GamesRPGElden Ring’s lovable living pots are pure body horror in Shadow of the ErdtreeWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
GamesRPGElden Ring’s lovable living pots are pure body horror in Shadow of the ErdtreeWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
(Image credit: Bandai Namco)

Pot Boys, Pot Friends, Clay Bros, Cauldron Cuzs, Living Jars… it doesn’t matter what you call them: they seem nice. They were among the first memes to spawn from Elden Ring and it’s little wonder, because they’re a species of sentient and occasionally violent pot. It’s like Hayao Miyazaki and Lewis Carroll collaborated, and then, I dunno, Eli Roth barged in. Or, to put laboured references aside, it’s like Hayataka Miyazaki having a normal one.
A brief appearance in the first Elden Ring gameplay video vastly undersold how very many Pot Friends there ended up being in the base game, which is no bad thing because one can never be under-equipped with ceramic vessels, sentient or not. Even the Pot Friends who attack us in Elden Ring are charming: their moveset is lumbering and predictable so that if a Pot Friend hurts you it’s definitely your own stupid fault. Pot Friends are hilarious, gorgeous, whimsical, bumbling treasures, are they not?
No: Pot Friends are nightmares. When Iplayed Shadow of the Erdtree recently, I encountered a subterranean gaol full of giant pots, which brought great joy at first. The gaol was miserable, after all. There was an elderly man crying somewhere in the distance. Some light ceramic relief was definitely in order. Alas, nostalgic encounters with conscious clay vessels were not in my waters that day.
Because that’s exactly what the pots are: they are vessels. Living Jars are not, as it turns out, sentient pots. The living parts of them—the thingsinsidethe pot, not the pot itself—are unspeakable shapeshifting hunks of gore that have learned to commandeer pots towards their own freakish ends. Oh, and they fuck you up too, in the fashion ofthese thingsthat FromSoft simply love to put in every single one of their videogames.
More Erdtree(Image credit: Future)Shadow of the Erdtree is PCG’s next coverMiyazaki explains why Erdtree had to be such a big expansionGetting punchy with Erdtree’s new weaponsErdtree’s new leveling system explained
More Erdtree
(Image credit: Future)Shadow of the Erdtree is PCG’s next coverMiyazaki explains why Erdtree had to be such a big expansionGetting punchy with Erdtree’s new weaponsErdtree’s new leveling system explained
(Image credit: Future)

Shadow of the Erdtree is PCG’s next coverMiyazaki explains why Erdtree had to be such a big expansionGetting punchy with Erdtree’s new weaponsErdtree’s new leveling system explained
If you were hoping the Warrior Jar’s words during that encounter were shrouded in poetic allusion, open to interpretation, and certainly not to be taken literally, then I hate to be the bearer of bad news. The pots really are just full of reanimated chunks of dead people. Sometimes it’s better not to know, but sometimes it’s painful to know alone. Hence, why I share this with you.
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TOPICSFromSoftware
TOPICS
PRODUCTSElden Ring: Shadow of the ErdtreeElden Ring
PRODUCTS
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