Many of the weapons and armour pieces in Elden Ring have hidden special abilities that elude players. Sometimes this is down to opaque item descriptions, but sometimes - as is the case with the Serpent-Hunter Spear - we just aren't paying attention. We're not sure what category this one falls into. The Old Aristocrat Shoes have an extra effect: they increase the size of male Tarnished's nether regions.
One Reddit user was busy putting these shoes on a trouserless Tarnished - we won't ask them why, that's their business - when they noticed something string in the Lands Between his thighs. Equipping the shoes made the bulge in the Tarnished's loin cloth substantially bigger.
We have no idea what causes this effect. It may be something to do with the way characters are modeled with shoes on vs with shoes off in general, or it could be specific to the Old Aristocrat Shoes. Whatever the case, we're searching high and low for a pair of these shoes in real life so we can get to the bottom of this issue. We need them to maintain the site's journalistic integrity, so please, if you know of a pair in the real world, please get in touch as soon as possible.
Naturally, the community response has been less than serious. The top comment on the Reddit post is, "didn't expect pickle," a message commonly placed throughout the game near phallic objects.
We only know for sure that this works on the type-A body type, as there is no video evidence of a test with the type-B body type in-game yet.
One commenter pondered if this signalled the crotch size had been shrunk at some point for all items of clothing but this marker hadn't been changed for this specific set of shoes. More research must be done. Again, if anyone knows of any of these shoes in real life please contact 0781-