Elon Musk revealed his Elden Ring build and was thrashed by Twitter users

Written by. Nick Mosier based on the original Japanese article (original article’s publication date: 2022-05-26 14:24 JST)

Elon Musk took to Twitter to unveil his Elden Ring build to the public, but users on Twitter were swift and merciless in their criticism of said build.

Elon Musk is the CEO of the American automotive company Tesla and known for being the richest person on the planet and a frequent Twitter user. Lately, the billionaire can often be seen tweeting about FromSoftware’s latest action RPG Elden Ring. After tweeting a brief explanation of his build in early May, Kotaku even took to in-game verbiage to criticize it, calling Musk “Maidenless.”

The other day, Musk made a tweet suggesting he had cleared the game. He also responded to a question in the replies saying, “Will post pic of my build tomorrow,” and followed up with pictures of his build on May 24.

Musk had previously described his build as “Power mage, but decent with a sword/katana.” When looking at the images he’s now posted, we can see he has 68 points in Intelligence and a moderate 25 points in Dexterity. He also has 31 points in Vigor, securing decently high HP. And his Mind stat, possibly set this way to be able to accept all the FP from a single flask, sits at 38 points. While there may be room for optimization, the stat distribution does seem to line up with his early description.

As for weapons, he appears to use Lusat’s Glinstone Staff to cast magic, and Rogier’s Rapier, along with the popular Moonveil, for close combat. One thing that stands out is that Musk has two shields equipped.

Twitter users that saw Musk’s dual shielding “Elon Build” were quick to lay on the insults. There were simple insults from “why do you have two shields you dummy,” to “Garbage build.” With others going as far as to question his business acumen and saying, “if you’re holding Tesla stock, sell now.”

As of this writing, Musk’s build has been retweeted roughly 1,100 times and quote tweeted over 3,800 times, with most of them insulting the build. But is the build itself really that bad?

There are certainly a number of points for concern. First is that his equipment load is right at the limit. Getting this down would likely make dodging easier. It’s also odd that he has two comparable shields equipped with no Ashes of War. Some are also calling out the talisman that raises HP due to its questionable effectiveness and the fact that he has no healing flasks equipped.

On the other hand, Musk does say that he lowers the equipment load when he needs to fast roll. Plus, the gear one has equipped isn’t necessarily set in stone while playing. He may have lined up those two shields to show off two in particular that he likes or possibly to compare them while playing.

It’s also not unheard of to not have flasks in his equipped items as he may have shortcuts set up for them. Musk did say that he would be showing his personal build, not necessarily a strong one. Whether you’re the richest guy in the world or an average joe, it’s kind of a bummer to see someone take so much heat just for showing how they like to play a game.

Something else to keep in mind is that Musk is an easy figure to criticize for his political statements. The fact that he’s extremely rich and in the spotlight also comes with a certain amount of hate. Combine that with the sexual harassment accusations and some of the hate for the “Elon Build” may actually be targeted more at Musk himself.

With that said, it’s probably more productive to target that anger toward statements and actions that they feel are problematic, and let people play games as they choose.