Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree's three-phase boss fight is no doubt one of the most irritating fights in the DLC, but it turns out that there's a way to completely skip its second and third phases to deal with it much faster.
The boss in question is, of course, the evil sunflower, Scadutree Avatar. It may be an optional boss, but I know I've never felt such rage against a flower since playing Undertale. However, with some sneaky planning, you can make the fight about a third as long as usual by making clever use of the cliff at the edge of the boss arena.
As demonstrated by YouTube content creator Tyrannicon, if you make a beeline to the left side of the arena, you'll eventually come to a spot where you can very carefully drop onto a rock on the side of the cliff. There, you can use an AOE attack to hit the flower when it gets close to you, and when you eventually deplete its health bar, its second and third phases will spawn off the side of the cliff, falling to their doom immediately, and netting you the win.
This cheese has largely flown under the radar since the DLC's release, to the point where speedrunners who are currently chasing a $10,000+ bounty by beating the expansion as fast as possible have seemingly rediscovered it. In one clip shared in the bounty Discord, it's shown that you can fight the first phase of the fight relatively normally at the left side of the arena, and then quickly drop down onto the cliff after you've killed it, which removes the need to bring an AOE weapon with you.
Speedrunner Spicee, who's currently at the top of the competition's leaderboard with a verified time of 1:27:26, estimates that the cheese could shave between 20 and 30 seconds off from the 'all Remembrance bosses' race. However, bounty host and prominent speedrunner Distortion2 has ruled that it's not permitted for entrants to use.
"I know in the rules it says glitches are fair game, and while the glitch is technically not a 'deload' which is banned, it kind of skirts on the edge of that territory," the host explains. "I intended to make this bounty to make people actually fight the bosses, and while it is a neat strategy it is not allowed for the run."
It's still a really smart scheme, though, and in other speedruns, it could end up being fair game – be sure to give it a go if you really want to show that sunflower who's boss.
If you want to beat this boss without cheesing it, be sure to check out our Shadow of the Erdtree Scadutree Avatar boss guide.
