I’ve been having a blast with the new content in Elden Ring Nightreign: The Forsaken Hollows, but one encounter ruins the mood for me: the Fire-Summoning Beast. My gripe isn’t with the fire mechanics or the challenge level — it’s that this event introduces some of the most relentless foes I’ve ever seen in a FromSoftware title.
When the event triggers, The Forsaken Hollows highlights three red zones on the map. Entering any of them inflicts a continuous burn that slowly eats away at your HP. Each zone hides a boss called the Sundered Tricephalos, a creature that will look familiar to anyone who fought the Gladius Nightlord in the base game. Defeat all three and you earn the Beast’s Hunt buff, which speeds up stamina recovery and restores stamina on successive hits — a very powerful reward.
The boss duels themselves are manageable; the Sundered Tricephalos tends to drop fairly quickly. The problem is the event’s sprawling footprint and the map design, which seems intent on tricking players into fatal falls. It’s easy to start the event and then get lost in routing issues or be driven off by the encroaching storm before you can finish it.
What truly makes this encounter infuriating is what happens after you kill one of the Sundered Tricephalos: the game spawns three smaller copies. These fiery hounds pursue you with maddening persistence. You might think that’s normal for Soulslike enemies, but unlike typical foes that can be outrun or will eventually despawn, these dogs chase relentlessly across vast distances.
If these fire hounds have any leash at all, I haven’t found it. I’ve watched them blink into existence and continue hunting me after I thought I’d escaped. In one case a dog followed me into a dungeon that halves your HP by default — and the event’s burn was already sapping what little health I had left. The result was an immediate and unavoidable death as I stunned into the area.
You might say, “Why not just kill the dog?” That depends on circumstances. Maybe I’d exhausted my flasks. Maybe I was underleveled for the fight. Maybe teammates bailed when the event popped. Or maybe I was simply transiting the zone and had no intention of engaging the objective — until the beasts teleported to me. Often the real issue is that once the event starts, finishing it isn’t always an option because of things like the Night’s Tide bearing down, so you can’t afford to stop and handle endlessly persistent enemies.
I know I’m not the only one frustrated. Two colleagues at Polygon told me they despise these dogs, and social media is full of similar complaints. One highly voted Reddit thread bluntly titles its post: “Dog invasion needs to be patched immediately.” Some players call the event “hot garbage,” while others describe it on community wikis as outright unfair.
After being hunted down so many times, I now actively sidestep the fire objective whenever possible. It’s hard to avoid, though, since the event is common and occupies large swaths of the map. Still, for me The Forsaken Hollows‘s fire event sits alongside irritating encounters like the Bell Bearing Hunter or Death Rite Bird — foes I’d rather avoid than face again. If I see those markers, I’m turning the other way. Sorry, potential teammates — not this time.
Source: Polygon
