By now, you've learned that there are plenty of dumb ways to die in The Lands Between. you could challenge a runebearbeing attacked by a giant crab out of nowhere, or trying to pet a not so friendly dog. As silly as your death may seem, nothing compares to the frustrating hilarity of dying due to damage from a fall, even though it may seem like a safe height. that's just ancient ring for you.
Every player must have felt like smashing their controller after jumping from a safe height, only to have the Torrent disappear and the Tarnished plummet to the ground for seemingly nothing. This strange fall-off damage system caught players off guard when the game first launched, and many are still struggling with it.
Redditor megardl is one such player. They posted a video of their Tarnished dying from a fall near Four Belfries (thanks, GameRant). While traveling in Torrent, they safely jumped off a cliff into some high ruins. They then began to slide down the ruins and despite landing on some sort of ledge in the middle, they fell to their deaths as they landed on the ground. This video is the perfect showcase of how unusual the system is.
"I don't understand fall damage and I never will," says megardl, obviously frustrated by the rather silly looking death.
"Yeah, I finished my first game and never quite figured it out. 'If you fall too far, you die' is pretty much what I understand," agreed rustycage001, who took a rather simplistic approach. "Slopes act weird in this game," added Deva_Way. "Every time I fall into one I stop for about 3 seconds, sometimes I even unmount torrent just to be safe."
"Yeah, it's always annoyed me that Elden Ring doesn't follow the typical fall damage layouts. Usually a jump into the air resets the distance. Not here, though," Etherwolf said.
As always, the community came to his aid and tried to explain how exactly Elden Ring calculates fall damage. "You should have stopped jumping, I don't think it registered your landing, so it counted the whole distance as a fall," said ObviousSinger6217, who felt the last jump resulted in extra fall damage, according to FromSoftware's algorithm.
"Until you come to a complete stop, the game will treat you as if you were continually falling higher and higher, even though you seemed to have stopped your fall at a safe height," iatetoomuchchicken explained in simpler terms.
Elden Ring is probably the only game that really needs an explanation of how fall damage works. lucky for you we have an explainer just for that. It comes with a helpful video and even preventative measures you can take to avoid damage when falling from a great height.
