Elden Ring Update makes Starscourge Radahn actually hard again

Elden Ring Radahn - An Elden Ring player squaring off against a boss
(Image credit: Bandai Namco)

Publisher Bandai Namco released a small update today to the larger Elden Ring patch 1.03 that hit mid-March. Specifically, they slid in a fix to give Starscourge Radahn’s back his groove. The original update reduced the intimidating swordsman and his tiny baby horse's damage, basically turning his giant swords into a pair of pool noodles, making him a total pushover compared to his brutal contemporaries like Maliketh. 

Developer FromSoftware continues to tinker with Elden Ring, tweaking the game to be just the right amount of challenging. Though, clearly getting Starscourge Radahn back to his formerly beefy self was important to the team as the only patch note in this update is “Fixed a bug in the balance adjustment of the boss 'Starscourge Radahn' in update 1.03, in which the power of some attacks was unintentionally reduced” making Radahn the star of a solo act update.

Elden Ring Radahn - A hero faces off against Starscourge Radahn

(Image credit: Bandai Namco Entertainment)

Previously, Radahn took a pretty big whack over the head in patch 1.03, with his weapon and projectile hitboxes shrinking and slowing down, a reduction in his melee damage, and big changes to his homing attacks among other things. While it's clear he needed some adjustments, he'd gone from being a challenge to being a source of entertainment as you could watch summoned NPC's pummel him on their own.

Not that there's anything wrong with using summons. While magicking up aid in battle feels against the spirit of Soulsborne games, as Pat discovered, leaning into the Elden Ring's summons feels like cheating but makes for an immensely fun time.

If you’re tackling Radahn now, you’ll want to be prepared since he’s bringing his A-game again, and that means weathering a beating. If you need some help, check out our Elden Ring bosses guide for some specific breakdowns, and it’s never a bad idea to brush up on more basic Elden Ring tips.

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Sarah Richter
Contributor

Sarah (She/Her) is a contributor and former Senior Writer for TechRadar Gaming. With six years of experience writing freelance for publications like PC Gamer, she's covered every genre imaginable and probably a few she made up. She has a passion for diversity and the way different genres can be sandboxes for creativity and emergent storytelling, and loves worldbuilding. With thousands of hours in League of Legends, Overwatch, Minecraft, and countless survival, strategy, roguelike, and RPG entries, she still finds time for offline hobbies like tabletop RPGs, wargaming, miniatures painting, and hockey.

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