One year on, there have been more deaths in Elden Ring than there are people living on Earth

Elden Ring publisher Bandai Namco has released a bunch of stats to celebrate the game’s first anniversary and, presumably, to taunt us all about how bad we are at it. There have been more deaths thanks to the game’s myriad hazards than there are people currently alive on Earth, which seems like a not-great record, and nearly six billion attempts to take down its various bosses, most of which failed miserably.

Of the nine billion deaths that have occurred in the Lands Between, a full 69% of them are due to enemies and NPCs. 15% are down to unchecked status effects—things like poison, blood loss, and madness—and 14% (or around 1.2 billion deaths) from falling, because gravity is the most persistent and enduring foe across the entire Soulsborne catalogue.

One of the more surprising things to me is that, apparently, we’re all a bunch of peaceniks. 88% of the one billion summons that have happened in Elden Ring have been for the purposes of co-op play, meaning a paltry 12% comes from invasions. No wonder a barely noticeable 2% of player deaths have been caused by other players: You’re all far too nice.

You can find the full set of stats below, but you’ll be unsurprised to learn that Malenia takes an easy first place in the ‘number of boss attempts’ category. Of the nearly six billion boss fights initiated by players since the game released last year, 329 million of them have been against Malenia, easily ahead of Margit in second place with 281 million. I guess she’d be even further ahead were it not for the noble work of Let Me Solo Her.

Elden Ring was, of course, our game of the year for 2022, and we’re all feverish with anticipation for its Shadow of the Erdtree expansion that was finally announced last month. Until that comes out, we’ll just have to settle for the entertainment value of watching the aforementioned Let Me Solo Her play a version of the game that replaces every single enemy with Malenia. These stats might need updating before too long.

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