With Elden Ring’s Shadow of the Erdtree DLC just a bit away, I’m sure that some of you out there will be picking up Elden Ring now and may be wondering how exactly you should get ready for the DLC and how you should start the game in the first place.
Elden Ring can seem a bit daunting and confusing, especially because a lot of Elden Ring’s open world is structured around pure exploration, with you not really getting many markers on the map. Pretty much if you’re picking up a questline, you need to go and explore the world to uncover the next phase of the questline. It’s not a hand-holding game and that can seem a bit intimidating.
However, there are ways to make Elden Ring a lot less intimidating so here are ten tips for your early hours in Elden Ring to make your journey through the Lands Between as the Tarnished as well as some general advice.
TIP 1: PICKING YOUR CLASS
When you first start up Elden Ring, you’re going to be faced with a decision to make: Which class you want to start with. Of course, there are quite a lot of classes in Elden Ring, but I’m here to let you know that technically, it doesn’t really matter.
Sure, your starting class augments your skill points early on, but as you progress in the game, you can pretty much just ditch what you started with and go on your own path entirely. Your starting class is a good introduction to Elden Ring, but you can orient yourself to whatever build you want later on.
Still, when starting out, try to pick the class that has its skills oriented more towards something you’d be interested in. Basically, do you find yourself more interested in the magic? More in strength and head-on combat? What do you want out of Elden Ring, or at least, what do you think you’d like out of the game?
From there, pick the class that seems the most interesting to you. I picked the confessor for a blend between strength and magic as I wasn’t entirely sure what I wanted to go for first, but overtime I did orient more towards strength because I’m just more used to that. I did end up including some magic, but if I wanted to do an entirely pure magic-focused build, I’d pick the Astrologer or any other class that has the highest intelligence and arcane in the beginning.
TIP 2: EXPLORATION IS KEY
Elden Ring thrusts you right into the middle of it all, with you coming out of the darkness of the dungeons below and into the beautiful world of Limgrave, the real starting area of your playthrough.
Limgrave is a pretty big region, but as you’ll see, the entire map of Elden Ring is pretty large in and of itself. Of course, this may seem a bit complicated at first, but my recommendation is that you start right away by exploring.
Don’t worry about fighting bosses just yet, because you will definitely not be ready within your first couple of hours of gameplay.
As you explore the world of Elden Ring, you want to try and get runes, find smithing stones, pick up unique objects you find, search for weapons and armors, and more. Try to build up your defenses as much as you can and level up appropriately before you tackle your first major boss.
TIP 3: THERE’S A LOT OF BOSSES
I know this may seem kinda like a duh… thing, but there are actually a ton of bosses in Elden Ring that you don’t even need to fight, but I recommend you get around to fighting anyways.
If you’re looking to play as much as you can in Elden Ring–which is very hard to do, so don’t feel discouraged if you can’t figure out how to 100% the game in your first playthrough–then you’ll want to go for the bosses to the maximum extent.
However, do note that if you don’t feel like you’re ready to face these bosses, there’s no consequences on the story overall to fighting or not fighting them. Now, there are some neat rewards that you can get for fighting them, such as the Grafted Blade Greatsword you get for fighting Leonine Misbegotten.
TIP 4: FIGURE OUT YOUR BUILD EARLY
Although you started out with a class, like I said in Tip 1, your build can easily be subject to change as you go throughout Elden Ring.
From the beginning, you’ll find that Elden Ring’s class gives you a good introduction to a certain playstyle, but maybe you’re miserable with that playstyle. Maybe for you, you’d like the more magic-focused sort of build or you want a more strength-focused build than what you started out with.
My recommendation? Figure this out as early as possible because the more runes you allocate to something you don’t want, the harder it’s going to be to change later.
I always recommend you try to increase your health points first by leveling up vigor and then focus on the other things, but you want to know what you want to be increasing. If you’re going for things like greatswords and whatnot, focus on strength first. You can’t wield the greatsword if your strength is rockbottom.
If you want magic, focus on intelligence and arcane.
My point is, your class does not have to be what you stick with but you should figure this stuff out in the early hours of the game to orient your exploration around these things.
TIP 5: DON’T IGNORE SIDE QUESTS
I think a lot of the time with open world games, we tend to sometimes overlook side quests in favor of taking out the storyline. In Elden Ring’s case, the storyline is based around the major bosses, but you’d be making a pretty big mistake if you ignore the side quests.
Elden Ring’s side quests are actually very important because they help show you the way Elden Ring really works. It’s hard to start them and it’s hard to finish them, but there are guides out there that explain these side quests. My point being, the more quests you do, the better you are at exploring the game. Plus, you can get some really good rewards with these side quests like runes, weapons, and more.
Furthermore, the side quests will often present you with bosses to face off against. These lesser bosses are good preparation for the major bosses and give you a good indication of what it’ll be like to face off against the big guns as you go throughout Elden Ring.
TIP 6: DO THE DUNGEONS
Elden Ring’s world is populated by many dungeons, caverns, catacombs, and more. My recommendation? Do them.
Alright, they may seem intimidating and even complicated at first what with gargoyles that can induce the bleed effect on you running at you an dropping from the roof, but the dungeons are actually really good ways to prepare even more for the major boss fights.
As you go throughout Elden Ring, you’ll often find entrances to caverns and more hidden locations that you should go through. Once you’re inside, you do need to finish the dungeon, but when you finish it, you’ll be able to get unique rewards like ashes of war, weapons, runes and more.
Plus, taking out these dungeons gives you a way to get closer to actually completing Elden Ring and learn the game more.
TIP 7: YOU’RE GONNA HAVE TO FARM SOMETIMES
Runes aren’t an easy task to get in Elden Ring. Sure, you’ll find some lying around here and there, but that’s not really enough to get you the amount of runes you really need to upgrade your stats and fight bosses in this game.
The best thing I can say is that you’re going to need to farm runes as you go throughout Elden Ring. There are many places where you can farm runes, but the point is, you want to redo these zones multiple times to get more runes, which in turn will let you get higher upgrades in your stats.
There are multiple places where you can farm in Elden Ring, one of which is Lenne’s Rise where you just run down this path until a giant boulder comes rolling at you, jump out the way, the boulder falls down and bam, instant runes. You can do this over and over and over and keep getting runes.
There’s also places where a lot of Godrick soldiers are at. Killing them over and over will net you a ton of runes as well. Fighting trolls and larger random enemies that spawn in the world is also not a bad idea, because you can get a lot of runes from these. They’re just hard to fight if you’re at a low level, so be warned.
Varre’s questline also can get you a great rune farming spot, but I wouldn’t focus on this too much in the early hours of your playthrough because it’s complicated to go through so worry about this later.
TIP 8: GET GOOD WEAPONS FAST
Elden Ring’s map is littered with tons of cool and great weapons that you can actually get pretty early on. The thing is, you want to actually go for these weapons as early as you can because the better your weapons are, the better your gameplay will feel.
I’ll give you one great early weapon that you can find, and it’s the Twinblade. I know a lot of people talk about this one, but there’s a reason. It’s actually a really good blade to get. To find the Twinblade, you need to go to the Dragon-Burnt Ruins and go to an underground cellar surrounded by four walls, the entrance to which is in the southeast building. There, you’ll find a chest with the blade.
There’s a lot of other weapons you can find and there’s a few weapon types out there, and it really depends on your focus in the game. If you’re going for magic builds, focus on finding a staff first. If you want strength, get bigger blades and fast.
TIP 9: DON’T IGNORE SMITHING STONES
There’s a lot of random stuff that exists in Elden Ring that you may look at and go “huh?” But trust me, that thing may be extremely necessary for you.
Smithing stones are one of those things and there’s quite a good number of them lying around, but you need to be careful. They’re sometimes surrounded by enemies or in random places, but smithing stones are actually really vital if you want a fighting chance in Elden Ring.
Smithing stones let you basically upgrade your weapon. You’ll see there is a numerical value next to the weapon you’re using, like +1 or +2. To get your weapon up, you use smithing stones to increase that value which in turn increases the power of your weapons and makes it easier to fight against bosses.
You can use smithing stones at the smithing table in the church of marika or at the roundtable hold, if you’re that far in already.
TIP 10: THE ROAD TO ELDEN LORD IS LONG AND HARD
If you’re just starting out in Elden Ring, you’ll probably find yourself impatiently wanting to get to the end of the game. If you’re in that spot, I’m just letting you know from now that the road to finishing up Elden Ring is not an easy or short one.
Elden Ring is a game based around exploration, discovery, and learning. As with most FromSoftware souls games, you’re meant to learn from your mistakes, approach bosses with new strategies, and explore the world before you really tackle the big portions of the storyline.
That means that the journey you undertake in Elden Ring is a longer one than other games. By all means, this should not discourage you from playing, but I want you to know that Elden Ring is a game best enjoyed slow and steady, when you can really explore the entire world, see everything it has to offer, unlock things and challenge yourself.
With souls games, challenge is the best part because actually defeating a boss is satisfying. You may die a ton of times, but when you figure it out, it feels like something amazing has happened. But you need to learn and you need to strategize, and that’s really what makes Elden Ring an amazing game to play.
Zainah Yousef
Zainah Yousef is the author of The Fallen Age Saga and specializes in gaming, social media advice, and reviews. She's been writing all her life and she probably won't stop anytime soon.
