Before we get into it, let's clarify the moral of this story right up top: When another human being approaches you with a terrible idea, one that is certain to bring them suffering and regret, encourage them. It'll probably be really funny.
That's all there is to take from the tale of DementedEnjoyer (spotted by GamesRadar), an Elden Ring challenge runner who amassed a fortune of 10 million runes over many days before losing it all to cruel fate (and fall damage). Why? Why not?
The player had originally spent "nearly an entire day" grinding 4 million runes at level 8 "for no specific reason" before asking the Elden Ring subreddit what they should do with their loot. The website had plenty of recommendations—including blowing it all on borderline-worthless glass shards from Patches—but DementedEnjoyer eventually settled on a combo of the two top-voted recommendations: A bow-only build and beating the rest of the game "without spending those runes or losing any".
"Fuck it, bow only run and I'm not allowed to level until I beat Elden Beast. Run's over if I lose my runes. I'm recording the whole thing and posting the highlights when I'm finished. See you on the other side fuckers," wrote our hero as they embarked on their quest. Oh, and by the time they'd settled on this decision, they'd spent at least two days of their life grinding all the way up to 10 million runes.
UPDATE POST from the tarnished who wasted an entire day farming 4 mil runes at lvl 8 from r/Eldenring
"I kinda have to [beat the game at level 8 without losing runes]," said DementedEnjoyer, "Every other option is just too sane".
The result was what I can only describe as a kind of anti-Brewster's Millions scenario: DementedEnjoyer was forced—by themself—to wonder The Lands Between with bulging pockets, completely unable to spend a cent (or whatever the rune equivalent of a cent is) until their journey's conclusion. Also, they could only use a bow, which wasn't part of the original Brewster's Millions but probably would have made it way better.
But tragedy ensued. DementedEnjoyer had made good progress, but a couple of days after accepting their challenge they posted a grim "final update". They'd tried so hard, and got so far, but an attempt at a corpse run to recover their 10 million (lost, but not necessarily permanently, to some offscreen death) ended inevitably as some clever platforming gave way to sharp drop and a sudden stop. The runes were gone forever, DementedEnjoyer's challenge run was over, days of effort had vanished in a puff of smoke, and they had little to show for their days of labour.
FINAL UPDATE from the tarnished who wasted two days farming 10 million runes on a lvl 8 character and refused to level up until he beat the final boss from r/Eldenring
But I rather enjoyed the whole story, so who's to say whether it was a bad idea or not?
True to form, DementedEnjoyer was rather sanguine about the loss. "We all knew it was going to end this way," they wrote in a comment on their final update. You know what? I salute them. So far as I'm concerned, Elden Ring's pantheon of unhinged player heroes just gained a new entry.
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