In a match against Malenia, an Elden Ring player was successfully defeated, but Waterfowl Dance did not appear at the match this time. Blade of Miquella made a name for herself in Elden Ring with one specific attack of her own, making it the most challenging boss.

Some FromSoftware veterans will have the sense of achievement by their victories in some difficult games. A player discover a certain Spirit Ash that can successfully stun and kill Malenia and win. Now Malenia can be called the most tough boss in the history of FromSoftware since its release.

On the one hand, players enjoy the feeling of challenging various competitions and achieving the ultimate victory. On the other hand, as the difficulty of the game continues to increase, players also need to keep pace with the times, learn more useful knowledge and prepare more Elden Ring Runes or items before starting new challenges to ensure their smooth passing. However, on the road to success, occasional failure is also very normal.

1.When Reddit user superepic13579 played the game earlier, he was in an excellent position to obliterate "Nihil" Malenia's health with Bloodboon Ritual skill of Mohgwyn's Sacred Spear. Afterwards, Goddess of Rot gradually entered its second phase and pay attention to the player's Mimic Tear. The Tarnished, with full health, seems to have seen his victory. It was such a harrowing experience that led the player to post this video to Reddit.

2.After switching to Rivers of Blood Katana, the player calmly and quickly uses Corpse Piler to stagger Malenia. Later, FromSoftware thought this skill was too powerful, so it was changed to cause damage and Hemorrhage build-up. As soon as a couple escaped from a defeat, the rotting female swordsman immediately jumped up and kicked the player, so that the couple couldn't dodge this attack in time. Since they couldn't restore their health, they devised another method, which was to use another Corpse Piler to kill Malenia. But, at this very moment, they knew they were doomed.

3.Immediately, Malenia stretches out one of her hands, rushes at the Tarnished while still in the attack animation, throws them into the air, and impales her soul on her weapon. The Shardbearer's most damaging single attack is this one. It kills the player instantly, and it's a one-line attack that many players are all too familiar with.

Later, Reddit user said in the video that they had never thrown the controller before this loss, but after this loss, they almost did. Fortunately, they tried again later, and it worked. So, in the Elden Ring community, it's better to enjoy playing the game than to be frustrated with the outcome of the game.

Shortly after performing a full analysis of The Witcher 3 Next-Gen on Xbox Series X and PS5, those folks over at Digital Foundry are back to do a full once over of the Xbox Series S version of CD Projekt RED's RPG.

Much like the Series X and PS5 analysis showed us, The Witcher 3 on Xbox Series S is a bit of a mixed bag overall. DF notes that those input latency problems present in the quality mode on Xbox Series X are still here, even if the overall performance at 30FPS is better thanks to a lack of ray tracing on Xbox Series S.

"Looking at performance, Series S impresses initially, hitting a rock-solid 30fps, no matter what I threw at the console and no matter which of the classic stress points I used. Even in the Heirarch Square, which is a real CPU stress-test for PS5 and Series X, there are zero issues.

Series S has the same high NPC count as those much more powerful consoles, although without the ray-tracing features, and it's absolutely holding 30fps, unlike the two more expensive machines."

That lack of RT is a bit of a bummer, but at least the frame rate holds up nicely. However, over in the performance mode, the Xbox Series S version doesn't fare quite as well. There are some major frame rate drops in the machine's 60FPS performance mode, dropping down to the low 40s in that aforementioned stress point; the Heirarch Square.

"Unfortunately, it's not a solid 60fps lock by any means. For most horseback riding in the wilds, Series S hits the mark mostly, but there are significant dips anywhere around Novigrad's centre, with lurches down to the low 40s as we go through Heirarch Square.

This is much worse than PS5 and Series X are in their own performance modes, and truly is the very worst performing section of the game we've found."

The performance mode does improve in more open, less NPC-dense areas, but it's still a very varied experience overall on Xbox Series S. It seems the 30FPS quality mode option is the more stable way to play right now, although with that mode's input delay issues, DF finds it hard to fully recommend either mode right now.

"It's a strange situation but the verdict is similar to the one we had on the two premium machines. The Series S Complete Edition needs a bit more time and some more work to iron out its rough points.

Fundamentally there's a great release of The Witcher 3 for Series S owners here, and it's perhaps just a patch or two away from where we need it to be."

Ultimately, it looks like the Witcher 3 is still a whale of a time on Xbox Series S despite some lingering performance issues, which sounds very similar to our own Xbox Series X experience at launch. We're hoping CDPR cleans this one up in the new year, so we can all enjoy a more consistent current-gen version of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

No professional career is eternal, especially in League of Legends.

With every offseason being quite unpredictable and every organization in the scene looking to secure a roster capable of winning trophies, it’s no surprise that some pro players are left behind and aren’t picked to compete professionally.

In League, this usually means that such individuals turn over to streaming full-time. That way, they can still polish their abilities, stay sharp, and wait for a potential offer from an organization to join its ranks.

As of now, there are a bunch of pros who have done exactly that: focused on streaming. Some of them are looking for potential offers in the future, while others remain undecided or gave up on coming back to the professional scene.

Here are six League of Legends pros who will enter 2023 as full-time streamers.

Broxah

Broxah is one of the few Western players to have reached the World Championship final when he became a Worlds 2018 semifinalist with Fnatic. Since then, he’s also played under Liquid and CLG’s banners. By the end of last year, he decided to become a full-time streamer, while also leaving the door open for potential opportunities. He rejoined Liquid as a content creator in January 2022, and not much will change in the nearby future. On Dec. 21, Broxah announced that in the first half of 2023, he will continue doing what has worked for him for the past year: streaming, appearing on LEC broadcasts, and more. At the same time, he’s uncertain about his plans for the second half of the year.

IWillDominate

IWillDominate is certainly one of the most renowned full-time streamers in the League community. He’s been creating content since 2016 for Liquid and Cloud9. He parted ways with the latter on Dec. 21, though the exact reasons behind that decision are unknown so far. Still, there are no reasons to believe that IWD will bid farewell to streaming. He has created a significant community and become one of the biggest personalities in the esports and gaming ecosystem.

Nemesis

After being unable to find a team in the 2020 offseason, Nemesis decided to also try his luck in streaming. And so far, that has been working tremendously, to say the least. The 23-year-old was picked up by Gen.G in January 2021, and since then, he’s created a bunch of content, often teaming up with other personas from the scene, like LS. With no updates from Nemesis regarding his future, it’s more than likely that he’ll continue broadcasting in 2023.

Bwipo

Bwipo joined Liquid by the end of 2021 in the hopes of claiming new successes with the North American squad, which at that time assembled a superteam, with the Belgian being one of the main stars. The following season turned out to be a fluke, though, and after a revamp of the roster, Bwipo has found himself teamless. As a result, he announced on Dec. 1 that he will be streaming in 2023. He also said he will be evaluating his future options as time goes by, so he might return to the pro scene eventually.

Pobelter

The North American LCS has many renowned mid laners and Pobelter is certainly one of them. With almost 10 years of professional gaming experience, Pobelter truly etched his name in the history books for his numerous appearances on the international stage and domestic trophies. He stopped playing professionally in February 2021 and has been focused on streaming ever since.

PowerOfEvil

In 2017, PowerOfEvil was just one game away from taking down Faker and SKT T1 in the Worlds quarterfinals. After that deep run on the international stage, the German has played for five different North American organizations, and it looks like now a small hiatus awaits him. The 25-year-old announced that he’s returned to Germany to focus on streaming after a lack of interesting offers this offseason. Still, he sees himself as one of the strongest mid laners in the game and would like to return to pro play in the future.

While not perfect, the co-op mod is the best way to re-experience this tremendous RPG.

On what had to be our 10th attempt at Elden Ring's first major boss, Godrick the Grafted, the big guy froze. A friend and I were using the Seamless Co-op mod (opens in new tab) and Godrick, despite having a literal fire-breathing dragon-head for an arm, decided to surrender. My fellow Tarnished got roasted a second earlier so it was just me and Godrick the Frozen. Cautiously I swung at him, ready for his brain to turn back on. It never did. I slashed away the last half of his health bar and sent him back into the ether. LEGEND FELLED. The mod may have broken him, but we were also several attempts in and just wanted to move on. A win is a win.

The Seamless Co-op mod solves all of the problems with Elden Ring's awful multiplayer summoning system, but it also introduces a slew of new ones once you're playing with it. Sometimes they're funny: my friend got to see my character ride an invisible horse a lot of the time. Sometimes they're useful: when one of you dies, the enemies don't reset, so you can cheese harder dungeons. And sometimes they're legitimately game-breaking: your ability to lock-on vanishes in the Radahn fight, which essentially prevents anyone who plays a spellcaster from doing damage at all.

The mod sits right in the middle of being unplayable and glorious. As Ted Litchfield wrote in his early impressions (opens in new tab) of it, it's simply the best way to play Elden Ring with a friend. Nothing could be worse than the normal method where you have to set a multiplayer password, drop a summon sign, wait for your friend to find it, and then be summoned in long enough to defeat the area's main boss. In the Seamless Co-op mod, you set a password, have your friend open their world, and then you can join them for as long as you want. You could play the entire game without ever getting kicked out.

On top of that, the Seamless Co-op mod lets you both ride Torrent (normal co-op prevents any horsing around) and, as part of a recent patch, you both can summon spirit ash allies anywhere you want. In some ways, playing with the mod is like playing in New Game+. There are some challenges here and there, but you have enough tools to barrel through however you want. Because my friend was new, I let her lead the way through catacombs and castles. She experienced all the little tricks FromSoftware plays on you with ambushes and puzzle-like combat scenarios. And, if things got hairy, I could assist using what I've learned from my own playthroughs.

New rules

The best moments with the Seamless Co-op mod are when things go very wrong. When the challenge is at its highest, the mod changes how you approach the game. Normal enemies are extremely susceptible to getting staggered when two of you are beating them up. We found this out rather quickly in the early parts of the game, so to keep things interesting we took on the toughest enemies. The patrolling Tree Sentinel in the opening area is a little more manageable when you have two people taking swipes at him on horseback, but he can still pulverize you in a single hit. For that fight, I equipped the talisman that kept his attention on me while I tanked him on the ground. My friend played the role of DPS and wore him down while he was distracted. It took us a few tries, but once she landed that final blow it felt like beating a raid boss in an MMO: going in with a plan and adapting on the fly based on the enemy's behavior.

We also decided to skip most of the optional catacombs and dungeons until we absolutely needed an upgrade or item they offered. This method kept us rune-starved enough to make some of the fights a genuine obstacle. For Castle Morne, we had to take turns pressing forward as one of us got killed, utilizing the fact that enemies don't respawn unless someone rests at a grace. The player that ate it can run back with a small penalty to their stamina regeneration. There were times where I intentionally bolted into a group of enemies and dispatched the most powerful one. I'd likely die in the process and leave my friend with the job of staying alive as I made my run back.

Under these new self-imposed rules, you're forced to come up with strategies that differ from the singleplayer game. By myself, I crept through dungeons and learned where enemies would appear. I'd wait until they were separated from the pack almost like a stealth game, or I'd pull them back to a safe spot. Wrong moves would be the end and I'd have to try again. In co-op, the goal is to cycle between each other long enough to make it to the next grace. To my surprise, Elden Ring works well as a gauntlet if you have someone who finds it equally thrilling to think on the fly.

Road trip

While not necessarily unique to the co-op mod, re-experiencing Elden Ring's open world with a friend who hasn't seen any of it before is a delight. It's like watching someone play your favorite game for the first time, but you get to be right there with them.

I completely forgot until the door locked behind us that Gatekeeper Gostoc traps you in a dark room with a brutal knight at the beginning of Stormveil Castle. Nothing is more scary for my friend than when something like that happens and we're both panicking. The same thing happened when she led the way toward a group of enemies in the middle of a swamp in Limgrave and the gigantic dragon flew down and barbecued her and everyone else. I've always said that Elden Ring's open world is basically made to emulate the popular Dark Souls memes (opens in new tab) where some person or animal gains a health bar and dramatic choir music starts. With persistent co-op, you can stumble into all sorts of problems, which is really what Elden Ring is all about.

The Lands Between also remain absolutely stunning to look at. I thought some of that would be lost while playing with a friend, but there have been several times where we've both crested a hill or came out of a cave and stood there looking out over the landscape. With two people, you have the time to appreciate the day/night cycle and how it can create the sort of imagery you'd usually see in staged screenshots. I desperately wanted a photo mode when all I could see on my screen was our silhouettes as we galloped across the grassy hills of Limgrave, or when we stood in the middle of the Radahn's battlefield, soaked in the crimson rain.

The Seamless Co-op mod's biggest weaknesses are in the most scripted sequences, which end up being the main Shardbearer boss fights, like Radahn and Rennala. You can't respawn at a Stake of Marika near them, so on top of AI and mechanics not working, you have to do the full run back. I imagine as we get deeper into the game there will be fights that might verge on being legitimately maddening. But we're halfway through and the worst we've had to deal with was the lock-on issue and one of us not correctly receiving runes as a reward for downing a boss—thankfully minor bosses are easy enough to farm souls from to alleviate that.

Otherwise, the mod is like playing on a new difficulty mode. It's still Elden Ring, but with pockets of new challenge that in-turn create new surprises. The mod's creator continues to update it as FromSoftware rolls out new patches. It's possible that at some point most of the bugs we encountered will be fixed. When that happens, I'll have zero caveats when recommending people to give the game a shot with a co-op partner. I wouldn't go so far as to say Elden Ring is purely better with friends, but it's easily the best way to re-experience it if you know someone that is willing to join you on the journey.

You can download Seamless Co-op from Nexus Mods (opens in new tab).