The FromSoftware fandom is a uniquely devoted bunch. From Demon’s Souls to Elden Ring, fans of this particular flavor of action RPG have pulled off some absurd self-imposed grinds, challenge runs, and secret hunts.
I’ve learned to respect their dedication, even if I’ll never share it despite loving these games myself. But to this day, my response to some alleged FromSoft feats is true disbelief. People do, after all, make things up on the internet. We should all doubt things online a little more. So when I learned of a Japanese player claiming to have killed Malenia and Promised Consort Radahn, respectively the most difficult bosses in Elden Ring and its Shadow of the Erdtree DLC, tens of thousands of times, I had my doubts.
That player is ShoulderCoffin, whose Twitter bio boasts of 21,420 Malenia kills and 13,260 Consort Radahn kills in some 9,500 hours played. I’m spotlighting their story for a reason, having found ShoulderCoffin on every platform I could and spoken to them directly, but I also want to walk you through my doubts here, because I was convinced there must at least be some fuzziness to these numbers.
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Everything I’ve seen suggests ShoulderCoffin genuinely is extremely devoted to co-op boss kills. They insist they’ve not “exaggerated” their boss kill counts, even if their hours played were surely smudged by some AFK time.
Elden Ring was released on February 25, 2022. That was about 1,200 days ago at the time of writing. For these stats to hold up, ShoulderCoffin would have to have averaged just under eight hours of Elden Ring every single day since launch. Some people have played games even more intensely than that, to be sure. I’ve spoken to Let Me Solo Them, a 5,300-hour Elden Ring devotee who can absolutely back up their claims, multiple times. But I still had my reservations. So, I asked ShoulderCoffin.
Via (perfectly readable but seemingly translated) responses, ShoulderCoffin explained that until the release of Shadow of the Erdtree, they were mostly either working, sleeping, or fighting Malenia. “That’s my lifestyle for two years,” they said over Discord.
ShoulderCoffin started posting Malenia kills on YouTube, cosplaying as Elden Ring community hero Let Me Solo Her – not always, and with no great meaning behind it beyond respecting the legend, they suggest – in 2022. The second video on their channel, from November 18, 2023, claims to show their 14,460th Malenia kill. Why are there no records of previous kills? They say they don’t have any footage of older kills. They said they previously posted a record of 7,500 kills on Reddit, but it was removed by moderators.
What they do have is YouTube, Twitter, and Reddit video posts chronicling thousands upon thousands of Malenia and Radahn fights going back years. Their Twitter record is especially meticulous. Sometimes it’s singular fights, and sometimes it’s compilations of multiple finales. With some basic scrubbing, I couldn’t find any obvious or even suspicious repeat fights used to pad their claim.
Most of these videos have relatively few views – they wouldn’t be the first player slaving away while almost nobody notices – but several of ShoulderCoffin’s posts do have replies from other players saying that they were able to overcome these bosses, especially Consort Radahn, with their help. And all of these videos make it very clear that they’ve mastered the fights inside and out.
13,000th Miquella’s Consort Radahn Slain on coop from r/Eldenring
In lengthy strategy breakdowns that I didn’t even request – I only shared my email address for possible future inquiries – ShoulderCoffin goes into extreme detail on how they formulated strategies to maximize their boss success rate in co-op. They’re fond of status effects like poison, rot, bleed, and frostbite, as well as HP-shredding effects like the Black Blade Incantation. The blood dagger Reduvia is a mainstay. They previously used the spell Impenetrable Thorns, as I did, to delete bosses. It wasn’t until several days after our initial conversations that they asked if I was familiar with Elden Ring – I’m on NG+5 – and everything they’ve said about the game’s mechanics checks out.
When I added them as a friend on PlayStation to confirm their play time, Elden Ring wasn’t displayed at first. An eyebrow went up. But ShoulderCoffin quickly updated their privacy settings, and sure enough, their account shows over 6,600 hours of Elden Ring played on PS5 alone. They started on PS4, they say, hence the 9,500-hour claim. And the rest of their profile checks out; they’re every bit the FromSoft fan they claim to be, with plenty of hours logged in Sekiro, Bloodborne, and Armored Core 6, as well as a range of other games.
They say they got into co-op bosses because they wanted rematches but Elden Ring doesn’t have Sekiro’s boss do-over feature, and it seems they stuck with it for the long, long haul for the thrill. “I wanted perfection, like one swing of a katana from a master samurai, perfect straight fist punch from a karate master,” they said of their Elden Ring history, adding that Malenia was the trigger. “I wanna catch up with her, the very best dancer in [a] video game I’ve ever seen.” Thousands of kills later, Consort Radahn came along, putting Malenia’s once-staggering difficulty curve to shame.
“I decided to fight the final dlc boss anyway,” ShoulderCoffin says. “Fighting Malenia was a gift and blessing as a video gamer, I thought whoever I fight, It will be Malenia 2.0 or something, and I was completely wrong. I spent two whole days defeating PC Radahn. Almost no opportunity to punish, fast, tough. No doubt FromSoftware threw everything they got.”
After checking every post and platform I possibly could, I can’t say I’ve seen every last purported boss kill, but I am confident that ShoulderCoffin is one heck of a passionate gamer with near-peerless Elden Ring achievements under their belt. Countless videos and screenshots back them up, and their story of devotion isn’t the first I’ve heard from FromSoft diehards, though it may well be the most intense.
ShoulderCoffin says they’ve finally had their fill, though. “I’m done. PC co-op consume my soul and … it’s pure nutcase and unbelievable,” they concede.
For another standout player, meet Elden Ring’s new community hero, the Elder Lord, a 72-year-old gamer with over 700 hours and New Game+7 beaten: “It was impossible, but I did it anyway”
