It took me a whopping 27 hours to finally beat Godrick. While those weren’t all spent at Stormveil specifically, given the number of times I’ve died there, by my calculations I’ve made this man filthy fuckin’ rich. And he had the gall to present himself as a merchant, charging me for his wares. And where did he get his inventory, anyway? Surely I’m not the first he’s scammed, judging by all the dead bodies littering the castle.

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Elden Ring is of course not the first game to do something like this. I’m reminded of Fallout 2, which features a town where little kids can pickpocket your character. And not just of money, either. While I never had it happen to me, reports suggest Fallout 2 kids can apparently nab key items, screwing you out of completing major quests easily. But as much as I’m grousing over games screwing me over like this, I’ve done worse! Fallout also lets you “reverse pickpocket,” so you can stick a live grenade in someone’s pants, which is probably something Gostoc would approve of.

Unsurprisingly, many players happily report they’ve killed him for his misdeeds. Most seem taken aback by Gostoc’s betrayal, if they ever find out about it. However, murder could be a mistake if you take a longer view; one of the top comments on his wiki page is from a player warning not to kill him, as it turns out, if left alive, Gostoc sells a fairly rare, important upgrade material later in the game.

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At least a few murders aren’t premeditated. “F*ck, I killed him in one of his hiding places thinking he was hostile,” one player wrote in the wiki’s comments. “Could they at least [have] given him some unique appearance? Stupid Fromsoft.”

Perhaps most unlucky, though, are the occasional players who claim that somehow, whether by glitch or haunting, Gostoc has continued to rob them after his death, even outside of Stormveil itself. Whether or not it’s happening is almost beside the point. If Gostoc has has actually found a way to continue tormenting players beyond his mortal coil, or if it turns out that players have merely imagined things, the Gatekeeper is having the last laugh.