Elden Ring / Tropes O to Z

Tropes for Elden Ring
Tropes A to E | Tropes F to N | Tropes O To Z

O

• Oh, Crap!: One happens during the Patches questline. At the very end, when you return to Murkwater Cave, you will find Patches treasure chest. Opening it will have Patches shout out a threat and attack you just like he did before. Moments after the fight starts, he'll come to the horrifying realization that it's you. The same Tarnished who beat him before. The same Tarnished who fought his way through the Volcano Manor Requests. The same Tarnished who recently killed the owner of the manor. He immediately vocalizes his panic and gives up. If you spare him again, a dialogue with him later has him admitting that he should stop bandit work if only because he's terrified of running into you again.
• One Stat to Rule Them All: Vigor and Endurance share this spot as essential stats for every single build, whether they be a thickly-armoured knight, an agile thief, or a spell-slinging sorcerer. Vigor governs your maximum health points and Immunity (resistance to the Poison and Scarlet Rot status effects), while Endurance governs your maximum stamina points, equip load, and Robustness (resistance to the Bleed/Haemorrhage and Frostbite status effects). Damage in Elden Ring is high, frequent, and often difficult/impossible to avoid, status effects are either crippling or deadly without proper mitigation, stamina is the 'fuel' you use for all your defensive and offensive actions in combat (with dire consequences if an enemy manages to fully deplete it), and increasing your equip load lets you either carry heavier (and therefore usually more powerful) gear, or improve your mobility while using your present gear — or both.
• Optional Stealth: Crouching and moving slowly and deliberately gives the Tarnished ample ability to sneak around, backstab enemies, and snipe them from a distance if they so choose. Sleep arrows can also be used to knock enemies out for a time. Several encounters are considerably easier if you just crouch down, hug cover, and avoid the big nasty monsters that you'd otherwise have difficulty killing, and the game teaches you this by introducing you to the deadly Tree Sentinel as soon as you enter the starting region of Limgrave, which is in an open enough area that you can easily sneak around them without attracting their attention.
• Our Angels Are Different:
  • The Two Fingers are essentially the Greater Will's angels, serving as its heralds and go-betweens between it and the demigods. Bit hard to get much different from what looks like a disembodied, two-fingered hand.
  • Classic "white-winged maiden" angels are mentioned in the item description of the Winged Scythe to serve as "Death's gentle envoys" in pagan belief.
• Our Dragons Are Different:
  • The Dragons of Elden Ring are said to have ruled in a prehistoric age, and were ancient when the Gods (the Erdtree, Marika, and her kin) were young. Sometime after, during the very early age of the Erdtree, war erupted between the Dragons and the Empire. The war devastated both sides, until Godwyn the Golden faced Fortissax, the Legendary Dragon General. Though Godwyn had the upper hand and was prepared to strike down Fortissax, he instead spared his life. Befriending the mighty drake, Godywn convinced his mother the Dragons were better as allies, Marika forged a pact with the Dragons and the Dragons were elevated to a position similar to lesser deities. This eventually flourished to outright worship, and a Dragon Cult formed at the Imperial Capital, soon encompassing many mighty knights and warriors. It would eventually become the Empire's unofficial "secondary" religion, as the demigods decreed the worship of the Erdtree did not conflict with idolizing the Ancient Dragons. After the Shattering, dragonkind still lingers and split into two different groups.
    • The first are the common Wyvern-esque ones found in most regions of the world. Feathered, and having only two wings, they are still powerful and fiendishly intelligent beings. They come in many flavors, ranging from Flying Dragon Agheel, who spews fire and uses a lake as a hunting ground, to Borealis the Freezing Fog, who haunts the far north and uses cold wind as his Breath Weapon. These dragons lack stone scales, having cast them off long ago. They are also not immortal and considered "lesser" beings; only containing "traces" of their ancestral power.
    • Then there's the Stoneguards, more commonly known as "Ancient Dragons", the real dragons the Demigods warred with. Possessing four wings and covered in the telltale thick, stone scales, they are some of the most powerful and ancient beings encountered in the game. They are able to conjure bolts with their hands, and manifest giant blades of pure, crimson lightning. Much rarer then their descendants, the Ancient Dragons are stated to be fully sentient people and seldom involve themselves with mortals, but are far more dangerous when encountered. There's even at least one example of an Interspecies Romance involving an Ancient Dragon, Lansseax, and a mortal Tarnished, Vyke.
  • A curious desire possessing some members of the Golden Order people is the consumption of Dragon Hearts, and for the weak-willed, this can become a very dark obsession. It leads to downward spiral of violence known as "Dragonlust", where the person becomes obsessed with becoming a dragon by endlessly killing and consuming the organs of slain drakes. This is how wyrms come to be; the end result where the enraptured becomes a wyrm, cursed to crawl on their bellies and wander the earth for eternity. This actually harkens to the original Norse myths of dragon depictions. In that mythos, dragons were often fallen heroes transformed into wyrms by curses.
  • The Dragonkin Soldiers were the underground Eternal Cities' attempts at creating Dragons of their own. They were ultimately a failure — the Dragonkin Soldiers are rotting mummified beasts who lack the immortality of the true Ancient Dragons. Of the three you can encounter in the game, only one still has the strength to fly and wield the Frozen Lightning that they created to imitate the true Dragons' lightning.
• Our Giants Are Different: Just like one of its major inspirations, Norse Mythology, there are several beings who constitute as "Giants".
  • General Radahn is absolutely huge, as evidenced by his normal-sized horse being tiny in comparison to him. He is not slow, however. While not a literal giant, there's evidence his father, Radagon, may have been their descendant. As a result, Radahn likely has giant heritage.
  • The Alabaster Lords are an ancient race of ghastly, nightmarish slender wraiths. With stone skin, they are said to have been born from a falling star which landed in the Lands Between eons ago, and wield the powers of the void, though they are thankfully rare. While smaller then the others, they are still a good twelve feet tall.
  • Then there's the actual giants; the legendary Fire Giants. Integral to Elden Ring mythos, the Fire Giants were a primeval species of huge, towering humanoids who dwelled on top the towering mountain peaks far above the capital city of Leyndell. Thousands of years ago, an apocalyptic war raged between the Empire of Marika and the Fire Giants who tore the very mountains asunder and nearly destroyed the Empire. After untold sacrifices, the Fire Giants were eventually defeated and were slaughtered to the very last, starting the Age of the Erdtree. They are seldom spoken about, for they are considered nightmares long gone. Their lands, the Mountaintops of the Giants, are forbidden for most to enter. When the player actually visits the peaks, they're revealed to be a snowy hellscape, devoid of much life, and covered in the decaying husks of millennium-old dead giants. And then we learn the truth; a single Fire Giant, the last one in existence, still lives on the tallest peak, revealing them to be nightmarish Humanoid Abominations. While they are extremely faithful to the Jotun of Norse Mythology (being very Norse-looking, having red hair, and about forty feet tall), they have a second face on their stomach which can awaken the ability to cast powerful fire magic.
• Our Gods Are Different: Gods and divinity are a broad subject in Lands Between, not helped by the fact the divine hierarchy itself is not fully understood by most mortals.
  • It should be noted the term "Demigod" is multilayered and encompasses beings of vastly different power levels. It's used, most often, in context to Marika's direct brood; her children she had with Godfrey and Radagon. Demigod in our real world history refers to an offspring born from a union between a God and a mortal. In Lands Between, however, Marika is the Top God, and her consorts are Deity of Human Origin, once mortal champions turned into Lords through Super-Empowering, and referred to as Demigods. Thus, Marika's Demigod children have a full Divine parent and a Semi-Divine parent; as such, they display immense power, ranging from an utter mastery in arms and magic, to more Esoteric abilities, can be Physical Gods in their own right, and worshipped as such. The lesser offsprings of these Demigods (such as Godrick and Millicent) are in turn much more in-line with classical depictions in terms of power (being very gifted, but far lesser champions), even though they too are referred to as Demigods.
  • Queen Marika, as the one chosen to bear the Elden Ring for Elden Lords to operate and use its power, is “a god in truth” and worshipped as such. Though Elden Lords rule the lands with her, Queen Marika’s authority supersedes them and she is the one responsible for the formation and imposition of the Golden Order, laws of causality which govern the Lands Between. Her divinity is such, even individuals who are even slightly or remotely connected to her are considered her kin, though only those Marika personally acknowledges can be called “demigods”. Given various revelations about Malenia’s status as the Goddess of Rot, the Elden Beast, as well as the Tarnished’s potential to become Lord of Chaos, it appears what constitutes a “god” is to bear the power and essence of an outer god in body and in soul, and become an extension of its being; as all of the aforementioned do so for different outer gods.
  • Above even Queen Marika and her Golden Order is the Greater Will, which is acknowledged as a divine being who bestowed the Lands Between with Elden Ring itself. As the name suggests, it is more of an abstract entity than a physical being, given it doesn’t directly interfere with events and allows Marika to run the world at large. However, they do interact with the world through their heralds the Two Fingers, who can be seen as the angels to the Greater Will’s god, whereas Queen Marika is the Will’s extension of being. The Greater Will appears to be in opposition to several forces of nature, as Queen Marika had gone to war with both the Ancient Dragons and Giants on its behalf. Various pieces of lore reveal that this is because the Greater Will is not the only “god” with their level of power and influence, and there are a number of “outer gods” who appear to hold similar powers and influence:
    • An entity associated with the falling stars and the dark moon, whom the ancient Lucaria sorcerers contacted and seen as a guiding force by major sorcerers, including Ranni. Its motivations are completely unknown, as various sorcerers have been inspired with different sorceries and affected differently by its guidance, making it very personal in nature.
    • One who sent the Three Fingers as its envoy, who blessed Shabriri with the Frenzied Flame. Frenzied Flames spread madness and corrupt other life into carrying it, being considered a force of corruption by the Golden Order. It appears to desire nothing more or less than destruction of order and the lands, as it empowers and corrupts its champions in equal measure.
    • The “fell god” mentioned to dwell in the flames of Fire Giants, whose Forge remain undying even to Marika and the Elden Ring. It is heavily implied to be the reason why Marika’s Empire slaughtered them down to the very last, then she cursed the last giant to tend to their Forge for all eternity.
    • One who had part of its essence sealed underneath the Lake of Rot, which resulted in the unholy Scarlet Rot infested place it is now. Not only is the Scarlet Rot a corruption incurable to even the demigods, the entity appears to have marked Malenia since birth to become an extension of it as “Goddess of Rot”.
    • One who sent a "twinbird" as its envoy, the mother of Deathbirds. It also has some form of tie with Godwyn as Prince of Death since its sorceries are also boosted by the Prince of Death Staff, which boosts death sorceries.
    • One whom Mohg refers to as “Formless Mother” and “Mother of Truth”, associated with blood and birth. Mohg contacted it during the Shattering wars in the hopes of using its power to resurrect Miquella as a god and to become his consort, and for that purpose, Mohg had formed a cult of blood to spread bloodshed across the Lands Between.
  • As well, the exact mechanics behind how these gods work is fairly intricate. The current Golden Order is maintained through the Erdtree, powered by the Elden Ring and directed by Queen Marika, functioning as a sort of Cosmic Keystone which dictates the laws of causality in the land, such as souls flowing into the Erdtree to reincarnate when one dies. It's later clarified that specific beings have been chosen by the Two Fingers in ages past as "Empyreans" to fulfill the role of Elden Ring bearer, and Marika just happens to be the latest and currently reigning one. These beings are strong enough to act as the lynchpin Barrier Maiden to hold the new order in place, and can "marry" a consort who acts as a bodyguard/enforcer. Prior to the Shattering, candidates of Empyrean to succeed Marika are Ranni, Miquella, and Malenia. However, as the Greater Will appears to have abandoned the Lands Between, another outer god can swap in an Empyrean of their own to run the show; though at least Frenzied Flame and Scarlet Rot don't appear terribly interested in making use of the Elden Ring, Ranni takes it upon herself to represent the Dark Moon in the "Age of the Stars" ending.
• Our Ogres Are Hungrier: Omens are horned, deformed giants born to otherwise completely normal parents, and are victims of massive Fantastic Racism: commoner ones generally have their horns sawed off as babies (which usually kills them), while nobles get to keep their horn but are instead chucked into the sewers and kept out of sight to avoid familial shame. Apart from that, Omens are as capable of free will as anyone else — while Mohg, an Omen born to Marika and Godfrey, is an outright Satanic Archetype, his twin brother Morgott is The Dutiful Son.
• Our Monsters Are Weird: FromSoftware isn't exactly known for unimaginative creature design, but some of these monsters take it up a notch. They include...
  • Grafted creatures are misshapen lumps of limbs haphazardly welded together, such as arms made of multiple severed arms grasping each other. The very first creature you meet, the Grafted Scion, is a crablike lump of torsos supported by an array of arms and legs, and one bird wing grafted on apparently just for the fun of it. Godrick the Grafted maintains a roughly humanoid shape, but is horribly misshapen and enters his second phase by replacing one of his arms with a dragon head.
  • Fingercreepers, giant spider-like crawling hands with way too many fingers.
  • Revenant, a misshapen creature shrouded in a robe who crawls like a spider on dozens of human-looking arms.
  • Walking Mausoleum, a huge quadrupedal stone construct with a bell hung from its underside and a burial chamber on top.
  • Land octopi, who are giant masses of ropy, intertwined tentacles with avian-looking beaks which can eat their own limbs to heal.
  • Land squirts, crawling mollusks who dwell in bodies of water and are shaped like massive, slimy eggs.
  • Centipede-esque golems with bodies made of connected, spherical stones.
  • Huge, glowing jellyfish floating through the air who also happen to be the corporeal manifestations of dead spirits.
  • Canines resembling a cross between a hairless dog and a Tyrannosaurus.
  • Trolls in the setting are barrel-chested giants but are emaciated to the point their stomachs are caved in, with a tombstone embedded in their guts.
  • Living Jars: Sentient clay pots with arms and legs that are given life by stuffing them full of human corpses. When they die, they shatter in a shower of blood and guts like you took the Bloody Mess perk in a Fallout game. Their shards have magical properties that make them a potent crafting ingredient so they are frequently targeted by poachers.
• Our Sirens Are Different: While exploring the world, you can occasionally hear a rather lovely voice singing in Latin. The owner of that voice is a giant bat with the face of an old woman that is much tougher to defeat than the regular bats and can even throw around clouds of poison.
• Our Vampires Are Different: Well, implied to be vampires, but there's nothing concrete. Among the background stories of the Tarnished Player Character is the "nightfolk" background; pale-skinned, white-haired, silver-eyed (wo)men who are supposedly rare in the Lands Between and live in seclusion whose blood is supposedly colored silver.
• Our Werewolves Are Different: They apparently double as Our Angels Are Different. All Empyreans have a divine 'shadow' given by the Two Fingers as a bodyguard and champion. Both Shadows met, Blaidd (Ranni's Shadow) and Maliketh (Marika's Shadow), are humanoid wolves, with Blaidd being roughly tarnished-sized and Maliketh being giant. They're also a contingency plan for if said Empyrean goes rogue. If that happens, the Two Fingers can compel the Shadow to go insane and slay their bonded Empyrean. Blaidd is able to resist turning against Ranni out of sheer willpower, and Marika abandoned Maliketh in Farum Azula to prevent him from stopping her from shattering the Elden Ring.
• Outside-Context Problem: The glintstone comets became this for the Lands Between. Study of their shards brought a new kind of magic to the world, but glintstone also infects its surroundings, turning the landscape, animals, and people into more glintstone... And sometimes the fallen star turns out an indescribable alien monster.

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• Pain & Gain: The "Seppuku" skill does exactly what you think it does, it causes you to stab yourself. You inflict blood loss on yourself in exchange for a boost to your physical damage and increased blood loss buildup on your attacks. This also procs the "Lord of Blood's Exulatation" talisman and the buff from the White Mask, basically turning you into a nuclear bomb for 60 seconds.
• Peninsula of Power Leveling:
  • The area outside the Bestial Sanctum at the northern tip of Caelid. While it's reachable by normal methods, there's also a teleporter northeast of the Third Church of Marika (at the east end of the river there) in northeastern Limgrave leading directly there. There are many Vulgar Militiamen in this area who hit very hard, but can be staggered easily, and drop 1100 runes each. Just make sure you don't accidentally aggro the Black Blade Kindred in the area.
  • Very near the above location, you can find a Mage Tower called Lenne's Rise. West of the tower is a path with a cliff at one side. Ride down the path on Torrent a short ways and a giant steel ball will appear and attempt to run you over. As it appears, make a U-turn towards the cliff side and dash past it so that it rolls right off the cliff. Since this ball is technically an enemy, it "dies" from falling off the cliff and gives you about 1900 runes (though for some strange reason it will not give any runes if it dies off-camera). This makes for a slightly faster and safer, yet far more boring rune farm than the above Vulgar Militiamen.
  • Another peninsula would be at Mohgwyn Palace, and a much more compact one at that. At the Palace Approach Ledge-Road Site of Grace, there's a gathering of Albinaurics who drop around 2000 runes each. And there's around 17 of them from just across the grace, and almost all of them not reacting to the player until attacked. There's also a Giant Crow across a very large chasm that, if aggroed by shooting it with a bow, will stupidly run straight off the cliff and into said chasm in its attempt to reach you, netting you 11,000 runes. At least the area is somewhat late-game… unless you complete one of Varré's quests giving you an item that teleports you to the entrance of the area's boss arena, with a map and a site of grace just right inside. This is even more lucrative in New Game Plus when the rune gain is doubled in the area.
• Permanently Missable Content:
  • Various NPC sidequests can intertwine with others. Should circumstances render you unable to progress one any further (such as an offscreen death triggered by advancing the main plot too far) you lose out on its rewards for your current playthrough.
  • Like in previous Souls games, you can only be invaded if you haven't beaten the boss of the area you're currently in. Originally, you could potentially miss out on the unique items dropped by NPC invaders if you had already killed the corresponding boss before finding the spot where they would invade you. This was particularly egregious in the case of one particular invader, who dropped a key item needed to complete a character's questline, so missing your chance to get invaded by him also meant it was impossible for you to complete that questline on your current playthrough. However, the game was eventually patched so that NPC invaders will always be able to invade you no matter what.
  • If the player for some reason decides to kill Fia upon meeting her again at Deeproot Depths, then the boss fight against Lichdragon Fortissax and subsequently, the trophy upon beating them, will be permanently locked out for the rest of the playthrough.
  • Defeating Maliketh in Crumbling Farum Azula causes Leyndell to be buried in a sea of ash as the Erdtree is fully set ablaze. New treasures and enemies are found in this new environment, but most of everything else there you've missed cannot be claimed. This includes the Bolt of Gransax, one of the nine Legendary Armaments required to unlock the Achievement/Trophy Legendary Armaments.
• Platform Hell: Elden Ring's physics and movement systems are not well-tailored to platforming and parkour, to say the least. Regardless, many areas are gated behind a series of precarious jumps across tiny platforms, which doesn't play well with the game's sense of momentum and judgment of what constitutes a lethal drop. Expect the surroundings to be painted with bloodstains in online mode, and expect to get very mad very quickly. The most infamous example is the Frenzied Flame Proscription, which requires you to make a number of near pixel-perfect drops onto very narrow ledges suspended over an enormous pit. It's almost a requirement to play this in offline mode, as the sheer number of player bloodstains (not to mention the darkness of the environment itself) are liable to hide the platforms you need to jump onto.
• Player Headquarters: The Roundtable Hold is this for the Tarnished. It is a hidden headquarters for all Tarnished working under the Two Fingers' command to work toward one of them becoming the next Elden Lord. It acts as a safe haven for the Tarnished as well as several helpful characters and merchants, all of whom can't be attacked due to a pact. In there, one can notably gather helpful information on the whereabouts of the bosses, upgrade their equipment and visit merchants to notably buy boss weapons.
• Playing with Fire: There are actually multiple types of fire abilities:
  • Redmane fire spells are various tools and Ashes of War used by Radahn's troops to fight the Scarlet Rot in Caelid.
  • Fire Giant and Fire Monk incantations take their power from the Fell God of the Giants, and are mostly of the 'toss fire everywhere' variety with a few buffing spells.
  • Multiple Blood Magic incantations actually deal fire damage, as the Formless Mother's blood apparently combusts upon contact with air.
  • Dragon Communion incantations can give the player the ability to use a fiery Breath Weapon.
  • The Frenzied Flame incantations revolve around shooting fire out of the caster's eyes, which also builds up Madness.
• Plot-Triggering Death: The story trailer reveals the Shattering and the ensuing wars were kicked off by the assassination of the demigod Godwyn by unknown assailants.
• Point of No Return: After defeating Maliketh, The Black Blade and completing Crumbling Farum Azula, you will no longer be able to go to Leyndell as it was above-ground, as now it becomes completely covered in ash and turns into another gameplay area entirely with new enemies and treasures. Although there aren't any explicit warnings this is the case, you have a grace period after you start burning the Erdtree but before it has a noticeable impact on the world. Subverted as this only affects the area in question: you are still free to explore the rest of the world which is left as it is, and follow other available questlines — except Corhyn/Goldmask and Shabriri.
• Poison Is Evil: Averted in the case of spirit jellyfish, disembodied souls that tend to hang around the graveyards where their original bodies were interred. They can fire poison at the Tarnished, but they only do so when attacked, as they are normally neutral entities. The Tarnished can also receive the spirit ashes of the spirit jellyfish Aurelia, allowing them to summon a poison-launching ally to the field.
• Polluted Wasteland: Caelid is this, having been devastated by Scarlet Rot because of Malenia releasing the rot during her fight against Radahn. As a result, this area has a number of hazards and enemies which can inflict rot on the player.
• Potion-Brewing Mechanic: The player can apply two effects of their choice to the Flask of Wondrous Physick, with their options increasing as they gather more Crystal Tears. These effects vary, including things like Gradual Regeneration, free spellcasting for a short period, creating a Single-Use Shield, curing all status ailments, and... blowing yourself up.
• Power at a Price:
  • In exchange for the heart of a slain dragon, the player can perform dragon communion to gain dragon-based abilities. After slaying the dragon, an NPC tells the player where and how the heart can be used. However, he warns those who do so will one day shed their humanity and be driven mad by their hunger for the power of the dragons. What exactly this means for the player in the long-term, only time will tell. As for what it means for other people in the setting, the Magma Wyrms and the Dragonkin Soldiers bosses are what happens when people attempt communion or try using dragon scales to become immortal; the former are cursed to never fly and become pale imitations of themselves, and the latter failed in their immortality attempt and the vast majority died as decrepit knockoffs of the dragons.
  • From a story perspective, we see this infatuation with the power of dragons in Godrick the Grafted's opening cutscene and his wish of the dragons to share their power with him, along with his merging with the head of a dragon. Given the joining of the two has a diseased, grotesque look, it's likely the merger of demigod and dragon is more likely to be fatal in the long run.
  • The Scarseal/Soreseal talismans give a +3/+5 increase to four stats (Vigor/Endurance/Strength/Dexterity for Radagon's, Mind/Intelligence/Faith/Arcane for Marika's) in exchange for more damage taken (about 10% depending on which talisman). However, having the equivalent of 12/20 levels of stat increases far outweighs the downside, especially for Radagon's talismans which give defensive stats which counteract this penalty. There is also the Scarab head pieces, the Crimson and Cerulean ones increase the effectiveness of their respective flasks, while the others reduce the FP cost to either sorceries, incantations or weapon skills, all in exchange for increasing damage taken. Finally, there are the Scorpion Charms, which are the equivalent of the Clutch Rings from previous games, boosting the damage you deal with a specific element in exchange for increasing damage taken.
• Power Up Letdown: The Elden Stars incantation requires a hefty 50 Faith to cast, the highest Faith requirement among all equipment in the game. After reaching said huge requirement, you get... a painfully slow to cast, expensive, and pathetically weak shower of light orbs that move slowly and only deal double digits of damage before the final blast, and the final blast itself isn't any stronger than much faster damage options that scale off Faith. This is in contrast to the other equipment with very high stat requirements, such as the Giant-Crusher with its high Strength requirement and Rennala's Full Moon with its incredibly high Intellect requirement, but have the power to back up their hefty conditions. All this is extra painful considering the Elden Beast, the final boss, casts the spell at half health, and it is extremely annoying to deal with, being much more effective than the version you can get is.
  • Compared to the Disc-One Nuke that is Radagon's Soreseal, the magical equivalent that is Marika's Soreseal is much less impressive. Compared to Radagon's Soreseal which can be acquired at the very beginning of the game and boosts multiple physical stats by 5 at the cost of taking more damage, Marika's Soreseal (which is similar to Radagon's Soreseal but increasing magic stats) cannot be gotten until the Haligtree, an endgame Bonus Dungeon. The problem is, by the time you reach said Bonus Dungeon, if you are a magic wielding character, you have likely reached or gotten close to softcaps for your magic stat of choice and you won't need the other magic stats it gives since you don't use them, meaning the Soreseal won't have much use for you to make up for the increased damage taken. Radagon's Soreseal on the other hand is obtainable early enough that it can be an extremely useful boon for most of the game until you start reaching its softcaps. And as a final insult, Radagon's Soreseal actually mitigate's it's own drawback as it increases Vigor, meaning you'll have a bigger healthbar. Marika's Soreseal offers no such reduction of the damage up drawback.
• Pre-Asskicking One-Liner: "I am Malenia, Blade of Miquella. And I have never known defeat."
• Pun: The human caretaker of Jarburg has the title of Potentate (though it's pronounced like "potent"). In real life, the title of Potentate is given to the head of the Shriners, a branch of the Freemasons. Which would make the citizens of Jarburg mason jars.^note Even though actual mason jars are made out of glass, not ceramic like the Living Jars.
• Punny Name: The region of Limgrave. Given how it’s Shardbearer likes to cut off people’s arms and legs for grafting, it’s basically where extremities go to die. It’s a ‘’limb grave’’.

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• Rage Against the Heavens: The narration in the gameplay trailer sets instructs the Tarnished to slay the demigods who let the fractured power of the Elden Ring get to their heads and restore order to the war-torn sacred continent, with the enemies of the Tarnished mocking this idea as impossible.
• Reconstruction: Of the The Time of Myths. Similar to what Bloodborne did for Gothic Horror, Elden Ring harkens back to classical mythology of many different cultures, in particular Greek and Norse mythology, two of the most influential mythological settings. Today, settings inspired by Norse Mythology and Classical Mythology can overly humanize gods and demigods in ways that don't inspire fear or intrigue. Elden Ring brings back that splendor and the horror full-scale. Mighty, human-like but also otherworldly Physical Gods clash with each other and rule over humanity as larger than life overlords, nightmarish monsters ripe with Body Horror and powerful magic tear across the realm preying on the innocent, legendary heroes rise to challenge them both, and epic adventures abound. The world also has some elements of Cosmic Horror Story to it, hearkening back to a time where humanity was afraid of the world and its unknowns.
• Recurring Boss: Distinct from the Degraded Boss enemies that later become Elite Mooks. Most "true" bosses are used multiple times yet maintain a high threat level and seldom respawn. Despite that they're still mostly identical to their earlier variants aside from changed stats and sometimes one or two new moves and a Palette Swap. In fact, there are only eight bosses in the entire game who are never reused: Rennala, Radahn, Rykard, Fire Giant, Placidusax, Radagon, Elden Beast, and Malenia. Some boss types stand out though for frequency:
  • The wyvern-type Dragons vary in size, stats, and palettes, but have pretty much identical moves outside of one or two projectile attacks (e.g. Algheel and Greyll breathe fire, Borealis breathes frost magic, Ekzykes breathes Rot, Smarag and Adula breathe crystals and can shoot small comets). There are six such bosses. In addition, three Lesser Glinstone Dragon minibosses (essentially identical to Smarag) can be found in the Moonlight Altar as well as a lot of Lesser Dragons (identical in appearance and moves to Algheel, except they’re much smaller and can't breathe fire) in Dragonbarrow. Six such Lesser Dragons essentially constitute Elder Greyoll's "boss fight", as she's incapable of fighting you herself.
  • Ditto the Ancient Dragons. There are two truly unique ones: Placidusax and Fortissax. Lansseax (who herself is fought twice) and the four similar Ancient Dragons in Farum Azula all use truncated versions of Fortissax's moveset with one or two new attacks added, meaning you can technically fight that boss seven times.
  • Crucible Knights probably take the cake as the most recurring boss level enemies. Five are encountered in four fights as bosses: twice alone (one just called Crucible Knight, another with the name Crucible Knight Siluria), once as a duo with a Leonine Misbegotten, and once as a duo of two Crucible Knights (a generic Knight and another named one, Crucible Knight Ordovis). Nine others show up around the game as non-respawning minibosses in six separate encounters (three single fights and three duo fights), for a total of fourteen Crucible Knights in ten boss or miniboss fights throughout the game. Aside from differing stats (most of the miniboss versions are actually tougher than most of the boss versions) and sometimes a single incantation being swapped or added, every Crucible Knight is identical to one of two variants (spear or greatsword) in appearance and move set.
  • There are fifteen Crystalians (not counting ones summoned by Spirit-Calling Snails) fought in seven encounters (two singles, two duos, three trios). Eight are considered bosses while seven (a single and two trios) are minibosses, but the minibosses are actually significantly stronger than the boss versions (while otherwise having near-identical moves) because they're all found in Elphael, Brace of the Haligtree. There are three variants of them: spear, staff, and ringblade.
  • Ulcerated Tree Spirits are fought twelve times, four as bosses and eight as minibosses. They have differing stats and some have attacks that inflict Rot, but other than that, all are the same.
  • Death Birds and their souped-up variants, Death Rite Birds, are fought a grand total of eight times across the game.
  • Night's Cavalry are fought nine times, eight single encounters and one duo, for a total of ten of them.
  • Erdtree Avatars (including the Putrid variants) have eleven boss and miniboss fights throughout the game, always solo or with regular mooks.
  • The Red Wolf of Radagon seems like a story boss, but two other near-identical Red Wolves show up throughout the game, one as a boss (renamed Red Wolf of the Champion) and one as a miniboss (the one in the Consecrated Snowfield, who's actually much stronger than either boss version). Additionally, three smaller respawning Red Wolves throughout the game use a stripped-down version of its moveset.
  • Godskin Apostles and Nobles. Each are fought twice on their own and twice as a duo, a total of four encounters with each. The last one, called Godskin Duo, will usually have you killing two of each despite the encounter's name, giving a total of five Apostles and five Nobles killed throughout the game.
  • Tibia Mariners can be encountered four times over the course of the game, three times as a field boss and once as a miniboss. Curiously, the last one lacks the others' ability to summon undead, making it the weakest of the lot.
  • Zig-zagged with the main bosses. Morgott, Mohg, Malekith, Regal Ancestor Spirit, Loretta, and Godfrey are all potentially fought in a weaker state earlier in the game where they have different stats and solely use their first phase's moves. Godrick, Regal Ancestor Spirit, and Fortissax do the same through fights with technically different characters that recycle their first phase's movesets and models (Godefroy, Ancestor Spirit, and Lannseax). But in all cases, the bosses' second phases remain unique to their main fights.
• Recurring Element:
  • It wouldn't be a Hidetaka Miyazaki game without an expy of Guts. In this case, we have Blaidd, a huge werewolf clad in armor wielding a greatsword in one hand, effectively evoking Guts post-Eclipse, though Blaidd is much more affable in terms of personality. Then it turns out all the 'shadows' of the royal family might all be Guts expies, if Maliketh's resemblance to Guts in the Berserker Armor is any indication. There's also the Greatsword, a BFS bearing distinct resemblance to Guts's Dragonslayer which has previously appeared in all four Souls games. This incarnation of it looks even more like the Dragonslayer than ever, and bears Flavor Text evoking lines from the manga.
  • Similarly, it wouldn't be a Soulsborne game if there wasn't at least one poisonous swamp. In this case, there's multiple ones scattered throughout the game, including the Swamp of Aeonia, the Lake of Rot, and a number of smaller unnamed poison swamps scattered throughout the world.
  • Melina is the latest in a long line of Mysterious Waifs who aid your character via leveling and upgrades. Though, unlike past examples who were confined to your Player Headquarters, Melina appears intermittently throughout the world at various key plot points and can even be summoned for one boss fight.
  • To the surprise of absolutely nobody, Patches makes an appearance. Though in a bit of a twist, you antagonize him first (albeit accidentally) by opening up a seemingly random chest which turns out to belong to him and taking his stuff.
  • You're once again invaded by a cannibal woman with a giant knife. Except this one actually wears clothes, unlike her predecessors.
  • Like Sekiro and Bloodborne, Creepy Centipedes make an appearance, except they are golden. You may also notice it's a design motif for the Rune of Death. While in Japan, centipedes are symbols of evil and decay, the golden centipedes are fetishes for the Golden Order.
  • The Moonlight Greatsword returns to wieldable status again after it was unobtainable in Sekiro, though this time under the name of the Dark Moon Greatsword. However, its weapon art is still called "Moonlight Greatsword".
  • Much like Bloodborne, one area requires you to approach a tower while avoiding a malevolent flashing light which inflicts a highly damaging debuff on you if it builds up.
  • Bloody Finger Okina and Bloody Finger Hunter Yura continue the traditions of Eastern warriors in very Western worlds.
  • There's a boss fought in a flower field- in this case, Malenia, Blade of Miquella.
  • Once again, a powerful king married to a tall, blonde queen who is using him as a means to an end wages a genocidal war against a race of giants, leaving one survivor who tears off one of their own limbs to fight the player character.
  • Also, just like in Dark Souls II, the default path of the game ends with the character seated in a throne. Not only that, but both the final boss of Dark Souls II and the first phase of the final boss of Elden Ring are fought on a stone platform surrounded by darkness.
  • The Sealed Tunnel southwest of Leyndell borrows some elements from the Great Hollow, as it requires you to pass through several illusory walls before fighting through a dungeon that requires you to drop down from giant tree roots to progress. No basilisks this time, thankfully.
• Red Mage: A supported build path for the Tarnished. By default, the implement used to cast Sorcery goes in the right hand, while Incantations go in the left. There are a small number of each magic type that require the other's casting stat to use; these are only effective when used by a character who has both, as the spell will be cast via an implement that scales on the standard stat (for example, the Litany of Proper Death requires 17 Intelligence, but is cast via a holy seal that sets Incantation scaling with Faith). Additionally, the Legendary Armament, Sword of Night and Flame, requires a substantial investment in both Faith and Intelligence to wield.
• Red Sky, Take Warning: Caelid has a very prominent red sky, and true to form, you're likely to find the area a massive jump in difficulty if you're wandering in from Limgrave.
• Religion of Evil:
  • The Frenzied Flame is essentially Fantasy Hollywood Satanism, as the Frenzied Flame is presented as the Evil Counterpart of the Greater Will, having an envoy called the Three Fingers as opposed to the Two Fingers, having its own Finger Maiden (Hyetta), and seeking a Lord of Chaos to channel its power through in order to burn everything. Adherents include people who've crossed the Despair Event Horizon and those who've been driven insane by Frenzy. The Frenzied Flame's prophet Shabriri even has a moment where he tempts you to abandon your quest to become Elden Lord in favor of becoming the Lord of Chaos in order to save your companion Melina.
  • Rot Cultists worship the Scarlet Rot, a singularly nasty pathogen that attacks both the mind and body, killing people if they're lucky and mutating them into monsters with no trace of the human they were if they aren't. They worship the demigod Malenia by spreading Scarlet Rot- entirely against Malenia's will, mind you, as she was born with Scarlet Rot and has fought it all her life.
  • While most cults of Destined Death are morally neutral, the Godskin Cult goes all-in with evil. Their whole religion is based on hunting gods and demigods, killing them, and then turning their skins into clothing.
  • The Bloody Fingers are a cult of the Formless Mother whose religious doctrine revolves around invading and killing as many people as possible.
  • While the Volcano Manor initially appears to be a secular Murder, Inc. organization, it's actually a cult of Rykard, Lord of Blasphemy, following his lead in acting against the Erdtree faith. A few item descriptions note that it's actually the result of Rykard rediscovering an ancient cult of the God-Devouring Serpent, the particulars of which are unknown but involved human sacrifice.
  • Normal dragon worship in this setting is morally fine (and is compatible with the Erdtree faith), but the related practice of Dragon Communion is fully this trope. Dragon Communion is a religion of worshiping dragons by hunting them and eating their hearts to gain power, with the risk of going insane and mutating into a Magma Wyrm. Notably, the dragons themselves hate the practice, and Ezykes is known as the "Dragon Communion Revenger" because he hunts down those who partake in it.
• Revenant Zombie: Tarnished are an unusual variant of this: they were revived by Grace (the blessing of the Erdtree), which they had previously lost, in the wake of the Shattering, with the apparent mission of mending the Elden Ring and becoming Elden Lord. However, they're not compelled or forced to actually pursue this goal; indeed, the overwhelming majority either don't bother, or give up in favour of living more 'normal' unlives. Moreover, all Tarnished can supposedly see the Guidance of Grace when first resurrected, but it disappears if becoming Elden Lord ceases to be a possible destiny for them. That said, not pursuing the Elden Ring has no effect on a Tarnished's continued existence or mental state.
• Revive Kills Zombie: Wraith Callers and Revenants take massive damage from any AoE healing spell, with the latter also becoming instantly staggered allowing for a Critical Hit.
• Rewatch Bonus: The opening cinematic audaciously spoils a massive plot twist, but none of the visuals make sense unless you know the context behind them. Specifically, the very first shot shows it was Queen Marika herself who shattered the Elden Ring, while the second shot shows Radagon trying to repair it.
• Riddle for the Ages: Despite being significantly more clear in its lore and plot than its spiritual predecessors, there are still key elements that are left as complete mysteries:
  • One of the biggest questions, even prior to the game releasing, was 'who or what shattered the Elden Ring, and why?' While you do find out the 'who', Queen Marika, it's never explicitly stated why she did it. Several potential motivations are left open, but none are confirmed explicitly; it could be anything to grief from losing Godwyn, a desire to destroy the Golden Order she herself created, to spite the Greater Will, or all or none of the above.
  • Melina's mother's identity is never revealed explicitly, despite being a core part of her motivation to travel with the Tarnished: the most popular theory is that she's Marika's daughter, as she remembers having her purpose given to her 'by [her] mother, inside the Erdtree', and the only person to fit that description that we know of would be Marika herself, and Melina's reddish hair and naming scheme would make her an offspring of Marika and Radagon, like Miquella and Malenia; however, Melina herself never acknowledges Queen Marika as her mother, calling her by title and name, indicating that the two are completely separate. What throws an even bigger wrench is Melina's connection with Destined Death as seen in the Lord of Frenzied Flame ending, making her at least ambiguously related with the Dusk-Eyed Queen, an ancient Empyrean that held the power of Death.
  • While the Grace of Gold is described explicitly as the blessing of the Erdtree to its followers, where the 'Guidance of Grace' of the Tarnished comes from is never explained. Through its association with gold and powers of revival, and thus life, it's implied that it comes from either the Greater Will or Marika herself; however, Marika is imprisoned within the Erdtree and is completely unconscious, if she's even properly 'alive' when we meet her — this should leave the Greater Will as the obvious solution… except it's mighty weird that the Greater Will would indicate the path to burn the Erdtree.
  • Speaking of, the motivation why the Erdtree has closed its way to anyone seeking to repair the Ring or become Elden Lord is unknown — while it's highly implied this was done by Radagon and the Elden Beast, or the Elden Beast-as-Radagon, the reason for the seal is never explained other than it being a sign of the land being forsaken; in fact, it takes the Two Fingers, emissaries of the Greater Will itself, completely by surprise and they try to establish connection to their god to get answers — which would take thousands of moons that the Tarnished can't afford. Does the Greater Will refuse to have any more Elden Lords, and the Elden Beast is acting out its will? Is the Elden Beast doing what it simply thinks the Greater Will wants, but is disconnected to it like the Two Fingers are? Has the Elden Beast gone rogue and is simply trying to hold control of the world, everything else be damned? It's left to the players to interpret.
  • On a less main story related note, it's never explained what the hell those utterly titanic skeletons seen in Caelid and the Mountaintops of the Giants are or what beings they belonged to - judging from the remains alone, they would have dwarfed every single living being in the game, from the Fire Giants to the Ancient Dragons, effectively being as big as mountains. Zero mention of them is made in any dialogue or in any item description, they're just... there.
  • What is the deal with the Oracle Envoys, and what's under their head wrappings? Their AI is named MoonServant which might indicate a connection to the Moons, and their oracle bubbles imply a connection to the Claymen, but even in universe no one has the answer.
  • Some of the ruins in the game, like the Uhl Palace Ruins, the Grand Cloister, the Mohgwyn Dynasty Mausoleum, and those steles you light to summon the Ancestor Spirits, all clearly belong to the same civilization, called the Ancient Dynasty in a few item descriptions. This civilization had its own distinct architecture with a stylistic shift that shows it was around for a long time, and the scattered nature of the surviving ruins shows it must have controlled a lot of territory at its peak. And yet the game says basically nothing about it, save that it existed and the Claymen search for its oracles in their bubbles. Most interestingly, all of these sites have large examples of identical statues: a bearded, robed man, carrying a tablet and with another tablet (which, if you look closely enough, is actually the Babylonian Map of the World) at his feet. This man was clearly an important figure, and probably central to their religion, but the game contains no hint as to his identity.
• Ruins for Ruins' Sake: Averted. Every ruin in the game has its story, and most of them can be explained by the Shattering having laid waste to the land. Although the player can sometimes encounter chunks of large buildings inexplicably laying in the middle of the countryside, it is eventually revealed these ruins are chunks of Farum Azula, a floating castle hidden above the clouds.

S

• Sacred Flames: Zig-zagged. Many incantations produce bright red flames originating from the god of Fire Giants, who was a keeper of their civilization before the age of the Erdtree. Because these beliefs are persecuted by the Golden Order, these holy flames are now seen as dangerous or outright blasphemous Hellfire.
• Scenery Gorn:
  • Caelid is maybe the most exquisite demonstration of this in Soulsborne history, looking like a cross between a Hieronymus Bosch painting and a World War I battlefield, with tons of horrific Alien Kudzu thrown in for good measure.
  • Mount Gelmir is almost as bad, being a barren wasteland of jagged volcanic rock littered with ruined fortifications and dead bodies.
  • Farum Azula is a rickety, broken ruin of what must once have been a masterwork of engineering. Several stretches require precise platforming to cross the tattered remnants of its streets and alleys.
• Scenery Porn: Though ruined and desecrated by unending war between demigods, the Lands Between are very beautiful (with the exception of Caelid). Whether it's the rolling plains of Limgrave, the massive lakebed of Liurnia, the perpetually twilit Siofra River, or the unbelievable scale and opulence of Leyndell, Fromsoft really spared no expense in making the environmental design every bit as immaculate as they could. The first entry point to any major area often puts you at a Video Game Vista to marvel at the scenery that stretches all the way into the horizon.
• Schmuck Bait:
  • Some of the chests in the world are teleport traps. One particular example is the trap leading to Caelid, which would ideally be the third area which should be encountered before anything else.
  • It's not unusual to find a valuable-looking item in plain sight, only to get ambushed as you run in to grab it.
  • One possible starting gift is two Stonesword Keys, which are the game's equivalent to Pharros Lockstones from Dark Souls II. Immediately out of the tutorial, there is a fog wall which requires two Stonesword Keys to dispel. What lies beyond is a very difficult dungeon which starts with a sprint across a large poison pool and only gets worse from there.
  • After you emerge from the tutorial level and see sunlight for the first time, one of the first things you'll see is a large mounted enemy. It's the Tree Sentinel, and he'll serve as a rough lesson to not blindly fight anyone who crosses your path.
  • One of the Crystal Tears you can mix into the Flask of Wonderous Physick says it just causes your character to explode. And yes, that's exactly what it does, although the explosion at least hurts the enemies more than it hurts you.
  • In several areas, you will find a lone enemy just standing around, usually a weak enemy like a Noble, only for it to transform into something much more powerful like a Runebear or Troll upon killing it. Liurnia has a Giant Lobster which transforms into a Grafted Scion upon its death.
  • Caelid is this, being that, unlike the rest of the map beyond Limgrave, is completely open to you the second you step out of the Tutorial. New players going in blind assume heading east of Limgrave is the direct progression before facing Godrick, only to find themselves in the Hellscape that is Caelid, full of enemies much tougher than nearly everything they have encountered yet, most of which spew a status effect that you have no reliable way to treat. This is mitigated by the fact that if you are careful and know where you are going, you can gain some pretty reasonably powerful items practically right out the gate by heading to Caelid as soon as you have Torrent.
• Screw Yourself: Radagon and Marika have children — the twin demigods Malenia and Miquella. This trope becomes a possibility when you discover that Radagon and Marika are one and the same.
• Sealed Evil in a Can:
  • Around the world the Tarnished can come across concave stone platforms whose centers are inscribed with a glowing seal and are surrounded by ominous stone worms. These 'Evergaols' each allow the Tarnished to initiate a boss fight against their particular prisoner who will drop a unique piece of loot.
  • The Three Fingers is implied to be this, considering it's stuck in the deepest depths of the Leyndell sewers where all abominations against the Golden Order are shoved, gated behind a dungeon full of monsters that will give you a hard time even at high levels, a winding pipe maze, a boss fight, a secret wall, a mass grave of genocide victims (some of whom still live to fight you), and a ridiculously precise platforming puzzle. If you make it through the gauntlet and open the door to it, you're automatically locked into its apocalyptic ending (which can only be escaped through an even more intricate and difficult series of actions spanning the entire world map).
  • The Lake of Rot under Liurnia is said to be this, as it apparently has the very essence of the outer God of the Scarlet Rot sealed in it.
• The Secret of Long Pork Pies: The Raw Meat Dumpling is a consumable item which heals you but also poisons you at the same time. Its description advises you to not ask questions about where the meat came from, though it's not hard to figure out. The dumplings are dropped by Living Jars, which the game makes clear are brought to life by stuffing them full of human corpses.
• Self-Parody: The first non-game piece of media in the IP, Road to the Erdtree, is a comedy manga that spoofs Elden Ring and RPG tropes in general.
• Sequence Breaking: Despite the vast open-world nature of the game, there are a few explicit sequences which can't be bypassed under normal circumstances. There are a few major sequence breaks which when combined can allow speed runners to complete the game in under 40 minutes:
  • The Grand Lift of Dectus is the first hard roadblock to getting to Atlus Plateau, requiring the player to either collect two halves of a medallion in remote forts, or going through a long dungeon. There is a hidden third option: in the Academy of Raya Lucaria, getting killed by the Abductor Virgin at the bottom of the lift transports you Volcano Manor, adjacent to Atlus Plateau and allowing early access to excellent loot.
  • One of the warps at The Four Belfries takes you to an isolated part of the late-game dungeon Crumbling Farum Azula. However, it's possible to wrong warp from there so you appear at the intended start of the dungeon instead, allowing you to complete it normally and trigger the endgame.
  • After that, it's possible in Leyndell, Ashen Capital to skip the Gideon and Godfrey boss fights through clever jumping abuse.
  • You can get into Leyndell without two Great Runes by using a teleporter chest in the Weeping Peninsula that takes you to a small section of Leyndell. Normally, you are limited to this one section, since the elevator connecting it to the rest of Leyndell is stuck at the bottom, and you're all the way at the top. However, you can negate the fall damage by blowing yourself up with the Rupturing Crystal Tear at a very precise point in the fall. Or you could use the Taunter's Tongue and hope an invader spawns at the bottom of the elevator and has to ride it up to get to you, activating it permanently.
  • In an earlier version of the game, it was possible to access the Consecrated Snowfield, the game's Brutal Bonus Level, without going through the somewhat challenging ordeal of obtaining the two halves of the Haligtree Medallion normally necessary to get in. You could skip this with death-warp abuse; by jumping off of a cliff in the Mountaintops of the Giants above the Snowfield, you could die in range of a Stake of Marika in the Snowfield, giving you the option to respawn right "back" in, at which point it was just a matter of making a mad dash for a Grace before one of the endgame enemies took you out. This skip has since been patched out, however. In fact, it's been "patched out" multiple times, but dedicated players keep finding ways around it.
  • Similarly, it's possible to climb the cliffs near the Coverted Tower so that you are in range of a Stake of Marika up on the Moonlight Altar, at which point you can simply Bloody Slash yourself to death and warp up there without needing to do Ranni's questline. You can even immediately finish Ranni's questline despite potentially not even having started it yet and having none of the required key items, since the developers clearly didn't expect anyone to be able to get up there otherwise so they didn't bother to put the last part behind an event flag. Unlike the above, this skip has never been patched, so if you want the Dark Moon Greatsword at the very beginning of the game, there you go.
• Serial Escalation: You begin the game fighting a single one of Godrick's soldiers as the first boss. Then, you fight mounted enemies in open combat, entire contingents of the Lordsworn, zombified giants, feral animals, monstrously powerful knights, and just keep scaling up and up until you're fighting mythological creatures, warrior-gods, avatars of the forces of nature, the setting's equivalent of Satan (two of them if you consider both Rykard and Mohg as contenders), the god of dragons, and finally the physical manifestation of the natural order of the world.
• Sequential Boss:
  • Several Dual Boss fights across the game have an element of this trope — rather than sic both bosses on you at the same time, you first only have to contend with one of them, and the second enemy appears after you've reduced the first to half health. If you can blitz down the first enemy quickly enough, you won't have to worry about managing both enemies at once.
  • The final boss of the game, like Scholar of the First Sin before it, has two characters, one per phase. The first is Radagon of the Golden Order, or at least what's left of him after the Elden Ring was shattered. Once defeated, the Eldritch Abomination Elden Beast arrives for the grand finale.
• Shed Armor, Gain Speed: Going with a light equip load means you have to work within a quarter of your total equip load. Depending on the weapons you're holding, this leaves you room for very light armor (or no armor at all). The boon from this, however, is a dodge roll that covers a lot of ground that can get you out of danger unscathed, and the bonus roll distance has been significantly increased from the 1.06 patch.
• Shout-Out:
  • Continuing the trend of FromSoftware making Berserk references in their games, the Greatsword is designed to closely resemble Guts' Dragonslayer and its description refers to it being a "coarse iron lump" which requires superhuman strength and skill to properly wield and states it is used to slaughter inhuman foes. What should be noted is the Greatsword was redesigned to be an even more blatant reference as a tribute to Miura's passing.
  • Blaidd is another reference to Berserk, being a strong and agile greatsword-wielding wolf-man afflicted with a curse and associated with a diminutive witch in an oversized hat, and when first encountered is perched on a tower striking the Berserker Armor-possessed Guts' signature pose.
  • An obscure historical reference can be found on the shore of the Weeping Peninsula. Exploring the beach players will eventually come across a corpse wearing regal clothing and sitting in a throne, a reference to the legend of King Canut commanding the tide to recede.
  • The description for Blaidd's armor says "The pelt serves as a cape, protecting from cold. Blaidd was the blade of Ranni, but the cold bothered him anyway."
  • The area at the end of Ainsel River where you fight the Baleful Shadow of Blaidd and access the Lake of Rot looks a lot like the painting Pandemonium by John Martin.
  • The starting "Numen" race option is likely a reference to The Silmarillion, where the first Men were from a land called Númenor. The reference is even stronger with the description of the Numen being said to be descended from people from another world.
  • The script on the Cipher Pata and the cipher rings have more than a passing resemblance to the elvish writing on The One Ring from The Lord of the Rings.
  • Morgott burning his wooden cane away to reveal his sword hidden inside is similar to how Yamamoto reveals his Zanpakuto.
  • The name of the mistress of the Volcano Manor, Lady Tanith, seems to be a reference to British fantasy writer Tanith Lee, while her daughter Zorayas shares her name with an antagonist from the author's Tales from the Flat Earth series.
  • Sage Gowry's sidequest is a Whole-Plot Reference to the poem The Insect-God by Edward Gorey (note that "Gorey" and "Gowry" would be transliterated/pronounced identically in Japanese). Millicent's name, the theme of giant anthropomorphic insects, and a focus on grotesque-yet-beautiful transformation are all drawn from the poem.
  • The temple in which Maliketh is fought looks very similar to Pieter Bruegel the Elder's famous painting of the Tower of Babel.
  • The Japanese name for the Soldjars of Fortune (特攻野郎 = "kamikaze attack bastards") is the same as the Japanese name of The A-Team (特攻野郎Aチーム = ). Calling them soldiers of fortune (a title often applied to the A-Team in their own show) was probably the localization team trying to keep the silly tone of the name while preserving an otherwise incomprehensible reference. Special mention to the French localization, which not only managed to keep the reference intact^note naming them "Faïence à tous risques"/"The All-Risk Pottery", based on the show's French name The All-Risk Agency but changed their quote to "I love it when a plan falls to pieces."
  • There are a couple of locations in the map where you can find a treasure chest shaped exactly like the ones from the first and third Dark Souls. Perhaps the location you'd most likely find by chance would be the Perfumer's Ruins on Altus Plateau. Of course, the chain is coiled, so you know they're not trapped, or a mimic.
  • Gideon and the Frenzied are inspired by characters and monsters from Steve Jackson's Sorcery! — Gideon strikes the same pose as the Sightmaster Sergeant when challenging the Tarnished, and the Flame of Frenzy was originally called "the Curse of Red Eyes" — paralleling the "Red Eyes of Kharé", which are said to shoot beams of flames from their eyes.
  • The Grafted Blade Greatsword looks like the Iron Throne if you could swing it. Of course, considering how George R. R. Martin was a contributor, this is no surprise.
  • Radahn bears a striking resemblance to Raoh from Fist of the North Star, being an inhumanly large and muscular horseman wearing a golden helmet adorned with upturned horns. What makes this amusing is that while Raoh's steed, Kokuoh was a monstrously huge, mutant draft horse who was large even in comparison to a giant of a man like Raoh, Radahn's horse, Leonard is... not.
  • Malenia's second signature move, Scarlet Aeonia, heavily resembles the Ciel System from Mega Man Zero and Mega Man ZX. Likewise, the flower that blooms following her defeat also matches the Ciel System in design, just with scarlet-hued petals.
• Siege Engines: It isn't suprising considering the massive Civil War that's going on in the Lands Between, but there's a huge variety of these. They can be found broken amongst the ruins of old battles, clearly having failed at breaching their targets but some are still fully operatable and used by the remaining Lordsworn to defend fortifications against the player and enemies. On the mundane side, the most common are the small Scorpio emplacements that fire Ballista bolts, and then become dramatically bigger with the Mangonel catapults, and then the utterly gargantuan Trebuchets which fire large pieces of strewn ruined walls. On the weird side are the Flame Chariots, mobile siege engines are built in the shape of a fire giant's head, and deliver giant bursts of fire. The Redmanes in particular use a lot of these in their eternal war against the Scarlet Rot.
• Simple, yet Awesome:
  • The lantern is a waist-mounted light that provides a smaller radius of illumination than a torch but has the benefit of keeping both your hands free. The sooner you find it, the easier it is to explore the game's numerous caves or travel at night.
  • The Square Off skill which comes with most straight swords by default. You essentially just assume a stance and can do one of two different strong attacks. Both variations do a good amount of damage and are very potent at breaking enemy posture, able to instantly break enemy guards or even stagger bosses in two to three good hits. On top of that it costs very little FP, meaning you can get a good amount of uses even without upgrading your Mind stat. The default Katana skill, Unsheathe, functions similarly but has less guard-breaking potential.
• Slave Race: Item descriptions describe the Trolls of the Lands Between are frequently enslaved by the lands' inhabitants, and are even used in lieu of beasts of burden, pulling the carriages across the roads. Same can be said about the Misbegotten, winged creatures who managed to stage a bloody slave rebellion in Castle Morne, and who the blacksmith Master Hewg is of kin.
• Sleepy Enemy: Most low-level enemies (from wolves to the Misbegotten) have a resting animation cycle and are often found sleeping in the overworld. This lets you sneak past them much easier than around roaming enemies, and was reportedly part of a cut questline that focused on sneakily stealing various sleeping creatures' dreams.
• The Slow Walk: The penalty for being overencumbered is the inability to dodge roll, run, or jump. Your walking speed is also painfully slow. If you're wearing incredibly heavy armor with the poise to make you Immune to Flinching from most weak attacks, you can achieve this trope.
• Soiled City on a Hill: Leyndell is the impossibly huge and opulent capital of Marika's empire, and seemingly one of the only places left mostly intact by the Shattering, but it hides some seriously dark secrets. Not only are the sewers crawling with discarded Omen children whom the populace above had no desire to deal with, but buried deep beneath its surface are the Three Fingers, herald of the Frenzied Flame. In addition, the Loathsome Dung Eater still stalks the streets, leaving defiled corpses in his wake, even in the high class areas of the city. During the game's final act, the ashes from the burning Erdtree almost completely bury the city, leaving very few places to explore and only a handful of avoidable boss-tier enemies to fight aside from the concluding Boss Bonanza.
• Space Compression: The different regions the game are treated as almost distinct nations ruled by different demigods, but from the gameplay perspective they're just neighbourhoods a few minutes ride from one another. This is especially notable with Leyndell that appears enormous with its grandiose architecture and acted as the capital of Marika's world-spanning empire, but can actually be crossed in mere minutes by foot. The entire map is only 80 square kilometers. For what it's worth, an in-game day is also only equal to 30 minutes in real life, which if you're taking at face value in regards to how long it takes to cross the map (i.e. distances are 1/48 what they are in "reality"), would imply the Lands Between are about the size of Britain or Honshu.
• Special Ability Shield:
  • The Jellyfish Shield can increase the player's attack.
  • The Pillory Shield prevents one-hit kills to the player.
  • The Perfumer Shield offers immunity to poison.
  • The Coil Shield is in fact a coiled snake that can bite enemies and poison them.
  • The Icon Shield slowly restores hit points passively.
  • The Visage and One-Eyed Shields are two fire-breathing shields.
  • The Erdtree Greatshield absorbs ranged spells and fires off a bolt in retaliation, if its skill is active.
• Spell Blade:
  • Many weapons have Affinity damage built in. A few even deal exclusively Affinity damage and no physical, meaning that they ignore shields.
  • One of the Ashes of War skills is Carian Greatsword, which lets the Tarnished wreathe their sword in mystical energy, and charge it to create a glowing blue BFS far larger than they are tall. Carian Grandeur is a more powerful version that can be charged even longer to make an even bigger BFS.
  • The player's Holy Seal (item used for casting Incantations) defaults to the left hand because several Incantations will add Affinity damage to the right hand weapon. This doesn't work on weapons that already deal Affinity damage.
  • Grease items are consumables that can create this effect, with the same limitations as above.
• Spiritual Successor: As mentioned before, it is one of Dark Souls, as it had done to Demon's Souls before. It shares much of its gameplay, its classification of weaponry and spells, and even its stats. What makes it different is the new setting and being a true open-world, as well as further evolving said gameplay to accommodate.
• Spoiler Opening: The images shown in the game's introductive cutscene spoil and hint at several things in the story that only players who played through the game would understand, in no particular order: It reveals that Marika shattered the Elden Ring, that Marika has an alternate male body, Rykard being devoured by the God-Eating Serpent, that "Margit" fought in the Shattering, shows Mohg kidnapping Miquella, and that Hoarah Loux is the original identity of Godfrey.
• Starfish Aliens: The Malformed Stars and Fallingstar Beasts are bizarre creatures from outer space who resemble, respectively, enormous scorpions with dragonfly-esque wings and human heads and hands; and large bulls made of rock who have large scorpion-like tails and mandibles like a beetle.
• Starfish Language: The Two Fingers communicate through what is implied to be some strange form of divine sign language. The minute twitches and shudders of their fingers are interpreted by the Finger Readers, who are able to read their motions. The silent prophet Goldmask is implied to communicate in the same way.
• Stat Sticks: Wouldn't be a Souls game without 'em.
  • The Great Turtle Shell is the latest incarnation of the ever-popular Grass Crest Shield, increasing stamina regeneration rate. As its name implies, it's literally just a man-sized turtle shell, so it's practically designed to be stuck to your back all the time.
  • The Icon Shield is the latest incarnation of the Adjudicator's Shield/Ancient Dragon Greatshield, providing a small amount of HP regen.
  • Most spellcasting tools give a 20% boost to a specific type of spell (eg. the Dragon Communion Seal boosts Dragon Communion incantations). However, you don't need to cast the spell with that tool. You can simply hold it in one hand for the bonus and cast the spell with a numerically stronger tool in your other hand for even more damage.
• Storm of Blades: One of the Ash of War skills is Glintsword Phalanx, which conjures a Homing-Soulmass-like sorcery in the shape of four small blades. There are sorcery variations that can create a larger array of blades, or fewer giant ones.
• Storming the Castle: Stormveil Castle has two options: go head-on through the gates (which isn't advised by the gatekeeper, since it's heavily guarded), or go in through a side entrance. Outside of Stormveil, the number of castles, keeps, and forts you can find throughout The Lands Between gives you a great number of them to storm.
• Story Breadcrumbs: Very little is told upfront of the background of The Lands Between. You'll need to look over numerous item descriptions and listen in to a lot of potentially missable dialogue to be able to piece together everything surrounding the Shattering and beyond.
  • For example, ever wonder why the Demihumans hate you so much? Hunt around, and you'll find a ghost who says that the demihumans "wax wroth, now that their mother has been taken." He'll also mention a knight "bedeviled by blood." Inside Fort Haight there is a scenery item of a tortured and killed Demihuman Queen, and the fort has been taken over by a mini-boss Godrick Knight. This knight is surrounded by Bloodroses and uses the Bloody Slash Ash of War, both associated with the Lord of Blood. In conclusion? Mohg did it. He corrupted the knight and granted him the Bloody Slash, and had the knight kidnap and torture a Demihuman Queen to stoke the Demihumans' anger and weaken the Weeping Peninsula with a civil war.
• Sufficiently Analyzed Magic:
  • The Glintstone Academy is a direct example of this — an organization dedicated to scientific study of Magic Meteors and utilizing their power as magic.
  • Golden Order Fundementalism studies the Runes forming the natural order of the Lands Between, with applications from healing spells to Hard Light weapons.
• Suicidal Overconfidence: Unarmed commoners are basically the one type of enemy in the entire game that won't relentlessly attack the Tarnished the moment they're detected.
• Super Drowning Skills: Sufficiently deep bodies of water are functionally just Bottomless Pits with a water texture draped over them. Try not to walk into them by accident while wading through much shallower pools.
• Super Special Move: Several of the bosses have a limited-use super move that they're scripted to do only once or twice throughout their fights, often marking their phase transition. The most notable are probably Mohg's Bloodboon Ritual ("NIHIL!"), Radahn's meteor strike, and Placidusax's Ruin. Subverted with Malenia's Signature Move, Waterfowl Dance, and her second phase's Scarlet Aeonia spell. While both have scripted uses (she'll use her first Waterfowl Dance when she gets to 80% HP, and she opens Phase 2 with Scarlet Aeonia) and are definitely her flashiest and most powerful moves, they aren't limited use. She can trigger either attack whenever she pleases and never runs out of uses; She might Waterfowl Dance more than she does her regular strikes if the AI decides that it hates you.
• Supernatural Repellent: There is a torch in Caelid which is coated in a scented oil which repels beast-type enemies. Be warned, this doesn't work with every beast enemy (for example, it does not affect the runebears).
• Sword Beam:
  • "Storm Blade" and "Vacuum Slice" are skills which let the weapon they're equipped to fire projectiles of Razor Wind.
  • The "Sacred Blade" Ash of War allows the user to fire a golden wave of energy in a slashing motion of their blade.
  • Both the Moonveil and the Dark Moon Greatsword can fire waves of light if their respective unique skills are used.
  • "Reduvia Blood Blade" is a skill unique to the Reduvia Dagger, which fires crimson lacerating projectiles from the knife's edge which builds up the Hemorrhage status effect.
  • "Blade of Gold", a skill unique to the Blade of Calling, charges the dagger with golden flames which are then shot as a single, blade-like projectile. "Blade of Death" from the Black Knife is a variation that inflicts a max health debuff and percentile damage-over-time.
  • "Wave of Destruction", the unique skill of the Ruins Greatsword, launches a massive, powerful blast of gravitational energy from the blade.
  • When fully charged, the unique skill of Siluria's Tree, "Siluria's Woe", fires a very powerful projectile of Holy energy instead of the normal tornado stomp. It even pierces through multiple foes.
  • The Blasphemous Sword's unique skill, "Taker's Flames", launches a trail of fire in front of you. This skill has the added effect of recovering a fair amount of your HP if you hit an enemy with it.
  • The "Black Blade" incantation creates an illusory Black Blade and swings it around, firing a vertical black projectile. A follow-up input adds another obliquely-angled projectile. Both inflict max health debuffs and percentile damage-over-time.
  • "Wave of Gold" from the Sacred Relic Sword unleashes a long-reaching and widening arc of holy energy.
• Sword Drag: Mounted enemies can set their weapon to the side with the intent to hit, often resulting with the Tarnished launched up into the air, with the weapon potentially dragging across the ground as well. Naturally, the Tarnished can do the same in return.

T

• Take a Third Option:
  • During Preceptor Seluvis's sidequest, you are prompted to either give his potion to Nepheli as he requests or give it to Gideon for disposal due to its suspicious nature. There is, however, another option the game doesn't hint at: you can give the potion to the Dung Eater's physical form, which also unlocks unique Ashes!
  • Shabriri would like you to think there are only two options to bypass the Erdtree's thorns, neither of which are good: Melina sacrificing herself, or you inheriting the Frenzied Flame, doing the deed yourself, and subsequently burning everything. There is, however, a third option for those willing to work for it: Complete Millicent's quest without betraying her, which will earn you the Unalloyed Gold Needle, and defeat Malenia. This unlocks the option to give Malenia the Unalloyed Gold Needle, which will in turn net you Miquella's Needle. Using Miquella's Needle in Placidusax's arena will purge the Frenzied Flame from you, allowing you to access the other endings.
• Take Your Time: Story events and quests only advance with the progress your character makes, the dialogues they activate and the zones they reach, not the in-game flow of time. This is particularly egregious in one scenario at the tail-end of the game: After unleashing the Rune of Death and burning the path to the Erdtree, Godfrey, First Elden Lord, will already be right at the Elden Throne before you - but will never actually enter the Erdtree despite it being a few meters away and it being his express purpose. While he was likely distracted by Morgott's body the first time around, as he's shown cradling it in the cutscene, he'll still wait around for you in the boss arena even should you die and come back several in-game hours later until you eventually kill him.
• Technicolor Fire: In addition to the regular kind of fire, the Lands Between have a few unusual kinds, including god-slaying black fire used by the Godskins, blood-red bloodflames which cause bleeding, freezing white spiritflames, and sleep-inducing purple fire from St. Trina's Torch.
  • While it isn't a particularly unusual color for fire, the madness-inducing Frenzied Flame is a very unnatural hue of yellow that abruptly fades to a maroon-purplish color at its outer edges and doesn't so much flicker as it seems to just melt away as it fades.
• The Time of Myths: The primary setting this time around, taking lots of inspiration from Norse, Greek, and Christian mythologies as well as Arthurian legend.
• This Is Unforgivable!: Rykhard's blasphemy against the Erdtree makes him "an enemy who can never be forgiven." In fact, the Minor Erdtree of Mount Glemnir is dead, and its avatar replaced by an Ulcertated Tree Spirit, representing just how done the Greater Will is with him.
• Tiny-Headed Behemoth: Godrick the Grafted, a multi-armed demigod, is nearly three times the height of the Tarnished and is incredibly wide as well, although his head appears to be normal human-sized. As seen after he's defeated, he used to be completely normal-sized but has just grafted so many body parts onto himself he became the giant he is now.
• Too Awesome to Use:
  • Black-Key Bolts are crossbow bolts which can inflict scarlet rot, but they're not craftable or purchasable and you can only find a limited number of them in a single playthrough. You're better off using the craftable but slightly weaker Rotbone Bolts.
  • Any craftable item which uses a "rare" ingredient that does not respawn after you pick it up. While there are enemies which drop these ingredients so you can still replenish your supply after exhausting all of the naturally occuring ones, they are almost never enemies that anyone in their right mind would want to fight repeatedly. Note that Aeonian Butterflies are one such ingredient and are needed to craft the above-mentioned Rotbone Bolts (and most other scarlet-rot-related items). Despite them being the "replenishable" alternative to Black-Key Bolts, Rotbone Bolts may themselves eventually become this trope for you as well. Unless farming Basilisks in the Lake of Rot somehow sounds appealing to you.
  • Your Great Runes can empower you through use of a Rune Arc, and the boost lasts until your next death. While you can find a fair number of this item throughout your journey, it's often found in hidden corners of the map, purchased from merchants at a steep price, or earned through multiplayer. You'd end up saving the Rune Arcs for a boss fight, but if the boss proves to be difficult despite the Rune Arc's power, it can chew through your supply and you have no convenient way to replenish it. However, you can farm a decent amount rather quickly if you help others with boss fights and can consistently kill the boss. They can also be dropped very rarely from rats.
  • Larval Tears, which are required each time you want to respec your character, are finite and cannot be farmed as a repeatable drop. As a result, players are more hesitant to experiment with new character builds unless they're really, really sure they are good. Fortunately, the game gives over 15 of them per playthrough and any unused ones can be carried into New Game Plus, which is far more generous than the previous game's hard cap of 5 rebirths per playthrough (which also included changing your character's appearance, while in this game it does not).
  • In each Journey, there are only 13 Ancient Dragon Smithing Stones, and eight of its Somber variant, the final material to max out a weapon's upgrades. Hence, there are only so many weapons that can get maxed out before one needs to start a new journey. The same goes to Great Grave Gloveworts and Great Ghost Gloveworts, where there are only eight and four of these per journey respectively.
• Top God: In a land full of demigods, Queen Marika serves as the ruler over all of them. Yet even she is second in power to the Greater Will, which seems to be more abstract than all the Physical Gods in the land.
• Thunderbolt Iron: There are several weapons forged from Magic Meteors — the Meteoric Ore Blade katana, the Onyx and Alabaster Lords' swords, and the Meteorite Staff. The swords have innate magical damage and gravity ashes of war, and the staff buffs gravity sorceries.
• Token Heroic Orc: Counselor Iji is a friendly troll blacksmith of comparable skill to Hewg. He plays a significant part of Ranni's quest line, and seems to have been part of her household since she was a child.
• Trailers Always Spoil:
  • It's only really noticeable after completing the game, but the announcement trailer shows Radagon and Marika shifting between each other's forms.
  • The gameplay reveal shows the Three Fingers embracing the Tarnished and part of the Fire Giant's transformation.
  • The "Rise, Tarnished" trailer shows, among other things, the Tarnished burning themselves in the Forge of the Giants for the Frenzied Flame quest, Queen Marika crucified on the Elden Ring, part of the Age of the Stars ending, and the solution for getting past the lava in Gelmir Hero's Grave.
• Transformation Is a Free Action: Played with. In some fights, your character will politely wait for the weakened boss to transform instead of just attacking. Some bosses transform with an area denial attack, forcing you away, but can still be hurt if you're committed. And some will spend enough time transforming that it's possible to deal enough damage to skip the cutscene and second phase.
• Tree Top Town: Miquella's Haligtree is this in Elden Ring. Upon arrival, the Tarnished finds themselves on the canopy of a great branching tree and must navigate down narrow branches and some platforms built into it, while fending off envoys, giant ants and scarlet rot zombies.
• Turn Undead: Some Golden Order weapons, tools, and spells deal extra damage against Those Who Live in Death and prevent them from reviving. Of special note is the Litany of Proper Death, an area spell which deals Scratch Damage to living beings and obliterates undead.

U

• The Undead: As the Rune of Death was stolen from the Elden Ring, this breaks one of the central rules of the Golden Order, and it means mortals have a very hard time dying and staying dead in the Lands Between. This effectively makes every mortal who lives there a form of undead.
  • Many people in the Lands Between are Technically Living Zombies. The extended succession war between the demigods has left a lot of the region devastated and impoverished, with little food or industry to be found. However, because people can't die, many are left as emaciated, weak, stumbling husks. Most have gone mad from starvation and the unending war, left wearing tattered clothes and aimlessly wandering the roads or digging in the dirt. Soldiers seem to be better off, relying on their past discipline to keep functional, but they are still mindlessly sticking to their guard posts or patrols. Very few people have any semblance of rational thought or intelligence anymore.
  • On the other hand, there are Those Who Live In Death, which are people who will not stay dead as a result of the Rune of Destined Death being partially embedded in Godwyn's corpse, and the influence of said rune spreading across the Lands Between to make corpses rise from their graves. They can be destroyed but will rise again unless their bodies are struck or they are slain with holy damage or with the Litany of Proper Death. Their existence is considered an affront to the Golden Order, and so they are actively hunted down and destroyed by undead hunters.
• Underground Level: Several locations involve going into caves or mines which go deep into the earth, not to mention the Absurdly Spacious Sewer beneath Leyndell. There is also an entire underground area with its own environment, enemies, and characters which can be found from select above ground locations. Examples include the ancient cities of Nokron or Nokstella, two underground cities. There is also the Deeproot Depths, a large cavern which is basically situated around the roots of the Erdtree.
• Underworld River: Those Who Live In Death have a strong association with water, such as the Tibia Mariners that appear in flooded areas. An endgame area, Mogwhyn's Palace, has several zombified or skeletal enemies and is situated underground, atop a lake of blood.
• Unequal Rites: There is a conflict between Fundamentalist followers of the Golden Order, practicing Faith-based incantations based off the world's natural order, and the Glintstone Academy which studies magic of the stars.
• Unholy Nuke: The Lord of Frenzied Flame ending concludes with an enormous Frenzy fireball splitting the Erdtree apart, reducing the Lands Between to half-melted ruins and ash.
  • Before the game's events, Malenia used a Scarlet Aeonia explosion as a Desperation Attack against Radahn. Countless years later, the entire region of Caelid is still a Death World infested with Scarlet Rot.
• Unique Enemy:
  • There is only one Man-Serpent Sorcerer in the game, and while he is fairly weak, he certainly makes an impression; he sits on a throne wearing a fancy unique cape and has a giant egg stuck on his head.
    • There is also only one Man-Serpent who wields a fire whip, fought just outside the sorcerer’s throne room. He is slightly larger than other Man-Serpents and has a bulging frog-like throat.
  • The game’s only non-aggressive dog can be found in Leyndell, lounging next to a Leonine Misbegotten who seems to have tamed it and taken it as a pet. The Misbegotten will attack the player on sight, but the dog will simply sit there until provoked. Examination of the game's files reveals this behavior is due to a coding error where the dog was accidentally given two 'wake up' conditions which conflict with each other, but that hasn't stopped the community from depicting the dog as a friendly little fellow.
  • The giant dog outside Sage Gowry’s shack in Caelid wears a collar and has a different sitting animation from all the other giant dogs in the game, implied to be because Gowry is the using the mental connection most creatures mutated by the Scarlet Rot share to influence it into acting as his watchdog.
  • The Elite Mook bats with old woman faces have a single unique variant which is found at the end of the Ruin-Strewn Precipice dungeon just before the boss, alongside a regular one. It wears a fancy hat, casts Rancorcall, and throws Cuckoo Glintstones.
• Unknown Character: There are indicated to have been many more demigods than the ones we actually see; the Walking Mausoleums (of which there are 7) hold dead demigods, Enia mentions that one other Tarnished (probably Gideon) also gathered two great runes (and thus killed two demigods), and it's implied that Bernahl and Vyke also killed demigods. The most importance any of these demigods hold is their mausoleums being able to duplicate remembrances.
• Unwinnable by Mistake: Not the game or any of its bosses themselves, but several of the questlines during the game's initial launch were inexplicably truncated or outright missing. This was soon rectified in a patch, and they all are now doable:
  • Nepheli Loux's questline effectively ended with her depressed and dejected after Gideon would disown her for attacking his men, with the only option of giving her questline any conclusion being making her drink Seluvis' drug and turning her into his slave puppet, as even if you've had the item that allowed her quests to progress for the actual positive ending, she simply would not react to it. This also meant that Kenneth Haight's questline was undoable, and he'd simply sit in his castle waiting for a new heir for the rest of the game.
  • Jar Bairn was completely Dummied Out at launch - which meant not only that its own quest was undoable, but that Diallos' quest effectively ended rather anticlimactically at Volcano Manor, as reaching Jarsburg was the final step and he just would not do it.
• Useless Useful Spell: There is an Ash of War for the skill "Through and Through", which is only usable on greatbows and allows its projectiles to penetrate enemies. There is only one greatbow in the game that can actually accept Ashes of War, and it already comes with this skill by default. While on a melee weapon this would still allow you to change its affinity, bows and greatbows cannot be given affinities other than Standard, making this Ash of War entirely redundant.

V

• Vancian Magic: Sorcerors can learn dozens of spells, but they can only actively wield as many as they are able to memorize while resting at Sites of Grace. Each spell produces a distinct magical effect, such as Glintstone Pebble firing a mid-range projectile with moderate homing capability. Spells also draw from the caster's finite pool of FP, meaning a sorcerer can only cast spells a limited number of times before needing to rest or drink from a Flask of Cerulean Tears.
• Vendor Trash: The description of the Noble's Slender Sword suggests it be sold for a high price due to its gold decoration. Ironically, few players are likely to actually do that given that it's actually an excellent straight sword and the drop rate is extremely low, so if a player has this weapon, it's likely because they specifically farmed for it.
• The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: Crumbling Farum Azula, an isolated, fragmented city held aloft by a massive perpetual twister. Teleported there after lighting the Forge of the Giants and setting the Erdtree aflame, your last task before claiming the Elden Throne is to release Destined Death so Marika can no longer control the cycle of life and death. Featuring Dual Boss the Godskin Duo, Superboss Dragonlord Placidusax, and Climax Boss Maliketh, clearing this gauntlet teleports you back to Leyndell to commence the final Boss Rush before the end of the game.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: If you're not in an area which forbids attacking, you can attack almost any NPC, even if you can't lock on to them at first. It usually takes a few swipes before they really turn hostile to prevent stray weapon swings from screwing over the player, so any NPC hostility will be of the player's own volition.
  • Each NPC merchant in the world drops their own Bell Bearing on death as a form of Anti-Frustration Features so the player cannot permanently lose access to their inventory. There's nothing stopping the player from murdering every merchant in the game so all the games' shops can be consolidated at the Twin Maiden Husks in the Roundtable Hold.
• Video Game Perversity Potential: The messaging system is back, and there are some new words added to make more rude messages. Some new messages in this installment include "try fingers but hole", "offer seed", and "fort, night".
  • You can also attach gestures to messages. One naughty player got crafty and used the "Warm Welcome" gesture to stretch out his hands to "two-hand" some armor sets next to each other.
  • Due to some third-person camera tricks, it's been proven that yes, the devs did render a set of underwear for Fia. And no, they aren't available for the player character to wear themselves... though they do exist, albeit Dummied Out, as the Deathbed Smalls.
• Video Game Vista: The game features two such moments: The first being when the player exits the Hero's Grave and sees most of Limgrave laid out before them. The second is after beating Godrick and clearing Stormveil (or not and going around) when the player is positioned on a cliff over Liurnia of the Lakes and can see all the way to Raya Lucaria Academy, Mt. Gelmir and Leyndell, Royal Capital, three very important locations later on.
• Villains Never Lie: There's a lot of surprisingly honest people in the Lands Between.
  • Tanith makes no bones about the Volcano Manor's purpose being blasphemous; in fact, she pitches that as a positive and the way to become a true champion.
  • The Dung Eater is too proud of what he does to lie about it; if you follow his questline, he will happily describe, in great detail, not only his plans to defile everyone personally, but his desire to defile the Elden Ring itself with a mending rune that will curse everyone.
  • Part of what makes Shabriri's temptation so effective is that he is completely and utterly honest about what he says. You are going to have to sacrifice your maiden, Melina, to complete the game, following his directions will prevent that (complete with extra cutscene of Melina, having survived your rampage as Lord of the Frenzied Flame, swearing to kill you for what you've done), and his ending will see you "incinerate all that divides and distinguishes," just like he says. The only thing he doesn't tell you about is, rather understandably, that you can cheat the Frenzied Flame with Miquella's Needle- and, given the obscurity of the spoilered thing, he might not even know about it.
  • For a shadowy schemer, Ranni's very straightforward. If you accuse her of masterminding the Night of the Black Knives as part of Rogier's quest she'll point-blank say "Yes, it was I, I did it all" without a hint of either deception or false remorse (in fact, she specifically says that she doesn't regret the deed). If you then ask her for the location of the cursemark, she just says that she doesn't have it and isn't going to tell you where it is, rather than trying to lead you on a goose chase by giving you a false location or claiming that it's destroyed. She also says that you're justified not to trust her and that suspicion will serve you well in the Lands Between if you refuse her spirit bell in her first appearance, and that her servant Seluvis has "peculiarities" but not to mind them as you should only focus on extracting what usefulness you can. If queried about her plans, she will clearly lay out what she intends for her Age of the Stars to the Tarnished.
• Violation of Common Sense: In Gelmir Hero’s Grave, there is a chariot which kills you in one hit and a path filled with lava that you can’t get past in time without being run over. How do you get past it? By going down a side path taking you to the rafters above, jumping on the chariot, and riding it to the end. Good luck figuring that out without a guide.
• Volcano Lair: Volcano Manor, naturally. A huge fortress built into the dormant Mount Gelmir, Volcano Manor was previously home base for the Golden Order’s inqusitors, who saw countless heretics tortured, mutilated, and executed, and now houses a heretical, Tarnished-hunting organization of the same name. Both are led (at least in name) by the demigod Rykard, whose priorities changed somewhat after the Shattering. The player gets there in the aftermath of an unsuccessful siege by the Leyndell army, said to be the bloodiest battle of the Shattering, so Gelmir’s slopes are littered with corpses, ruined campsites, and semi-feral soldiers, though the Manor itself hasn’t fared much better; everything past the clean, well-appointed front kept by Rykard’s consort Tanith is just as ruined.

W

• Wake-Up Call Boss:
  • One of the first trolls encountered has a high health pool, can't be snuck around, can't be guard countered, and is right in front of a band of enemies with crossbows. He serves to help get players to realize they need to level or fight dirty. Or you can just run past/around it.
  • The Tree Sentinel is the definition of this trope. He is probably the first boss you will face if you don't bother being sidetracked and he is intentionally way above your level, possible but very tough to beat, so you will learn to explore other areas and not immediately rush to the main quest if you don't want a rough time. He does become manageable, even easy, later, but only if you bother exploring, getting better gear, even cutting down some easier to fight but harder to find bosses in the way, which is not just possible, but the way the game proposes.
  • Margit, the Fell Omen is fast, hits hard, has many attacks at his disposal, and can take a lot of punishment. Of note is his attacks sometimes have a very long windup and strong tracking which punishes players who panic-roll at the sight of enemy movement. The difficulty of fighting him is a good measuring stick as to what to actually expect when progressing the story, and it's an implicit message to the player to go out and explore, since they can get better equipment or even a key item which can make this fight easier.
  • Godrick, at the end of the same dungeon Margit opens, is another test of skill. He isn't quite as aggressive as Margit, but he is beefy, requiring a lot of attacks to bring down. With Margit, a sufficiently strong player who has been exploring the world could potentially damage race to victory, if they showed some skill; the same does not hold true for the master of Stormveil Castle, who will punish greedy strikes and initiate attacks with odd dodging windows, forcing the player to learn how to dodge properly and capitalize on certain attacks. His second phase is a final exam of sorts for the opening act of the game, as he becomes even more brutal, if predictable; a player who has learned their lesson and seeks out moments to strike will come out ahead, while any player still convinced they can attack mindlessly will be beaten into the ground. Additionally, a little exploring in Stormveil can lead you to find a powerful summonable ally for the fight, Nepheli Loux. She can take a lot of heat off the player with her aggressive attacks.
  • Carian Knight Moongrum is a miniboss situated right before the fight with Rennala. He is adept with shield, sword, and magic, and can roll out of attacks like the player. He's a parrying god who will punish your reckless swinging with a lethal Critical Hit, and is equally skilled at punishing your panic rolling with Carian Piercer. All in all, he serves to check overly aggressive players and remind them of patience in combat.
• Waking Up Elsewhere: It happens quite a few times. In particular, the trope is used for both getting in and out of Farum Azula, probably because it was hard to find a more logical reason to end up on a flying ruined city.
• War Is Hell: The Shattering has absolutely decimated the Lands Between, with almost every settlement in ruins and very few sane civilians left in the countryside. Reading deep into the lore will reveal that the Shattering had no victor. Almost every engagement of note either ended in a stalemate or both sides wiping each other out. The war between Malenia and Radahn in Caelid ended with both demigods incapacitated, their armies decimated, the entire region in ruins, and with neither side achieving their strategic goals. The Mt. Gelmir campaign went on inexorably until there simply weren't enough men left to fight anymore, with all the Gelmir troops either dead or deserted and the Royal forces left in shambles. The two known sieges of Leyndell were the exception, as Morgott won both decisively, but they still decimated the region's infrastructure and unrepaired war damage is still visible all over the city. The Liurnian Civil War is its own barrel of laughs, as the Knights of the Cuckoo despoiled the entire countryside before themselves getting wiped out besieging the Carian Manor. When Ranni calls it "A war that wrought only darkness", she means it. Nobody gained anything from the whole affair.
• Warm-Up Boss: Played for Laughs with the Soldier of Godrick, a perfectly normal, basic enemy who inexplicably has a boss health bar and music to match. The game strongly encourages the player to guard counter him, which kills him in one hit.
• Weapon of X-Slaying: Near the entrance of the boss arena against the God-Devouring Serpent, there's a Great Spear called the Serpent-Hunter. Unsurprisingly, it's tremendously effective against this boss specifically, manifesting Razor Wind with each swing or thrust which it does not do if used outside the boss fight.
• Wham Episode
  • After defeating Morgott, the Tarnished learns the main reason no one's taken the title of Elden Lord since the Shattering is because the Erdtree itself is actively rejecting anyone who tries to take it. Not only does this raise major questions regarding Marika's intentions, but the Two Fingers promptly abandon the Tarnished — which confirms they didn't know this either — which ends up driving Gideon mad as he comes to believe Marika wants the people of the Lands Between to fight, kill, and die for eternity.
  • Everything after Crumbling Farum Azula hits the player with Wham Moment after Wham Moment. The Erdtree has started to burn in earnest and the resultant ashfall from its titanic boughs has buried Leyndell under mountains of ash, turning the entire city into a new area that cuts off any access to Leyndell as it was. Then you fight Gideon, who went mad after discovering Marika's intentions for the Tarnished and is actively trying to stop you from becoming Elden Lord. Then you fight Godfrey, whose pre-fight cutscene and second phase reveal that not only is the First Elden Lord Tarnished (specifically he's Hoarah Loux from the opening cutscene), he was the first Tarnished. Then you breach the Erdtree and find Marika, crucified on a Rune Arc with a spear run through her shattered torso, who then falls off of it and transforms into Radagon, her husband and the Second Elden Lord who proceeds to fight you like some kind of automaton. Then once you beat Radagon, a massive monster with a star field for a body transforms Radagon's corpse into a sword to fight you, revealing it to be the Elden Beast that is the living embodiment of the Elden Ring itself and the envoy of the Greater Will.
• Wham Line: The Golden Order questline follows Goldmask and his follower Corhyn trying to figure out the events leading up to the Shattering. The relationship between keepers of the Elden Ring at the time, perfect goddess Marika and human champion Radagon, is studied as well, culminating in a revelation:
  Radagon is Marika
• Wham Shot: It's a bit out of the way, but not too far away from the Leyndell Royal Capital's West Castle Rampart site of grace is a set of stables which can be platformed on to jump onto a small balcony with an open door. Stepping inside of said door leads you to the upper floor of the Fortified Manor. It's the real Roundtable Hold in ruins, with corpses everywhere. Items like the Coded Sword can be looted from the corpses littering the area. The Roundtable Hold serving as the hub for your game, much like the Firelink Shrine in Dark Souls III and the Hunter's Dream in Bloodborne, is merely a Pocket Dimension created by the Powers That Be for the use of you and the other Tarnished, while the physical location it's based on has long since been abandoned.
• What the Hell, Hero?: If the player bears the Frenzied Flame, Melina will abandon the player after declaring them unfit to be Elden Lord and vowing to kill the player for attempting to destroy all life.
• Where It All Began: The final battle takes place in the heart of the Erdtree, where Marika shattered the Elden Ring ages ago and where she now hangs crucified on its remnants.
• Wise Old Turtle: Tortoises are associated with wisdom in the Lands Between, if the Rises forcing you to hunt “three wise beasts” before entering are any indication. This goes some way to explaining the existence of Pastor Miriel (or is it the other way around?), a gigantic sapient tortoise, potential magic teacher, and apparently an ordained minister.
• World Tree: The Erdtree, an enormous glowing tree powered by the Elden Ring. Taller than anything else in the scenery by a country mile, to the point it looks like the top of the tree goes straight through the overcast cloud layer. All the while, the tree is glowing with an ethereal golden light. The Erdtree is also the primary object of worship for the people of The Lands Between, originally believed to be perfect and eternal, it came as a shock when it stopped producing its healing sap, and it was discovered it actually has seeds like a normal tree. There are even smaller minor Erdtrees growing across the land.
• Worthy Opponent:
  • As he transitions to his second phase, Margit recognizes the protagonist as a worthy adversary.
    Margit: Well, thou art of passing skill. Warrior blood must truly run in thy veins, Tarnished.
  • Godfrey also recognizes the Tarnished as this, and compliments them by saying they fought nobly if he kills them during his first phase. When entering his second phase as Hoarah Loux, he decides he's given them "courtesy enough" and kills Serosh so he can give them the proper walloping his station demands.
• Wutai: The Land of Reeds, the world's equivalent of Japan, as shown and described in the items and gear you can find originating from there. There's even a bit more history compared to the "Far East" in the Dark Souls trilogy; the region is going through its own version of the Sengoku Period, locked its own miserable civil war. It is known for its katanas, which cause intense bleeding and hemorrhage buildup. Multiple characters from the Land of Reeds appear in the game, including Yura, the Bloody Finger Okina, and the Inaba.

Y

• Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: Congratulations, Tarnished! You made it to the base of the Erdtree just as Melina wanted and are literally a few steps away from becoming Elden Lord. Wait, why is the Erdtree blocking out all visitors? Fortunately, Melina proposes an alternate plan to get in.
• You Will Not Evade Me: Gravity magic exists in this game. It is used to drag targets in and basically prevent them from moving for a moment.

Z

• Zero-Effort Boss:
  • The Mimic Tear's gimmick is that it duplicates whatever equipment you have on you when you walk through the fog gate. Nothing is stopping you from unequipping all of your weapons and armor when you walk in, and then reequipping it after the Mimic spawns, allowing you to whale on it while it's naked and helpless. For an even easier time, fill all of your talisman slots with talismans that lower your own defenses, such as the Scorpion Charms, the Scar/Soreseals, or Daedicar's Woe.
  • The Soldier of Godrick, who is fought at the end of the tutorial cave, is literally a bog standard Godrick Soldier, the weakest variant of an enemy type that you will kill literally hundreds of throughout the game. The only thing that distinguishes him as a "boss" is that he gets a fog gate and a health bar, and he's mostly there to teach you about guard counters, as performing one on him will instantly shatter his posture and let you get a critical hit that is almost certain to finish him off. If you die to him it's probably because you were trying to.
  • The Spiritcaller Cave ends with a three-stage boss fight. In the first, you fight a Godskin Apostle, the strongest one in the game. In the second, you fight a Godskin Noble, which is also the strongest variant of that boss in the game. In the third, you 'fight' their master, the Spiritcaller Snail. He gets a screen-spanning healthbar and Boss Subtitles but has low health and can't actually attack you. He'll probably die in a single hit.
  • Elder Dragon Greyoll is the titanic mother of all dragons with a massive health pool to match. She is also so sickly that she can't move or attack, only able to use her signature roar which debuffs your attack and defense. The intended method of killing her is to kill the red-eyed dragons surrounding her, all of whom are at half-health themselves. Each one killed will deal about a quarter of Greyoll's health without you even touching her. If that's still too much effort for you, get a weapon that inflicts blood loss (which deals percentage-based damage every time it procs), go behind her, and smack her in the leg for 10 minutes. None of her kids can reach you back there, so you will be completely safe.