One Elden Ring player encountered a rather unlucky circumstance as a relatively harmless Teardrop Scarab caused them to die. Elden Ring has over a hundred different enemy types, from the Godrick Soldiers to the Crucible Knights, giving players tons of opportunities to die besides the risk of falling that make up roughly 14% of all Elden Ring player deaths. Players know to be careful around all the enemies of Elden Ring, but when a non-hostile creature is around, players usually don't try to take caution near them. However, what happened to this one player should make those players rethink what they heed caution to.
In Elden Ring, besides the many faunas that are out in the open world of the Lands Between, there is a type of creature known as the Teardrop Scarab. These Teardrop Scarabs drop valuable items upon death, but first players would need to catch them, as they do run away. While there are tricks one may employ in Elden Ring to catch Teardrop Scarabs, there's usually no genuine danger to the player for pursuing these creatures. They can come in many different varieties, from those that run in specific circles for the player to catch, or those that fly in the air for the player to shoot down.
It was the flying variety that happened to have caused this one Elden Ring player's particular death. Posting to r/Eldenring, user Low-Signal-6596 uploaded a video of them trying to fight the Glintstone Dragon Smarag, a large dragon with many attacks involving flying and their wide-sweeping fire breath. The player was riding on Torrent to catch up to the dragon after they flew away, only for one of the hovering Teardrop Scarabs to drop on them and stagger them, causing them to be unable to avoid Smarag's fire breath attack and killing them instantly.
In Elden Ring, dropping on enemies, even without swinging a weapon, is a way to cause damage. In fact, there are many cases where players are killed due to a glitched Elden Ring boss stomping them to death. However, this makes even harmless enemies a danger to players, especially the ones that just hover harmlessly over the lands like these Teardrop Scarabs do.
Elden Ring is a game that always tries to throw surprises at the player, whether it's a weird player in PVP or Elden Ring's hardest boss Malenia having a second phase. While most of these are intentional, sometimes certain mechanics will allow for such unintentional surprises to occur, like the one here. Players must always take caution, even when they think they are safe because it's possible the most harmless creature in the game could lead to their downfall.
Elden Ring is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.