You know what those golden flakes in the sky are, right?
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00Hello everybody, welcome to Our Culture Gaming. I'm Scott, and I'm also playing Elden Ring.
00:04Chances are, so are you. It's been dominating our lives since launch day.
00:07I'm about 60-ish hours in. I know people are 100+, etc, etc.
00:12There's a hell of a lot to talk about when it comes to tips and tricks and things that you likely didn't see
00:16all around the open world itself.
00:17Now, this is one of the most hyper-detailed games possibly ever made.
00:21It's made to be uncovered over time, and these are just various things that I've found in my travels
00:26alongside some help with specific members of the community
00:28to put together the best tips and tricks the game never told you.
00:32Because there's all sorts of different things that you could do with a pointer to find out.
00:36So, I'm Scott from OurCulture.com, and this is Elden Ring 17 Tips and Tricks the Game Never Told You.
00:41Number 17, use crystal darts to make some enemies attack each other.
00:45Chances are, you've got a whole bunch of crystal darts at this point.
00:48They're strewn across the west side of the map. You'll find them in the Raya Lucaria Academy,
00:52and you can find them in various other places.
00:54Now, if you like the idea of throwing different knives at different enemies,
00:57you're probably using the Kokiri or the other throwing daggers.
00:59However, the crystal darts, when used on other, let's say, constructed enemies,
01:03like the Urd Tree Watchdogs, or like the Stone Imps that you can find,
01:08they make them go crazy and attack each other,
01:10which is extremely helpful if you're up against the twin Urd Tree Watchdogs both at once.
01:14You can make one of them attack the other, as a few different players online have found.
01:18Number 16, weather boosts damage output.
01:21Honestly, there's quite a lot of Breath of the Wild in Elden Ring when it comes to just having fun
01:25with the various elements of the world itself,
01:27which is to say that when it rains in Elden Ring,
01:29kind of like Breath of the Wild, when it rained over there,
01:31you could put a metal item down on the ground,
01:33and a lightning bolt would strike it, doing a bunch of damage.
01:36Weather also affects combat here too.
01:37So, if it's raining, that will boost lightning damage, but it'll negate fire damage.
01:42Also, if you happen to see a bunch of golden, I don't know, golden flakes around you,
01:47whatever the hell we want to call those things,
01:48that boosts rune acquisition.
01:50So, you want to make the most of taking out as many enemies as possible in this window,
01:53because you'll be getting a whole bunch more runes in the process.
01:56Number 15, hit L3 to order your inventory.
01:59Why this wasn't in the big patch that they just did,
02:01that added like map markers, and all sorts of different tweaks and buffs and everything else,
02:05I've no idea, but if you hit L3, when you're in the inventory itself,
02:09it'll pop up and ask you how you want to order it.
02:11You can order by item acquisition itself, recency of when you picked something up,
02:15you can order by different, just a bunch of different categories,
02:17that just aren't flagged at all.
02:19They're not even on the part of the UI itself,
02:21telling you that you can order this insane inventory,
02:24that once you're multiple tens of hours in,
02:26will be full of tons of different items that you need to try and get your head around.
02:30Number 14, dual hand a weapon with a torch to maintain its effects.
02:34Elden Ring has a whole bunch of different torches in the game,
02:36and you'll likely be thinking that that only means that they work in regards to a light source.
02:40Not the case.
02:41There are various other torches that you would usually have equipped,
02:44that do things like calm different enemies down.
02:46There's one called the Beast Repellent Torch,
02:48that makes it so the dogs and different animals like bears or whatever,
02:51don't just jump at you like they do most of the time.
02:54And there's also a Sentry Torch as well, that lets you see invisible enemies.
02:57So these are really valuable, helpful things to have on your person.
03:00However, you don't need to have the torch active in one of your hands,
03:02for its effects to still be active.
03:04If you do the whole dual wield thing,
03:06let's say you have a torch in your left hand and a blade in your right hand,
03:09you hold Y, hold triangle, and press R1 or RB to grab that weapon with both hands,
03:14you'll put the torch on your back.
03:16Now this doesn't mean that the light effects stay,
03:18you know, from a standard torch,
03:19but it does mean that the Beast Repellent or the Sentry,
03:22or whatever other torches you can find, their effects are still active,
03:25even though the torch itself is not ignited,
03:27and it's just sitting on your back.
03:28Number 13, use Spirit Summons to locate invisible enemies.
03:32This one came from the almighty, the king of us all, Vati Vidya,
03:35who over in his Tips and Tricks video,
03:37was pointing out that when he was fighting an invisible enemy,
03:39he was actually using one of these Spirit Summons,
03:41to track where it was in the arena itself.
03:44Now in various fights against invisible enemies,
03:46look all around you for different clues as to where something is.
03:49Maybe you're fighting in a pool of water,
03:51you can maybe track where something's footsteps are, or something like that.
03:54Point being though, that if you just want to summon an ally next to you,
03:57the AI will always track where something specifically is,
03:59letting you know exactly where you should be attacking.
04:02Number 12, there are plunge attack animations for certain enemies.
04:06Another from Vati, which has also been found by various members of the overall Souls community,
04:10or whatever we want to call it,
04:11Elden Ring does have plunge attacks, an old school Dark Souls favourite,
04:15that were used against the Asylum Demon back in the original Dark Souls.
04:18Here it's really weird, because certain enemies have really awkward hitboxes,
04:21and that means that a lot of people just didn't realise
04:24that you could do a specific plunge animation, depending on what the enemy is.
04:28The one that Vati showed off in his video,
04:29that's also been shown by Winston Wolf,
04:31shoutout to them,
04:33is one of the enemies that you can find over in Kaelid.
04:35It's this giant mechanical contraption full of explosives,
04:38that's being driven by one of the soldiers,
04:40and if you jump on top of it and press R1-RB,
04:43when your feet are about to touch its head,
04:45you'll warp into the animation,
04:46where you're just plunging your blade straight directly into its head.
04:49It looks a lot like the way that Link killed Ganon at the end of Wind Waker,
04:53it's just a full-on, old-school, down-in-the-head style plunge,
04:57but the jury's out as to which other enemies this applies to,
05:00so start jumping around and seeing which other enemies you can plunge your blade into.
05:04Number 11, always use R3 to hunt for enemies.
05:07Call me an old-school veteran Souls player,
05:09but I would encourage getting into the habit
05:11of always just clicking R3 while you're walking through any new area.
05:15From Software-slash-Hidetaka Miyazaki love hiding enemies,
05:20bosses, whatever, mini-bosses, around corners.
05:22They love just catching you out with stuff.
05:24And while that, you know, has its intended effect most of the time,
05:28you can get the jump on enemies by just clicking the right stick in,
05:31and letting the camera itself do the work.
05:33Just pan the camera over the environment,
05:35over a dark room as you're wandering into a cave or a dungeon or whatever,
05:38and find some stuff that's about to get the drop on you instead.
05:42Number 10, remove all skills from your shield.
05:45This one's a little bit contentious,
05:46because I know that Mr. Josh Brown in the other room over there
05:49likes having shield skills equipped,
05:51because there are various things like being able to kick,
05:53or being able to parry, that is just super helpful.
05:56However, my overall tip would be to remove skills from your shield.
06:00Just literally equip the no-skill option,
06:03so that you can then use your weapon skills.
06:05Because for me, there's just way more variety in the weapon skills themselves.
06:09Whether it be, you know, the bloodhound blade that lets you do the backflip,
06:12followed up by the heavy attack charge.
06:14Whether it's just different ranged attacks that maybe certain blades can do,
06:17where you're sending out a beam of holy light or whatever.
06:21I just think that you have more options if you make it,
06:23so that your shield has no skill.
06:24Therefore, when you press L2, it'll treat the weapon that you have equipped
06:28as if you were dual-handing it.
06:29And it means that you can just do whatever your weapon skill is,
06:32whilst also holding a shield.
06:33Number nine, poison and scarlet rot damage is your friend.
06:37Seek the dragon communion.
06:39Another thing in that school of Breath of the Wild mentalities,
06:41in terms of thinking about elements while you're playing,
06:44different magic types do way more elemental damage to specific enemy types in Elden Ring,
06:48than I've ever seen in any previous Souls game before.
06:51And I'm gonna go with Souls game, Souls game, Soulsborne game, Souls-like, whatever.
06:55Point being that if you're playing Elden Ring,
06:57know that gravity magic works well against airborne enemies.
07:00Know that sleep works well against godskin enemies.
07:03And know that holy works very well against cursed enemies.
07:06Now, some of these things overlap.
07:07Some of these enemies are hard to tell what type they are, so start experimenting.
07:11But most of the time, you can hazard a guess as to what's going to work on something.
07:15Alongside that, I've found that scarlet rot and poison are the two elemental types,
07:19damage types, to spec towards.
07:21And if you seek the dragon communion,
07:23if you've killed any number of dragons and you get their hearts,
07:26and you find the dragon church inside Caelid,
07:28you can offer these hearts up to get specific dragon summon spells
07:31that will let you literally breathe scarlet rot onto an enemy type.
07:35This works against bosses as well.
07:36However, quite a lot of them do have resistances,
07:38so they don't stay under the effects of the curse for very long.
07:42But point being that you can just barf out a whole bunch of scarlet rot
07:45against a number of enemies and let the scarlet rot do the work for you.
07:49Number eight, golden-eyed enemies give four to five times the amount of runes.
07:53Super simple thing here, but keep an eye out for enemies with golden eyes.
07:56They're a little bit harder to kill,
07:57but they will give you four to five times the amount of runes
08:00if you can manage to take them down.
08:02Although there's no proven way to guarantee you're going to summon one of these things,
08:05I have found that when I'm revisiting older areas,
08:07especially from nearer the beginning of the game,
08:09or at least that part of the map,
08:11they tend to show up more frequently.
08:12So go explore, go find an older area that maybe you've sworn off
08:15because you think you're way too powerful to be there anymore,
08:18and the four to five times multiplier on the runes
08:20will still make that acquisition worthwhile.
08:23Number seven, alternate shoulder buttons to escape grab attacks.
08:26If there's one thing I hate just fighting in all of these games,
08:29it's being stun-locked and then grabbed by an enemy.
08:32Now, other Souls games have had ways for you to get out of various grabs
08:35with specific methods, specific equipment, whatever.
08:38In Elden Ring, if you get grabbed by something
08:40and you go into any lengthy animation that is just doing damage over time,
08:44chances are, as your health bar is going down incrementally,
08:46if you just jam on the shoulder buttons L1, R1, LB, RB over and over again,
08:51you'll be able to interrupt the full length of that animation playing out
08:54and hopefully save yourself from dying.
08:56Number six, hold D-pad directions to reset item cycles.
09:00A super helpful tip that I think originated in Dark Souls 3,
09:03that's where my mind is pulling it from,
09:05Elden Ring also has that game's thing where you can hold D-pad down
09:09or hold the D-pad up and reset to whatever the first thing was in that slot.
09:13So if you want to make sure that your healing item,
09:15let's just call it the Estus Flask, for the sake of getting there,
09:18if you equip that in the first slot in your inventory,
09:20whenever you then hold down, it'll reset to that point,
09:23meaning you can heal faster when you're in battle
09:25rather than tapping down over and over again and just hoping for the best.
09:28The same thing happens with spells,
09:30if you want to make sure that you have a more reliable spell,
09:32like I said, the Dragon Breathing Out Scarlet Rod is the thing that I default to,
09:36put that in the first slot and whenever you hold up,
09:38you'll get back to that slot so you can use it faster than you would be able to before.
09:42Number five, see just how many runes you've acquired.
09:45Now I don't mean look towards the bottom right of the UI itself,
09:49you know, the active golden rune readout thing,
09:51I mean the golden runes that you pick up,
09:53the actual items that you pick up that literally just say
09:55golden rune, square brackets, 1, 2, 10, whatever.
09:59At the very beginning of the game, I thought this literally meant
10:01that I was picking up one golden rune or two golden runes,
10:05when instead, it more refers to a level of golden rune that you've picked up.
10:09And there's a whole bunch of different golden rune types,
10:11the basic amount that says golden rune goes from 1 to 13,
10:15and they are worth varying amounts of runes themselves when crunched inside the inventory.
10:19A lot of players don't realize just how many golden runes they're sitting on,
10:22because they assume that they're being factored into their overall total,
10:25when instead, you need to go into the inventory,
10:27select the golden rune and crunch it to release all the runes within.
10:31Golden rune 1 is worth 200 runes, golden rune 13 is worth like 10,000.
10:36But my overall point here is that if you want to know how many runes are sitting inside a given golden rune,
10:41go to a merchant and try to sell that rune.
10:43The exact amount that it's worth is how much you can crunch it for to get the runes back yourself.
10:48So I guess you could just sell it there and then,
10:50but it'll give you an idea of what you're picking up
10:52if you want to crunch runes in between merchants,
10:54and make sure that you're getting the most out of everything that you're acquiring along the way.
10:57Number 4, you can heal and attack on ladders.
11:00Another Dark Souls Bloodborne-y thing that carries over,
11:03dive onto a ladder and your light attack will punch upwards while your heavy attack will kick downwards.
11:07So if you have any human enemies or humanoid enemies that are chasing after you,
11:11take the fight onto a ladder and just get to kicking them in the head until they fall to their death.
11:16You can also heal on a ladder, so if you need to take a break away from a boss,
11:19maybe that really annoying pumpkin-headed thing that you fight in Kalos,
11:22just dip down onto the ladder and drink, again, I don't know what they call it,
11:26the Grace Estus Flask to get some of your health back,
11:29and then when you re-emerge, you're a hell of a lot better to take that thing on.
11:32Number 3, your character is fully movable while paused.
11:36Now this legit requires like a claw hand,
11:39kind of like the claw hand you have to do if you're trying to resurrect Torrent the Horse in the middle of combat,
11:43because the game just defaults to saying no
11:46in terms of using one of your Estus Flask things to resurrect your horse,
11:49and you've kind of got to use a weird D-pad claw whilst using the analog stick
11:53to move your character and use the menu at the same time.
11:55It's this mentality that carries over.
11:57It's not a very easy thing to do,
11:59but you can move your character underneath the menus while paused.
12:03If you're trying to access certain items, if you're trying to get out of the way of danger,
12:06or you're trying to apply one of the grease items or whatever,
12:09the analog stick, left analog stick, will always move your character
12:12while the D-pad and the face buttons will control the menus.
12:15So combined, you can get out of dodge, you can get some space from a boss
12:18whilst equipping something else or doing whatever you want to do inside the menus,
12:21hopefully avoiding death.
12:23Number two, dismount an enemy for a secret finisher.
12:26Now for me, I am terrible at parrying and getting the timing right for that,
12:30but good old Josh Brown found this thing that if you parry an enemy on horseback
12:33as they come towards you, you'll knock them off the horse altogether
12:36and they'll be left in a specific state on the ground
12:39where you can run up and do a, again, a specific animated finisher
12:42where you just plunge the blade directly down into them, usually for a one-hit kill.
12:46And number one, practice lock-on etiquette.
12:49Now I'm calling this lock-on etiquette, but any veteran Souls people will know exactly what I mean
12:53and that is to say that if you're new to Elden Ring, if you're new to the overall Souls vibe,
12:57you might be waiting, let's say, until something like the lock-on of an enemy
13:01delocks before you move to the next creature.
13:04Now, this is a weird thing to point out because it's very specific
13:06and the comments might be able to help me with this too,
13:08but overall, you should always be scanning for the next enemy,
13:11you should always be scanning the room around you,
13:13you should always be looking to the next threat.
13:15That is key to managing multiple enemies.
13:17You always want to make sure that you're delocking and relocking to something else.
13:20Alongside, like I said, if you're entering an area,
13:23you want to make sure which enemies are actually ahead of you,
13:26but there is a lock-on etiquette to the way that you play the Souls games overall
13:30and it comes down to always managing your environment,
13:33always rotating the camera around.
13:35If you're in the middle of a backstab animation or any sort of animation
13:38where you're invulnerable for a while, you've got some iframes for a while,
13:41delock, look around, maybe relock again.
13:44Get used to being as comfortable as possible, locking, unlocking
13:47as many enemies as possible to get a full feel of exactly how much danger you're in.
13:52And those are 17 tips and tricks I don't think Elden Ring ever really spells out.
13:56Like I said, it's one of the most mysterious, gratifying, and rewarding games
13:59that you could play, but there's also a ton of people just running around
14:02hoping for the best. That's obviously what FromSoftware wants,
14:05but videos like this can start getting a discourse going on just what the rest of us are missing out on.
14:09Let me know what you think down in the comments below.
14:11Maybe you've got your own tips and tricks that you would like to share.
14:13And for now, I've been Scott from WhatCulture.com.
14:15Also, please check out the WhatCulture Gaming Podcast and I'll catch you soon.