With time you will piece together the story and setting of Elden Ring but so much of the deep lore of the game is hidden from the player. We've gone hunting through Elden Ring to help you understand the story a little more and pick up on some secrets about the lore that you may have missed.
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00:00A quest for Elden Ring's Vyke, the character who appears on the cover art, was apparently
00:19cut from the game. You'll probably recognise Vyke as the kneeling knight on Elden Ring's
00:23front cover. He appears only briefly in the final game as an NPC invader and boss who
00:28rewards you with his unique armour set and spear for defeating him. But it seems a bit
00:33odd that a character with such a small role would appear so prominently on the cover art.
00:39Well, that's because he was originally a much bigger deal, with in-game lore explaining that
00:44no other Tarnished was closer to the throne of the Elden Ring than Vyke.
00:48Elden Ring dataminers have since uncovered a cut questline featuring Vyke using some unused
00:53voice line making reference to a knight in armour melting inwards. Unfortunately,
00:59no text or dialogue for Vyke has been discovered, but the quest seemingly would have had a few
01:04dialogue choices and offered a handful of rewards, ultimately unlocking Vyke as a summon
01:10in Stormvale Castle to help you fight against one of its bosses. It does seem really strange
01:14that such a prominent character with so much work put into it was cut, so here's hoping future DLCs
01:21fill in some of the gaps.
01:30An Elden Ring modder has discovered a tragically forgotten NPC who's doomed to never fulfil their
01:35purpose due to an unfortunate typo. During the final phase of the boss fight in Raya Lucaria
01:41against Renala, you will have to deal with a room full of sweetings, young scholars who
01:46crawl around and harass you as you fight the Queen of the Full Moon herself. Several times
01:50throughout the fight, Renala will call on three of these sweetings to form a bubble shield around
01:55her. The chosen sweetings could be any three in the room, except for one lonely soul in the back
02:01corner. A modder has discovered sweeting number 21 has the ID number of 14000830 in the game files,
02:09but a typo causes Renala to call out for ID number 140008230, meaning that this particular NPC
02:20is never called and simply crawls around otherwise forgotten. So next time you're
02:25running through Raya Lucaria, pour one out for this NPC,
02:28doomed to never reach their true potential due to a mispressed number 2 key.
02:40Hard to believe I know, but dataminers have discovered that Elden Ring's most notorious
02:45Melania used to be even more difficult to beat than she already is. By analysing and playing
02:50through the 1.0 version of Elden Ring, that is a version that's been untouched by patches or
02:55changes since the original game, a modder discovered several key differences with her
03:00attack pattern and abilities, making her significantly more aggressive. The most
03:04notable change is that version 1.0 Melania uses her old waterfowl move that wasn't originally
03:10tied to any health loss and a similar but different attack called Melania Blade which
03:16could be chained, all the while attacking more aggressively and blocking more overall.
03:20That alone sounds hellish, but the dataminer goes on to detail other variations which include
03:25slightly different combos and increased use of the dreaded Scala Aenea incantation.
03:31A pre-release build of Elden Ring has a quest that lets you craft a dream brew
03:36that makes NPCs chatty and sleepy. Essentially, it gets them drunk.
03:40Prolific modder Lance MacDonald released a video where they explore an earlier Elden Ring build
03:45that included content which was ultimately cut from the game and was able to uncover a whole
03:50questline, NPC and other items which never made it into the final build. The quest itself is
03:55questline, NPC and other items which never made it into the final build.
04:00The quest involves a fully animated and voiced NPC named Jiko who's looking
04:04for ingredients to make his dream brew, which he explicitly says is a type of alcohol.
04:09Jiko says the dream brew will convince other NPCs to tell you their deepest,
04:13darkest secrets. If you agree to help him, Jiko gives you an item called
04:17Santrina's Crystal Ball which you use to collect Dense Fog of Sleep from napping creatures.
04:22Bring the filled vial back to Jiko and he uses it to make his brew,
04:26which you can offer to NPCs to open up additional lines of dialogue and hidden lore.
04:31MacDonald brings the dream brew to Merchant Kale at his shop inside Church of Elay in Limgrave,
04:37and after Kale drinks the brew, he falls asleep and has a nightmare about eyes being
04:41burned by a frenzied flame. Jiko then asks for two more vials of Dream Mist to make more dream
04:47brew and it's then that MacDonald discovers additional sleeping creatures, suggesting
04:51that this questline was pretty well formed before it was cut. Sure makes you wonder what
04:55other stuff was snipped from the final launch version, and if any of it is as fun sounding
04:59as getting NPCs drunk. When it comes to cut content in Elden Ring, there's one character
05:10who's dialogue in particular makes for an interesting dive into the game's lore, Godfrey.
05:16To be granted audience once more.
05:19YouTuber Sekiro Doobie discovered a selection of cutlines from Godfrey,
05:24and there are some interesting theories about what these new discoveries all mean.
05:27The dialogue seems to reinforce the idea that when it comes to the Elden Ring's shattering,
05:31Marika may have originally had a plan in advance to shatter the ring,
05:35which Godfrey knew about all along. If Godfrey was aware that the Elden Ring would be shattered,
05:40then the banishing of the Tarnished was actually a plan to remove them from the
05:45greater world's influence. The consensus seems to be that Godfrey was initially
05:49meant to play an even larger role throughout Elden Ring, with a potential storyline that
05:54would take place in the past based on the lines heard in Sekiro Doobie's video.
05:58There's nothing concrete here of course, just guesswork reading between the lines,
06:02but there is a lot to theorise about with some juicy tidbits nestled with Godfrey's lost dialogue.
06:15Carley
06:16One of Elden Ring's earliest merchants was originally part of a long-running,
06:19tragic questline before FromSoftware scrapped it. Carley is the first merchant you stumble
06:24across in your adventures in The Lands Between. Remember an NPC dressed like Santa Claus? That's
06:29our guy. Aside from selling valuable items and offering some lore tidbits in exchange for chatter,
06:34you don't really get much else from Carley, as he remains rooted to the spot.
06:38However, the merchant was once tied to a tragic subplot of the game. Speaking to him further
06:43would have led to a mention of the Great Caravan, which was once home to merchants like Carley and
06:49something he yearns to find. Defeating Godric at Stormvale Castle would send Carley on a quest
06:55to find the Great Caravan, with certain clues left behind to help you find the merchant's new
07:00location each time he moved. This would have continued until you reach the subterranean
07:04shunning grounds beneath Lendal. This place is eerie enough and is home to the Three Fingers,
07:10which relates to one of Elden Ring's bad endings, but it's also littered with bodies.
07:15Some current in-game lore explains the bodies are all the remains of the Merchant Caravan
07:20after it was accused of heresy and burned alive, summoning the Flames of Frenzy and Despair. In
07:26Carley's scrapped quest, he discovers the fate of his people and embraces the flames himself.
07:32A look back at the Elden Ring Network Test highlights some significant changes to the
07:37finished game. In November 2021, Bandai Namco held a Network Test for Elden Ring,
07:42allowing players an early glimpse of the lands between to test the game's online servers ahead
07:47of its full release. Things obviously changed in the final release and fans noticed all sorts
07:51of little differences. One of the more unusual changes happened to Whiteface Vaar, one of the
07:56While he's largely here to offer some guidance for the newly tarnished, he used to be a lot meaner.
08:01In the final game, he mentions Maidens and the Round Table Hold before telling you you're fated
08:06to die in obscurity. However, in the original Network Test version, he tells you that you're
08:11plum out of luck and describes you as a bit player, before telling you, feel free to go off
08:16and die in obscurity. In the final game, he mentions Maidens and the Round Table Hold,
08:22a bit player, before telling you, feel free to go off and die in a ditch somewhere. Charming.
08:35An Elden Ring fan has discovered that most of the game's song lyrics are just computer generated
08:40nonsense. One of the aspects that makes Elden Ring so captivating is its music,
08:44which is chock full of haunting choral melodies. Intrigued by the meaning behind these songs,
08:49one Elden Ring fan dug a little deeper and found that although the lyrics may sound like Latin,
08:54most are actually just gibberish. Reddit user Magister Organi, a Latin student,
08:59has been studying the game's lyrics. They started with a song of lament, a beautiful piece sung by
09:04the game's siren-like creatures. According to their post on the PS5 subreddit, these lyrics
09:09are actually in Latin, but they were written by a lyricist who worked on just that one song.
09:15Curious about Elden Ring's other songs, Magister Organi contacted the game's music producers who
09:19explained that 99% of the lyrics in the game are not in any language at all and don't mean
09:24anything. Instead, the lyrics are computer generated and adjusted to resemble ancient
09:29languages. Intrigued to learn more, they went on to analyse other tracks and said that sometimes
09:33the lyrics resemble Latin, but they are not Latin. The goal was to simulate ancient language
09:38songs to enhance the dramatic feel of the player's experience.
09:44So, those are all the Elden Ring lore secrets that we've seen. If there's any that you've noticed,
09:48put it in the comments below to let us know what we've missed.