Elden Ring - 11 Things To Do First
Like Dark Souls before it, Elden Ring boasts a huge variety of secrets, deep gameplay elements, and punishing lessons for those who don't take it seriously. While the joy of discovery is a major draw from this software's newest adventure, a little bit of help in the beginning can save a lot of headaches in the future.
Here are 11 things to do first in Elden Ring. One of the new additions to the elden ring from the Souls games is the ability to craft special items such as fire pots, arrows, and even healing items for your horse. Upon activating the first sight of grace when stepping out of the limb grave, follow the golden thread to this point, the church of Ella.
Here you'll find a merchant that will sell you the crafting kit and another necessary item, the torch. You only need 500 runes to purchase both, so the nearby road that goes through the trees will provide plenty of soldiers to farm until you have enough. After visiting the church of Ella, follow along the nearby road through the trees once again, and you'll run head first into these ruins, where you'll find a bunch of enemies.
For now, go around them on the left side for now, and head to this location right next to the stormgate. Resting at this site of grace or whichever third grace you touch will introduce you to Melina, an important NPC that will let you spend your runes to level up. Melinda will also give you the ability to summon torrent, your spirit horse, which will be your main method of transportation across the lands between.
After getting a torrent, fast travel back to the church of Ella, where you met merchant Sansa, and across the courtyard you'll find a witch who gives you a summoning bell. This bell allows you to summon spirits to aid you in areas when this white arch logo appears in the left middle part of the screen.
These spirits cost FP your magic meter in order to summon and are separate from the story npcs or co-op partners that you summon in ways similar to the other Souls games. When you first open your map, you'll notice that important locations and sites of grace are marked, but the rest is covered in the brown fog of war.
You'll need map fragments for each area to expose the topography, and they can be found at the base of pillars that look like this. The first one is in the aforementioned bandit camp we just had you circumvent, right next to the storm gate fight, or sneak your way into the center along the road and grab the fragment to make the surrounding area a little more clear.
If you're feeling daring and the same ruins among the bandits, there's an underground tunnel that leads to some ashes of oar and the whetstone knife, which allows you to freely change out your ashes of war among your weapons. These are distinct abilities that can be switched out at sites of grace to suit your playstyle, and they affect the stats and stat scaling of the weapons you use.
Whatever stat you're building your character for, be it strength, dexterity, or even faith, having a weapon that scales exponentially with that stat will pay major dividends in the long run. If you're looking for more ashes of war, they can be found here at the warmaster shack directly north of the gatefront.
Head northwest through Stormgate along the road until you hit the Stormhill shack. Pop in real quick for reasons we'll make clear later, and then head east for the easiest way to get there, although there may be one or two obstacles on your way. If you're looking for a fun introduction to various systems mechanics and the kinds of surprises Eldren Ring has to offer, look no farther than Merkwater Cave.
Resting alongside the bed of the river here in Limgrave, move along the river's west side going south until you pass the bridge, and you should be able to find a place just to your right to safely drop down to the river. Then head back north up the river and look for a fire guiding the entrance on the left side.
Keep your head on a swivel and be ready to defend yourself from an unusual attacker, just in case. While there are several giant dungeons in the elden ring that you can't miss, there are tons of little dungeons peppered throughout the lands between that offer anything from optional boss fights to even fun little misadventures like the one at Merkwater Cave.
A lot of these can be found in underground tunnels in the center of ruins, but there are other hidden ones as well. Make sure you're on the lookout and not just moving along the path of the golden thread. One of these weapons can be found at the morkwater cave we mentioned earlier if you're focusing on a dex build, and there are two in the gatefront ruins right by the site of grace where you first met Melana.
Just check these giant stone carriages to pick up both the flail and the lord sworn's greatsword. You can upgrade your weapons all the way to plus three at the anvil of the church of Ella, but in order to do that you'll need smithing stones. You can find these strewn about the opening areas, but one of the best places to pick them up is in the limb grave tunnels here on the north side of the lake next to your starting area.
Just be aware that crossing the lake means you may encounter certain obstacles. They can be incredibly useful for crowd control, distracting a boss, or actually doing decent damage, but you have to find them first. Just to give you a heads up for a few of them The wandering noble ashes are in the stormfoot catacombs north west of the first steps; the godric soldier ashes are here in Stormhill cemetery surrounded by jellyfish enemies outside the castle on the far left cliffs; and you can get the actual jellyfish spirit from a woman in this shack and Storm Hill we mentioned earlier; and that's it.
Our next tip was going to be to die 17 times until you get that boss's pattern down just right, but we figured you could do that part on your
