Carian Retaliation, specifically the Ash of War variant of the spell, is causing an Elden Ring glitch that is destroying chances at fair PvP. The bug seems to have come from the latest patch for the game and is making numerous invaders use the glitch to effectively one-shot players.
How does Carian Retaliation cause an Elden Ring bug?
After applying Carian Retaliation to a shield of small or medium size, you are granted three daggers which appear just behind your shoulders after you parry an enemy spell. But currently, you don’t have to do that at all; you can parry your own spell to activate the skill or use Glintstone Scraps or other consumables to trigger it as well.
Not only does the attack scale with the intelligence stat and the shield’s upgrade level, but according to users on the official Elden Ring Reddit, it deals a lot more damage that it’s supposed to.
Worse yet, if players use Carian Retaliation to parry their own spell, the dagger-like projectiles become invisible to the target. It’s not impossible to dodge the attack by spamming a roll or some other technique like Bloodhound Step, but the difficulty in countering the ability is extremely high.
Due to how prevalent this Elden Ring glitch is right now, From Software will likely patch this out sooner than later. One combo that combined Fire’s Deadly Sin and the Erdtree Greatshield was severed in one of the latest patches so that they didn’t trigger each other anymore.
That said, this isn’t the only Elden Ring bug or very cheesy one-shot build out there, so it might take months for the PvP to be in a properly balanced state.
In other news, Dying Light 2 will be getting new game plus and a photo mode through DLC, and a Microsoft executive may have accidentally mentioned PlayStation Game Pass.