly, but we should expect to see the same thing there.

But that's not all! KingBore had mentioned to me that direct changes to existing AI is more nuanced (rather than adding new flags entirely), which is probably why it wasn't the first thing he investigated. In taking a look at that, he also found that the Crucible Knights should have a similar change. He expects the result to perhaps be a bit more subtle than the changes to the above enemies, but non-attacker-role Crucible Knights should attack less often and strafe more often.

Some people might be disappointed in these nerfs but I think it makes them a lot more manageable to solo, so I dig it.