You can dunk on Elden Ring's Radahn by making him dunk himself

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He can hold the stars, but he can't hold his breath.

Elden Ring's Radahn cries out to the sky in cutscene
(Image credit: FromSoftware)

Here's a tip for one of the most notorious Elden Ring bosses: let Radahn defeat himself. You don't need magic or a powered-up weapon, you just need enough dignity to let one of the most feared warriors in the Lands Between launch himself off the map to an instant death.

Some devious Elden Ring players have discovered that Radahn's gravity magic has a fatal weakness, and that weakness is water. When you get about halfway through the big guy's health bar, he propels himself into the sky and zooms back down as a deadly meteor. Usually you need to run like mad to dodge what is almost surely an one-hit death, but if you instead lure Radahn over near the water in his massive boss arena, he will land in it and sink.

To pull this off you need to start by fighting Radahn normally, preferably by summoning all the allies that are available in the fight. That'll keep Radahn distracted while you throw magic at him or get a few sword swipes in. When he's close to half health, you can start to lure him towards the  water on horseback. If you stay slightly outside of his melee range, he'll have no choice but to chase you, and you can take him all the way to the edge of the ocean and trigger his meteor attack.

This absurd strategy—found by both Reddit user HomeGrownCrown7 and Twitter user izuoku_—trivializes the constant balance passes on the Radahn fight, but to me it still falls in line with a history of weird tactics for Souls bosses. FromSoftware initially nerfed Radahn's damage output too much and recently made him threatening again. Now you can't boast about killing Radahn without specifying exactly when you killed Radahn. Surely the git gud-ers won't like you making a fool of the Starscourge himself, but I think this method is the most in keeping with how surprisingly funny Elden Ring is all the time.

"Did you ever hear the tragedy of General Radahn The Starscourge?" joked Reddit user sebaniko93 in a post where someone showed off this method. "I thought not. It's not a story the Roundtable would tell you."

It's always humbling to see that while everyone is touting rune farms and the best weapons to use, someone finds a way to achieve something difficult in the most ridiculous way possible. 

Tyler Colp

Tyler has covered videogames and PC hardware for 15 years. He regularly spends time playing and reporting on games like Diablo 4, Elden Ring, Overwatch 2, and Final Fantasy 14. While his specialty is in action RPGs and MMOs, he's driven to cover all sorts of games whether they're broken, beautiful, or bizarre.