From Software's big Eldenring expansion, Shadow of the Erdtree, arrived to great acclaim, including PC Gamer's highest scoring DLC ever (sorry, Geralt). Of course, there were a few unforeseen problems, the most notable of which was the worst bottle of perfume ever to absolutely melt the dreaded boss of Erdtree.

The culprit was the standard moveset of the lightning perfume bottle, which produces a series of individual explosions. Combining this moveset with the Rolling Sparks Ash of War and aiming at the ground had the unintended effect of causing all the explosions to explode instantly and on top of each other, resulting in a tremendous amount of damage that obliterated the last boss in 13 seconds. This worked with Frenzyflame's perfume bottles. Well, FromSoftware has sensed what you've been up to, and in today's new patch, they've nerfed that sweet smell of success to the ground.

After the patch, pointing the perfume combo at the ground will only result in one small, weed-like explosion. This was not the only reduction in the tool's unexpected behavior. Players were losing sleep over boss fights with spiky shields, thanks to a glitch where pushing forward into an attack would be defended and no stamina would be expended. Alas, no more of this.

These are the most extreme nerfs, but adjustments have also been made to Bloodfiend's Arm: Bloodfiend's Arm was scaling in arcane more than intended, and the new armor is now more powerful than the old one. There is also one PvP-specific nerf." Reduced the damage and damage animation of the shearing vacuum effect of the skill Swift Slash."

Some players have been having performance issues with Erdtree, and this patch addresses some, but not all. It also, quite cheekily, puts the blame on third-party mouse software and the player's own ray tracing settings. The rest of the patch notes are minor tweaks and bug fixes, which you can read in full here. One particularly nice line is included:

"Fixed a bug that caused the Golden Hippopotamus boss' unblockable bite attack to connect with players more easily than intended."

Poor Golden Hippopotamus! This patch is now available and is required to use the online features of the game. I haven't played Erdtree to the end yet, but in the weeks since its release, the game's large community has ripped Erdtree to shreds. The last boss is a complete nightmare, apparently, but some enthusiasts have already danced through one of FromSoft's biggest difficulties without a single scratch.