An Elden Ring clip shows the importance investing a lot of rune levels into Vigor when getting ready to challenge late-game bosses like Astel, Stars of Darkness. It's an unfortunate showing of exactly how powerful Elden Ring's endgame bosses can get, but makes for a hilarious video as players spend 30 seconds preparing with physics and buffs before quickly being defeated.
The original caption for the video claims that the players are roughly Rune Level 150 while fighting this boss, which should be high enough to beat Elden Ring without too much trouble. However, it does show exactly how important the quality of a build can be when players have to choose which skill points to invest in during a playthrough.
In the clip shared by Reddit user TheShotaKing224 on the Elden Ring subreddit, the player can be seen having been summoned as a phantom to fight Astel, Stars of Darkness. After spending half a minute preparing for the fight with a series of Ash of War and buffs, the group of three enter the fight only for the host to be immediately pummeled by the boss. It can be seen that the attack manages to deal 1037 damage to the host, killing him instantly and sending the assisting players back to their worlds before ever getting to engage with the fight.
It is a hilariously short encounter, made all the funnier by the fact that the group of three spent so much time preparing for a fight that ended so quickly. However, some of the comments have pointed out some of the finer points of the host's build based on how much damage he took when being beaten by Astel. According to the damage taken, it appears that the host had roughly 30 Vigor, which isn't quite enough to be able to survive most hits from Elden Ring's stronger endgame bosses.
The clip itself does show the importance of investing in the Vigor stat in Elden Ring, as more than 30 still isn't enough to survive a single attack from a boss like Astel. Given the variety of builds in Elden Ring, there are a lot of ways to make a character who is able to withstand an attack like the one that kills the host player in the clip. That being said, the need for so much Vigor can sometimes limit exactly how much room players have to mix up their builds without creating a glass cannon that gets killed in one hit.
Elden Ring is available now for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.