A data miner brings huge NPCs to life that shouldn’t even be active in the game. This sometimes has dramatic consequences, but also makes for an exciting video.
Don’t wake a sleeping dragon, as the old fantasy saying goes. But of course, most heroes can’t refrain from poking the snoring giant reptile with their sword and then vanquishing it in dramatic combat. This risky habit apparently also plagues Dataminer Zullie The Witch in Elden Ring.
The world freezes when the dragon rises
What could possibly go wrong with awakening the colossal dragon Greyoll, who doesn’t actually become active in Elden Ring? Well, you could crash the entire game world with it. And that’s a shame, actually:
Who is Greyoll again? The enormous mother dragon slumbers peacefully in Caelid. She is protected by her much smaller, but still nasty dragon children, who will give you a run for your money if you get too close. She is an optional boss that you don’t fight directly – instead she loses part of her life for every dragon sprout she defeats. In our guide we explain how it can be made even easier and how you can get 70,000 runes in one go (well, almost).
Thanks to Zullie’s work, you can actually mess with the dragon itself. In a video, Zullie explains exactly how the awakening actually works and what happens when you mess with Greyoll. Take a look for yourself:
Why can you wake up inactive NPCs?
Greyoll is not the only giant NPC that Zullie has activated. In the video, the giant vase Great-Jar can also be seen suddenly rising. The fact that this works, although the creatures are intended more as background elements, has a simple reason, which the video explains.
Elden Ring uses some enemy models in different size variants, Greyoll is the giant version of her babies, Great-Jar is a towering “Pot Boy”. And they share not only the visuals but also the animations with their little doppelgängers – even if they don’t actually need them. In concrete terms, this means that Great-Jar stands up in the same way as a small pot.
There’s even more to Greyoll than that: It even has real fighting animations including hitboxes. This means that with the help of a mod you can also fight the biggest dragon of Elden Ring, at least in theory. In practice, the gigantic beast quickly crashes the entire game. The animations for the 180-metre-long flying lizard simply demand too much computing power, which shows itself in lags and finally in a complete freeze.
And in case you’re wondering: Yes, Greyoll is much bigger than the Dragon God from Demon’s Souls, which is supposed to be about 103 metres high. The only dragon in the Souls games that might be taller is the dead Gransax – though that’s not a real character model. I wonder how long it will take for modders to bring him to life anyway?
