(Risk: Software) A motherlode of the long-awaited Elden Ring info arrived this week with the preview of the Network Test (we did it). Although I know how long it has been since Elden Ring announced the announcement in 2018, the resulting articles and videos have left very few questions unansweredquite the relief. That Network Test is just a fraction of the full game. But now we can understand more about it than it works: it’s more than a new version of A/V, but it’s more than a complete game. But there are still questions we’d like to give them answers. I think most of what we don’t know about Elden Ring is most likely kept kept that way till next February so we can preserve some of the mystic but that’s not stopping us thinking about and theorizing for the next three months. Here are a few of the critical questions that are still holding to our minds.
How many correct dungeons have there?
The Elden Rings test was complete with bossesand, fought around the open world with some 10 scattered in mini-dungeons, and in the Stormveil Castle, the first ever meaty Legacy Dungeon. But there are definitely some tiers of bosses in Elden Ring, and some are far bigger challenges than others. The landowner arose in the town of Stormveil (which won’t be accessible in the network test). To the top of the castle, Elden Ring awaits the first major boss, Godrickone. We don’t know exactly how many of them await us in the Elden Ring, and that number will be an excellent indicator of how long it is. Legacy Dungeons are big, dense areas that remind the Ancient Dark Soul of that time period. However, the rest of Elden Ring is composed of vast open lands and small dungeons scattered around it. Knowing how many Legacy Dungeons there are in total will help us to understand how much of that classic FromSoftware exploration we should expect in Elden Ring. In a June interview, director Hidetaka Miyazaki said that Elden Ring is composed of six major areas with each having their own major dungeon. But also he said that there are “a wide variety of catacombs, castles and fortresses interspersed throughout the map” and that some of these may be bigger than the small, short ones I encountered in the opening area. Wes Fenlon Maybe we can answer the question here, and it’s only six: each section of the map has its Legacy Dungeon, and that’s it. I don’t know how the developers were doing that. But these developers kept Ash Lake in a random tree in Dark Souls’ dankest pit, so I was skeptical.
How many colors should you expect from the magic system?
There were a handful of sorceries and incantations available in the beta. A lot more could be accumulated in the full game. Elden Ring seems promising in terms of variety and flexibility. For example: Ashes of War are collectible items with different powerful attributes to weapons. If you find one that brings magic-oriented powers or powers, or scaling with magic-oriented attributes, you can easily use it to melee weapon without having a magic build. Of course, you might not want to use melee weapons at all. If you are not rocking a job or seal, then you can always turn down the value of the item, but it does not come without the idea that Elden Ring’s wide variety is going to offer. One major change is that pyromancy is now combined into faith rather than leveled separately. Shaun Prescott
What’ll we tell when NPC play?
At the preview, I ran into a deni-human NPC. It had been turned into a bush magically. I helped him out with a sword thwart that returned him to his normal form and then promised to steal something from the demi-humans’ cave. Later, on the map, he noticed that his name had moved along with the cave, but I didn’t find him anywhere. Nonetheless, this indicates that the NPCs will move and have their own journeys as they did in the Dark Souls game. Will those stories have them cross the entire world map or confined to regions of unique size? Do they be as easy to lose as they are in Dark Souls? Wes
How much freedom do we really have from the beginning?
The map of the Elden Ring is quite big. The Network Test provided a fraction of the material found in the gameplay previews of Bandai Namco earlier this month. But can you go wherever you want right away? Hidetaka Miyazaki told IGN in June that “You won’t hardly access everything from start until you find it,” but there are lots of different ways you can approach each area. And there is a lot of freedom with regards to in which order you also tackle different areas.” That is a great relief. finding new areas of Dark Souls is one of their greatest pleasures, and figuring out it from the beginning would have helped to get the most enjoyment out of the game. At this stage, it’s unclear what will “gate” areas to early players, or whether these inaccessible-from-the-start places even exist on the already known map. Will the world be rescued by slowly unlocking journey skills, upgrades to your steed, or at that time, or even the same way you’re being? Is there a tyre? We know that one of the best bosses gives a key to the door that is inaccessible in the beta. Shaun
How will you improve your flask and spell slots?
In the Network Test I found a secondary flask that can be customized for different effects, from refilling half your health billiard to, er, making your body explode. But will we find the usual upgrades to help increase the amount of drinks we can take from the regular halas, and the upgrades to make it easier for the healing effect? And what about the time slots? Attunement is no longer a stat, so there’s something else to collect,perhaps to earn more spell slots. Magic people will hunt those down within an hour. Wes
What’s the exact limits of the group game?
In Dark Souls games, a cooperative membership of another player meant exactly that: it didn’t affect your own. If you want to play the Dark Souls 3 in cooperative mode, one must be beaten in both players’ worlds, and both players will survive to regain their chance to move beyond that point together. When playing something other people, you are the Phantom. The process of cooperative play is much simpler now, as it has some limitations, so you can’t change your mind to the dungeon, but it’s inevitable to learn to play both the overworld and the dungeons. But what will be exact limits on where you can and can not summon? If you defeated the boss of the Legacy Dungeon, I wonder how you could get blocked from summoning there. How does Elden Ring limit level vs for summoning and invading? We know the deep strokes but not all the small details. Shaun
What’s your point of view?
The Public Network Test doesn’t feature any character creators (although you’ll be allowed to pick five of the classes in the game). The quality (or lack thereof) of the original character of the final game is important, considering how much effort souls fans devotees to making a scary suave look. I’m not expecting anything less than in Dark Souls 3, but a pleasant surprise would be given that we have more options. You’ll have better time in style. Shaun
How did George R. Martin all this incorporate?
Most iots know Elden is the type of game that isn’t known by anyone. It’s easy to read objections to the new format, but for most of us we are making a mistake. And if Elden Ring is indeed a neat fit with Soulsand it’s still early days, after allwhere’s George R. R. Martin in all this? From what we’ve seen up to this point a mere invisible sight. Martin supposedly wrote the lore that Miyazaki and team used as the foundation for Elden Ring’s actual stories and characters, but he does not have any effect. Elden Ring, as it is far from Dark Souls, seems to be cut from the same cloth as Dark Souls. Perhaps there’s some more deeper lore waiting in the final game, which gives Martin a voice that shines. Shaun
Where are the patches?
If, what you’re looking for, I would consider myself the best option.
