Elden Ring’s unlikely hero “Let Me Solo Her” is the perfect exemplar of the game’s multiplayer community

It’s a tough and lonely life out in the world of Elden Ring. From the lowliest soldier to the most impossibly massive boss, pretty much everything roaming the Lands Between is out to kill a humble Tarnished. Perhaps that’s why one player in particular has become something of a folk hero in the community.

The player in question, simply named “Let Me Solo Her,” has garnered a lot of love across the Elden Ring fandom, especially in the game’s subreddit. Wearing nothing but a loincloth and a helmet shaped like a pot and wielding two katanas, Let Me Solo Her — or “the Jarnished” to those who appreciate a good pun — has placed his summon sign on the doorstep of the hardest boss in the game: Malenia, Blade of Miquella. This fight is a tall order for even the most experienced of players, but by all accounts Let Me Solo Her simply strolls in and proceeds to absolutely wreck the source of the Scarlet Rot one-on-one.

An odd pairing

It might seem counterintuitive for the fans of such a punishing game to rally around someone who basically beats the hardest boss in the game on your behalf. The clarion call of “git gud” has been indelibly associated with FromSoftware’s games since the original Demon’s Souls, and Elden Ring’s launch saw discourse still raging about the idea of including an easy mode. But the popularity of Let Me Solo Her is, if anything, perfectly exemplary of the core philosophy of Elden Ring’s multiplayer.

Indeed, the implementation of multiplayer in the game seems almost laser-focused on jolly cooperation. Even though players can still invade each other’s worlds, Elden Ring offers a lot more control over when and whether it happens and provides plenty of opportunities to make the experience a little less tiresome, such as a ring that automatically summons another player to help fight an invader. Whether it’s discovering helpful messages left behind by good-natured Tarnished or summoning in a helper to best a tricky boss, the options for helping a fellow player far outweigh those for causing them strife.

For as much as the community does like to delight in the borderline masochistic difficulty of Elden Ring and the Souls games, it has nevertheless always been a strangely supportive place. Between writing guides for the toughest bosses, sharing the perfect builds for certain playstyles, and laying down their own summon signs to help give struggling players an edge, the denizens of the Elden Ring community, and that of the Souls games at large, primarily want to help each other achieve magnificent things. There’s always been some disagreement on how best to do that — just look at the vitriol thrown back and forth about an Elden Ring easy mode — but ultimately most players really do want to help others to help themselves.

The hero we deserve

With all that in mind, it’s easy to see why Let Me Solo Her has proven such a hit. His role as a knight in shining loincloth lies at the perfect center of the Venn diagram of things that most Souls players love: a helping hand for those who need it, the spectacle of a Tarnished who has undeniably “gotten gud,” and even a tip of the helmet to the game’s bizarre and rather wacky sense of humor. The Jarnished even manages to get around the peculiar issues of communication and etiquette often experienced in multiplayer Souls, as noted by Cameron Kunzelman in his musings on the experience. Those who summon this particular collaborator outside of Malenia’s arena know that they’re getting, well, exactly what it says on the tin.

As the saying goes, not all heroes wear capes. Sometimes they wear nothing but a jar on their head, and arrive with a simple offer of help: “Let me solo her.”