Elden Ring players died 450 times on average since release

Bandai Namco celebrates Elden Ring’s first birthday with fun numbers

Elden Ring has been out for one year – considering the meteoric impact this open-world RPG had on video games in 2022 that could seem both too short and too long a time. It seems like yesterday that we made our first steps into the Lands Between and at the same time it seems like we aged a million years in our quest to mend what was broken.

Publisher Bandai Namco celebrates the first anniversary of its groundbreaking hit by sharing some very fun data points from the last 12 months of adventures, to which we all contributed. Give yourself a pat on the back for that. There you go, you died a lot and deserve credit for that.

Over nine billion player deaths were recorded in Elden Ring’s first year. If you divide that through the 20 million copies the game sold in that timeframe you get an average death count of 450. So if you could swear that you died hundreds of times while exploring the Lands Between then you’d be statistically correct.

69% of those deaths were caused by enemies and NPCs, while a mere 2% came from other players. The Scarlet Rot and other status effects like poison, bleeding, frostbite, madness, sleep, and Death Blight ended 15% of all lives, while the remaining 14% were caused by the most insidious killer of all: gravity.

Players challenged Elden Ring’s bosses 5.9 billion times with – you totally guessed it, didn’t you? – Malenia, Blade of Miquella, being the most-challenged boss of the game. Tarnished went up against her 329 million times, followed by Margit the Fell Omen (281 million), the Limgrave Tree Sentinel (277 million), Radagon of the Golden Order (148 million), and Starscourge Radahn (130 million).

Thankfully we had some help along the way to defeat these bosses, right? Over a billion player summons have happened since release, with 88% of them being calls for assistance and only 12% being an invasion by another player. It’s not like the world wasn’t unfriendly enough already.

In terms of magic and incantations, players had some clear favorites: Rock Sling was the most used magic spell, while Blessing of the Erdtree took first place among the incantations.

Here are the top five spells in Elden Ring by usage numbers:

1. Rock Sling
2. Crystal Torrent
3. Glintstone Pebble
4. Greatblade Phalanx
5. Rotten Breath

Here are the top five incantations in Elden Ring by usage numbers:

1. Blessing of the Erdtree
2. Bestial Sling
3. Golden Vow
4. The Flame of Frenzy
5. Bestial Vitality

Let’s hope the journey through Elden Ring’s first DLC, Shadow of the Erdtree, will be as memorable. We already know it’s going to be as lethal, let’s be honest.