I’ve started using an Elden Ring Map. I even plumped for the paid version ($8?) which meant it would ditch the ads and let me store filters and progress.
Like I mentioned in a previous post, this game just hands itself to you and suggests you get on with it. The main form of guidance is “follow the light from the grace” but that will get you killed.
This map has been super useful. For one thing, I completely missed the lady who sells you extra spells who is quite near the starting area. As a spell caster it’s quite surprising that I’ve survived on just these two starter spells until now.
(Quick aside: even though I have more spells, it seems the game is built nice enough that the pebble and arc are not “starter spells”. They’re still great at what they do. The other spells just do different things. Very good design!)
The map has made me a better player. I’m finding – and of course still fighting for – the bits and bobs that make the game more fun and interesting. Cave mouths I completely passed by for the first 30 hours are obvious to me now!
I have discovered that Elden Ring is actually a very good Podcast Game. This is a game where you can sort of zone out and listen to podcasts. I usually have a backlog to listen to, so it’s nice that this game fits so well into that.
Mostly, I think, because it’s a grindy game of dying and then recollecting and making more runes to level up with. There aren’t many audio queues, so the muddied sound isn’t an issue.
I haven’t played Elden Ring in quite some time – I think Steam said it was early 2025 when I played last.
At that point I had clocked 40 hours in the game, and only three achievements.
This is a hard game and I am not good at games.
I decided to start playing from the start again as I didn’t really remember anything. This time around I’m playing an Acolyte (though, I’m not entirely sure how much the class names matter, other than starting gear and stats), using magic (Intelligence) and a rapier (dexterity).
Lots of spamming the starting pebble spell and then finishing off with the rapier when I run out of magic.
Elden Ring is a game that sort of just plops you in a world and then gives you very little guidance anything much at all. That, at least for me, includes the story too. But the mechanics are barely explained either. I was given a cool jellyfish, but no way of using it. Nothing told me that I couldn’t use it, it just wouldn’t work. There was no sign posting that I need a cool bell first. The bell came to me eventually, but I have no idea what triggered that happening.
I’ve been collecting talismen as I’ve been going around but only just in the past half an hour realised they were equip-able. There’s no guidance telling you how to use them.
In some ways the game is actively hostile to the player understanding what’s going on: there’s no way to compare items, like those you’re looking at in the shop, with what you currently have equipped. There’s no way to tell what the status symbols mean. They’re not mentioned anywhere in-game.
Although that sounds quite negative, it’s quite an experience that for the moment I’m enjoying.
Combat is genuinely difficult, but in a way that makes me feel like it’s my fault, rather than the game. That’s a good thing. Hopefully I’ll get better as I practice.
Once you accept that the game loop includes grinding (fighting the same, respawning bad guys over and over again to get XP) then even death becomes okay. Sure, you just spent ten minutes fighting through the hoards, and now you have to do it again but that’s sort of the game. If that’s not what you want to do, then take a break and play something else: it’s what you’re going to get otherwise.
