Found a Reddit thread claiming that there was an illusory wall in Volcano Manor that took fifty hits to open instead of just one.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Eldenring/comments/th3cao/apparently_there_is_a_hidden_wall_in_volcano/

At first I thought, "Surely this is just some dude using some clever video editing to troll the fan base into hitting this wall fifty times to have himself a giggle."

Then I tried it. And it's fucking real.

I am part extremely amused and part absolutely horrified. Occasionally hitting a wall to see if there's a secret door is fine and cool, but surely it's just bad game design to ask players to run around hitting every wall in the game fifty times, right? I really thought that these From Software folks were mostly reasonable game designers deep down, that their vindictive tendencies had been exaggerated. Now I'm not so sure!

And now shall follow a period of the rabid fanbase not only hitting every suspicious wall in Elden Ring fifty times, but hitting every suspicious wall in all the previous From games fifty times. Good grief.

Huh, investigating a little further, maybe this is unintended!

One of the replies shows another one of these nearby, too.

Yeah I was gonna say... while this is very funny and I would think it a great joke to do exactly one of these in the game to fuck with people... it seems pretty obvious that it's just some weird holdover from a previous build of the game.

But seriously do this in some random cave and just hide a single weird skeleton behind it.

I just thought this was an appropriate video, also from Reddit, on solving this particular problem:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Eldenring/comments/thkuo0/work_smarter_not_harder/

But yes, this is kinda fucked. I mean, it would be funny if there was just another wall behind it, but as it is now that means there could be other walls in the game that require 50 hits to open. That's something most people have realized already, but what if there's a wall that requires 51 hits to open? What if there's one that requires a hundred? Who the fuck smacked a wall fifty times in a row to find this out anyway?

@justin258: I mean if there is one of those walls then its another dummied out thing and nothing is behind it so... there's no point wondering about them or looking for them unless you really just need a new novelty thing to be obsessed over.

Which... someone is going to do, let's be honest.

Oh, I'm not going to be doing any of this. I'll occasionally hit a wall I think looks suspicious and I've found two or three that were illusory walls, but frankly I'm not going to be so obsessive as to hit every wall or anything. This is one of those From-isms that ought to be either made clearer (a small visual cue that one wall is different from others or an obvious path with no obvious way to get to it unless you're thinking about the space you're in) or dropped altogether.

I'll just wait for modders and dataminers like Zullie The Witch or whoever to dig into this game and find them without whacking every wall.

What's the difference? If you're so desperate to see everything in the game that you'll hit walls fifty times, you're not just occasionally hitting a wall; you're hitting every single wall in the game, probably at least twice to make sure you actually hit it properly the first time.

People were talking about this in the GBI chat and I agree and am satisfied with the conclusion that almost anything this obscure is fine if you consider it a type of easter egg. Maybe From fans are obsessive enough that easter eggs are insults to their playstyle, I'm not too familiar with that aspect of the culture, but I almost think that the better hidden an easter egg is, the more enjoyable it is to find.

I got through this specific illusionary wall in one hit. In fact it wasn't even a hit, I rolled through it.

Maybe there's an event that happens which alters the health of the wall? Or maybe it's just bugged?

@sweep: Wait this wall specifically that opens up behind that npc or the actual real illusory wall that you progress the manor with.

Because I think that's why the weird 50 hit wall exists because it was intended to be the progression route then dummied out improperly when it got moved to that other room.

@efesell: He's probably talking about the other illusory wall just identical to this one that gets you into the locked room.

It's also a nothing shortcut, so this has to be some kind of oversight. I doubt they intended for people to use it.

I already have souls ocd. There's also a parody dungeon in the game based on illusory walls.

@efesell: oh you're right, it was the two real ones on either side.

That kind of implies that this was got the numbers bumped because it was redundant rather than because it's a design choice or bug. I imagine a dev just went "I need to make this wall impassable what's the quickest way to do that"

Fun fact, when we suspend someone on Giant Bomb we are actually just temp banning them for 9999999999999 days. Same situation :P

Considering how much content was cut or held back from retail release and is now being trickled back into the game through patches it's not very surprising something like this exists. It's obviously not intentional and a result of the somewhat rushed release they decided on.