Elden Ring streamer strums Margit to death with an actual acoustic guitar

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Viral Elden Ring dance pad streamer MissMikkaa has found yet another weird way to explore the Lands Between.

MissMikkaa playing Elden Ring with a guitar
(Image credit: MissMikkaa)

MissMikkaa, the streamer who defeated the Elden Ring uber-boss Malenia using a level one character and a dance pad, has yet another bizarre boss kill to her repertoire: This time, she's taken down Margit, the Fell Omen, with an acoustic guitar.

See for yourself:

You'll notice that MissMikkaa is using a real acoustic guitar here, and not some kind of Guitar Hero-style controller. You might then naturally wonder how it works. The answer, she said in another tweet, is a program called Abject Audio Inputs, which binds audio frequencies to keyboard inputs. Basically, you can use any sound to control your keyboard, recorded or live, "as long as you are able to keep a certain consistency in your tone."

"My guitar is connected via an XLR cable to my gaming PC," MissMikkaa explained while demonstrating the setup during a recent livestream. "Basically how the software works is that it has these frequencies that it looks for, for this specific [in-game] action, which is W. So when it hits that frequency, for example when I do a G [chord]—you saw that it hit it—that means it does a W [keypress] for four seconds. Now if I want to attack, I have it assigned to the second frequency, which is A minor, and that's just a tap. And now we can heal, which is R, which is the third line [in the software], which is a C chord on the guitar. You see?"

MissMikkaa acknowledged how ridiculous it looks to play Elden Ring with a string instrument. "I mean, I can understand how it can look like, or be unbelievable, but it's definitely not fake. Instead of saying, 'this is not real,' you can say, 'How does this work?'"

(Image credit: MissMikkaa (Twitch))

In case it needs to be said, playing Elden Ring with a guitar and some weird software is clearly not easy. MissMikkaa was able to take down Margit, but I spent 15 minutes watching her battle Godrick the Grafted with a guitar during her Twitch stream, and she got absolutely rocked throughout. She eventually moved on to more conventional guitar-driven exploration, but even that was clearly a struggle—although to be perfectly honest she's doing better with the guitar than I ever did using a conventional controller.

It's definitely not the way I'd want to play Elden Ring, but the commitment to the bit is impressive. Of course, MissMikkaa is well known for exploring the Lands Between in the weirdest and most difficult ways possible: Before this, she beat two instances of Elden Ring's final boss simultaneously, using a dance pad for one and a regular controller for the other.

Andy Chalk
Andy Chalk
US News Lead

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.