Elden Ring - 10 Essential Early-game Discoveries
Intro
Flask of wondrous physick
You can find your flask at the third church of America, located here. That's up to you. By mixing in different crystal tear combinations at a grace checkpoint, you can alter its effects. For example, here, my crimson burst tear heals me over time, and my opaline bubble tear gives me a shield that protects me from the next attack I'll be hit by.
You can get both of these things from the field boss here.
Whetstone knife
Another essential item is the whetstone knife, which allows you to apply the ashes of war to your armaments. You can find the whetstone knife here in a cellar underneath the gateside ruins. It's kind of crazy that they hid such an important item here, but with this you can now apply ashes of war to your weapons, and that allows you to give them new skills and new scaling options to better suit your build.
If you want to quickly get a lot of ashes of war, make sure to visit Banal during the day here at the warmasters' shack. He sells an ash of war that is perfect for you, no skill. I'm being serious though, because it's actually pretty good. What you do with this one is apply it to a shield that has something like parry or another skill that you don't like, and by applying this to your shield, it allows your ash of war to default to your weapons weapon art rather than your shields.
And if you find yourself wielding two weapons, then you might want to duplicate an ash of war for both of them. To do this, you'll have to trade an item called "Lost Ash of War" to the blacksmith, and you're going to want to talk to the blacksmith pretty early since the smithing table at the church of Ella can only get your weapons to plus three, but the blacksmith can take them well beyond that.
To talk to him, though, you'll have to be invited to the round table. It's hard to know exactly what triggered Melina to invite you here. I know you will definitely be taken there if you defeat Margaret at Stormville Castle, but failing that, you will simply be invited. Just after exploring the world for a little while and you can warp here at any time in the bottom left of your map.
Talisman pouch
Defeating Margaret is actually also important because he gives you your first talisman pouch. With each pouch you collect, you gain another talisman slot. Talismans are like rings from previous games; you only start with one, but in the end, you can have multiple and they offer diverse and powerful benefits to your character .
Spell memorisation
Just like talismans for your spell memorization, slots are now also tied to items, so if you want to memorize more than two spells at a time, you'll need to seek out memory stones. Your first memory stone can be found at Iridis Rise, where you'll have to solve a simple puzzle in order to gain access and open the chest.
Night vs day
Put this in your new memory slot. The world is a lot more dangerous at night in addition to night enemies, tons of night bosses also seem to spawn, so if you're looking for more bosses to fight and you think you might have missed some in the early game, head here. here, and here, you'll find some good bosses here now to offset this apparent rise in world difficulty at night.
In my experience, your roon acquisition at night is also boosted, and this is thanks to three new mechanics. The first mechanic is that when the urge tree graces you with this golden reign of leaves, you've just chanced upon a really rare weather effect that buffs your character. What does this buff do?
I'm not sure exactly. The icon here is that of a four-fingered foul foot, which has items that increase item discovery and rune acquisition, so it's likely that this one does something similar. Now the official guide says that this rain increases roon acquisition by four to five percent, so I guess that's likely to be correct, although my testing actually revealed nothing of the sort.
The only other option I can think of is that it boosts item acquisition. Whatever the case, though, it's probably a good idea to farm some enemies while this buff is active, just based on the icon if nothing else. The second thing to look out for is enemies with golden eyes. In my experience, enemies drop four times the number of runes when you kill them, so if you see an enemy with golden eyes, go out of your way.
I love this mechanic because it really encourages you to take up some fights that you might just normally have run past. Last but not least, be on the lookout for glowing white skulls on the ground. Once broken apart, these will give you a golden rune consumable. They spawn in random locations and can easily be looted by trampling them with a torrent and spamming the loot button.
Elden bling
Some folks will want to spend these runes on becoming more powerful. But that's lame, honestly. Instead, you should spend them on looking good and getting that old bling, What I'm doing here is called "armor alteration," where elements of some sets of armor can be changed for a small price.
For example, a cloak can be added to the common set and profits can be freed from the neck piece. Of course, every armor piece is different, so check it out for 500 runes and see what changes to unlock armor alteration. You have to defeat the boss of the demi-human cave in the south-western limb grave.
When you're victorious, you'll receive the tailoring kit and a sewing needle. The tailoring kit unlocks armor alteration, but the sewing needle is actually a part of the box quest line. The box quest line can be started in a grove of trees located here, and I suspect his quest line might lead towards more armor alteration .
Clouded mirror
When I started this build, I wanted to be a glorious, faithful kind of Valkyrie character. Then I found a black crossbow, a spell that cast darkness, and an evil-looking flail. These things were way too edgy for me, but luckily I had an elden ring. You can change your character's appearance to better suit your build, so that's what I did.
It's easy to miss, but in Fear's room at the round table, go up to this mirror. This is the clouded mirror stand.
Spirit tuning
Make sure you frequently return to the round table area to see if anything's changed or if any new NPCs have dropped by. Rodica should be one of the first new faces here. You can talk to Rodericka out in the world, here by the stormhill shack, but it doesn't seem absolutely necessary for her questline.
For you to talk to her here, just progress through the game and she should eventually show up at the roundtable, whether you've talked to her before or not. After you've talked to her in the roundtable, go and talk to the blacksmith, and then go back and talk to her again, and you can trigger a progression in her questline.
