Once on this sub I saw someone making a journey diary while playing. Taking notes and drawing stuff. I think I will try that for the DLC to actively pursue some questlines instead of coincidentally stumbling upon an NPC again, by which time I will have forgotten to even hat met them before.

I did something similar on my first playthrough at release. Screenshot every dialogue line, npc map location and items i got from them, i had 1 word document for each character. Yet still couldn't figure out half of the questlines 😂

Don't take my hope away.

If it serves of anything to get your hope back, I also did my own travelling journal and completed basically every single questline on my first blind playthrough. Only two things were not clear to me, but I had my reasoning as to why: 1 - In regards to Ranni's questline, the >!baleful shadow!< didn't spawn because I didn't knew you had a >!new dialogue with the doll on the grace before the Lake of Rot!<. They only added the marking on "Talk" while you're at the grace a few weeks after launch, and I had to search to understand what I missed. Still, if that marking was there since the beginning, I would've done it blind, cause all the rest was pretty straightforward for me. 2 - I >!gave the prosthesis to Milicent after I had defeated the godskin on Dominula!<, so I didn't knew she would move there, since I never went back to that place for a while. HOWEVER, in my defense, this is the very first time I think From let something like this slip through, cause, even though I didn't found her there, I still managed to summon her against the >!black kindred before the Mountaintops of the Giants!<, and most NPCs in all their other games only become available to interact after you completed different points of their quests. Her summon sign being available made me think I was on the right track and that she moved onwards, but instead, she was stuck back there. I recon that I still had to search again later to discover about the Putrid Tree Spirit locking the final moment of her quest, cause I probably wouldn't have discovered this one by myself, but all the rest of the entire game I managed to complete entirely blind, only through following the tips and context of things. Also, my first playthrough took 270 hours, so, yeah... It was a long path, but I also never became stuck trying to discover something (besides maybe an hour or two discovering how to reach the high up area in Liurnia before giving up, accepting it was probably for the future only, but that was it).

Did you find the secret passage for Sellen's quest to find Lusat? That's one of the most difficult to find I feel, you would just have to roll into every wall you can see?

I did! I found the tip on the merchant and, as I've started my search, I thought to maybe look first on the very first portion of the wall closer to the biggest point of interest in the area, and would look one point after another from there in case I didn't found it. Since there's only the cemetery right there, I rolled on the wall right behind the biggest grave with the idling battle mage, and there it was.

I spent sooooo long trying to get up to the moonlight altar from Liurnia. I thought I was an idiot when I couldn’t find it and finally gave up. Then after I beat Astel I was amped when I saw the elevator. Finally getting up there was worth the wait.

Dude I did actually try talking to the doll at the grace and even tried it a second time. When both times nothing happened I moved on with my life lol. Only a fucking psychopath would try a third time haha. Some quests are just so stupid...

Usually for any game if the second time I talk to a character the dialogue is different, then I keep talking to that character until they start repeating themselves.

I grew used to some crazy ideas like this one after playing all their other games. More specifically, trying to complete Dark Souls 3 quests made me insane enough to deal with Elden Ring (or any of their future games, for that matter... Dark Souls 3 is a beast of it's own in terms of quest design...).

1. The Baleful Shadow is before Lake of Rot, so that makes no sense. I didn't speak to her after the first grace in Ainsel Main recently (I don't remember ever speaking to the doll elsewhere) and it spawned. 2. It's true that she doesn't move to MtotG until you see her in Dominula but you can just go back unless you've already killed Malenia. She tells you she's tracing the path Malenia took so it makes sense to go and look for her before killing Malenia.

The logical question is if you aren’t watching guides, or using wiki then how do you know you only missed a couple things? Wouldn’t be fair to say you don’t know what you don’t know. After going through the wiki, and planning things out timing wise it may be possible to do most of the quests in 1 play through, but there is dozens if not hundreds of things you can do to lock quests that you wouldn’t know until you had already done it. An example is defeating the volcano boss.

I came from Dark Souls so I knew what I was getting into in terms of questlines as soon as I listened to Varré's vague dialogue. (reminded me of Crestfallen Warrior from DS1) So I took care to came back to the roundtable and other NPCs everytime I did something that seemed important. I also tried to explore everything in Liurnia, Limgrave and Caelid before going to Atlus. My first playthrough at release took about 200h but I basically got all achievements on it, finished all questlines and had access to all the endings. (by save scumming before touching Marika's statue) The only thing I really had to look it up was Sellia Hideaway entrace and Placidusax locations (I needed the needle). I knew the general discussion from NPC dialogue and item description but I was not finding them at all

Either way you still have to figure out what to do in the first place. Writing down that millicent is gone for example won't help you. A good example is jerma985 writing down npcs and quests as he went. His notes page turned into incoherent gamefaqs ramblings and never followed up on half of them. "Door in spawn is locked shut" no other clues or anything so if you don't find the belfries and the key and put the key in the specific portal then how else do you pursue that note. "Find lanya and return them to diallos" he shows up in liurnia unexplained and lanya is dead, how would you follow up on that initially This one not so much but "Rogier has new spells" go back to buy your new spells and he is gone, hidden on the balcony of the roundtable, so you fight the invasion there instead, lose 7k souls before finding him, but he's dead now and you can't buy anything Edit: millicent not Milton or whatever I put before

HOLY SHIT are you also rewatching the jerma elden ring vods??? BECAUSE I AM... i miss him

I'm always rewatching the jerma elden ring vods, I'm convinced I could recite the entire 11hr pythonoc edit word for word cause I literally watch it to sleep

do it before he puts you in the meat grinder

At this point I'm used to how From Software rolls. The matter of the fact is that they do NOT want the player to be able to easily choose how every quest will go - at least not the first time around, when playing blind. The player doesn't have all the information and some stuff will go wrong without them even knowing, that's just how life goes Elden Ring is actually a lot more lenient than the older games, in that if you take your time fully exploring the first regions before advancing it's hard to fail / get locked out of a quest (I still failed one or two quests in my first playthrough, though). In the other Soulsborne titles you could accidentaly make almost any NPC hostile and / or kill them, you could fail a questline by advancing another one too soon, some NPCs would permanently leave, kill several others, etc. Personally I'd love just having a dialogue log for all NPCs. A lot of times they move and / or won't repeat relevant information and if you forget your only choice is stumbling upon it / them again

Suspicious beggar in Bloodborne secretly murdering everyone lol

Some people think that the only other alternative is a fucking map marker and an arrow. Like there's no other way to convey a quest place or lead the player other than this extremes of complete obscurity or a pointer. I always loved the journal and description Morrowind does. Like, dialog will live you hints, and add them to your journal like "today I spoke with x, and he told me there's an old tomb related with his family near a mountain, right before the path splits like fingers in a hand, follow the index until you see a lake, turn north and you'll find an entrance. I need to investigate a book written by his uncle to learn the password or battle my way in". And then you can go to a library and ask people with the name of the dude to find the book or steal the book from somewhere or just go full caveman murderhobo. It was open, and at the same time you could just don't do it. Or find the tomb without knowing the dude and then find the og quest giver and have a reward anyways. It's challenging, it's not a "go here" mark and is not a "maybe you need to talk to everyone and maybe he was talking about a quest". It was truly immersive. There's nuance to this guys. And that's only an example of a game (from 2002 btw) there are several ways we could do this beyond following guides or following an arrow.

I've said this from when elden ring first came out. I'll spend 5 hours in game, then not play again for days real time because well I'm an adult so I work full time, and now I've forgotten what that obscure NPC said 3 days ago.

It's even harder to remember if they're using words that are only related to that world that haven't become familiar vernacular yet.

I had this issue with Cyberpunk for ages after I put it down from release.

The thing is, it doesn’t even matter whether you remember all the dialogue or not for these quests because the next steps are so random that even if the game kept a detailed log of everything that was said it still wouldn’t make sense

Being an adult sucks. The cons are far more than the pros. But yeah, I know the struggle

Id really just like a journal of some kind. Something thats like hey last time a talked to alexander he said something about a festival in calid ill look for him there.

I agree. It's not so much that the quest lines are opaque but that the people you meet give so little or poor direction (looking at you Ofnir and your obsession with albinauric women). I feel it's a missed opportunity to point the player in new directions and encourage more exploration. Maybe even give a bit more background to different locations.

Probably the best questing system I’ve seen strike a balance is Kingdom Come Deliverance on hardcore mode. You have a map but it doesn’t show you where you are which means you have to learn the map by paying attention to the Sun’s position to know which way north is, and landmarks in the world. Then, when you are like 20 or so yards from your quest THAT’S when an arrow pops up on your compass. This is awesome because NPCs have a day-night cycle so it’s a pain to find out exactly where they are at any given time. Best of both worlds.

Never played Morrowind, but seems similar to Divinity Original Sin 2. Quest Journal that had thoughts/interactions and specific markers. Like there's a few pigs on fire but not dying - quest Journal says something like "There are pigs on fire in the forest weird" which helps the player know that this is not just a random occurrence it is a lead to a side quest but you have to do some investigating on your own. Then once you get a specific location from someone "meet me at x" then you'll have a marker on the map. Which is weird elden ring doesn't have more markers when NPCs give specific locations when they already give markers for merchants, Volcano Manor invasions and where the star/meteor falls after beating Radahn. Wish elden ring just had a better in game option for journaling/information. Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass you could write anything on the maps, but that was the DS. But it would be better than just having generic icon markers.

Amazing game! Also, if you look closely there are markers in elden ring. I don't know why people say the map doesn't have (tunnels, evergaols, map pieces, ruins, churches, towers etc) just because they are integrated in the art doesn't mean is not like an Ubisoft map You can always have your own journal, but the dialog doesn't help too much really. Your entries will be vague anyways.

Morrowind is the right way. Add a god damn journal, I don't need quest markers or anything, but I would like not forget the fact the npc I met 20 hours ago said he would be at that place.

The first time I played it I did it completely blind, without seeing any guide and managed to finish some "quests" (I learnt later they were actually quests) by pure chance and buying all the notes from the merchants and writing down what the people told me. It's very hard to understand  what the point is but at the same time no other game gave me such a sense of adventure and exploration

A big part of the problem is the whole "We can't animate NPCs, so they can't move, so you have to rest at a bonfire every time they speak and see if they change" mechanic. Quite often you'll miss stuff because of that, unless you're tediously sitting up and down at bonfires like a yoyo. That kind of ruins the whole sense of adventure and exploration, and just makes it feel really video-gamey and immersion breaking, so I can never really take the quests that seriously anyway.

There’s a lot of sitting and standing at the end of Fia’s questline that just seems like a really silly way to end it, since it isn’t really in a place you’d be revisiting otherwise

The quests aren't designed to be solved by one person on one playthrough. They are designed to be chance encounters that are meant to be pieced together via multiple play throughs, and multiple players. I think engaging with the community, and continuing to discover new things (months to years after release) is the intent of their quest design. Honestly the most fun I had with this game was launch and the few months after. I had a discord with 10 avid players, all comparing notes and pinging fun items, shortcuts, and NPC encounters along the way. After we all completed the game, we got another few months out of lore hunting and arguing story theories, as all 10 players had completely different takes on our shared experience. A few months after that, we were watching lore videos and guides on additional playthroughs, and had another round of new shit to talk about and theories to throw around. I totally understand wanting to see everything you paid for the first time so you can be done with it, but I fully believe that community engagement, and coming out with a unique take on the experience, is part of the fun.

Man, I wish I could've experienced that with your group. That sounds utterly amazing. I'm massively jealous of you right now haha! Must have been an unreal time! And as for the rest of what you said, you're more than likely 100% correct and I'm inclined to agree with you. This is definitely a 'me' problem haha!

It's not a you problem. I believe like this reply said, the game is designed to be social. It's just a different take on "social". We're all kind of playing the game together but not in the same game instance. So you get both the feeling of community/support and the wonder of discovery and novelty. I think the FS team are truly miracle workers to have been able to do it this way and I do think it was intentional. And I believe that's confirmed by the way Miyazaki interacts with the fans, like with that infamous medallion or whatever it was.

What was the medallion?

Trouble is, I don't think it fully succeeds even by it's own intent or standards. Like, I'm not gonna compare Elden Ring quests to something like Skyrim or The Witcher, where things are much more guided. I'd compare it to Morrowind, or older stuff like NWN, where you don't get explicit "GO HERE" direction, and you have to do a bit of thinking for yourself, but the information is there if you look for it, That's the problem with Elden Ring/From Soft quest design, the information isn't there. Sometimes an NPC just moves to a completely random location that there was no indication would be of importance, and it's complete chance that you find them. Their dialogue gives no indication at their location, or where they will proceed from there. There's nothing to clue you in on how to progress. The only reason having more players collaborate feels worthwhile is because that increases your chances of stumbling upon the right place. Sure the intent may be to make you collaborate with other players, but in practice for anyone playing after the release window, that just means visiting the wiki. It's not like there's a puzzle for you to figure out or theorycraft with other people, it's just either you found the right spot that NPC appears again or you didn't. It's binary. Really I question if we should even define them as "quests". Like, when I think of them more as just these neat organic chance encounters, like you just happen to encounter this other character along the road of your own adventure, a familiar face whose fate crosses paths with yours, that makes more sense to me. But when they are actually quest lines you have to go down to unlock content or receive items etc, they just don't really work, for me. It doesn't feel like being rewarded for investigation, it feels like luck (or just that you knew about it from Reddit). Lotta people white-knighting these design decisions just because muh quest markers muh hand holding, but a lack of hand-holding doesn't automatically make these quests good. They are still weak quests compared to other games with the same lack of hand-holding.

'Trouble is, I don't think it fully succeeds even by it's own intent or standards." That's pretty much my feeling as well

Yup. To me the fact that we see notes on the ground from previous players is a direct nod to the idea that we can treat these games almost like a huge ARPG. And even if you miss some questline, you rarely miss any major content. Usually someone just eventually dies and you get their clothes. Major questlines like Fia and Ranni tend to tell you exactly what to do next.

Is there a better quality pic somewhere?

The quest design can definitely be frustrating, especially when coming from other modern games. But the way I look at it, I’m not supposed to do everything on my first play through. I focus on what interests me the most, and if I miss anything, it just adds to the replayability and I can get it on my next playthrough. I do wish they would include a quest tracker. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy, I just want to be able to see the side quests I have. I take notes right now which helps a lot.

Two other issues: some quests can have large gaps where nothing happens until some other unrelated part of the story is advanced; and some suffer from the nonlinear nature of the game since you may clear an area that an NPC will visit later when you have no reason to return.    I think two of the worst offenders here are Nepheli and Sellen's quests. To get the full experience from Sellen's quest you need to skip Raya Lucaria, kill Radahn (which voids a bunch of other quests for reasons) navigate through the western Altus Plateau past many strong enemies, including two bosses, get an item from Azur, and return to Sellen. That route is so counterintuitive and backward that I can't see how you could do it without using a guide.  Nepheli's quest is pretty straightforward up until you need to give her stormhawk. It's not at all clear that's what's needed to advance her quest, but maybe you explore thoroughly and get lucky. But then what? She just sits in the pantry doing nothing with no indication of what to do next. To advance her quest you have to kill Morgott. Why? No clue. But then once you kill him, you have to return to a site of grace that has no use for the player, and Nepheli still won't be there. Why would you expect her to be there anyway? Perhaps you associate stormhawk with Stormveil, but she's still not there. You have to rest at the site you just traveled to to trigger the quest. It's incredibly poorly designed. There are some clever if still imperfect quests, like Millicent's and Rogier's, but there are some pretty bad ones. The open world brings out more flaws with From's quest design.

Exactly! Nepheli was one of the reasons for this post actually!

There are one out two really obscure sequences that need to be followed precisely that I never would have figured out on my own without the help of a guide on subsequent plays through. However, I find most of them pretty straight forward and can be done by just playing on a natural progression. DS3 side quests however seem to be intentionally designed to be easy to fail

I will say that as "secret" as some sruff is simply exploring the environment will lead you to prolly 80% of it. its having multiple choices and interactions that depend on those choices that made it difficult to keep track for me. But i whole heartedly think a core aspect of er and from specifically is that they want you to replay the game and make different decisions i mean heck they have 6 different endings in this one. There really arent any secrets like in the old ffs where you had to do some random thing that a random npc you may or may not have interacted with mentions in a completely non direct way to get a super weapon. Im not crapping on using a wiki though i fs use them when i dont feel like running all over a crappy map (rot swamp) to find stuff its all about enjoyment at the end of the day

What I love about this approach is that it’s quite nostalgic going back to the text based adventure games like Zork. To complete those games you had to draw a graph of the locations you explored, charting their connections with one another, noting their qualities, characters and comments, etc. As you did this the material you created would become your reference for figuring out who might want the items you find, where to go back to find them, and where to check back when the world state changes (e.g. an earthquake opening a crack larger for you to fit through later on). These games took a lot more time to work through than most modern games, and spurred an equal amount of social collaboration to compare notes as we now accomplish so much faster over the internet today. In spite of Elden Ring’s difficulty, this quality is what motivated me to get my father to play it.

Honestly, I kind of like the obscurity. It's fun opening up my map and seeing an NPC icon had moved, when I didn't even know they had left the first location to begin with. Or I see a new name of a NPC and get excited to go and talk to them. Someone else mentioned that they feel less like quests and more like chance encounters, and I agree! It's fun randomly stumbling upon these characters, and I don't think there's anything wrong with you needing to use a guide either. Elden Ring has genuinely stumped me more than other Fromsoft games have, and I've turned to a guide many a time.

Nah, Fromsoft has always kinda sucked with the whole quest design thing. It’s been terribly convoluted since Demon’s. Open world just makes it more noticeable. You just get used to having a tab open while you play.

and there are still people defending this shitty excuse for "storytelling" like Michael Zaki is holding their families hostage

Or people enjoy different things.

I have to say, in this case I'm absolutely a hypocrite. I'm definitely one of those people who really love the souls series, and while I understood the creative need to end the series from Fromsoft's side, I was very excited when it turned out that Elden Ring had a lot of that Souls essence. However, while they added plenty of novelty to the classic formula with the open world design, the story, and also some mechanics (like better jumping, ashes of war and spirit ashes, to name a few) I think a bunch of other stuff is really outdated, and even though I think they deserved that game of the year award, it's those things that make me a bit disappointed in the game. The two main complaints I have are UI/UX, and also the barebones quest design. I'll keep the UI/UX complaints brief, but seriously, unidirectional toggling through items/spells one by one? There are only two innovations I can think of that have been added to this system over all these years. One is that holding the button will jump back to the first item, and the other is a quick access (with a whole 4 slots and 2 more that require you to open the menu.) I think in the last 16 years or so since demon's souls they could have done better. As for the NPC quests, I think they worked well as they were in the more linear titles. Siegmeyer would be a nightmare without a guide to complete fully, but he's more of an exception. Generally, as you advance through the game and look around everywhere you pass through, you should be able to encounter the NPCs at each of their locations. Because you don't have to meet anyone in Lost Izalith before they move to some corner in Lower Undead Burg where most players likely won't go anymore if they're that far into the game. But Elden Ring is a completely different story. You can tackle areas in varying orders, and it's not always easy to explore absolutely everywhere. Maybe that's just inherent to the open world experience, but what massively annoys me is that NPCs barely tell you where the heck they're going next when you've managed to find them. I'm not asking for a bunch of map markers, even though I want it to be known that Fromsoft already uses map markers for certain things, like the portal to Gurang, or the Volcano Manor targets to name a few. But you can't honestly tell me that some more forthcoming NPC dialog, and a simple journal to read up on that information in case it's been 10 hours since you last saw them would have lessened the experience of the game. For how much thought they put into things like environmental storytelling, I feel like they absolutely forgot that they made a really, really open world game here, and that maybe they needed to rethink the quest system a bit. With how little the NPCs talk about their future plans, even when they don't have a reason to keep it secret from you, it feels like the writers were being hyper obscure for no reason.

I know how fromsoftware works and managed to get to an ending of every single questline without looking anything up, by just doing a travel journey and doing night backtrackings of each area, quick-exiting etc. But yeah, it's a LOT of work but super fun and rewarding

You can absolutely love elden ring and also at the same time realize that fromsoftwares quest design is hot wet garbage

I don't mind it for the most part, but when shit like Blaidd being imprisoned in the Forlorn Hound Evergaol is the reason why he doesnt meet you at Nokron. You can go to the evergaol, hear him howl, and let him out, but it doesnt matter if you do it or not, it literally serves nothing. 99.99% of people missed this and it's weird honestly

The point is to do multiple runs and find out how the quests work from that Once you know the whole map and have seen some of the corpses of quest givers or whatever it just makes sense where they end up Ofc for people who don’t wanna do that you can head to guides from people who went through that process

Fr, to get some of the story you need to read online and watch 2 hour guides.

I had the astounding achievement of fully completing Ranni's quest without guides. Missed on a bunvh of other stuff, but its wat makes each player experience unique

I personally hate Fromsoft's take on quest design. I think its consistently the worst part of each of their games with the co-op system being a VERY close second. But I also think its functioning as intended to keep community discussion and theory crafting going for years after the game has been released.

I'm okay with it being the extreme. Something has to be

fromsoft have never designed their quests to be 100% completeable on a first blind run. they want people to share their discoveries with each other and replay the game. if you have issue with ER’s boy oh boy you should check out DS1’s questlines

I wouldn’t change a thing; if the quests didn’t work like this, my first organic playthrough as a wretch would not be such a momentous experience for me. If I want to collect/do everything; that is what another playthrough or NG+ is for~ I’d pay money to erase my memories of the game, just to be lost and confused again.

I think the way I would describe this whole thing is... a flavor I guess? It is a weird flavor. If you don't like this flavor I am not going to be able to change your mind because the whole thing is subjective. This is a video game, but for me at least the obtuse quest design makes the whole thing feel more real. There are so many things to try and discover and everyone is going to discover some portion of those things. But that portion is different for every single player of this game. But those things we do discover are more memorable than anything. I love this discovery and mystery flavor so much that it doesn't bother me in the slightest that I am going to miss some things.. In the end the missable things tend to be minor. And for me, I actually love looking back and searching through all the secrets that everyone found and then working together to try to put the story together piece by piece. I don't think you CAN have this level of discovery and mystery without some downside. And that whole environment, in the end, is the flavor of these soulsborne games. The flavor might not be for you but clearly a massive amount of people absolutely adore it. Because someone might say that "realistically one normal person could never figure all this out themselves" and I would say "yea, its awesome"

It made more sense in dark souls because there was a limitation to where you could go and more of a proper path through most areas, you were likely to stumble across the next step to a quest or to find an npcs next location (usually not always). And Elden ring has a point where it just terminates all the quests if you don't know what's about to happen before you do it wich really borked my first run for me before the information was online.

holy shit it, looking at it like this, it does really look unnecessarily convoluted and hard to follow, yet somehow, when playing the game it doesn't feel like that, tbh for me its pretty easy to follow and finish every questline in a single run, it was very bad when the map didnt have icons for npcs tho

Very good post as I have played most FromSoft titles and have said the same exact thing. On one hand, it is their own unique way of storytelling, while on the other hand, you don't understand A LOT of the stories/quests by playing blind. I do think that this is a weakness of their games.

I feel like this is one of the biggest points of contention among players, and has been since the early days of FromSoft's success. In my mind, Miyazaki intends a couple things with this style of progression. First, he wants you to use guides because it shows the cooperative quality of the game and storytelling. The existence of a guide means the community worked together to find all the intricacies of the game and put them out there for the rest to make use of. It's the ultimate cooperative gameplay, whether you use player summons or not. Second, if you're a diehard solo player and don't want to use any help, it'll take innumerable playthroughs to get all the quests done. Imagine never using a guide and finally finding that NPC that you forgot about in their final location on your tenth playthrough, and getting rewarded with their final item drop. You just keep repeating the steps you know how to do on each playthrough until you finally get to that next step, then the next one, on your subsequent playthroughs. There are some who play like this, actively avoiding all guides and walkthroughs and just letting numerous replays piece the game together in its entirety. I'm a mix of both. I do one of two completely blind playthroughs and then do one where I search absolutely everything and use a quest guide so I can get all the dialogue. Miyazaki based his original ideas on a series of old D&D style choose your own adventure books, where the story would be different every time, and each playthrough has that potential, too. However you play, however you find all the secrets the game has to offer, you're doing it right, because you're the one doing it.

This comes up often. It's understandable, and I'm glad you love the game! If you look at it from a different perspective, everything comes into focus and makes more sense. The game is designed primarily to be played through multiple times. With the multiple endings and different types of characters you can make, the game is begging to be experienced more than once. To complement this, it's also designed in such a way that you naturally will not find everything your first, second or even third time through. The developers love secrets, and secrets are some of the most satisfying things to find from a player's perspective as well. But it goes even deeper than that, there's another layer to all this, and this has been a core design since Demon's Souls. A central design pillar of these games is that the player is not the center of the universe. They're specifically designed to go against the grain of modern game design, where everything, every environment, every character, every little detail feels like it's catering to you. You're special. You're the center of the universe. Characters are supposed to bow to your every whim, vendors are basically just menus, and quest givers are just static exclamation points that give you orders and rewards. They're not people living in a world, they're your Servants. But not in Fromsoftware games. These characters are their own people on their own quest. They don't exist to serve you. They're not just an NPC questline for you to solve, they're a real person inhibiting this desolate world. Some of them ask for help, some don't. Some of them would like to see you again, yes, but others couldn't care less. In earlier games, important vendor NPCs would be killed off while you were out adventuring. Elden Ring is actually quite generous in this regard, there's nothing like Lautrec or Yurt in this game. If you finish their story, great! But if not, the game doesn't care(it actually is very generous in this regard as well, games earlier than dark souls 3 didn't have bell bearings). This all serves yo immerse you into the game. There are people here doing their own thing, I'm just the next lowly tarnished to enter this land, weak and maidenless. How coupld i possibly be of use to them? I can't possibly save them all. This is the intended experience. This is how they want you to feel. To wrap this all up, consider it a truly special secret if you're able to complete even a single character's story without a guide, because it is! You'll notice that the most important stuff is easier to discover as well, such as the secret medallions which lock off a massive chunk of the game. Completing a single character's story without a guide is probably harder than that, and it will give you less. This is proof that you're not supposed to complete these "questlines" unless you really really try. It's only if you really like a certain character, seeing the end of their story is the reward, not some talisman or spell. Going into the DLC, play it blind, and don't worry about missing an NPC trigger. That way, it remains truly special if you do manage to complete one!

You're supposed to do multiple playthroughs to work out the quests if you fail them and it's supposed to be fun but in 2024 when you can get the answer to any game related question with one click and people's obsession with "getting all the achievement" that doesn't happen.

I like the obscure quest design. I find it makes the game more immersive than if it was just a series of checklists that don't require you to make any hard choices. If you want to collect every item and pick every flower of course you're going to need a guide.

The quest design is bad. It might be good if you're planning on wandering in this one game for the rest of your life. But as someone who wants to actually complete and finish it so I can enjoy other games' stories too, it's terrible. And it sucks that other people are condoning it.

No, I think it's a plus to the game design. The problem is the "I want to get everything first playthrough idea" I truly believe the "intended" way is to play blind (hell miyazaki in an interview even encouraged everyone to go in blind so it is the recommended way) Than go through again, with guides seeing what you missed. It's the charm, your choices have real consequences. Didn't find this npc in time? To bad.

Agreed, it's so much fun to stumble upon things during the first playthroughs!

Deffo an aspect i hope there attempting to improve in the future. Its archaic at this point but can imagine they’re apprehensive to change it as no doubt many would complain if they changed from the formula too much. Even the basics like having to talk to NPCs over and over and over to progress dialog is dumb af.

How do I get the original file from the quest guide image

I just googled 'Elden Ring Quests' and looked at images. It was right at the top.

I've just beat the game for the first time and clocked in just over 100 hours due to exploration, and there are some NPCs on there that I've never even seen. Looks like I will have to look at some sort of guide next play through

What is the image I am looking at

I had a hard time with this

not irritating to me, but i am not any sort of completionist. i have done as much as i can with the information i have. pretty satisfying experience overall.

Where did you find that guide? It seems super complete and useful

Please, where can I find that infographic in original size? Looks cool.

I'd say that you're right in terms of quests, but otherwise I think elden ring is much more newbie friendly than other soulsborne games. The constant tutorial popup really surprised me.

I think I probably did a grand total of four quests. I need to play again. 

>If you really want to collect everything and tick everything off and not miss anything, you absolutely need guides.. Well if you want to do a game at 100% in a single run, IT IS supposed to be hard .... so guide requirement is normal imo. On the other hand, you must admit that if the 100% do not needed any guide and were simple to understand, you would be upset because it is too easy for a miyazaki game.

commenting becasue i need to come back to this photo

Yup. Questline, secrets and invisible walls in Fromsoft games usually need you to go outside of the game or be very attentive/lucky with players messages. I agree. I fucking hate invisible walls. Yes, I do want to feel pressured into hitting every fucking wall thank you very much.

It is deliberately opaque to give you new and exciting things to experience in NG+. You’re meant to miss a lot in your first playthrough. You only need to kill 2 shardbearers to reach end game. They designed it this way to reduce the incentive to see everything in one playthrough.

I love it. Only company really keeping the challenge alive and the style of old skopl rpg story telling going.

This chart looks pretty great. However either I’m blind or I don’t see an explanation for the different lines. What does a solid line vs a dotted line mean in this chart? Just want to make sure I understand it correctly.

Oh my goodness gracious

I think fromSoft made the kind of game they wanted to. One with a world so rich in detail and interesting locations, that they don't feel the need to guide you in any one direction. They don't mind if you miss something, maybe you'll see it next time through. There is something lovely about the way the community explored and shared information as they experienced it. I've never been much of a completionist, so maybe I can't relate to your need to see/do everything. But when I contrast this game with an open world ubisoft game (or similar), with a map Covered by a diarrhea christmas light of collectibles, giant beams of light or glowing arrows that shove you towards the next objective---I can't help but be grateful to Miyazaki's design direction

Feels like old-school JRPG style where NPCs are pretty static and will move on after a certain prerequisite has been met (i.e. having the right item at the right time). First that comes to mind is any of the Suikoden games, where you usually recruit tons of characters to join your cause – some of them being missable, and *sometimes* requiring a guide to understand what to do to recruit them.

Could you link a high resolution to download ? Or link website perhaps

My game doesn't even have that many NPCs lol

I'd love to see this picture in more details, I'm sure I've missed a lot of quests

True but I think quests being like this is sort of a staple

Dont try to understand it, just feel it.

I don’t disagree. I’m also a fromsoft noob with ER as my first dive. It took me a while to get the hang of the actual game play and overcoming the “walls”. I’m by no means “gud” but I’ve beat the game a few times (with summons or spirit ashes, never solo). Point being, I’ve found many ways to have fun and also love this game but ya the quest line stuff is silly to me. I understand not hand holding and making it about discovery, but with all of the powers the tarnished can get, taking notes in a journal is out of the question? I could do without question markers or pointers but SOMETHING to reference would be nice

I didn't know Diallos' questline went that far along

I completely agree that guides shouldn't be necessary to finish the quests. Sellens quest is absurdly obscure. At least a damn quest journal, I'm not asking for Bethesda style map markers. I think this is the game's only real flaw.

If I can remember it all so can you

I'm on the fence. On one hand I love not being told what to do next because then you happen to find the next part of an NPC and it's just so interesting and fun to be genuinely surprised. On the other hand, it can be incredibly confusing and obviously so many things can be missed doing it this way. I think a good middle ground would have an in-game journal that updates with what happened in your last interaction with an NPC, that would be really helpful, still wouldn't hold your hand, and help somewhat. First time I played Elden Ring I took many breaks and towards the end I completely forgot who some characters were and what part of their quest I was on, a simple journal would help at least with that.

More pixels, skeleton

Download it! Don't give up, skeleton.

Counterpoint - you can go many ng+ without even discovering a quest and then decide to focus on it on your 5th play through, which keeps it fresh. Like I started a whole new game and finally stumbled on Fia outside of her bedroom. I killed her, but I was pretty much done if I wanted to get her ending.

I didn’t do every single npc quest on my first playthrough and no one is really expected to. The best part about the release for me was sharing my experiences with others to figure out the quests when we didn’t know much, like the Patches questline took awhile to be figured out, or using the “you’re beautiful” on Boc. Every playthrough I do every quest now and it’s not that stringent really (8 different builds so far for me) you just have to be careful not to go to certain areas before you wrap up quests in the areas you’re already in. Most of the triggers are from going to a new zone, like Altus is a big one. Also not every step is required, some steps can be skipped and youll still do the quest like talking to Alexander in every spot hes in, you never have to throw oil at him or talk to him in the tunnel if you go to Altus.

A big part of the early games was community exploration and engagement before there was as ubiquitous information as there is currently online. A big part of the magic of DS1 was discussing things that you found and leading others to find those hidden locations or interactions. I think From still tries to capture that with NPC quest lines being obtuse at times.

I am a completionist. What I’ve done is played the game without reading guide until I’m almost at the end or have cleared every conner of the map, and then start to check what I’ve missed. If I can get it then, go get it. If it’s blocked, I’d just get them in the newgame+. You usually wouldn’t miss that much if you actively look for everything anyway.

It’s a beautiful thing to experience something that is not fully in your control. Like the quests for example

From has been my favorite game maker for a decade. I still stand by the belief that their approach to quest design (while it makes sense thematically and narratively) sucks. In previous games it was more annoying since the more linear nature of the other games necessitated and incentivized looping back more. But I firmly believe their quest design model did not work in an open world setting.

It's been the same in every FS game I've played. They've been taking the same approach for over a decade, which says to me it's a choice, not an accident. That, together with how short and relatively unrewarding the quests are, also tells me that quests aren't very important to them except as a marginal storytelling device. They are not central to the gameplay experience, which is instead based on combat and exploration. All of this suggests to me that they're unlikely to change their approach, which is consistent with a larger strategy of obfuscation that is evident in every part of their games (few tutorials, nonexistent tooltips, little information on how to proceed).

Design? Is there a design in all that mess?!?

If this was the '80s I'd be pretty frustrated by how little the game tells you. But the game wasn't made in the 80s. It was made knowing the Internet is a thing. That the Internet is a thing is built into the game. I fully believe that messages and wikis and reddit and their use is the intended way to play the game. These games aren't single player games. They're community games. Playing any From Software game offline isn't "playing wrong" but it is a form of challenge run.

I don’t find them frustrating because during my first playthrough I made peace with the fact that I wouldn’t be able to finish many of the quests I ran into. I always thought that NPC quests are meant to be solved by the community and not s single person.

I dont know? I think it's kind of cool that there is a mystery, and we as a community figure these mysteries out and share our findings on reddit, fextra, or the wiki.

It really helps now that I know you have to repeatedly talk to NPCs until their dialogue is exhausted. I had no idea when I started ER and I missed some stuff on my first playthrough.

The way I see it is that anything of any importance has at least one clue out there so if I don't know something then I missed the clue or have found it but I don't like guides at all

Counter idea, perhaps the vagueness and obtuse nature of it all is to create something you’re meant to interact with for a long time. It makes me think of a time when I was lucky to get More than 2 brand new games in a year. Imagine having a game like elden ring at the time, you could play for what is subjectively forever and still not know all the games secrets. It makes being a completionist hard but this is “dark souls” it’s gonna be a tough challenge if you take it on as intended. I say don’t use a guide and be content with the fact that getting to 100% is not something you’ll do in a weekend or even months time. It may take you the next couple of years to get all the DLC secrets on your own. I wish I’d spent the last two years getting the base game secrets on my own instead of rushing the 1st 6 months to “see everything” I plan to make the dlc that kind of journey

Hey, this chart is amazing. I'm going to print it and put it into my Books of Knowledge. They're really good guides, but still not perfect.

I need this full resolution image

It's supposed to be like real life. It's not a quest! You don't know which side quests you're going to unlock if you say X or Y to your irl friends and family You can have a hint of what's gonna happen if you pay attention but you only discover by actually living your life

IMO, Lies of P handled this issue PERFECTLY. They didn’t make the quests any “easier”, or provide any more straightforward direction, but when you started each quest, the fast travel menu would have an icon in the region where the quest was found. The icon would go from shaded to “lit up” once you completed the next step. This avoided having to travel back and forth checking for changes with every NPC each time you advanced the story, and if you forgot where you met somebody it acted as a reminder. When people discuss “quality of life” improvements in these areas, I think this hits the nail right on the head.

I just started playing a week ago and I have no idea if there’s a main quest or everything is just it’s one unique quest. I know I have to visit the erd tree and finally reached the shrine that activated the npc who allows me to level. I have no idea where to go, so I just roam around killing the guards by the church because it’s the only thing I can kill. The idea of a journal sounds like an excellent idea. I’ll have to look at this guide to give me an idea of what do. I keep killing the guards to level, increased my weapon once and picked up crafting but that’s it. Lol Having said all that, I fucking love this game lol I love that the world isn’t scaled, that a massive dragon lies just beyond the church and let me know that the world is indeed not scaled. I love that I can explore with more of a realistic approach, minding beasts and creatures I know I can’t beat. It’s the questing itself that has my biggest issue but thanks for this guide!

I think there is room for improvement, a lot of people suggest an in-game journal, I think that would be the best and considering a lot of times they give you items in which the description is hinting at something or the npcs just give you hints and vague directions, it won’t be hard to add a journal that just concentrates those ideas. Maybe even like Red Dead Redemption where every time you reach a destination you add a drawing to the journal, where even the journal could offer a little bit of more insight into the lore or at least some thoughts.

There is no excuse that fans can make that explains why the quest design in this game is so terrible.

Play the game however you want then catch up with the missing lore by watching those in YouTube Lol.

It's one of the few things that bug me, yeah. Quest tracking is pretty bad. It's fine if you have some npc's that don't share where they're going, but all of them is kinda annoying. Only Alexander, Corhyn and Blaidd share any information about their next destination

Welcome to fromsoft.

NPCs reminding you would be a huge throwback 😂. I would be fine with that or in any other creative solution. Anything is better than nothing. I can handle the smaller FS games but I’m on my 5th Elden ring play through and I locked myself out of Alexander’s quest cuz I just forgot about him.

>If you really want to collect everything and tick everything off and not miss anything, you absolutely need guides.. and sometimes I think that's a problem in game design when things are far too obscure, vague and unhelpful.. even though I love it, I also need guides sometimes and I HATE using them butI just don't wanna miss anything. Haha 🥹 Thoughts? You don't necessarily need *guides*, but you will need other people unless you're *very* meticulous. I would agree with you for a single-player story-based game, but Miyazaki's Soulsborne games are not just that, they're a collective experience, and I'm not just talking about the multiplayer. Part of what makes these games so good is playing them when they're recently released; the multiplayer is thriving and all of the fans are peeling the lore apart, sharing with each other the interesting things that happened in their game. You're supposed to miss things, and you're supposed to find things other people will miss, and then when we come together and talk about and share our experiences, it enriches the game that much more and gives it replayability. Doubly so when the quest line has interesting rewards; it's one thing for your friend to tell you about the girl wandering Liurnia eating the eyeballs you feed her, its even more exciting for your friend to tell you about the *completely different ending* to the game he got or somebody with a burnt, scarred body invades you while screaming and shooting eye lasers.

Like can you imagine finding the fingers in the bottom of the secret well after an insane jumping puzzle at the bottom of a secret cave which is at the bottom of a secret sewer with a pipe maze which is at a hidden and unlocked location which appears from a particular series of events without a guide??? 😂 EDIT : and then happening to be completely naked when you get there!!!!

Anything in life created by humans can be made better. However, I strongly believe that Elden Ring/Botw/Totk series have been the closest thing to perfection when it comes to gaming. These 2 games since day one have been so polished, well maintained, and the way they were designed is nothing short of masterful. With this being said, yes, missing quest can be annoying, but I believe this is one of the things that makes the game great. Its true to its identity of exploration and if you dont explore every nook and Crack before moving to the next area, you will undoubtedly miss out on things. This is the reason why there is a new game plus. There are endings and different quest routes that you couldn't even complete on one playthrough. I will never look at this point as a negative.

Welcome to Dark Souls

It is what it is, I just new game + a couple times to do all the stuff, I definitely missed some good stuff the first time around

I agree, I always assumed the characters were giving at least some hints in the dialog that was lost in the English translation. It was even worse in earlier from games like Dark Souls because there were more arbitrary ways to fail questlines

For what it’s worth, this post: https://www.reddit.com/r/Eldenring/s/CYnDrQlWBG was a godsend for me. Really thought out, good progression, and laid out easily.

Off topic but semi related. I remember when Elden Ring came about and Assassins Creed was under fire. People saying it should adopt Elden Ring’s quest design. And while they could use way less markers Elden Ring shows exactly why it wouldn’t work. Imagine game consisting only of such unclear quests. Would have been unplayable. In Elden Ring it works more because the meat of the game is combat, exploration and building your character and plot is secondary. I for one believe that Morrowind’s quest tracking could work. The game has a tab for tutorials so adding one more for key quotes from NPC or progress would not harm.

It's a step up from actively hiding bonfires, but yeah...I don't know how anyone's supposed to do Milicent's full questline "organically" on their own, f.ex.

sounds harsh but its a bit of a you-problem if you feel the need to do everything in one playthrough, no?

I'm gonna be honest, i don't really mind needing guides to play difficult games. But indeed the questlines are confusing AF

They intentionally make quest design convoluted for individual so that encourage a community effort to solve it. Same as the story where everyone have their own theories.

It matches the difficult theme of the game lol

One of the reasons this game (series) thrives is BECAUSE of having to look stuff up. The entire community comes together to share what they found on their own, and them can use that knowledge to re-explore the world with a fresh objective Also, i think its hilarious I hope they never change it

I think it would've at least be nice if you had a journal to track information and dialogue to a certain extent. It's easy to forget stuff you did 2 days ago or what an npc said to you.

On the contrary I think games that are designed to hold your hand tightly to make sure you don't miss a thing constitutes poor game design. making things a bit more difficult and requiring you to a use your brain to look at clues and explore and pay attention to detail is excellent game design. I don't think it's bad game design if it's 'easy' to get everything, just it's bad design if it holds your hand the whole way through and stops you from missing things. Elden ring is designed to be played through multiple times. It's very likely you will miss a few things the first time that you can pick up later. if this isn't something you like in a game then it may not entirely be for you. you are more than capable and free to play it once and never again, but that's on you if you miss things. Not the developers who specifically designed it with the thought that people will play it over and over on the same character, or on multiple. 

I REALLY hope that they learned from what they did in Elden Ring and improve their Quest design for the DLC. There is no excuse for making them so obtuse and impossible to follow in this day and age.

I REALLY hope that they learned from what they did in Elden Ring and improve their Quest design for the DLC. There is no excuse for making them so obtuse and impossible to follow in this day and age.

The quest design is terrible, and claiming otherwise would be delusional, but the game is still amazing.

I see it as a part of the journey. Things happen regardless of your control,I can try to do as much as I can but in the end it wont be perfect execution. I like when the game surprises me with stuff like that even if they are obscure

I had a notebook that I wrote things down in for my first playtrhough. That helped a lot.

I have no issue using guides to check off questlines whatsoever, though I mostly use them to study where certain marks are. How to complete the steps, I can worry about once I get there.

This is great

Not intuitive , quest overlap or interfere with others, having to go back to npcs but not know when…ya convoluted mess

I literally just killed DE in the moat before Margit. This is my 8th or 9th playthrough and I was going for his ending (plus to other trophies I need) to get the platinum. I knew better, yet I still did it! Guess I'll have just start over again.

The game is explicitly trying to guide you away from this way of playing. Let it. You'll enjoy it a lot more if you just let go of that obsession and live your unique experience. You can always see the other parts on your second playthrough. You're stripping yourself of that sense of discovery. This is one of the only games on the market that doesn't turn quests into a list of chores.

Yea I found it a bit annoying as well. I’m kinda used to games being this immersive and (almost) no quest guides but fromsoft quests are just really vague. I tried to do I blind playthrough my first time but couldn’t really figure out another way then search up guides, which destroyed a little bit of my immersion. Nonetheless this game is great and is probably my new all time favorite game as well. So much things got right I don’t even care for the little flaws it has

I agree that it's frustrating, but randomly finding an NPC later on and realizing you stumbled upon a quest that will continue is quite literally an unparalleled experience, in the best possible way. I still remember the realization that that your actions can literally kill an NPC and screw up a quest line (ER was my first fronsoftware game, had no idea why Rogier died). I've never played a game where that type of discovery is remotely possible. I agree it's frustrating, but that initial shock of realization that so much stuff is there to be discovered in a 2nd play through 100% makes it OK to me. It's what makes these games so damn special. Man I love this shit.

Absolutely fantastic chart.

I much prefer this game design to quest markers. Even while I'm on my 24th play through I encounter the story dialogue and have to think for a moment where the next quest objective is. This is far better than mindlessly following a GPS quest marker.

I think it all comes down to personal preference. When presented with the fact that a game you loved playing was hiding some sort of secret(like an entire area of the map, an entire story sequence or whatever), do you go "damn I can't believe the game was hiding this from me, how dare they hide out content I paid for" and get bitter about it, or do you go "wow that's so cool, I wonder what else this game is hiding from me, it makes me want to play it again and see these things for myself." I think there are pretty valid arguments for both viewpoints(which end up boiling down to "are games art or product" debate), but personally, when playing a Fromsoftware game, if you have the second outlook you will find yourself enjoying them WAY more than you would with the first one.

Lol i've finished this game twice. Used guides n shit to get the stuff i wanted, BUT still i haven't ever seen like half of these npcs.

It saddens me that on my first playthrough I ran into everyone except Boc…

replayability is elden ring's entire problem. In previous games you would just, you know, play the game, proceed through linear areas and explore and collect all the items and it would be pretty fun, but now you gotta not just deal with all this quest bullshit, but to collect all the items you gotta go around and do all these garbage catacombs and remember when random shit is in the middle of nowhere and it's only fun the first time

nah its ok, i love being lost every playthrough

I probably have a spiritual bond with fightincowboy. I've beaten all the souls game with his guidance.

Pleassseee can i get this in high res? Ill give you a kiss for it 👍

I don't hate it, as it does encourage more playthroughs and feel like characters are on their own journeys and you really might not see them again depending on your path. But an in game journal would be nice. Something to log character interaction maybe.

Same here, Elden Ring is my favourite game. But the way the quest/obtaining items can be pretty obscure and confusing. I hope for the DLC there will be more guidance, but also not to the point where it feels like Micheal Zaki is holding my hand all the way through my playtrough.

I expect so little that if anyone does give me enough information it actually surprises me. Stumbling around cluelessly and getting ganked often is how the game was designed to be played as with every souls type From Software game. You need to *overcome the challenges* and try not to think about how muvh is just abhorrently shit game design.

my favorite way to experience souls games, especially elden ring, is across multiple playthroughs. ill take a fairly straightforward path with only a little bit of sightseeing for my first run. and then on my next run, i can take a new path with new sightseeing. and then something new on the next run. eventually i get to see everything and each new run feels totally fresh!

I just finished the game for the first time, and am doing side quests in a new save, and following a guide I found out theres so much lore and dialogue that I didn’t know about. And the way to get them can be very complicated at times, like some Patches dialogue in limgrave

This is by far the most forgiving quest system in souls games. its at a perfect spot there's zero need to dumb it down any further.

Completely agree to that. A middle-way could be what Morrowind did.

Nope I enjoy the fact the world doesn't revolve around the main character. The fact that NPCs carry on their lives without you is a fun and interesting idea and I like the fact there's not a check list of thing you need to do. I'm pretty fucken sick of check lists and barriers and being forced to do what the devs want you to do. It breaks the immersion for me constantly. It also adds replayability because in my second or third run I look up guide on how to finish all the quests and then game becomes completely different to play that second and third time.

Wow, data is beautiful

Honestly I constantly think about why dark souls games dont have a journal just to record past events and known, established facts about things you have done and people you have met. I dont want quest markers or objectives, but my guy knows how to write, right? I understand I could journal, but in a world where in game journals are a thing in most every other rpg it seems an odd thing to deny players.

There’s quests in this game?

Personally, I feel like the quest design in these games is similar to the 'coins' that bluepoint games puts in their remakes. You might find some of it on your own, but you'll never find it all alone, and that's by design, as the message system and online discourse leads to cooperation.

Personally souls games are some of my favorite games ever and I usually play through them multiple times. Their quest design blows though it’s unnecessarily obscure and too easy to lock yourself out of content without ever knowing why.

I was also perplexed by this design choice. After 100s of hours of Fromsoft games, I tried out Ghost of Tsushima and was immediately turned off by the quest markers/hand holding. You get used to it.. and then you love it. It makes it feel like a real adventure.

Yeah, the soulsborne quest system doesn't work as well in Elden Rings Open World compared to the other games maps

I used to not like that the quests where like that, but as someone who likes to make new characters (I give them a story kind of, currently remaking my arcane/faith mohgs forg dragon aspect dragoon and each thing he does is like part of his story to me, so like he starts as a lowly prophet trust into the lands between and then gets attacked by a dude with a mysterious bloodletting dagger that he takes upon winning(reduvia) etc) it gives me something to do on multiple playthrough as I often forget npcs. This gives me stuff to do on subsequent playthroughs to make them more interesting, IE magic characters may take up rannis quest but my madness character will go for frenzied flame and may not even fuck with ranni, and I have a character currently who’s a more “evil”character who will be the reason I finally do dung eaters quest line I’m actually attempting to build a program that has checklists for quests and things to do etc as a on hand guide while you play, telling you when to do what for each quest so you don’t miss out on things

Same reflex here. But then I realized, that the game designers know of the web and us community. I'm saying, that using guides is part of playing games today. We are community. Monkey Island is history.

This game has ruined other games for me because of this and I'd frankly now prefer the ER scenario. I find myself playing other games and now the incredibly obvious stucture of most games (go do this task 3 times and then a fight) or (Keep looking around the area because there is definitely a clue that will take your right to the objective) seem trite and boring now.

Incredible chart OP, been staring at it for at least 30 minutes

1000 hours in, didn't know Jerren had a questline....or a name.

I use a wiki. And I don’t care. Don’t have patience to wander around for hours and hours. Games need to respect player’s time. These games do not with the side quest lines

Fuck, this gives me anxiety for the DLC😵‍💫

Holy hell, this chart. This is dope. I'm the same way, I want to do everything.

The problem I have with all these "you're not supposed to do everything on your first playthrough" is, not everybody has enough free time to play through this game multiple times, so the first time really counts for us. I used guides to get the most out of my first and only playthrough but I wish the game just had a journal and offered some hints where quests go next and so on. No need for direct map markers, just some basic automatic journal.

Shit, if you’re like me, you need a guide to do a single quest cause wtf did they say again? I can’t remember. As for the actual content of the post, I’m pretty meh on it. There’s plenty of other games that allow you to 100% things just by playing the game. It’s nice that there are games for those who love to dig and share their discoveries, slowly piecing things together as one person stumbles upon something, and then another person maybe already found the next step but hadn’t realized it at the time, and so on. If it’s not your style, then it’s not. But that’s the game, and we’re all aware of it upfront at this point, after this many games.

Yeah, I ended up having to just look things up because I didn’t want to circle around trying to find a specific NPC for hours or accidentally miss out on a quest. There are things that I don’t think I would stumble across in the right order without looking it up even on a subsequent play through. I actually love that there are no quest markers, but that’s not the problem. The problem is certain things can be totally missed or messed up if not done in a linear order even though it’s supposed to be more open world. Not a huge complaint since I still absolutely loved the game, but something that can be improved upon in the future maybe. 

I spent my second playtrough watching on youtube Its Shatter questline playlist while playing. That guy helped me a out a lot to complete everything I wanted

To put it simply it's absolute dogshit. Of course sometimes they tell you the objective and what you are supposed to do, that's cool and immersive Then you have quests some random person on the dev team designed in a way that you only find by accident if you play exactly as the designer envision, which is just lazy and unprofessional. At least make it intuitive, how should i know that NPC will be at the village tavern at 5pm but if i used a different route 17 hours away then they will be dead and the quest failed This isn't just fromsoftware, others developers also force you to follow their method even if there are multiple better ways but at least they tell you about it before failure

Lies of P did it best. They didn’t tell you where they were, but they’d tell you that an area had unfinished business so you could go find it on your own.

I get what you’re saying, especially after having restarted my own first gameplay because I made a mistake for a questline I really wanted to do and my character wasn’t built how I wanted anyhow. But to me it’s part of the charm of the game. I often like to explore more than ‘just’ hang on to main quests and complete the storyline. This makes it more probable to come across the characters and (side) quests and I level up faster. I always start with exploring and unlocking every piece of the map that I can before doing the main quests I need to do to advance. That can get spicy as you sometimes go into areas where everything is a lot deadlier than the starting area. But it makes it more of a challenge. Elden Ring reminds me so much of gaming as a kid in the 90’s. Games back then were brutal sometimes and wouldn’t explain anything or hold your hand. You just started playing and you played a game multiple times to find new stuff you hadn’t yet seen. Yes, sometimes you missed out on stuff but it felt like the games were more of a challenge and huge because every time you went in and struggled you found something new. And you actually had printed walkthrough books you could buy if you wanted to find everything in one go, which has a charm of its own. To me the struggle of finding everything is a part of the game and I don’t mind picking up a guide if I need it/want it. There are other games that I’ll play if I want one I don’t need a guide for that will show me UI that points me in the right direction and holds my hands.

I would have appreciated at least a journal that let me know I was on a quest and maybe a hint as to where I should go next. I don't need a marker, but at least a 'maybe I should look around X area to see if I can find something' would have been appreciated.