Elden Ring’s Malenia boss fight has huge co-op bug in Patch 1. 04

Malenia is arguably the toughest boss in Elden Ring, and a major part of her difficulty is that she can heal herself by hitting you with her sword attacks. However, there’s a problem with the game that makes Malenia even more difficult: a bug in the game means she can heal herself by hitting you with her sword attacks, regardless of whether or not you are actively trying to contact her.

Let Me Solo Her, the premier expert on being summoned to fight Malenia, has posted a video of this bug from patch 1.04. Around the 8:30 timestamp in the video, you can see Let Me Solo Her fighting Malenia, and it’s quite a battle as she continually heals, even while Let Me Solo Her flawlessly dodges all of her attacks.

Let Me Solo Her is still able to kill her — after all, there’s a reason this player has become a legend in the Elden Ring community — but other players have noticed the bug as well. This could be due to lag, or an online server discrepancy. Elden Ring may have detected the attack hitting but not fully. Reddit user EX-Eva had the following theory :

I haven’t seen anyone post this happening in offline, which leads me to believe this is a result of the multiplayer stability improvements mentioned in the patch notes. As others have pointed out, you were likely hit in the hosts world but not on your screen, which would register a heal but not damage.

This is consistent with her offline healing. If she attacks you after your death, you will notice that she heals when she crosses over your body, even though she hasn’t done any damage.

FromSoftware have been patching Elden Ring since the game’s launch; there have been numerous bug fixes in recent patches, including one that nerfed its extremely scary blood dogs.