"Shadow of the Elder Tree" has been out for a week now, and the theorists are already tearing into it, perfume bottles in hand. Yes, really. The monsters of the Shadow Lands are susceptible to cologne overdose. Violence has never smelled so good.

As you may have noticed, this is an absolutely wicked amount of damage, even by Elden's Ring standards. Since it's only been on sale for a week, I can't embed the video directly here for fear of spoilers, but there are many users who are leveling this nuclear-grade sniff serum at the DLC's last boss: one user wrote, "All my anger at this guy is summed up in this."

So what the heck is going on here is the unexpected interaction of Ashes of War.

This information comes courtesy of YouTuber Syrobe, who has a build overview on his channel. Basically, Lightning Perfume Bottle's standard moveset generates a series of explosions, each with a unique and individual hitbox that does a fair amount of damage. However, they are all predictably dispersed.

A Rolling Spark Ash of War is now available that can be applied to the Lightning Perfume Bottle. By aligning the explosion of the perfume bottle in a straight line forward, it can add range to an unwieldy weapon.

However, when pointed at the floor, all the explosions in the line "instantly overlap each other" and explode. This inflicts damage that can only be described as heretical.

To compensate for the poor scaling of this weapon, Shirobehaye layers on equipment that increases the weapon damage of lightning and perfume, as well as the Aged One's Talisman of Delight and Black Dumpling Hat, which increase damage while under the effects of Madness (or nearby in the case of the talisman). Recommendation. If you give yourself Madness, no problem.

There is also a new Rakshasa armor set, which increases damage in exchange for more punishment.

With all of this in place, you can obliterate Shiloh and dozens of enemies like him, the game's last boss, in about 13 seconds. I've fought him myself, and my attempts at perfume bottles without lightning take much longer.

However, From Software did say that a balance patch is coming for Shadow of the Erdtree. It is not known if this build will survive the next few weeks.