Elden Ring Twitch Streamer’s Drawing Tablet Run is Ridiculous

Another day, another Ring of Elden challenge race. Ever since FromSoftware’s hugely popular Soulslike released on February 25th, Tarnished around the world have been taking the game in absolutely crazy ways. But at the same time beat it with one hand and play it with a harp are awesome, Twitch streamer Luality has taken it to a whole new level lately trying to complete Ring of Elden with a fucking graphics tablet.

You may have heard of Luality before. A Brazilian content creator who mainly plays Soulslikes on Tic and Youtube, Luality has been challenging itself to beat these hard games in a really crazy way for a minute now. In 2018, for example, she went through dark souls 3 with a dance dance revolution dance pad, killing tough bosses like the dancer of the boreal valley and the nameless king while sweating a storm. She later darkened everything Ring of Eldenthe bad guys with the dance mata feat that earned her so much attention that she ended up making an appearance at the Intel booth at PAX West. You can imagine how shaken I was watching Luality do this. As FromSoft’s game continues to kick my ass, here she is, training boss after boss with a dance pad like nothing ever happened.

So when I came across Luality stomping Godrick the graft with a graphics tablet while scrolling Ring of Elden subreddit, I was floored and needed to know more. Why? How did the setup work? Was playing with a graphics tablet difficult and, more specifically, was it more difficult than playing with a dance floor? I had the chance to chat with Luality on Twitter DM, which gave me all the tea.

Perhaps the most confusing part of racing is how it all works. Luality broke it down, explaining that it uses both PC and PS5 (via PlayStation Remote Play) to stream Ring of Elden to her Wacom Cintiq Pro 13 tablet. Things aren’t perfect, she says, but with the help of her community, she tinkered with something that worked well enough for her to beat the stupid Tree Sentinel waiting for all the Ternis at the beginning of Limgrave.

“I had this idea two weeks ago, asked some friends for help, and in three days we could have a prototype that barely worked,” Luality said. “Then I went to PAX West. I was invited to play on the dance mat Ring of Elden live at the Intel booth! It was amazing! As soon as I got home I continued to work on the operation of the tablet and right now we are close to perfect and by perfect I mean barely possible! This race is held by my hopes and dreams more than anything! I use five different programs that are not meant to work together to make this possible. But adjusting things slowly and making things more stable was a lot of fun, especially as the race started to take shape and I started killing bosses. it just makes me happy to see how far we’ve come in such a short time!”

If you’ve seen some of Luality’s clips, you’ll notice her drawing strokes on the tablet screen to perform in-game actions like attacking (a straight line) and jumping (a triangle). Some commands were too cumbersome to use. Camera control, for example, was impossible with this setup, so she ditched that altogether, relying only on the “reset camera” command. Accuracy is impossible here, which Luality says made the race “incredibly difficult and frustrating,” but totally doable.

“The dance pad and graphics tablet aren’t very reliable controllers and have their challenges, but the tablet beats the dance pad on this one,” Luality said. “In many places they come together as equally bad. I don’t have camera control either. But at least on the dance mat, I can hold down the keys so things like sprinting and diagonal walking are more reliable. With the tablet, I can’t hold the keys. I have to keep drawing and drawing. Sometimes the tablet lets me walk diagonally, but if I’m using my stylus, I have to pick a direction or it’s swamped with inputs! Talking about it makes me laugh. I love how it all barely works. It makes it more fun and special for me.

Something she’s a little more aware of during this challenge run is how her body feels while she’s playing.

“My wrists are fine,” Luality said. “Sometimes the position I need to have the tablet in hurts my hands a bit, but I’m working on that so it’s not a long-term issue! I damaged a tendon in my my feet while doing dance mat races a while ago, but I’m doing pretty well now!

Of course, this isn’t Luality’s first jaunt through Ring of Elden. Although she cannot count how many times she has beaten the game, she intends to complete it with the graphics tablet because she is “too stubborn” to give up now. She did, however, talk about the hardest part of the race so far, which, perhaps surprisingly, comes from wandering the Lands Between with her Ternished. At first it involved drawing lines to initiate movement, but much like controlling the camera, it became too cumbersome. Instead, Luality overlaid a virtual keyboard just for character movement, which streamlined things a bit.

Setting up the software is a work in progress, so Luality hasn’t shared the programs it uses to make it all possible. However, she has repeatedly shouted out to her community for helping her achieve this.

“I don’t do it alone either,” Luality said. “People in my community have helped me and they have always helped me a lot. The reason I always say “we did it!” when we do something cool it’s because it’s always been a group effort. They help me solve problems. They help me understand the details. They help me try different things. They support me financially so that I can afford to take the time and buy the necessary equipment for these races, and above all, they are always there for me and they believe in me even when I don’t believe in myself and they move forward.”

I love his community, Luality, and you really get that sense of camaraderie watching his streams. Not only does she give sound advice on relationships – example: respect yourself, don’t put up with bullshit – but she also gives numerical high-fives every time she accomplishes something, be it beating a tough enemy or surviving. to a massive fall from a cliff. It’s damn healthy, not least because it stream with his rabbits. That doesn’t make it any less stressful, though, and I sweat watching her get repeatedly beaten up by the bosses.

So what’s next for Luality? Besides the finish Ring of Elden with her graphics tablet – she’s about halfway through the game from her latest twitch streamCurrently battling Rennala Queen of the Full Moon and Starscourge Radahn, she also talks about some other seriously bonkers challenge runs for FromSoftware’s latest Soulslike.

“I’ve been playing FromSoftware games in weird ways for many years,” Luality said. “I often think and have weird ideas for races. I have a piano class scheduled for very soon. Most things are ready [on that front]!”