This Commander Niall fight is peak Elden Ring cheese

Line up a sneaky shot, and fire away

Whether it’s due to one-hit kills, crazy attack combos, or annoying minions, if an Elden Ring boss is enough of a pain in the ass, honor goes out the window. A win is a win.

While I take a few weeks to recharge and either roll a new character or dive into New Game+ with my bloody dex build, I’m living vicariously through other players’ mischief — and it’s been a blast. A hilariously straightforward cheese method for one of the later optional bosses in Elden Ring captured my attention today. It’s weirdly nostalgic.

The clip — captured by Reddit user H3NRY-56 — is as light on spoilers as one can probably get given its place in Elden Ring. The scenery might come as a surprise, so look away if you’re feeling cautious, but the footage shows the end of the cheese strat, not the actual setup, and you’d have to squint to even see what this boss looks like. You can peek!

With that said, **spoilers below**.

Couldn’t beat Commander Niall so had to do the ultimate cheese
byu/H3NRY-56 inEldenring

I struggled quite a bit with Commander Niall as well, but while plenty of us leaned on our MVP spirit ashes to survive this frosty boss, H3NRY-56 just stocked up on arrows and played it extremely safe with the “ultimate cheese.” After poking around Castle Sol, they found a perfect perch with long-range access to Commander Niall — just the tiniest opening — and they got to work with a bow. That’s it! That’s the whole plan. But it’s kind of crazy that it’s possible. Exploration can pay off in unexpected ways.

If you actually want to try this cheese on Commander Niall, you can see the setup in this video from Black Sheep Gaming Studios. Again, bring lots of arrows.

This strategy reminds me of Dark Souls players tossing bombs onto the Capra Demon before stepping through the boss’s fog gate, which also ruled. That split-second dog dodge still freaks me out and/or frustrates me to this day, depending on the run.

As Elden Ring matures, its content is exhausted, and the community gets bored enough to find exponentially funnier and cheesier methods, we’re going to see some wild shit.