Elden Ring - The "Friendly" Dog 

I had a general understanding of why the dog was stuck in its animation, but I consulted with thefifthmatt before making this video, who helped clarify some of the finer points, including pointing out that the Grave Warden's event region was still valid and could be used to wake the dog up even in regular gameplay. Thefifthmatt is also partly responsible for DarkScript3, the program used to help view and edit event scripts, as seen in the little snippets of code shown in the video.

Zullie: It's a strange but harmless coding error. The internet: No it's a friend.

Inside you are two wolves. One has a misplaced animation event, and the other deals 13,000 damage per second.

The description of how you can trigger the dog "legit" solved me feeling crazy, given this dog wasn't friendly for me when I came to it and I wondered what others were doing.

When you think about it, oddities like this add to a game in the sense that it gets people thinking and talking about it. If the dog woke up as intended, it'd just be another enemy to slay, but it being docile by mistake leads to something players will remember. Happy accidents like that can add charm and staying power for a game, and that's a nice feeling.

A real "I have no mouth and I must scream" scenario.

I hope they never fix this, it's a wonderful bug that's turned into a very wholesome feature.

In Ds3, there's two Lycanthropes chilling near a fire in Crucifixion woods, and I always thought it was odd that one of them stays passive, while the other one is triggered to attack as soon as you approach. I'd wager a bet that it's the exact same bug.

There's another doggo with interesting behavior I noticed. On Mt. Gelmir, there's a corpse sitting on a chair looking out over a cliff, with a wolf laying down next to the body. If the player approaches, the wolf will aggro, but unlike other enemies, it won't chase the player. It'll instead stay within a set radius of the corpse in the chair. And if you wait long enough even just outside that zone, it'll eventually de-aggro and go back to the body and lay down. However unlike the doggo in this video, I imagine that this wolf's behavior was intentionally coded to behave this way.

The one good doggie in all of Fromsoftware's history.

I feels like every souls game has one enemy like this. Bloodborne has a non-aggro crow, and I think there are others I can't remember offhand. I always thought they were just a little easter egg.

“If it doesn’t kill you immediately it’s a friend“ sums up this franchise perfectly

2:11 Is it not possible the dog was originally placed here with the Grave Warden, then moved to its final location after the Warden was removed? Or the friendly one was copied from a deleted enemy here, and they forgot to change that value?

Maybe the real friends were the typo we made along the way 😔

Zullie can I just say that last little slide about certain slip ups leading to charming little moments is why I watch this channel. I love learning these quirks about my favorite games but your way of concluding with more than just a statement about the game's programming but also something akin to a moral to the story, like you're reading the final words of a fairy tale, is what makes these videos so comforting to me and I'm sure plenty, plenty others!

I've worked at a number of animal shelters and I can verify this is heartbreaking.

He craves violence but he is bound by chilling

These videos always remind me how great the music is in Breath of the Wild. They really knocked it out of the park with that game.

Despite playing through the game several times now. Looking at the player model petting the dog has made me realize just how massive they are. They're like small horses or regular ponies.

Let’s not forget about the friendly crow from Hemwick in Bloodborne

"Likely friend, therefore happiness!"

I remember there being a few of these in the game early on - there was a dragon in faram azula that wouldn't wake up either, that I ended up putting a "don't you dare" sign by. Later on I came back to them though and the AI had been fixed, but it honestly brought back memories of the dragons from DS2 that would be completely peaceful until you broke their eggs. The rare peaceful enemies always stood out to me so much more because of how simply hostile and unfriendly the rest of the games are.

As someone who spent all morning fixing a small coding oversight in a game, this dog hits very close to home. Or doesn't hit close to home, as one hitbox trigger is upstairs on the ledge, I guess.

Something about the zombie like dog being not only disturbing to look at but also having a broken ai causing it to idle menacingly, makes it that much more creepy.

FromSoft: _Makes one tiny error in the coding of a specific, unimportant enemy at the backend of the game_ Zullie: Everyone look at our friend :)

reminds me of the friendly crow in bloodborne, found in hemwick, just up the first elevator shortcut to the right of the lamp. if you kill the aggro ones, this one crow never attacks, and i dont think it has a "waking up" animation, so it makes me wonder why its passive

There's a similar enemy in another place in the game. The Haligtree Soldier wielding a greatsword standing guard outside the room where you get Cleanrot Knight Finlay will just keep looking at you until you attack him. I wonder if there's something similar going on there

I'm so caught up in the eerie and enchanting atmosphere of all your videos that near the end of this one, I whispered: "don't pet it! It's dangerous!" Sublime. Just sublime.

*pets him VERY carefully so as to not to wake up the Leonine Misbegotten*

I love to see little quirks in coding like this. Im even more impressed that you managed to figure out the root cause and solve it. Happy accidents that lead to interesting, if unintended results.

I remember encountering this and thinking “there’s probably some crazy lore about this dog”

Seeing the dog getting pet at the end of the video made my day, thank you Zullie!

It is really interesting how fromsoft crafts their games. From reaction based events, too region based actions, you really cant know for certain what the next area contains

"It wants to attack you, but it can't" is very relatable

peacefull crow in bloodborne peacefulldog in elden ring makes you wonder if any more peacefull encounters are around in other games

The one dog in all of FromSoft that didn't let his intrusive thoughts win

Maybe this is the true definition of what a friend is

an overdue video would be why the camera chooses random enemies to lock on to instead of the one you are looking at. happens ALL the time but most noticable in Renala fight. also, i absolutely love the Gerudo Night track ❤❤❤

Have you ever looked into Radahn's bow phase? The player can run away from him immediately and he'll switch to melee. He fires an arrow towards the castle though, and I wonder if it's aiming at Jerren.

This one dog in particular was raised well. One of the few happy endings one might see in a Fromsoft tale…

Thank you for covering this! I've always wondered about this pup ever since our first encounter. A dog and a cat chilling under a tree?! Friendly wildlife in a souls game!? How rare lol

Love this guy. He featured heavily in my earlier videos

your vids are so calming and educational

Thank you so much for your vids Zullie, you're genuinely one of my fave channels and I love seeing new vids from you

Your music choices are always on point.

This sort of event reminds me of the Haligtree Soldiers napping away in Elphael, or sometimes being extremely passive to everything around them. Of course, they actually do wake up when you get really close to them.

Don’t forget the troll near the wagons in weeping peninsula, is a buddy too.

You just _know_ he's surrounded by messages all the time. Dog

I think it's worth mentioning that not all enemies with idle animations use events to wake them up. A lot of other times it's handled through the BackupEventAnimID field on the enemy, which does seem to go through their AI and play the wakeup whenever they're in a searching/combat state. Also, it surprises me that this isn't intentional. It reminds me of that one passive crow in Bloodborne, but that one is definitely intentional since it has its own dedicated AI param that mentions it being friendly.

Great vid as always! I have a suggestion/question for a subject to potentially investigate. There’s a scripted fight between the giant dogs and Redmane soldiers at the Impassable Greatbridge, and the scaling of these particular enemies behave completely differently when interacting with each other than a nonscripted enemy from nearby, or even the player. They do very little damage to each other to prolong the spectacle of the fight, but drawing in nearby unscripted enemies will usually take the normal damage you’d expect them to do. I was curious as to how this exactly works or if it’s seen anywhere else in the game besides this spot, I just noticed it because the redmanes usually decimate the pack of giant dogs further up the hill if you bring them into the fight yourself.

This could've been a good, sad story of a master lost to madness with his best friend over-watching his end in hopes of you as the victor.

this video appeared, I watched it, I enjoyed the vibe, learned something for that Elden Ring playthrough I'll totally do and then left, a calmer, more content individual. masterpiece.

I'd love to see a deep dive on input queuing. My dodge rolls caused me a few deaths before I decided to figure out what was wrong. I found that if a dodge roll is queued up while locked onto an enemy, the roll action and direction is queued. But when you are not locked onto an enemy, the roll action is queued up, while the direction is NOT queued up.

Pitbulls when they're in a school zone, but on their leash

Reminds me of that one crow in Bloodborne that you encounter in the Hemwick Chapel. A group of crows will attack you if you get close, but one of them is just vibing there. The fact this bug seems to have happened here too makes me think it may not have been such an accident after all...

Interesting video. Also thank you for putting the song used in the description.

The whole "region scripts make enemies act instead of AI" is actually one of my biggest complaints about Elden Ring, and I think is a huge betrayal by FROMSOFT. There are moments that feel gamey and cheap when the players falls for what I've come to call "auto traps." Two of them that come to mind are in the Lyndell sewers when an imp comes around a corner to attack you without having seen you, and another is in the snowfields catacomb when an ice blower pillar raises and waits to blast ice until you've made your way up some stairs. Traditionally, traps in FROM comes are consequences of the player not being mindful of their surroundings, but in ER it doesn't matter how mindful the player is, certain auto traps will still go off. Stuff like that is beneath FROM

* sniffs the air * "YOU SMELL LIKE YOUVE BEEN TO THE COLOSSEUM!"

You put a lot of work in and you don't get enough love. Hat's off to you sir or ma'am

i dont care what the code says that dog is a friend and he will always be a good boy. i found him in my first playthrough and sat down to take a photo with him, one of my favourite moments from the game

gotta love the communal adoration towards this one puppy

Wow, just learn alot from this. This video just gave me a deeper understanding of video game development. Deep as hell

Pitbull named “Destroyer of Worlds, Destined to end Malenia’s Scarlet Rot.”

The bestest boy, I take a picture with him and chill there for a bit during every run. 🤗

Have I ever played Elden Ring? No. Did I still watch this all the way through because little quirks in games like this are fun and the editing and music was smart and relaxing? Yes

this channel is such a fun way to learn how games work in bite sized chunks

thank you zullie for the seemingly endless flow of wonderful souls trivia :)

It may be like drinking water to you, but you amaze me with cool and smart things like this with every video!

if the enemy in that area is called 'grave warden' then i would think that dog is a church grim, a dog that is buried first in the graveyard to guide spirits to the afterlife

Seems incredibly likely a Grave Warden + dog encounter was set up at the colosseum, they decided not to, then moved the dog to its final location because they thought it would work better there and wrote the new event script while simply overlooking the first one. Would make a lot of sense.

The thumbnail was so ominous 😭 I thought this was going to be like a sinister game theory type of video, but it was still interesting to learn something new! 👍

I like how you put very relaxing music over every scene where you encountered an enemy in that portion of the game. There were so many enemies in between the corriors, large fields and around the corners in that area that I kept shitting myself everytime I got jumped lol. Beautiful area as always but far from relaxing haha

Thanks for another video! I feel I’ve met this pair before

I always love when weird errors like this cause enemies to not aggro, much like the friendly crow in BB, it's such a small thing but somehow it makes the worlds of Fromsoft games a little more charming when there's even a single animal that just chills

You humanize the code wonderfully. Thank you.

Every single dog thing in this video is NIGHTMARE fuel.

If I remember correctly, the event area outside the colloseum is where Corhyn and Goldmask appear during their quest, which could explain why the duelist was removed.

am i crazy or does that even make that dog more adorable? i remember bumping in to him and really loving that moment, its strange to think its because of a bug - maybe they found it to be charming as well and left it in

You and Wand of Sparking have the exact same vibe and I love it

the reason the dog aggros if you go to that specific area first is because you stepped in something smelly there and he doesn't like it.

Such chill videos :D

I was naive and thought that first sentence was gonna be something like "dogs are the most disliked enemies because so many people love dogs and they don't want to hurt them"

Some of the most interesting little things in the souls franchise has been completely unintentional ❤

I don't care what "logic" and "code" dictates. This dog is a good boy and must be protected at all costs!

"But sometimes a happy accident can be more memorable than if everything went as planned, and lead to new friendships." I'm not crying, you're crying!

I like how this just has Zelda music playing in the background lol.

Good video with reasonable information and a great outfit.

I love that although you can target the Dog, any deployed Glintstone Phalanxes etc will not engage to attack it until that second trigger.

Dog was sleepy, didn't feel like waking up. So now he gets pets.

I remember seeing the Leonine Misbegotten and the dog sitting there with a couple of messages left around the two, after killing both the misbegotten and the dog, thinking they were you’re average enemies, I read the messages all saying stuff like “friend ahead” and “ahh let there me friend” and was super bummed cause I thought so killed a docile misbegotten and doggie combo

I've never seen that dog not wake up as I've always gone over to that corner by the colosseum for no reason.

Sweet, sweet bugged narrative theater...Thank you for yet another installment!

*bug in street fighter 2 world warrior:* allows u to cancel an attack into another attack, inventing the 1st combo *bug in elden ring:* DOGY

I never realized how big the dogs are until the last bit where you put your hand on its head lmao

Increadible how every single one of his videos are interesting af

Finally, Zullie does a video about my dog

Ahhh I love that you petted it in the last scene

well, this certainly explains some things, like why I was able to get the drop on certain enemies who'd pull a little ambush attack otherwise by going around the edge of an area and jumping on things.

1:06 hahaha I love it, she just stopped when she heard that someone was reloading the attack

There are 2 wolves inside this dog. One is a wolf. The other is a tortoise. Making him 'Dog' again. \o/