What Happens In Elden Ring When You Kill The Tutorial Boss (2024)

At the start ofElden Ring, player characters wake up in a windswept, cliff-perched complex called the Cathedral of Anticipation, where they can roam around, get used to the game's movement controls, and get instantly mauled by a grotesque, many-armed creature called the Grafted Scion. In true Soulslike tradition, the first enemy encountered in Elden Ring is almost (but not quite) impossible to defeat. Players whodo manage to beat the Grafted Scion on their first try will get the enemy boss's armaments as their well-earned reward - a weapon and a shield with interesting skills and intriguing lore in their item descriptions.

In both the original and remake versions ofDemon's Souls,FromSoftware's first Soulslike RPG, players were dropped into a starting dungeon of soul-starved foot soldiers and blue-eyed demonic knights - easy-to-defeat foes that eased players into the game's combat system. Then they received a brutal wakeup call in the form of a boss called Vanguard, a giant, blobby, axe-wielding demon capable of killing fresh Demon's Souls PCs in a single strike. Subsequent SoulslikeRPGs, including Elden Ring, would also use shockingly lethal tutorial bosses as a way to shock players out of their complacency and encourage them to approach future enemies more mindfully.

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The Grafted Scion boss players encounter in the tutorial area of Elden Ring is actually a mini-boss encountered later on in the Stormveil Castle Legacy Dungeon - a deformed abomination created by grafting the limbs of dozens of Tarnished warriors onto a single human body.When player characters are defeated by this creature's multiple swords or damaging shriek attacks, they get throwndown a ravine, encounter Melina and the horned horse Torrent in a cutscene, then progress through a much more manageable tutorial level before entering the Limgrave area (the region first seen in Elden Ring's Network Test). Consequentially, players get only one chance to defeat this terrifying and hard-to-read enemy,acquiring3200 Runes and two interesting items if they triumph on their first try.

Elden Ring's Grafted Scion Boss Drops The Ornamental Straight Sword As A Reward

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Players who fellits many-armed, hard-to-beattutorial boss in Elden Ringreceive the Ornamental Straight Sword, a pair of one-handed blades with crescent guards andgilded hilts. They can be effectively used by any Elden Ring starting character with a Strength of 10 and Dexterity of 14 and have a special weapon Skill called "Golden Tempering," which coats the twin blades in a golden magic and unlocks a new weapon move-set of lightning-fast jabs.

The item description reads as such: "Slender straight sword patterned after an antique ornament. Superior swordsmen prefer to wield one in each hand.After falling from grace, the dregs of the golden lineage sought power and purpose in the past." Although"dregs of the golden lineage" could be a reference to the Tarnished protagonists of Elden Ring, they could also easily refer to the Grafted Scions of Stormveil Castle and their master, Godrick the Grafted.

Elden Ring's Grafted Scion Tutorial Boss Drops The Golden Beast Crest Shield

After slaying the tutorial boss, new players of Elden Ring also receive the Golden Beast Crest Shield wielded by the Grafted Scion, a great-shield with no weapon Skill (letting players use their weapon's skill without grasping it in two hands). This item description: "Shield of dull gold with a beast engraved as its crest. Lighter than most greatshields, and subsequently easier to wield.The beast depicted is Serosh, aged counselor who guides the golden lineage."

In the game world of Elden Ring, there is indeed a beast engraved on this shield's face, a gryphon strangely similar to the eagle-clawed lion creature seen in the official Elden Ring portrait of Godfrey, the first Elden Lord. If this creatureover Godfrey's shoulder is the same Seroshfrom the shield's item description,he may well have been a sentient, talking animal - an architect of the Golden Order who looked after Godfrey and Marika's Demigod children and despaired when they eventually turned on each other.

Next:Why Elden Ring's Actual Length Was Hidden Before Release