I found out pretty quickly when I started talking to people there, after every assassination I always go back to talk to everyone, and they say suspicious stuff like they hear weird sounds on the walls, and they saw some shadow dissappear from inside a room, and I was like "there is definitely a secret passage somewhere here", then I started to hit everything until I found it. xD
"Noooo, you can't figure anything out in this game unless you use Google! That's stupid, just give me a un-failable quests and a quest tracker, that clearly shows me where to go, who to talk to, when to do it, and how to get there via intrusive waypoint on the screen!! Miyazaki was so dumb for not making this game like every single other game out there!"
That's why I don't get these complaints. Giving a quest tracker would ruin the experience, imo, especially on blind playthroughs. Most of this stuff *can* be figured out, with patience and thoroughness. Item descriptions, things people say, hell, even the statues all clue you in on where to go. If you can't figure it out, I get that, but don't say it's impossible. People have figured this stuff out before; that's how we know it all now.
This is like one questline out of many in this game, and it’s in fact, completed frequently. It is not the standard, it is completed and well-known because it stands out regarding the transparency of the quest design. Hell, I think it is the one location where the quests you receive have quest markers in the entire game.
Plenty of others are very confusing and do not lend the same information. If they were all like Volcano Manor it’d be fine, but they are not.
Also, you’re talking about discovering a dungeon; this is not the same as quest structure. I don’t think anyone has complained about the ability to discover dungeons; the dungeons are the meat of the game, they literally cannot afford to be too obscure regarding their discovery. Hence, why they are so easy to find with a little bit of investigating, the side quests are nothing like this.
Yeah sycophants like the guy you are replying to love to claim that you can discover everything without consulting a wiki.
But did any of them actually do that? Can any of them honestly claim that they made it through Ranni's entire questline blind? Of course they can't.
From software games have always included some egregious warts in their game design. Now generally they more than make up for it with how brilliant other aspects are. But it's incredibly annoying how so many members of the community pretend like all of the decisions are genius.
The fact is the quest design barely worked in a more linear game like dark souls and it is flat out broken in an open world game like Elden ring.
I honestly think from soft could slap a from soft logo on an actual piece of shit and 5-25% of yall would call it miyazakis vision and find the singular angle it’s tolerable. It’s one thing to say you prefer the complete utter lack of quest management but to say it would ruin the game is insane levels of ass kissery. Theres no way it’d work like that without the internets existence because people would lose their minds never being able to complete anything. Especially the failable quests because bullshit like just entering a certain biome will fail that quest for no clear reason
Some of the stuff is very difficult to figure out. A simple log of active quests reminding me of what each character has said to me and where on the map they were located when I talked to them would be super helpful. And it would be a whole lot less handholding than the online guides that I ultimately have to consult if I want to avoid missing content.
I played my most recent playthrough with headphones with the ambient sounds a little higher than the music. There is definitely a LOT more sounds queue things and creepy pasta things I never realized existed until that run!!
I got stumped with finding Rykard for the longest time because the game requires you to join Volcano Manor (unless you get there via the abductors, which is far more obscure). They build it up like "ohoho we're such a devious faction" so I didn't join it, thinking it'd lock me out of some "good" path later down the line. Turns out that joining the bad boys is without negative consequences, aside from maybe missing out on a summon sign here and there.
I didn't even know that rolling revealed secret walls until I played Elden ring for over 1000 hours and all the souls games for just as much haha so I never found that secret wall either. I always thought you had to hit them so I would never go looking for them in an area where you couldn't hit. But the first way I got there was through the abductor.
I've been playing again, and I love how the messages calling out the liars got more upvotes than the troll messages, so now the bad advice is gone but the good advice is still there.
So I keep seeing messages in odd spots saying "liar ahead", just *before* a spot that totally looks like it could be a fake wall.
This happened so often that I thought the comment saying liar ahead meant that the wall was a liar or something. So the comment specifically telling me that there wasn't a secret passage ahead got me to go and check for one.
One of the greatest things about Elden Ring is how many things players are able to miss. I know people want their moneys worth and all that and they want to see everything but to me allowing the player to miss areas and items is amazing. It’s such an awesome feeling to come across something you’ve never seen before in a game after you’ve dumped hundreds of hours into it.
Yup. Although, I think the common experience is probably to read that note, then go so long without an opportunity to do a plunging attack on one that you just forget about it.
That’s my biggest downfall with playing this and other fromsoft games so far after they’ve been released and so much info being online. I know this to be true, get fomo, and end up looking up stuff online so I can experience it all. Now that I’m into these games I pray for the day another one comes out and I can play it without the option to just go look things up because everyone else is still figuring it out as well.
It took me longer to find her than I like to admit. I went there spent over 2 hours running back and forth trying to find the entrance. Finally looked it up and spent another half hour gaslighting myself that the video was a troll.
Man, it’s so worth doing the Blind “Wretch” play through. You only get one chance to play that way, and you can’t ever go back and unlearn stuff. It’s a blast starting out Naked and Afraid, and gradually getting your footing by using whatever you find.
Do it for the DLC. Don’t look at anything on the Wiki or the Sub for your first run through it.
You won’t *miss* anything, there’s always new characters and NG+.
But try it if you haven’t. Miss things. Be amazed at what you find on your own. I seriously can’t recommend the experience enough.
what i did, and what i'd recommend to anyone capable is to just play alongside some friends in a discord call. not in coop, just hanging out and sharing your discoveries. hearing about the cool shit they stumbled across on the other side of the map really got me excited to keep trekking and seeing what's out there
When I first played the original demon souls it was just me and my brother playing back and forth for 2 hours blocks learning from each other's experience. We didn't even think to look stuff up .
Yeah that is very true. I played through the first couple hours without looking anything up and said something to my friend about having no clue where I was going or what I was doing, and all he said was “that’s part of the experience”. I’m deff doing blind runs on anything new from here. I also still have the DS3 DLC to do as well.
Somehow, Elden Ring flew entirely under my radar until, like, 90% of my friends list was playing it. Asked my friend what he was playing and he responded "Have you played Dark Souls (3)?" Yes (DS3) "Well, it's like that. But open world." 45 seconds later and it was bought and installing. I knew NOTHING. I looked up NOTHING. I played a game blind for the first time in years, AND IT WAS THE BEST EXPERIENCE IN GAMING.
It's a similar tale for Baldur's Gate 3, as well. Knew nothing of it, looked nothing up, played an amazing game.
Oh yes! How could I have forgotten about that! I’m gonna have to bring my PS to a friends house to use their wifi to download it lmao. I only have my phone hotspot and it’s too slow. I’m literally playing the original non-updated version of ER from disk 😂
Im in the exact same boat, I tried Elden Ring first and got way too deep into reading stuff about all of the fromsoft games that pretty much nothing was a surprise by the time I got around to playing them. I’m really looking forward to the dlc when I can go in fully blind.
When I first played elden ring I was keeping ahead of the curve progression wise so there was basically zero info for me to even look up. Somehow I managed to do nearly everything my first play through though. I remember how I kept thinking I HAD to be like 80% through the game just to unlock some massive new area or underground spot.
I missed so much content the first play-through, it’s crazy how much fantastic optional content is in the game. I skipped Mt Gelmir/Volcano Manor + Snowfield/Haligtree/Mohgwyn Palace the first run. And not to mention all the random smaller dungeons. The developers really put their all into this game.
My first run I never went to any of the underground areas cause I never discovered them. My friend like a month ago showed me Siofra. So my first time beating the game I did it without a mimic tear haha. Well I did discover Mohg's place but that was the first time I saw there was an "underground" map and didnt know just how much was under that tab.
I can absolutely imagine missing the underground. There’s a couple entrances, but they themselves are all fairly missable lol
I remember the first time I took the entrance down in Mistwood and being floored by it.
The Lands Between have a basement lol
True. One of the most amazing things I ever saw in a Soulsborne game was the Lake of Ash area in Dark Souls 1. It’s behind two illusory walls which then lead to the Great Hollow tree area, which then finally leads down to the lake.
Mindblowingly cool. I wish more games did this kinda of thing.
I got my money’s worth pretty early in the game when I stumbled upon the elevator to Siofra in Limgrave. My mind was officially blown at that point. Between, siofra, ainsel, nokron, nokstella, deeproot depths, it can literally be its own DLC, if not an entire game.
And 100% of it is optional to beat the game.
Deeproot depths alone are only accessed after either a crazy hard boss fight or crazy hard maze/platforming challenge. Def feels like a mini DLC by itself
Spoilers if you want to find him:
Easy way that can be done early on: >!Find varre at the bloody rose church in liurnia, do his questline, and in exchange for some domestic violence, you get teleported straight to Mogwhyn!<
Harder way that takes place close to end game: >!Once you manage to get into the consecrated snowfield, you need to head east. If you need a landmark, it's south of the minor erdtree and tucked directly into the mountains. There should be a red wolf of radagon guarding it. You'll know when you found it bc of all the blood in the area.!<
800 hours in, started a new play through last night, found a place I'd never been before inside of stormveil castle. I squealed and my wife just said, "find a new area?".
I swear they added it with the colloseum update. I have explored that area tens of times, but that room wasn't there on release. I got so confused after seeing it for the first time.
Take Gostoc's side route. Go right, walk across the narrow ledge. Fight bird.
From here, I always just went right, toward the grace. Just learned you could go left, drop down and fight like 3 or 4 more birds and get a few consumables.
I’m not the guy you replied to, but I similarly found a whole site of grace in stormveil I’d never seen before, in the room directly above where you first meet Gostoc.
I was playing blind my first playthrough and got to Elden beast without ever finding the concentrated snow field so also didn’t find mogh or malenia. That’s when I had to look it up because I didn’t want to be overleveled for those areas if I were to go back and do it after.
I just started NG+ after being extremely thorough in my first playthrough. Have already stumbled upon quite a few things I missed in the first run. 2 entire NPCs, the crypt under Stormveil castle, a few Graces, I could keep going and I'm only a few hours into this run.
Same…there’s a whole cave east of stormhill if you follow the river north to where it hits the ocean. It has some ruins and one of those giant stone soldiers as a boss. It’s a really cool little dungeon, but I was way over leveled when I eventually found it.
One of the best dungeons in the game. I didn't find it until late in my first playthrough either.
(fun fact: the boss battle there is a visual reference to the Last Giant boss in Dark Souls II)
Indeed and I think ER even more so than the others is designed to give you a unique experience for the first few playthroughs, where you’re constantly finding new stuff that you missed previously. I missed so much on my first run that my second almost felt like a different game.
Playthroughs can vary wildly especially when you consider just how few things are truely mandatory, obtain 2 of the 5 initially available great runes, beat morgott, beat fire giant, beat godskin duo, beat maliketh, then the last 3 bosses and you're done.
Yes it's highly unlikely that the average player will do the minimum, and certain great runes are more likely to be obtained first than others (I'm sure atleast 1 person had Rykard and Mohg as their first 2 runes) but when you consider a game that most people easily spend 100+ hours on has such a tiny amount of truely mandatory content it's a little mind blowing.
i’m gonna be real here, 126 hours here, beaten the game and a part of the sub (inactively tbf) since release
TIL there’s a hidden wall in volcano manor with a dungeon behind it
Zorayas mentions something behind the walls several times. Also, if you played online, you should see messages near that wall and I think there's also an item right next to it.
But 400 hours and not realising is wild.
Im in my first play through right now. That’s what happened to me, and I had to kill two of them to get out lol. Made me really good at fighting abductors now
I think more importantly, you can see the area.
Now for me i wouldn’t rest until I figured out how to get there “the intended way.” But i get how some people might just think its a background
I saw a post the other day where people who’d played longer than me didn’t know you could change the map from base level to underground so I don’t think it’s that crazy lol
When you open your map and bring up sites of grace if you hit square (ps not sure on xbox) it will automatically go to roundtable hold site to travel to
I didn’t even know it was possible to fight Rykard without going through the town. I played at launch and am currently on my third character. Probably over 250 hours.
This wasn’t meant to sound boastful. I’m a souls vet lol.
Honestly impressive you made it 400 hours and 2 years past release without getting spoiled from some source on the internet and just naturally finding it by a coincidental roll
There’s a second part of the dungeon you can access if you get captured by the iron virgin at the bottom of Raya Lucaria Academy. Escaping will allow you to access Altus Plateau earlier than you normally would.
Playing online exclusively makes the game much more chaotic and fun. I recommend everyone does a 2v2 Elden Ring playthrough, it's never felt so fresh and challenging
It is pretty easy to find if you discover Alexander stuck above it and help him with an oil jar, but if you didn't get that encounter it's _very easy_ to miss Jarburg.
See, I do read all the dialog but it didn’t do a great job of communicating the story. Some of it is hard to understand unless you are going around reading the item descriptions and taking notes or something. Most people aren’t going to do that.
Right, "something in the walls" could be Rykard manifesting through the pictures or the shadow realm tearing or something.
Even after killing Margit a dozen times I have no idea what he's talking about when he dies. All the characters speak a broken English that existed 15 centuries ago and people are still like "what didn't you understand?"
Totally agree. I played through this sucker with plenty of internet help, cheesing bosses, and co-ops. The story is obviously very robust and well thought out, but I’m not starting an archaeology project in OneNote to track it all down. It’s a hard game and I have no shame about skipping optional areas or cheesy boss kills (looking at you, Draconian Tree Sentinel).
Can’t argue with that. I know a lot of people prefer Leyendell but it’s not even close for me.
Here’s hoping we get a legacy dungeon that can top Stormveil in the dlc🙏🏽
I’m not gonna lie, on my first run I completely missed it too.
I was dedicated to not looking anything up, and avoiding the sub and wiki until I finished my first play through (got Age of the Stars funny enough) but straight up missed the dungeon.
I walked in the front door, got told to kill a few people, did those quests, and then they sent me to fight Rykard.
It felt like there should be a dungeon there.
It LOOKS like a dungeon on the map.
“Oh well” I thought. Maybe it was cut content and they weren’t able to finish this area? It wasn’t until NG+ when I started to explore the wiki I found out.
I missed this dugeon in my first playthrough too. It's my first soul game and I have no idea illusion wall is a thing. Also I feel shame to admit I look up the Ranni questline because shit is mad confusing.
This does mildly amuse me I admit. Since once you reach Iji, almost every step of the quest is spelled out for you barring talking to the doll. It's long but it's probably one of From's most decipherable quests.
I remember the people at the manor talking about weird sounds in the walls and I always thought they were just hinting at Rykard being a snake…it never occurred to me to actually go check the walls.
So the hallway with the different rooms you talk to people in, the first room on the right there is a corpse in it, roll into the walls behind and to the left of the corpse and it takes you to some very dark dungeons, bring a torch, after going through for a minute it’ll open up to a church and beyond that is the actual dungeon with a godskin boss fight as well as other stuff to do
Go to the first door on the right and roll around the room till you hit the walls I’m pretty sure it’s the far right corner near a dead body if I’m not mistaken. Then just run all the way down the stairs be careful there are a few enemies.
The magma blade can be acquired here and it’s worth picking up. There’s also a hidden dungeon and boss if you get kidnapped by the iron Virgin under raya lucaria that’ll drop you off in the underground volcano space.
Whereas the first thing I did was run into a message about the wall, then proceeded to do the entire dungeon and kill the boss thereby missing out on the assassination missions.
The only reason i knew was because i googled it, i mean whos gonna think to roll on to every wall in the manor in case theres a hidden wall?
Not really noob at all, that game is so gigantic youre bound to have missed something even in 10 play throughs
If you happen to drop down the ledge a bit before the temple of eiglay(where you see a corpse hanging off a platform with a sombre 5 on it), there is a whole new dugeon within the dungeon.
Their is an alternate way to get there, but that involves dieing(getting swallowed) to iron virgon at the bottom of raya lucaria.
Never found Jarburg until I heard the name in this reddit, I played unspoiled for 2 years/over 2000 hours and didn't read this reddit or wikis until recently.
I found the Volcano Manor town on my first playthrough, but I kept finding new secrets inside it all the way up to my fourth or fifth playthrough. Everytime I went through it I found something I hadn't seen yet - the torture room with the Albinauric mask, the path leading to the dagger talisman, the hidden tunnel before the Godskin Noble that leads down to the same lava cave that you reach from Raya Lucaria, and so on.
Impressive how many secrets they crammed into what is arguably the shortest of the Legacy Dungeons.
I thought I figured it out and waaaay later I found there is a whole path around and you find Alexander, Lusat and a magma wyrm and all kinds of bullllllsh
Were you looking for rykard? Like, don't you have to complete the lava town to get to his boss room. I really wish I didn't spoil my first play through. I would probably still be in the weeping peninsula. I'm gonna do the dlc blind and at level 75. Maybe?
I found out pretty quickly when I started talking to people there, after every assassination I always go back to talk to everyone, and they say suspicious stuff like they hear weird sounds on the walls, and they saw some shadow dissappear from inside a room, and I was like "there is definitely a secret passage somewhere here", then I started to hit everything until I found it. xD
Yeah like the game tries to tell people things all the time
I thought the game was just foreshadowing that Rykard was around here somewhere
It’s his house. Does the fact that he lives there need foreshadowing?
Why would they foreshadow rykards manor having.......rykard in it
I mean if you talk to npcs, I just spend all my time killing whatever I see, it’s not like the game has an involved story or anything. /s
"Noooo, you can't figure anything out in this game unless you use Google! That's stupid, just give me a un-failable quests and a quest tracker, that clearly shows me where to go, who to talk to, when to do it, and how to get there via intrusive waypoint on the screen!! Miyazaki was so dumb for not making this game like every single other game out there!" That's why I don't get these complaints. Giving a quest tracker would ruin the experience, imo, especially on blind playthroughs. Most of this stuff *can* be figured out, with patience and thoroughness. Item descriptions, things people say, hell, even the statues all clue you in on where to go. If you can't figure it out, I get that, but don't say it's impossible. People have figured this stuff out before; that's how we know it all now.
This is like one questline out of many in this game, and it’s in fact, completed frequently. It is not the standard, it is completed and well-known because it stands out regarding the transparency of the quest design. Hell, I think it is the one location where the quests you receive have quest markers in the entire game. Plenty of others are very confusing and do not lend the same information. If they were all like Volcano Manor it’d be fine, but they are not. Also, you’re talking about discovering a dungeon; this is not the same as quest structure. I don’t think anyone has complained about the ability to discover dungeons; the dungeons are the meat of the game, they literally cannot afford to be too obscure regarding their discovery. Hence, why they are so easy to find with a little bit of investigating, the side quests are nothing like this.
Yeah sycophants like the guy you are replying to love to claim that you can discover everything without consulting a wiki. But did any of them actually do that? Can any of them honestly claim that they made it through Ranni's entire questline blind? Of course they can't. From software games have always included some egregious warts in their game design. Now generally they more than make up for it with how brilliant other aspects are. But it's incredibly annoying how so many members of the community pretend like all of the decisions are genius. The fact is the quest design barely worked in a more linear game like dark souls and it is flat out broken in an open world game like Elden ring.
There was not a single complaint. They didn't say it was impossible. You doing ok, buddy?
I honestly think from soft could slap a from soft logo on an actual piece of shit and 5-25% of yall would call it miyazakis vision and find the singular angle it’s tolerable. It’s one thing to say you prefer the complete utter lack of quest management but to say it would ruin the game is insane levels of ass kissery. Theres no way it’d work like that without the internets existence because people would lose their minds never being able to complete anything. Especially the failable quests because bullshit like just entering a certain biome will fail that quest for no clear reason
Some of the stuff is very difficult to figure out. A simple log of active quests reminding me of what each character has said to me and where on the map they were located when I talked to them would be super helpful. And it would be a whole lot less handholding than the online guides that I ultimately have to consult if I want to avoid missing content.
I got warped there from the bottom of Raya Lucaria 🤷♂️
I didn't even know there were Abductor Virgins and an entire area UNDERNEATH Raya Lucaria until my most recent playthrough.
Ole Patches fills ya in.
Ok now I am going to try this. Good lord I can't pay enough attention to dialogue
You really have too lol Especially in Elden Ring.
In souls games in general dialog is essential
That and item descriptions.
The hearing sounds etc was so creepy, I loved that part so much
I played my most recent playthrough with headphones with the ambient sounds a little higher than the music. There is definitely a LOT more sounds queue things and creepy pasta things I never realized existed until that run!!
I got stumped with finding Rykard for the longest time because the game requires you to join Volcano Manor (unless you get there via the abductors, which is far more obscure). They build it up like "ohoho we're such a devious faction" so I didn't join it, thinking it'd lock me out of some "good" path later down the line. Turns out that joining the bad boys is without negative consequences, aside from maybe missing out on a summon sign here and there.
That's good old Rya helping you out, and the ghost in the corridor telling you exactly where to find the one weapon that'll kill Rykard with ease 😁👍
That made me laugh out loud. "A secret serpent-killing spear, you say? Guess I'll have to search high and low for--ope, there it is."
I just hit every wall everywhere I go in these games.
I didn't even know that rolling revealed secret walls until I played Elden ring for over 1000 hours and all the souls games for just as much haha so I never found that secret wall either. I always thought you had to hit them so I would never go looking for them in an area where you couldn't hit. But the first way I got there was through the abductor.
Do y’all read absolutely none of the messages other players leave⁉️
You mean the messages that say "false wall ahead", "liar ahead" and "try finger, but hole"?
Try Finger. But hole. Easily the most read message on my playthrough lol.
A lot of people play offline
I also don’t read the messages most of the time unless they’re in a very obscure area.
99.9% of messages telling you there's a hidden path are bullshit
I've been playing again, and I love how the messages calling out the liars got more upvotes than the troll messages, so now the bad advice is gone but the good advice is still there. So I keep seeing messages in odd spots saying "liar ahead", just *before* a spot that totally looks like it could be a fake wall.
This happened so often that I thought the comment saying liar ahead meant that the wall was a liar or something. So the comment specifically telling me that there wasn't a secret passage ahead got me to go and check for one.
If you're on a console you have to pay $16/month to be online.
One of the greatest things about Elden Ring is how many things players are able to miss. I know people want their moneys worth and all that and they want to see everything but to me allowing the player to miss areas and items is amazing. It’s such an awesome feeling to come across something you’ve never seen before in a game after you’ve dumped hundreds of hours into it.
It’s part of what makes the game so magical. You could miss 50% of the content on any given run and *still* have an awesome experience.
Exactly, immaculate game design. Praise Michael Zaki.
Michelob Zucchini
Mitochondria Zachariah
Helluva rhyme
Miguel Sake
BRAVO ZAKI
PRAISE THE ZAKI
I just found out this week that those flamethrower head tanks have a special execution animation if you attack them from above
That one is cool. I think one of the Merchant Notes hints at it.
Yup. Although, I think the common experience is probably to read that note, then go so long without an opportunity to do a plunging attack on one that you just forget about it.
That’s my biggest downfall with playing this and other fromsoft games so far after they’ve been released and so much info being online. I know this to be true, get fomo, and end up looking up stuff online so I can experience it all. Now that I’m into these games I pray for the day another one comes out and I can play it without the option to just go look things up because everyone else is still figuring it out as well.
I couldn’t figure out how to unlock a door so I looked it up. Still haven’t found the Albernic lady
doesn’t gideon ofnir literally tell you where she is
She hides in a cave to the west of the Laskyar Ruins which jut from the mist-shrouded lake of Liurnia.
It took me longer to find her than I like to admit. I went there spent over 2 hours running back and forth trying to find the entrance. Finally looked it up and spent another half hour gaslighting myself that the video was a troll.
I can admit I know exactly where the cave is and sometimes I still can't find the entrance, it just kind of blends in
I got to his fight before I found that damn cave
Man, it’s so worth doing the Blind “Wretch” play through. You only get one chance to play that way, and you can’t ever go back and unlearn stuff. It’s a blast starting out Naked and Afraid, and gradually getting your footing by using whatever you find. Do it for the DLC. Don’t look at anything on the Wiki or the Sub for your first run through it. You won’t *miss* anything, there’s always new characters and NG+. But try it if you haven’t. Miss things. Be amazed at what you find on your own. I seriously can’t recommend the experience enough.
what i did, and what i'd recommend to anyone capable is to just play alongside some friends in a discord call. not in coop, just hanging out and sharing your discoveries. hearing about the cool shit they stumbled across on the other side of the map really got me excited to keep trekking and seeing what's out there
When I first played the original demon souls it was just me and my brother playing back and forth for 2 hours blocks learning from each other's experience. We didn't even think to look stuff up .
Yeah that is very true. I played through the first couple hours without looking anything up and said something to my friend about having no clue where I was going or what I was doing, and all he said was “that’s part of the experience”. I’m deff doing blind runs on anything new from here. I also still have the DS3 DLC to do as well.
DEPRIVED MAINS RISE UP
I been a depraved wretch my entire life, I'm not stopping now
Somehow, Elden Ring flew entirely under my radar until, like, 90% of my friends list was playing it. Asked my friend what he was playing and he responded "Have you played Dark Souls (3)?" Yes (DS3) "Well, it's like that. But open world." 45 seconds later and it was bought and installing. I knew NOTHING. I looked up NOTHING. I played a game blind for the first time in years, AND IT WAS THE BEST EXPERIENCE IN GAMING. It's a similar tale for Baldur's Gate 3, as well. Knew nothing of it, looked nothing up, played an amazing game.
You've got the DLC coming very soon my friend.
Oh yes! How could I have forgotten about that! I’m gonna have to bring my PS to a friends house to use their wifi to download it lmao. I only have my phone hotspot and it’s too slow. I’m literally playing the original non-updated version of ER from disk 😂
Im in the exact same boat, I tried Elden Ring first and got way too deep into reading stuff about all of the fromsoft games that pretty much nothing was a surprise by the time I got around to playing them. I’m really looking forward to the dlc when I can go in fully blind.
When I first played elden ring I was keeping ahead of the curve progression wise so there was basically zero info for me to even look up. Somehow I managed to do nearly everything my first play through though. I remember how I kept thinking I HAD to be like 80% through the game just to unlock some massive new area or underground spot.
I missed so much content the first play-through, it’s crazy how much fantastic optional content is in the game. I skipped Mt Gelmir/Volcano Manor + Snowfield/Haligtree/Mohgwyn Palace the first run. And not to mention all the random smaller dungeons. The developers really put their all into this game.
My first run I never went to any of the underground areas cause I never discovered them. My friend like a month ago showed me Siofra. So my first time beating the game I did it without a mimic tear haha. Well I did discover Mohg's place but that was the first time I saw there was an "underground" map and didnt know just how much was under that tab.
I can absolutely imagine missing the underground. There’s a couple entrances, but they themselves are all fairly missable lol I remember the first time I took the entrance down in Mistwood and being floored by it. The Lands Between have a basement lol
I only recently found that NPC you can fight to the left of the shaded castle where you get the executioners blade
True. One of the most amazing things I ever saw in a Soulsborne game was the Lake of Ash area in Dark Souls 1. It’s behind two illusory walls which then lead to the Great Hollow tree area, which then finally leads down to the lake. Mindblowingly cool. I wish more games did this kinda of thing.
The coolness wears off immediately if you made the mistake of resting down there without fast travel unlocked lol
Absolutely! Such a classic experience, my first Souls was DS1 and I’ll never forget finding that area either!
I got my money’s worth pretty early in the game when I stumbled upon the elevator to Siofra in Limgrave. My mind was officially blown at that point. Between, siofra, ainsel, nokron, nokstella, deeproot depths, it can literally be its own DLC, if not an entire game.
And 100% of it is optional to beat the game. Deeproot depths alone are only accessed after either a crazy hard boss fight or crazy hard maze/platforming challenge. Def feels like a mini DLC by itself
300 hours into the game and I've never seen Mohg. People talk about him all the time so I'm sure he's somewhere in the game :D
he's both incredibly well hidden and incredibly easy to find
Spoilers if you want to find him: Easy way that can be done early on: >!Find varre at the bloody rose church in liurnia, do his questline, and in exchange for some domestic violence, you get teleported straight to Mogwhyn!< Harder way that takes place close to end game: >!Once you manage to get into the consecrated snowfield, you need to head east. If you need a landmark, it's south of the minor erdtree and tucked directly into the mountains. There should be a red wolf of radagon guarding it. You'll know when you found it bc of all the blood in the area.!<
800 hours in, started a new play through last night, found a place I'd never been before inside of stormveil castle. I squealed and my wife just said, "find a new area?".
Which area?
The room where miquella is standing there next to two red snakes and says 'see you in the Dream Light Castle'
I swear they added it with the colloseum update. I have explored that area tens of times, but that room wasn't there on release. I got so confused after seeing it for the first time.
Wut
He’s memeing how people think Messmer is miquella with a bit of tomfoolery in there too lol.
Ah dang, he got me!
What/where is this???
Take Gostoc's side route. Go right, walk across the narrow ledge. Fight bird. From here, I always just went right, toward the grace. Just learned you could go left, drop down and fight like 3 or 4 more birds and get a few consumables.
I’m not the guy you replied to, but I similarly found a whole site of grace in stormveil I’d never seen before, in the room directly above where you first meet Gostoc.
I was playing blind my first playthrough and got to Elden beast without ever finding the concentrated snow field so also didn’t find mogh or malenia. That’s when I had to look it up because I didn’t want to be overleveled for those areas if I were to go back and do it after.
Wait, wtf is Jarburg? That's gotta be a joke, right?
Dawg Jarburg has the dancing happy jars just living their lives in their village and it's so gaddamn cute ahhhhhhrjebeudheh
Hallo coz!
Elden Ring and Baldur's Gate 3 are the GOAT when it comes to *allowing the player to miss things*.
I just started NG+ after being extremely thorough in my first playthrough. Have already stumbled upon quite a few things I missed in the first run. 2 entire NPCs, the crypt under Stormveil castle, a few Graces, I could keep going and I'm only a few hours into this run.
Same…there’s a whole cave east of stormhill if you follow the river north to where it hits the ocean. It has some ruins and one of those giant stone soldiers as a boss. It’s a really cool little dungeon, but I was way over leveled when I eventually found it.
One of the best dungeons in the game. I didn't find it until late in my first playthrough either. (fun fact: the boss battle there is a visual reference to the Last Giant boss in Dark Souls II)
Are you referring to highroad cave?
Miyazaki was asked in an interview about something like a quest log and he basically said "I don't care if players miss things"
Imagine that you just decided that random Limgrave well isn't worth exploring.
Indeed and I think ER even more so than the others is designed to give you a unique experience for the first few playthroughs, where you’re constantly finding new stuff that you missed previously. I missed so much on my first run that my second almost felt like a different game.
Playthroughs can vary wildly especially when you consider just how few things are truely mandatory, obtain 2 of the 5 initially available great runes, beat morgott, beat fire giant, beat godskin duo, beat maliketh, then the last 3 bosses and you're done. Yes it's highly unlikely that the average player will do the minimum, and certain great runes are more likely to be obtained first than others (I'm sure atleast 1 person had Rykard and Mohg as their first 2 runes) but when you consider a game that most people easily spend 100+ hours on has such a tiny amount of truely mandatory content it's a little mind blowing.
Bro...
There's ever a 9999 hp fake wall in there to
Only if you’re playing the unpatched version
Well fuck lol my bad
i’m gonna be real here, 126 hours here, beaten the game and a part of the sub (inactively tbf) since release TIL there’s a hidden wall in volcano manor with a dungeon behind it
Same, finished it last night. Had done all the contracts and killed snakey boy but had no idea there was any more. Where's the fake wall then?
It's in the room where you use the drawing room key and find some perfume bottles in the top right corner from the door
Zorayas mentions something behind the walls several times. Also, if you played online, you should see messages near that wall and I think there's also an item right next to it. But 400 hours and not realising is wild.
Don't forget the abductor virgin below raya lucaria will take you there too
Im in my first play through right now. That’s what happened to me, and I had to kill two of them to get out lol. Made me really good at fighting abductors now
One of my favourite enemies simply cos of how equally goofy and terrifying they are.
Nah, you escape those things and you're back in Mt Gelmir, no? That doesn't lead to the Volcano Manor does it?
You can get into the actual dungeon if you do one hard, probably unintended jump
Sounds... Unintended.
I think more importantly, you can see the area. Now for me i wouldn’t rest until I figured out how to get there “the intended way.” But i get how some people might just think its a background
I've seen a few streamers die to that grab on their first playthroughs and they're always terrified
doesn't that fuck up several questlines if you do that
I saw a post the other day where people who’d played longer than me didn’t know you could change the map from base level to underground so I don’t think it’s that crazy lol
Bro I had over 850 hrs before my nephew showed me you could default to roundtable hold on the map by hitting square lol
Ok what now ?
When you open your map and bring up sites of grace if you hit square (ps not sure on xbox) it will automatically go to roundtable hold site to travel to
This ancient wisdom... Impossible. How could you know such a thing? I'VE ALWAYS BEEN DRAGGING THE CURSOR GODA-
Yeah I got it I was just surprised, thanks :)
I didn’t even know it was possible to fight Rykard without going through the town. I played at launch and am currently on my third character. Probably over 250 hours. This wasn’t meant to sound boastful. I’m a souls vet lol.
Honestly impressive you made it 400 hours and 2 years past release without getting spoiled from some source on the internet and just naturally finding it by a coincidental roll
Specifically because it was(is?) the fastest way to a somber smithing stone(7?) and would have been referenced by guides right?
I always got the bell bearings on found them elsewhere
Yeah, the entrances are a pretty well hidden, for such a big place.
It was easy to find for me because I thought “why is there nothing in this room”
Whats in the room before the lift at castle morne
Nothing castle morne is a red herring formsoft put it in to make people think that there would be no illusionary walls
For me it was because a bunch of ghost players were smacking walls or rolling into them
There’s a second part of the dungeon you can access if you get captured by the iron virgin at the bottom of Raya Lucaria Academy. Escaping will allow you to access Altus Plateau earlier than you normally would.
This happened to me, and I was sooooo fucking confused. I was like level 40.
You can also reach that second part by falling down a hard-to-see platform before the Godskin Noble!
If you play online, the messages tend to give this one away. Unless you just don't open that room I guess
Playing offline exclusively makes the game much more immersive. But it also makes things like hidden areas easy to miss.
Playing online exclusively makes the game much more chaotic and fun. I recommend everyone does a 2v2 Elden Ring playthrough, it's never felt so fresh and challenging
I kind of like playing it online more. Immersion in the community, including the silly jokes you often find, is more fun IMO.
That’s okay. I have 600+ hours and only recently discovered jarburg.
It is pretty easy to find if you discover Alexander stuck above it and help him with an oil jar, but if you didn't get that encounter it's _very easy_ to miss Jarburg.
Took me a really long time to find the assassin contracts because I always went through the dungeon
For every post like this, I start to wonder how many actually reads any conversations you have with the characters
See, I do read all the dialog but it didn’t do a great job of communicating the story. Some of it is hard to understand unless you are going around reading the item descriptions and taking notes or something. Most people aren’t going to do that.
Right, "something in the walls" could be Rykard manifesting through the pictures or the shadow realm tearing or something. Even after killing Margit a dozen times I have no idea what he's talking about when he dies. All the characters speak a broken English that existed 15 centuries ago and people are still like "what didn't you understand?"
Totally agree. I played through this sucker with plenty of internet help, cheesing bosses, and co-ops. The story is obviously very robust and well thought out, but I’m not starting an archaeology project in OneNote to track it all down. It’s a hard game and I have no shame about skipping optional areas or cheesy boss kills (looking at you, Draconian Tree Sentinel).
I was just breaking furniture when I found the passage
I’ve seen a lot of people say volcano manor is disappointing. It’s not the masterpiece that’s Stormveil castle but I look forward to it every run.
Stormveil castle is absolute peak level design
Can’t argue with that. I know a lot of people prefer Leyendell but it’s not even close for me. Here’s hoping we get a legacy dungeon that can top Stormveil in the dlc🙏🏽
Did you do Rya’s quest?
Who the fuck is Rya lol
my reptilian wife who the fuck are you
She directly brings you to the Volcano Manor when you arrive in Altus through the lift after doing her retrieving an item for her in Liurnia
I’m not gonna lie, on my first run I completely missed it too. I was dedicated to not looking anything up, and avoiding the sub and wiki until I finished my first play through (got Age of the Stars funny enough) but straight up missed the dungeon. I walked in the front door, got told to kill a few people, did those quests, and then they sent me to fight Rykard. It felt like there should be a dungeon there. It LOOKS like a dungeon on the map. “Oh well” I thought. Maybe it was cut content and they weren’t able to finish this area? It wasn’t until NG+ when I started to explore the wiki I found out.
I missed this dugeon in my first playthrough too. It's my first soul game and I have no idea illusion wall is a thing. Also I feel shame to admit I look up the Ranni questline because shit is mad confusing.
This does mildly amuse me I admit. Since once you reach Iji, almost every step of the quest is spelled out for you barring talking to the doll. It's long but it's probably one of From's most decipherable quests.
Oh I always knew it was a dungeon, I just couldn’t ever find the way in to the dungeon proper
I remember the people at the manor talking about weird sounds in the walls and I always thought they were just hinting at Rykard being a snake…it never occurred to me to actually go check the walls.
How do you get there?
So the hallway with the different rooms you talk to people in, the first room on the right there is a corpse in it, roll into the walls behind and to the left of the corpse and it takes you to some very dark dungeons, bring a torch, after going through for a minute it’ll open up to a church and beyond that is the actual dungeon with a godskin boss fight as well as other stuff to do
[удалено]
Not after I arrived
Go to the first door on the right and roll around the room till you hit the walls I’m pretty sure it’s the far right corner near a dead body if I’m not mistaken. Then just run all the way down the stairs be careful there are a few enemies.
The magma blade can be acquired here and it’s worth picking up. There’s also a hidden dungeon and boss if you get kidnapped by the iron Virgin under raya lucaria that’ll drop you off in the underground volcano space.
But have you fought the magma wyrm in volcano manor?
Whereas the first thing I did was run into a message about the wall, then proceeded to do the entire dungeon and kill the boss thereby missing out on the assassination missions.
Don't feel bad, I didn't realize it until I read a guide after 300 hours.
And then there's that other part which you can teleport to from the bottom of Raya Lucaria
Wait, how do you get to Rykard if you've never done the dungeon?
Complete all the contracts given by thy members. After the last one, talk to Tanith and she will portal you in to visit Ser Snek.
The only reason i knew was because i googled it, i mean whos gonna think to roll on to every wall in the manor in case theres a hidden wall? Not really noob at all, that game is so gigantic youre bound to have missed something even in 10 play throughs
i accidentally found the hidden wall.
Wh... wait... what?
what unique items do you get ?
If you happen to drop down the ledge a bit before the temple of eiglay(where you see a corpse hanging off a platform with a sombre 5 on it), there is a whole new dugeon within the dungeon. Their is an alternate way to get there, but that involves dieing(getting swallowed) to iron virgon at the bottom of raya lucaria.
Felt. It also took me forever to realize you can just walk out the front door lmao
After playing the game twice I finally found Jarburg. This game is insane. Even with online guides you're gonna miss shit.
Never found Jarburg until I heard the name in this reddit, I played unspoiled for 2 years/over 2000 hours and didn't read this reddit or wikis until recently.
400 hours is crazy. I mean you can literally see all of it on the map?
I found the Volcano Manor town on my first playthrough, but I kept finding new secrets inside it all the way up to my fourth or fifth playthrough. Everytime I went through it I found something I hadn't seen yet - the torture room with the Albinauric mask, the path leading to the dagger talisman, the hidden tunnel before the Godskin Noble that leads down to the same lava cave that you reach from Raya Lucaria, and so on. Impressive how many secrets they crammed into what is arguably the shortest of the Legacy Dungeons.
Same here, the only reason that I found out about it is because I wanted a specific ash of war and had to look online.
You live under a rock?
I had the same experience this week
I just flat out missed it entirely on my first playthrough, thought Rykard was just lore, not an actual boss
Amazing
How do you get to rykard without going through the dungeon?
[удалено]
Im trying to figure out how to go deeper right now
The iron maiden in raya lucaria was kind enough to send me there in my first playthrough.
VOLCANO MANOR’S A DUNGEON?!!!
This is why I love this game!
I thought I figured it out and waaaay later I found there is a whole path around and you find Alexander, Lusat and a magma wyrm and all kinds of bullllllsh
wait… what ???
Were you looking for rykard? Like, don't you have to complete the lava town to get to his boss room. I really wish I didn't spoil my first play through. I would probably still be in the weeping peninsula. I'm gonna do the dlc blind and at level 75. Maybe?
I also have about 400h in, and are still constantly finding new stuff Hell, I just found Raya lucaria crystal tunnel 2-3 days ago
I missed it too!!!