The difficulty of ELDEN RING is one its biggest selling points as well as one of its biggest deterrents from people buying the game. On this page I will go over some of the mechanics of ELDEN RING to help give you an idea of what you’re getting into. along with some ideas on how to play.
A) Health (HP): Health is common knowledge. You have a set amount of hit points, you take a hit, you lose them. You lose all of them, you die. Health can be upgraded via levelling Vigor, talisman buffs, and or armour or various other buffs. HP can be restored by drinking crimson flasks, healing incants, or armor buffs.
B) Focus points (FP): Focus points are what you need to cast sorceries/incantations or do ashes of war on weapons. FP can be increased by levelling Mind or equipping talismans. FP is restored by drinking cerulean flasks or by certain items
C) Stamina points (SP): Stamina points are required to do actions during combat. Dodging, attacking, guarding, jumping, etc. Stamina is naturally regenerated but depending on the action performed it could impact the stamina regeneration. Max stamina can be increased via levelling Endurance while stamina regen can be sped up via talismans or buffs.
D) Resistances/Defense: How you negate damage in ELDEN RING may seem confusing at first, but it is simpler than you think.
Let’s look at the stats from above. Now let’s look at their Physical damage negation. They have 137 / 34.004 damage negation. If an enemy were to do an attack that deals 700 damage. First, we take the first number and take it away from the damage
(700 – 137 = 563)
Now we get 34.004% of the remaining damage, round it up, and then subtract that.
({536 * 34.004% = 191.44252 -> 191} 536 – 191 = 345)
So, the attack that delt 700 damage got negated to only dealing 345 damage instead
E) Equip load: Equip load determines how fast you roll and how many i-frames (invulnerability frames) you get. Below is a list of how many i-frames you will get based on your equip load on 60fps
- (0 ≤ 29.99%) Light = 26 i-frames. Long distance.
- (30.00% – 69.99%) Medium = 26 i-frames. Medium distance.
- (70.00% – 99.99%) Heavy = 24 i-frames. Small distance. Long wake up roll
- (100.00% ≤) Overloaded = no i-frames. No distance travelled. Stamina regen penalty.
Equip load is increased by equipping armour, weaponry, or talismans.
F) Runes: Runes are the primary currency and xp system of ELDEN RING. Runes are obtained via killing enemies, selling items, using consumable runes, or slaying bosses. If you die with your rues on you, you will lose all your runes, and they’ll be dropped where you had died. If you die without picking up your runes, they’ll be lost forever.
G) Rune level: Rune level is how you get more powerful. When levelling up you get the option to put your levels into eight different stats.
- Vigor: increases max HP Mind: increases max FP
- Endurance: increases max SP and equip load
- Strength: increases scaling with strength weapons (axes, hammers, great swords)
- Dexterity: increases scaling with dexterous weapons (curved swords, twin-blades, katanas)
- Intelligence: increases sorcery scaling on staffs and some seals
- Faith: increases incantation scaling on seals and some staffs
- Arcane: increases item discovery and status effect power
Stat Requirements: Every weapon, spell and incantation in the game have stat requirements. For example, an iron greatsword would have a stat requirement of Strength 18 and Dexterity 10. If the player fails to meet the requirements, they will not be able to wield the weapon. N.B: for strength specifically, two handing a weapon gives a 50% stat boost (EX: one-hand: 12 / two-hand: 18 {12 / 2 = 6 + 12 = 18}).
Upgrading: Upgrading your weapons is a crucial role in allowing you to deal damage to enemies. Weapons can be upgraded at blacksmiths by using smithing stones. Basic weapons can be upgraded to +25, 12 of each stone and one Ancient Dragon Smithing stone. Some weapons however are somber, meaning that they require somber smithing stones to upgrade. Somber weapons can be upgraded to +10, requiring 1 somber stone of each level. stones can be found throughout the world (primarily in mines), dropped by enemies, or bought from merchants.
Stat scaling: Weapons tend to scale one certain stats, primarily the stat that’s needed the most to wield the weapon. There are multiple different grades to give an idea of how good a weapon scales with a stat. This can change depending on the weapon and the attunement.
For example, if we go off the iron greatsword at +0 the scaling is a C for strength and a E for dexterity. Compared to it at +25 where it has a B in strength and still a E in dexterity. Now if we were to change that to a heavy attunement, it would lose all dexterity scaling and get an A in strength scaling.
Another thing to note about stat scaling is that stats have soft and hard caps. For example, leveling Vigor beyond 40 will begin to diminish the amount you get. Levelling past 60 will heavily reduce the return value.
Parrying: Parrying is an advance defensive counterattack revolving around parrying the enemy’s weapon and going in for a critical hit. Parrying revolves around frames as well; during a parry there are three types of frames. Start-up, active, recovery. Start-up frames happen on the input, active frames are how long the parry window is active for, and recovery frames are how long it takes to recover from the parry. The key is to line up the active frames to when the enemy’s attack is about to hit.
Status Effects: Status effects are unique effects that can be applied via certain weapons, spells, incants, and attunements. Status effects work by building onto a bar. Depending on the enemy’s resistance to it and the player’s weapon’s status effects.
For example, if an enemy has a hemorrhage resistance of 400 and a player’s weapon deals 72 hemorrhage build-up. It will take about 6 hits to proc a hemorrhage.
{72+ 72 + 72 + 72 + 72 + 72 = 432}
After every proc, the enemy will gain an increase to their resistance. Usually, a 20% to 30% buff.
The player also has resistances to status effects as well. Looking at their Immunity in the example stat sheet above, we see two numbers, 396 and 133. The bigger number is how much resistance you have, and smaller number is for if you get poisoned, how much will be taken off the status bar before it begins to deplete
There are seven status effects in the game.
- Hemorrhage: Deals a percentage of the enemy’s health as damage.
- Frostbite: Deals a smaller percentage of the enemy’s health and lowers their physical resistances. Can be removed by fire.
- Poison: Slowly drains the enemy’s health bar for a period of time.
- Scarlet Rot: A more potent variant of poison.
- Sleep: Causes the enemy to fall asleep. Some enemies will just stager for a second while others will fall asleep for a certain period of time. If players are affected, they will lose FP.
- Madness: Can only affect Tarnished. Locks them in a position and deals damage and drains FP.
- Death Blight: Can only work on Tarnished. Instantly kills when proced.
Combat: Combat in soulsbornes has always been hard to get the ropes of. Is very basic in a sense where it is as simplistic as attacking and rolling. Depending on the weapon, you can either attack fast and light or strike powerful and slow.
Ashes of war: Ashes of War are special skill that come with or can be applied to a weapon. These take FP to do and are capable of dealing high damage, buffing the player or letting the player dodge an attack. Timing ashes of wars can be difficult as some have long wind up frames while others cant be easily cancelled out of
Sorceries, Incantations: Sorceries and Incantations are options for attackers mainly leveling up int or faith. They’re spells that can be casted via a stave or finger seal, allowing for long range or close up combat. Both however drain FP per attack, so leveling mind and bringing cerulean flasks will be a must to be able to cast more at a time. Additionally some spells or incants may have long casting times, so it is wise to take for count how long the spell casting time is and how far from the enemy you are.
Avoiding attacks: Dodging attacks can be difficult to master at first, it takes time and practice to learn an enemy’s attack pattern and be able to instinctively dodge it. Mostly all enemy attacks can be dodge rolled, whilst a few will require either jumping over it or making distance.
Now that you now how to play, why not see what else is in the world
