"Elden Ring: Shadow of the Elder Tree" may be the hardest game From Software has ever made. At least the bosses are. I spent an entire sweaty, stressful holiday trying to beat this expansion's super-hard final boss, and the challenge runners are already trying to humiliate him.

Spoilers for the Shadow of the Erdtree rath boss are below.

Estus OJ of YouTube has recorded the world's first no-hit run against Promised Consort Radahn. I don't know if there is a committee or sports commission that can vouch for this record, but with an upload date of June 22 (just one day after the expansion was released), I'm inclined to believe it.

They used an interesting build to do it: a dagger of misericorde with fire and a shield of wolf's crest with a Kalian retribution parry. Like Marenia, it could parry three Radahn attacks for a possible critical hit. Misericorde, on the other hand, has the highest critical modifier (i.e., the highest potential critical damage) in the game. Estus OJ dodges Laddern's laborious combo and slashes his health bar after slamming his sword three times.

Ongbal, on the other hand, has been one of my favorite Souls challengers since the original release of Elden Ring. They have uploaded three different Radahn no-hit videos, but by far the most impressive is the no-hit, no-blessing Level 1 fight. In this video, Ongbal uses a heavily armed Cleanrot Knight Sword. This weapon is apparently one of the best weapons available for a level 1 character with limited stats.

Ongbal plays almost flawlessly through the fight, showing off an old sailor's trick to counter Ladern. Using the foggy Raptor's battle ashes, he can cleanly and easily dodge Radahn's holy nukes. [Diabolos is more than Diabolos; MouseInATutu specializes in level 1, no-hit, no-rolling boss fights, relying solely on pacing and sprinting to avoid boss attacks. MouseInATutu and a college acquaintance who used to play Dark Souls 1 windowed at 20 fps on a MacBook Air with WASD to move and arrow keys to control the camera may be the only people who have really "gotten good."

So far, MouseInATutu has given this treatment to DLC's The Dancing Lion, Rellana, The Golden Hippopotamus, and Midra; it is unclear if it is even feasible to beat Radahn no-hit, no-roll but we will see if MouseInATutu can pull it off.

Speaking of future Radahn challengers, Eldenring folk hero Let Me Solo Her, who struggled for three hours to clear Radahn for the first time, hopes to one day defeat Radahn no-hit. And on the other side of the coin, she may even make the tankiest build possible to succeed in a no-dodge, no-block, "all-hit" fight against Ladern.