Elden Ring - George R.R. Martin and Hidetaka Miyazaki

Definitely Gamepad.

i’m gonna spoiler tag these, just in case you (or anyone reading this who would still care) are easily spoilered. Frankly, i don’t consider them spoilers because some of them are pretty essential, and even not that easily found out.

On starting items: ignore the stonesword key, you’ll find lots, and besides the first place to use it sucks hard as a new player. probably the best is the golden seed. You’ll also find lots of these, but this will immediately yield an additional flask for you to use (once you rest, and then select flasks, and use golden seed), which will help you out regardless which path you choose.

On starting characters: dont be afraid to experiment. Try one, and then try another one! And another! I probably played 10-15hrs in 5 starting characters before i settled on one. Ya, you’ll go through the same content, but at this stage, it’s all learning basic mechanics and the repetition will pay benefits down the line

On the start: After you die to the first boss and are resurrected, drop down the hole before you go up the lift. I’ve read this is explained better now, but i haven’t seen it. The hole is the tutorial.

Get your horse and bell: To get your horse, you need to find the grace that’s right in front of the big gate. After you leave the starter area where you respawn, heading north you’ll find a grace in a broken temple. to the northeast, past a small forest, is a broken town, just north of that is the grace you want to find. Now i think you need to head back to the temple and rest and you’ll get a conversation that’ll give you the horse. Also, come back at night and another conversation will net you another essential item.

Get your whetstone: In that broken town you bypassed to hit the grace, there’s something of a hidden stairwell just off the main north/south road. Go down there, and you’ll find a whetstone - an important artifact for adjusting your weapons

Oh, ya, and i’ll second the gamepad choice. I couldn’t imagine playing this on m&kb.

Finally, after you do all that and you’re like, which way should i go now? The game suggests north is the way to go, and it is, at least for the story. But getting past that gate is actually a bit of a bitch at first, and the things up there aren’t that easy. My recommendation, head south first. I went and explored the entire southern peninsula before i ventured north of that gate, and I felt that it was the right way to go.

Ok, now you have the bare minimum essentials!

All great advice. Every place that has “ruins” (marked on your map) always has a stairwell going down to a treasure. Sometimes it’s hidden. You’ll usually see a message or two around the spot and if you roll over it, it will open it up. Not hiding this, because it’s too easy to miss and you’ll be missing critical items if you don’t realize this on your own.

This is my first Souls-y and I went with the Astrologer.

I can’t compare it to any other builds but it’s felt like a great way to learn the game. Magic seemed easy to use effectively, and I was able to wander into areas where I was under-leveled and cheese the enemies to an extent. Once I got some mage-friendly weapons I eased myself into the melee combat system and found I prefer it – but when shit hits the fan I can always pull out my staff and throw rocks.

I finished Elden Ring yesterday. What a journey! I’m 54 and have had little patience for the Dark Souls games. Elden had been an obession since I started playing back in Feb. This game tested my patience many times. This is easily the best game I have played in many years.

Thanks for all this, just what I was after

I did not realise performance was so poor on pc, stuttery regardless of set up.

I have started an astrolger, enjoying so far

couple of other odds n ends

On merchants: Always look for recipe books and buy when you can. The first merchant in the church will suggest you buy something from him if you talk to him(cant remember its name atm), but it’s a good idea and its essential to crafting things. The recipe books each add one or two items to your crafting list every time you buy them, and once you buy it the recipes are immediately added and you don’t need to do anything further with the books. Also, you’ll notice cracked pots, pots, perfume bottles, etc - these are the base ‘holders’ for your consumables. They are reusable, but only hold one ‘charge’ of each thing you craft with it. So, picking these up when available is never a bad thing.

Glowing skulls: jumping/running over/smashing the skulls drops a gold rune you can pick up. These gold runes are only good for converting to runes(money), but unlike money they dont drop when you die. Some people advocate converting and spending your gold runes as soon as you can. I always kept them and used them as cash storage for whenever you need extra cash. As the gold rune numbers go up, the amount of cash you get from them also goes up. There are lots of levels.

Weapon/ash upgrades: At some point you’ll be able to use stones (smithing and somber) to upgrade your weapons. and worts (grave and ghost) to upgrade ashes. Smithed weapons go to +25, Ashes and somber weapons only to +10. For any of them, feel free to use any/all stones/worts until you get to the +9/+10 worts/stones. You’ll eventually find things to allow you to buy any stones/worts you need up to the level 9/10 ones. Particularly important for ghost ashes (legendary ashes), there is only 4 of the highest level ash wort (great ghost wort) available, so be very sure before you use one of them. But it’s pretty pointless to hoard the low level stuff - use it freely.

I run by you! Don’t be afraid to run by stuff, particularly to pick up some runes you dropped on death. but also dont fret when you lose runes. You will. We all did. It’s not that big of a deal, just try not to make a habit of it :)

Rainbow stones! One of the things you either know or learn how to make early is rainbow stones. They’re a pretty useless item, and glow a color when you drop them. However, they are awesome in a couple of specific scenarios. 1) if you drop them over a ledge, if they shatter, you will die from the fall. If they land and glow, you’ll survive (though you may take damage). Also note that they tend to stick to surfaces they might touch, where you might not - so the stone might land on a small shelf that you can’t land on, and it survives that, but you might continue past that shelf to your death. If it’s not flat on the surface you intend to land on, drop another one. 2) Some of the catacombs are tricky and difficult to navigate. A dropped stone can help indicate where you have been before. Sometimes an area is meant to look the same when it’s not actually - a dropped stone can be essential to figuring this out easily

I have what is supposed to be a sub-standard pc and I ended up having very little problem with ER. There are connection problems with multi-player but that seems to be a game software problem. I recommend using a controller.

This is an excellent beginner guide to a lot of the mechanics

That is easily fixed with Flawless Widescreen. I’ve played through twice at 3440x1440. This also removes the 60 FPS cap and reduces stuttering. Instructions here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ultrawidemasterrace/comments/t0xwov/flawless_widescreen_has_the_elden_ring_fix_out_now/

Note, you can’t play online with that enabled. So you have to toggle it off for multiplayer. I found that multiplayer is a net negative, anyway. By the time you’ve seen your 100th “try finger but hole” message, you may reach the same conclusion.

You won’t get banned.

180+ hours in I finally went to ng+. I have been helping my buddy and he just finished first play through. Got a whole list of stuff to hit that I missed first run

Controller Shmontroller. If keyboard and mouse is good enough for Let Me Solo Her it’s good enough for you!

Can people in NG+ help those not in NG+?

Yes they can. The game doesn’t care which NG you are in for multiplayer.

Cheers I have Flawless widescreen, I shall look at this one

Ok Flawless works perfectly however performance is crap, regardless of resolution and graphic settings I get weird stuttering as I look at round and dos goes from 60 to 31 then 44 then back to 60, it’s like a stutter fest.

Thanks for that, although I read this too late. A YT suggested that the stonesword key was the best one to pick so I did. Opened that first area with it and died a minute later. Once unlocked, is it safe to assume they stay unlocked so I can come back later when I have more health?

That’s correct. And that Youtuber misled you. The Fanged Imp Ashes are the best starting gift. Stonesword keys are abundant in the game and you’ll get more than you can use if you explore.

Info in my earlier posts may help with the stuttering. Good luck.

And you can also buy more stonesword keys at some point from certain vendors.