With players constantly on the prowl for hands-off strategies at Elden Ring Runes, it was only a matter of time before someone figured out how to reach the end of the game with no fighting whatsoever.

In his most recent video, Iron Pineapple--who runs a fantastic YouTube channel that is dedicated exclusively to Souls and Souls-like games, walked us through his battle to beat Elden Ring as an pacifist. The game's playthrough gets a bit complicated due to the speedrun issues and smart build synergies, iron Pineapple never broke one single rule: Don't do any direct damage to the enemies and bosses alike.

"I think the entire run took about 45 hours," Iron Pineapple told MMOexp via email. "Most of the time was spent playing around and preparing to go on the road, and I only got stuck with a handful of bosses."

For those who are thinking of becoming Elden Ring pacifists out there, the game gives you all the tools needed to begin your journey. Iron Pineapple started as the Prophet class for its healing powers and selected to use the Fanged Imp Ashes as his extra item. The entire plan was to make use of to summon NPC summons as an auxiliary class. When the summons do all the damage, the goal of Iron Pineapple was to buff and heal them as needed.

As seen in the video below, Iron Pineapple's ran into several dead ends, some of which led him down avenues that ultimately proved fruitless.

In the event that the Godskin Duo in Crumbling Faram Azula was causing even his leveled up Ash trouble, for instance, Iron Pineapple decided it was time to take one of the greatest summons in the game: Black Knife Tiche. The only issue is that Iron Pineapple would have to finish Ranni the Witch's quest line to reach Tiche's ashes. It wasn't until jumping through its various hoops and getting to the boss that unlocked Tiche that Iron Pineapple realized he couldn't get help, which prevented him from getting Tiche which rendered the whole excursion ineffective.

"I probably spent the majority of my time on The Godskin Duo," Iron Pineapple said. "For some time, I was convinced that if I could heal well enough and got lucky in my attack patterns, I could do it. Of course, I eventually took the torch and sleeping instead."

In no way is it surprising that Iron Pineapple also used the Mimic Tear, which acts as a copy of your character. It is regarded as one of the most flexible of Elden Ring's summons even after its nerfing in the 1.03 patch. Iron Pineapple spent much of his time in a pacifist mode focused on other sources of damage and when the moment came to shove it was difficult not to be aware of the capability to make a very unique sidekick. As such, he resorted to using Mimic Tear Mimic Tear to defeat many of the more difficult, end-game bosses.

"I had a feeling that the Mimic was going to be extremely strong right from the beginning, which is why I took the deliberate decision to avoid it for the sake of diversification," Iron Pineapple said. "It was fun to highlight the different niches and strengths of some of the summons available in the game and approach the issues as puzzles that you have to solve rather than simply winning by the raw numbers. In the end, I was somewhat disappointed with how strong the Mimic still is even with the change in the nerf."

Iron Pineapple's pacifist run is yet another illustration of how Elden Ring retains the strategic openness of its Souls predecessors. With the right equipment to cheap Elden Ring Runes, skills, and resources to your disposal it is possible to win the game using just about every strategy within the book. There's a chance that you'll hit the brick wall there and then. Iron Pineapple sure did. If there's one thing to learn from an Elden Ring playthrough, it's that everything is possible with a bit of stubbornness.