So, you’ve gone out and bought or borrowed an Elden Ring and now you’re stumped. The large open world of Elden Ring is a beautiful and dangerous land to see, but now that you’re in the land of the tarnished, a little guidance may be useful. In this Elden Ring guide series, I’m going to take you through the base game. I will likely mention side quest locations as we near them. Maybe bring up the location of a secret item that could be useful along the way, but this will be a pretty straightforward guide to help you along the way in case you get lost. You have likely already begun the game, so I’m just going to recap the starting area of the game and explain our way to and through Stormveil Castle. You’re going to be thrown into a boss fight right off the bat. Don’t sweat it at all. This boss is meant to kill you from the get go. When you have completed the game and started New Game+, you’ll be able to get your revenge and easily whoop him the second time around. Now our journey begins in the Stranded Graveyard. Making your way through is pretty straightforward and there are messages along the way that explain the basic controls of the game for you. You will see as you playthrough that the controls become more advanced and just how simple this area really is. Enjoy it while it lasts because it won’t be long until things begin to heat up. Now that you have made your way through most of the area, it’s time to face a mandatory mini boss. Soldier of Godrick is very easy to beat. You shouldn’t have much trouble defeating him, but keep in mind, he is probably the easiest fight in the game. After you finish the tutorial, the game picks up the pace and starts punishing you for underestimating your enemies. It’s not hard to get overwhelmed by baddies. Now that you’re out of the cave, I would recommend exploring a little bit. It’s a huge open world and there are a lot of hidden secrets to be found. Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, it’s time to make our way to Stormveil Castle. Start making your way East and enter the Storm Gate. If this is your first playthrough, just take your time and try not rush right into fights as there will be more soldiers around the area. You stealthily work around the area to take a headcount and try to lure some of them in one at a time. Or just rush right in there and see what happens. Totally up to you. As you work your way, there are going to be some dangerous enemies ahead. Crossbowmen and a large troll are just waiting to ambush you. My first time through, the troll killed me. I ended up riding past the area on Torrent … Read More
Elden Ring – Best Rune Farming Location
Elden Ring hosts a lot of challenges and the further you progress, the more challenging it will become. Therefore, farming for runes to level yourself up can be a key step towards victory in the end. There are a handful of places to farm runes, but there is one place in particular that will load you right up with tons of runes. Infact, you can scrape up a few million runes in under an hour in this location. I’m talking about The Palace Approach Ledge Road site of grace. Here you can easily squeeze out 30,000 runes in about 1-2 minutes and the grace site being right there, you can reset over and over again. There are two ways to reach The Palace Approach Ledge Road site of grace. There’s a fairly simple way that’ll get you there earlier than the second way, but how you choose to get there is up to you. Personally, I recommend the hard way, that way you can experience the bulk of the game the way it was intended. If you’re just about farming and getting through with ease, here’s the first way to reach the site of grace you need. The easiest way to reach The Palace Approach Ledge Road is by completing Varre’s questline. This is an NPC you meet very early on in the game. He is first located at The First Step Site of Grace. There is no way to miss him unless you do it on purpose. Go ahead and speak to Varre and exhaust his dialogue. Now you’ll need to make your way to Godrick, the first real boss fight you’ll face in Elden Ring. Once you have defeated Godrick, go back to The First Step Site of Grace and speak Varre again. Varre is going to tell you to hold an audience with the Two Fingers at the Roundtable Hold. Once you have completed this step in the questline, you will find that Varre is no longer standing at The First Step Site of Grace. Instead, he has left you a message to find him at the Rose Church. The Rose Church isn’t too difficult to find. It is located West of the Academy Gate Town Site of Grace. Once you reach this grace, you can travel directly west to reach the church. Once you reach the church, you will Varre standing outside the entry. Be aware that if you step inside the church an NPC will invade you at the church and you’ll need to kill him. Otherwise, just speak Varre and tell him Something Seemed Off about the two fingers. He will carry on dialogue with you and give festering bloody fingers. USe the fingers to invade another player’s world 3 times. You don’t have to win the fight nor stay to fight if you’d not bother other players to complete this quest. After the three invasions, speak to Varre again. Make sure you select to be anointed … Read More
Elden Ring… the best RPG of all time!
Elden Ring has gone on to become my favorite video game of all time. I know that sounds drastic to some when considering the long list of video games available to play and to date myself, I’ve been playing video games since 1985. So, how on earth after playing more video games than I could possibly count did Elden Ring manage to take the top spot for me? Well, that’s a long answer, so I’m going to put it down into sections. None If the reasons listed are in any particular order, so I wouldn’t read too deeply into the placement. For starters, the games lore is top notch. Call it a story if you’d like, but the story is the lore. Playing through Elden Ring is rather realistic in the sense of how the story unfolds. I imagine that if I were in a primitive land on a mission to kill the lands lords and become a lord myself, it would unfold much like the game. Not a lot of clues, not a lot of friendlies and a whole lot of exploring. You never know what you’re going to get yourself into. That is unless of course you beat the game and start a new one. For the most part, you know what’s happening down the line. If it were real life, I could become a tour guide and talk about my adventures. Of course, if I’m an Elden Lord, I’d probably just have one of my subjects tell my story, but that’s just semantics. Well balanced. FromSoftware is known for challenging players. The Souls series is a great example of that, but I will say Elden Ring isn’t quite as tough as the Souls games. It’s still quite a challenging game, especially for newcomers that have no real prior experience with Fromsoftware games. The balance is pretty near perfect. It offers a good amount of challenge, but it also offers many ways to get relief if you just can’t get beyond an area. An enormous map. Man, this map is huge and it has so many hidden locations and items, it makes my head spin. During my first playthrough, I could have never grasped just how large it is. During my second playthrough, I wound up uncovering areas underground that I hadn’t discovered in my first run. Just when I thought I’d seen it all, I discover a new map. Wow. Now, I have beaten all the games in the Souls series and I’d like to include BloodBorne and Sekiro for good measure, but completing Elden Ring the first tike around gave me more satisfaction than any of those titles. Probably because I sunk around 160 hours into my first playthrough and was just blown away by the vast amount of freedom to explore. I just can’t get over it. I’m sad for the ones writing articles about how they have Elden Ring fatigue before completing the game. All in all, Elden … Read More
Lets talk Speedrunners
Speedrunners are known for beating games at a remarkable pace. Playing through games faster than most can comprehend and I’m one of those onlookers that just can’t imagine being able to speed run a game the way these seasoned gamers manage to do. If you’ve been keeping up with gaming news lately, no doubt you’re aware that Eldin Ring has been released to critical acclaim from critics around the world. You also probably know that the game is not for the faint of heart. It can be a challenging title to take on and your very first play though will most likely be the most brutal, if you manage to hang in there and complete the game. It’s a beautiful open world that requires a lot of exploring and paying attention to your surroundings. Taking your time is definitely a smart way to play this game, but I am seeing a lot of frustration from gamers lately when the subject of a Speedrunner comes up. Hence why we are about to cover the subject. There have been major feats for Speedrunners in Elden Ring. In fact, the fastest playthrough was clocked in around 59 minutes and set a world record, only to be undercut to 49 minutes by another player in the same day. I could not imagine completing this game in less than an hour. This takes some serious practice and if I do say so myself, talent. I keep hearing from other players that aren’t necessarily complaining about Speedrunners, but more so seem to be confused by them. Comments like “why would you want to speed through this game and not take a moment to look at all the scenery?” Or “Speedrunners are stupid. You can’t even find all the items because you’re skipping everything!” This is all false. There isn’t anyone out there running through this game on the first try and beating it in under one hour. These Speedrunners have to play through the entire in order to learn how to speed through it. They have to level up their characters, find all the beneficial items they’ll need in the game before they start their next play through and know exactly how to kill off each boss quickly to move on. This is no easy feat by any means. It’s grueling, I’m sure. Speed running games aren’t something to scoff at, its something to be admired. If you really think about it, many of these players know these on much deeper levels than the majority of us casual and hard-core gamers. It’s not something everyone is interested in and certainly not something everyone can do, but we should all give props where it’s deserved. So to recap, speedrunners aren’t skipping entire games. They are exploring as many elements as possible in order to complete the run. It is indeed a feat that most of us cannot complete, but that’s alright too! We don’t need to. All we need to … Read More
Elden Ring Review
Elden Ring is here at last and if you have been reading the reviews, you know this game is probably pretty damn good. Being compared to games like The Legend of Zelda is no easy feat and dare I boast my opinions with others and claim that this could be one of the greatest games that have ever been created? Yes… yes I do. This game is indeed an instant classic and a literal game changer for the industry. It will go down in gaming hosted as one of the best games ever created and there are plenty of good reasons. So, so many things to discuss and so little space in this review, but I’m going to do what I can to fill you in and not spoil anything. If you want spoilers, be sure to check the page regularly as I’ll be writing up walkthroughs to help tarnished souls get around this massive game. Speaking of massive, I don’t think I could quite explain how massive this open world RPG really is. Man, this will set a new standard for size and beauty. Not only is it massive, but well detailed and beautiful. Souls games have always been beautiful, but often restricted in how far you can travel. Souls game maps are tight enough to feel like a path has been partly carved out for you and it’s fairly easy to stay on track. Elden Ring definitely follows the spirit of Souls games, but it does it even better than any of the Souls title have. It is amazing. And if you’re by chance a Souls fan, you’ll likely agree. On one hand, this game has had some changes that seem to make things a little simpler than in the Souls games. You can jump with the cross button now. That’s a big deal to me because I am not a fan of holding the circle button to sprint and then pressing it again to jump. Furthermore, you can summon your steed to help navigate through the large map with speed and that includes a double jump on horseback. I didn’t realize just how useful the horse would be and it doesn’t hurt that you can still swing a sword while riding. You can still use multi-player to call in two other players to help aid you along the way for boss battles and even use a chat feature instead of just using gestures. The bosses in my opinion are much more difficult to take down this time around. It’s like Sekiro meets Dark Souls. Not everyone has the patience to play a title like this. Many will say the game is too difficult because they want to just run into every fight unprepared without any plan of attack. Then you have the seasoned player that claims that this game isn’t difficult at all and if you disagree, you must suck. Sorry pal, the expression you’re looking for is simply put as “Git Good!” … Read More
Pre-E3 Game News Update
E3 is kicking off today and before all of that excitement begins, I need to drop the rest of this week’s gaming updates and then start covering the big show! Without further ado, let’s get to it! As stated above, E3 is kicking off soon, but there have been plenty of things going on prior to the show such as Summer Game Fest, which was absolutely great, by the way! I’m not going to recap everything here, but I am going to give you the tidbits! One of those tidbits and it’s a pretty big deal to me, is that Elden Ring has finally got a release date. Yes, you read that correctly, Elden Ring has a release date!!! Elden Ring was announced back in 2019 and it’s been on the minds of gamers everywhere. We have seen and heard very little about this title and honestly, I didn’t expect a release date to be as close as it is and I am smitten. Dropping on January 21, 2022, Elden Ring will finally be in the hands of all that have been awaiting its arrival. To top it off, there is a decent trailer that has also been released! Check it out below!! Elden Ring Official Trailer from Summer Game Fest For us Call of Duty fans, season 3 of Warzone and Black Ops Cold War is about to end and with that begins season 4! PSA, if you want to get your hands on the Rambo and or John Mclane skins, grab them before season 3 ends! Season 3 aside, we know there is going to be a road map revealed for season 4 on June 14th, but we do know a little bit about what’s to come. Black Ops Cold War is getting some new game modes and of course maps. There is also the promise of another round based zombies mode in season 4. And while I can’t really be sure of map changes coming to Verdansk in Warzone, we do know the satellites will come crashing down onto the city and likely change a few things. I just don’t know what those changes will be just yet. Come on June 14, I’m getting antsy here! Also on June 14th, we’ll be treated to double XP and double Battle Pass XP to finish up season 3. Season 4 begins on June 17th and I can’t wait! Remember Death Stranding? The game that was a critical hit, but also seemed to be critically confusing for some? Well, Hideo Kojima is releasing a director’s cut for the PS5. What the director’s cut will include isn’t readily available for us at this time, but once Kojima releases let us know, we’ll let you know as well! I’m sure we can expect to see upgraded frames per second, maybe a boost in graphics and its details, possibly some extra storyline content and who knows else? I’m sure that PS4 owners of the game won’t be getting a … Read More