A talented Elden Ring player has worked out a way to use a harp as a PC controller, and they even managed to slay Margit by playing musical notes. The setup assigns button presses to specific strings on the orchestral instrument, enabling the musician to pluck their way through the popular RPG game.
In a short clip, Reddit user Lettuce4Dayz, aka Anna Ellsworth, shows off the Elden Ring harp controller by playing notes to attack, dodge, and roll. In a longer YouTube video, the musician delves into how the instrumental controller works, including how it connects to a gaming PC.
Ellsworth explains that the Harp’s notes are captured by a pickup and sent through to an audio interface. The sound is then handed off to a MIDI translator which ultimately transforms the instrument into a really elaborate gaming keyboard and mouse alternative. Thankfully, the musician doesn’t have to play riffs to run across The Land’s Between, as playing a single note toggles movement on and off. That said, if you’re the kind of player that likes to spam magic, you might need to play an elaborate solo on this harp controller to do so.
Defeating Margit using a controller is hard enough, so the fact Ellsworth has stomped the Elden Ring boss using musical notes is something to behold. Using instruments to defeat a ‘big bad’ feels like something you’d do in a classic DnD adventure, which perhaps means this musician is technically a Bard.
Harpist beats Margit with a literal harp (not harp bow) from Eldenring
Of course, this isn’t the first time we’ve witnessed someone play Elden Ring with a weird PC controller. Last month, a modder played the game using a converted Fisher-Price gamepad, and a bunch of wired-up bananas helped another player beat Godrick the Grafted.