Summary
- This Elden Ring modder has added a way to fly in-game after two years.
- It makes Torrent invisible and swaps the riding animations for the wings SFX so that it looks like you’re flying through the air.
- The mod took months of research to pull off, and elements of it are still a work-in-progress, but you can download it right now.
Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree added a new Ash of War that briefly allows you to sprout wings and fly into the air, before crashing down into your opponent. But ineedthetail has taken this idea even further.
In their newest mod, which you can download here, you can fly uninhibited. To do this, they made Torrent invisible, added flight controls, and swapped out the riding animation. The end result is that it looks like you’re flying through the air with a pair of Crucible Knight wings.
As a result, it also replaces Torrent.
Of course, this does break the game slightly. You can fly to endgame areas immediately and even reach out of bound zones, but it also opens up some fun new challenges —ineedthetail has already uploaded a video experimenting with how fast they can speedrun the game.
They were able to fly to the Forge of the Giants from jump, meet Melina, and then burn the Erdtree to ash. All without saying ‘how do you do?’ to a single demigod. Afterwards, they glided through Crumbling Farum Azula towards Maliketh, beat him with their NG+ setup, flew all the way to the penultimate boss fog, fought Godfrey and Morgott at once, and then took down Radagon and the Elden Beast to roll credits. All in just ten minutes.
This Mod Has Been A Dream Since Elden Ring Launched
This mod has been a dream of ineedthetail’s since the early days of Elden Ring, involving “months of research and trial and error”, and even a nine-part plan so that they could make a flying mod that is as satisying to play as it is intuitive.
To accomplish this feat, there were several problems that had to be overcome, some of which are still in progress. The most important is that fall damage needed an overhaul so that you wouldn’t trigger killboxes and death cams, immediately dying if you flew into the wrong part of a map.
They also had to shut poor Torrent up.
Disabling fall damage took “months”, and removing killboxes and death cams was done by modifying the maps manually, “a painstakingly slow task”. There’s also an issue with maps not loading (Stormveil Castle and Leyndell Capital only trigger “from very spcecific locations”), which is still being investigated as ineedthetail has yet to find a solution.
Nonetheless, this is an incredibly impressive mod that makes the flying feel like a natural addition to the game. It’s understandable why FromSoftware didn’t introduce such a mechanic — the world and its progression isn’t designed for flight — but being able to revisit The Lands Between from a new perspective is a treat. The fact it’s done so well is just the cherry on top.
With worldbuilding from Game of Thrones scribe George R.R. Martin and developed by FromSoftware, Elden Ring is a masterpiece in what has become known as the ‘Soulslike’ genre of action role-playing games.