'Elden Ring' Player Discovers A Supposed Illusory Wall That Breaks After 50 Hits, Setting Off Panic In Community

While we may be closing in on the era that all the secrets of Elden Ring have been discovered, one very dedicated player briefly set the community into a panic after they potentially discovered another illusory wall in Elden Ring, one that only breaks after getting hit 50 times.

On Friday, Redditor teristam posted their discovery in the /r/EldenRing subreddit. By whacking a wall in Volcano Manor dozens of times, the wall suddenly vanishes, opening a passageway to a connecting area.

FromSoftware's Dark Souls series was notorious for its illusory or hidden walls. Certain walls in the games would disappear if they were whacked by a weapon, sometimes leading to high-quality treasure and other times leading to some of the game's best bosses. Elden Ring has kept up the tradition of deeply hidden FromSoft secrets. For example, to get to the game's hardest boss, one needs to complete a Byzantine side-quest to even access the first of two entire hidden zones that players must then traverse through to earn the privilege of getting their butt handed to them.

Elden Ring has been out for a month, and players have nearly completed the vast wikis covering every secret and obtuse NPC questline in the game. Teristam's discovery of the 50-hit illusory wall threatens to change all that. Could one of the game's approximately nine-billion walls hold the key to the ultimate treasure? An even harder boss fight? An ending where players can actually do it with Fia?

As of now, it seems like there's no cause for players to literally bang their heads against every wall in Elden Ring. Players of Elden Ring may have noticed that the "illusory wall" discovered by Teristam doesn't actually lead to a secret. Instead, it leads to a section of Volcano Manor that is accessible through a regular, working door.

So what gives? Right now, the most prevalent theory is that the wall was simply a mistake left in by FromSoft. Dark Souls hacker @ZullieTheWitch announced they'd done some digging in the game's code and found that the wall in question had 9999 HP. This isn't uncommon in the Souls series, as Zullie points out that in Dark Souls 1, some terrain had health points because they were set to break with an event trigger, such as walking over an area that would cause the floor to collapse. While these areas also had a maxed-out defense to prevent players from breaking the terrain, it seems this supposedly illusory wall didn't have the same defense points.

Diehard FromSoft fans should rest easy for now: It seems like every illusory wall is working in the way that is intended, and there isn't an uber wall somewhere hiding a super-secret treasure. However, considering what you had to do to get the Penetrator armor set in Bluepoint's Demons' Souls remake, nothing can be put past FromSoftware entirely.