Since Elden Ring’s release, Margit, The Fell Omen, the first major boss, has become a nightmare to many players new to souls-like games. Of course, as an open-world RPG game, players can have a much easier time facing him after some grinding, but some might have taken it a bit too far. Reddit user robot_tron was scared by the discussions about the boss’s difficulty and decided to level up their character for 40 hours. They reached level 93, far beyond the average level (level 15~40) when others players encountered the boss. Some players were not this high leveled when they beat the entire game.
Over-leveling characters before encountering the first challenge is quite common among RPG players. But taking things to this extreme level is another story. The experience points required to reach a new level will grow literally exponentially as the characters level up, and the xp from early enemies are far from enough. A player must have extraordinary patience to repeatedly defeat the same weak enemies for hours, days, or even months to level up their character.
However, in Chinese gaming communities, a few legendary players took this grinding to the extreme. There is even a name for players who grind this hard: Shilipo Sword God (十里坡剑神).
A screenshot of the “Shilipo Sword God” mini-game in a collaboration event from Kalpa of Universe.
The title Shilipo Sword God comes from Legend of Sword and Fairy, one of the most popular RPGs in China. In 2005, a player on the game forum recalled when he was a kid. He couldn’t find a very important quest NPC to continue the story and was then stuck in Shilipo, the first maze of the game. He thought maybe the game would progress if he reached a certain level, so he stayed there and kept playing for 6 months, and leveled the main protagonist to level 71, almost end-game level.
A screenshot of the post where the legend of “Shilipo Sword God” started.
It’s not hard to imagine his frustration when his dramatic story became popular. People call bill7437 the “Shilipo Sword God”. Now it is more than a meme but a collective memory among Chinese players. Anyone who achieves a similar milestone in games will be called “Another Shilipo Sword God”, like Harlen_Sinclair, who leveled up to 241 in Skyrim before leaving Helgen. In Legend of Sword and Fairy 5 Prequel, Softstar, the series developer, set a hidden achievement called “Shilipo Sword God” as an easter egg.
A screenshot of “Shilipo Sword God”, a hidden title in Legend of Sword and Fairy 5 Prequel that gives the character +100 Atk.
In 2019, “Shilipo Sword God” came back into the public eye. Someone posted a question on Zhihu.com, the Chinese version of Quora, asking if the story behind “Shilipo Sword God” was real. Some users did the calculation. It would take 1161375 experience points to reach lv 71 and in “Shilipo” the experience points obtained from clearing all the enemies on the map is 76. This means the “Shilipo Sword God” would have cleared the map 15281 times. Each time would normally take 5 minutes, for a total of 1273 hours.
An experience point table was made by a Zhihu user.
According to the calculation, bill7437 played at least 7 hours per day, simply killing the same bunch of enemies for half a year, never being stopped by parents or getting bored and quitting. Given this, they believed he was either exaggerating or not remembering accurately.
However, a user named “每一天欢乐” (means “Happy every day”) or “Huanhuan(欢欢)” had different ideas. They believed being a “Shilipo Sword God” was not impossible and decided to test it by themselves.
To achieve this goal, Huanhuan put a lot of effort into it. They recorded every enemy's experience points and marked their locations on a map.
Huanhuan made a map to locate all the enemies in Shilipo.
Huanhuan also created a “Right Angle Route” to encounter the enemies faster than normal. They used a specific thunder magic to beat the enemies since that magic has the shortest animation, only seven frames.
This route took them 160s to defeat all the enemies on that map which saved them 140s from the regular 300s clear time. It may not sound big, but thinking about the total 15281 clears needed, it would save about 600 hours for Huanhuan.
Huanhuan kept playing the game for at least 8 hours per day. Weeks later, Huanhuan could play the game without actively watching it, giving them the opportunity to watch movies or read novels at the same time as playing.
The hard work finally paid off. After 112 days, Li Xiaoyao had reached lv 72, and Huanhuan has proved the legend by becoming the legend.
A screenshot was taken by Huanhuan when they reached lv 71. Later, they leveled up to 72.
Later that year, Softstar sent Huanhuan a customized trophy to congratulate them on achieving such a tremendous goal.
Some people may think that being a “Shilipo Sword God” means nothing but wasting time and that they should spend the time on other more important things. According to Huanhuan, they believe becoming a “Shilipo Sword God” is like climbing a mountain, “I just want to know how it feels after reaching the top of the mountain.”