Elden Ring Tips and Tricks for new players

Elden Ring Dragon Header

Look, you’re going to need some Elden Ring tips and tricks to survive in The Lands Between. The latest game from FromSoftware takes everything the developers have done so far and puts it into an open world, and then fills that open world with pain, fear, amazing weapons and spells, and beautiful places to visit.

A lot of the joy of Elden Ring comes from exploration, and uncovering secrets yourself. To that end, we’re not going to actually give you any spoilers, but merely suggest a few things that’ll help you out, because we wish we’d done them in the first place too.

Elden Ring tips and tricks

While each of these may seem fairly simple, we’d implore you to try and keep them in mind throughout your time with Elden Ring. A playthrough can easily last around 60 hours, and due to the density of the world as well, you’re still unlikely to see everything even if you spend more time there. That’s to say nothing of various potential quest outcomes too. Anyway, let’s get into the proper Elden Ring tips and tricks.

Elden Ring Tips & Tricks 1

Go slow

For the love of the Erdtree please take your time. Elden Ring is huge and intensely uncompromising. There are dungeons, catacombs, caves, mines, and other little things dotted around absolutely everywhere. Finding all of these isn’t essential, but many contain incredible weapons or essential upgrade items that will help you become stronger of fine-tune your build. So, don’t be afraid to follow a river to its end, or double-check the shade cast by a giant cliff for a door.

Elden Ring Tips & Tricks 2

Pick up everything

Along with places to explore, the world of Elden Ring is also full of items to pick up. Sometimes these are glowing orbs, sometimes these are plants, rocks, or other oddities out in the world. No matter what they are though, pick them up. Many items you find can be powerful consumables, essential upgrades for your healing flasks, amazing weapons, or useful upgrade items. It’s a little stressful trying to grab everything, but always make sure you grab what you can from mines and catacombs, because they have items for upgrading your weapons and spirits. Plus, always pick up the glowing orb items, because they could literally be anything.

Elden Ring Tips & Tricks 3

Use markers and take notes

With the world being so large, it’s a good job that Elden Ring is also kind enough to give you a marker system. There are a few different kinds of marks you can leave on a map, and it’s worth using them to their fullest to make bosses you’ve yet to beat, dungeons you need to explore, or things you’re not 100% sure about.

Also, mark every NPC you find as well. We’re pretty sure we found someone who needed eyes, but we can’t remember where, and it’s haunting us. For that reason, also keep a notepad, digitally on your phone or computer or in a physical book or pad, because a lot of NPCs will give you quests and there’s no in-game journal to track them.

Elden Ring Tips & Tricks 4

Don’t beat your head against a wall

This is one of the most important Elden Ring tips and tricks; you’re going to get beaten up a lot. However, unlike the Souls series, you don’t have to just fight or go and grind. Due to the size of the world, you can just go somewhere else. There will always be other paths you can explore, other side quests to push on with, or just other battles to attempt. Try a few times for sure, but if you find yourself getting really annoyed with the game, don’t feel bad for just leaving the problem for future you.

Elden Ring Tips & Tricks 5

Talk to everyone regularly

There are a lot of NPCs in Elden Ring, and they’ve all got some help to offer or a quest for you. They’ll also fairly regularly offer you little bits of lore about the world, or even grant new quests if you go to them with the right items in your inventory. We’re pretty sure that everyone in Elden Ring is a little evil, but it’s still in your best interests to keep them all on side where possible.


More Elden Ring Guides from TheSixthAxis

Written by
Jason can often be found writing guides or reviewing games that are meant to be hard. Other than that he occasionally roams around a gym and also spends a lot of time squidging his daughter's face.