Remnant 2 looks like a pretty standard souls-y game on the face of it. Which is a fair assumption if you’ve only played the first few hours, which slow-burn you into its wider build variety. You start off with just one archetype, and it takes a while before even the most basic of builds start to form.

Once you get your feet wet, though, everything changes. You can wear an amulet, four rings, three different weapons (all slotted with different mods and mutators), two archetypes, and swap out your relic (the equivalent of Dark Souls’ Estus Flask) to others with different synergies. That interplay has now produced a build that lets you belly flop your enemies to death.

I have invented the single greatest build to ever exist from r/remnantgame

Nearly perfected by Soerakraven on the game’s subreddit (though not discovered, as belly flop builds are a time-honoured tradition in the Remnant series) the belly flop build uses a few key items to turn you into the fat-rolling gut-buster of your dreams. 

Some context before we get into the nitty-gritty. Firstly, a belly flop is performed by trying to dodge in armour that’s way too heavy for you. Instead of i-frames, this produces a pitiful belly-flop that can damage enemies. Secondly, the game treats this as a charged melee attack for some beautiful reason. Which means you can buff it.

Soerakraven has posted a full gallery of the items they use for the build. Firstly, there’s the Red Doe staff—which sends a stampeding spirit forward every 750 points of flopping damage. They’ve slotted it with the Tainted Blade mutator, which makes their belly flops corrosive. The Blood Jewel ring also makes their belly flops bleed. Imagine getting crushed by some guy, then finding yourself coated in acid and bleeding. That’s what this build does.

Other items make this even more potent—like the Red Ring, which duplicates those corrosive and bleeding status effects, or the Band of the Fanatic, which makes status effects deal more damage at the cost of duration. The rest of Soerakraven’s items just make them real tanky, like the Crystal Heart relic which slows them down even further but gives them a hefty damage resistance boost. Best-in-slot for a build that spends half its time on the floor anyway.

I’m just happy to see weird and wonderful builds in any game—let alone one of my favourites from this year—pick up traction. Sure, meta builds like that one Diablo 4 Sorcerer build that turns you into an invulnerable lightning ball of pure death are fun. But why would I care about doing damage when I can make belly flopping a viable strategy? After all: fear not the warrior who has mastered 1,000 builds, but the warrior who has belly flopped 1,000 times.