Think Elden Ring's Malenia is too easy? I don't believe you, but a new mod does seriously up the challenge
Not quite as easy as pie.
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If you think Elden Ring's Malenia is easy, you're lying, but if you did for some reason want a harder version of her, this is of course a mod for that now.
Since Elden Ring has come out, I've only beaten Malenia once. That's because I've only played the game once (some of us have other games to play), and I'm fine with that. I'm also fine with not having to fight Malenia again, but some of you out there are masochists that like pain, and to those of you who fit that bill, I'd like to introduce you to the Unalloyed Malenia mod. As recently demonstrated by Elden Ring and general Soulslike YouTuber Ongbal bellow, Unalloyed Malenia is a mod from MiquallaTheUnalloyed that has one thing in mind: to make Malenia "much more difficult."
As described on Nexus Mods, the idea was to make it "so that it can be an interesting challenge even for those who know Vanilla Malenia in detail," and even to "present a more canonical image of Malenia," i.e. someone who has never been beaten, not even by some Tarnished. This mod make a number of changes and additions to the already incredibly difficult boss fight; for one her moveset in the first phase is different, now utilising the cut second Waterfowl Dance that wasn't in the final game, and her second phase now puts her at full health instead of about three quarters.
The mod also borrows some animations from some other classic FromSoftware titles like Sekiro and Bloodborne, mostly notably from Lady Maria. On top of that, she also has full immunity to scarlet rot and poison, her defence against all other types of damage is increased, and the scarlet rot she uses in phase two of the fight is now essentially unavoidable. There's several other tweaks too, and some cut dialogue was even added in if you manage to beat her, so if you haven't actually seen that yet it might be worth giving the fight a go (or you could just watch Ongbal's video above).
It also seems like a good way to kill some time while we wait for Shadow of the Erdtree, which is still in the works, even if it doesn't have a release date just yet.