I believe in you

Take it from someone who uninstalled the game three times. I wasn’t sure what kept me going. Was it my own pride? In a way it was. I tried to return the game, but due to Steam’s terms of service I have played too many hours so now if I wanna get my sixty dollars worth I have to keep going. But that wasn’t enough, what really lit the bonfire under my butt was the fact that the NPCs in the game were mocking me.

In Elden Ring you play as a being that cannot die (a tarnished). Guided by grace (which is just this golden light that tells you where to go in the open world), you are one of the last tarnished that can still see the grace. One of the last who has any hope of becoming Elden Lord. All the other Tarnished have given up on the quest. So if you give up on the game you are no better than the other Tarnished who lost their way. At the start of the game before you kill your first big boss and acquire a ring. Most other tarnished give you the same speech. That just like them you will give up because this quest is too hard. Something about this made my blood boil. So in order to get my sixty dollars worth and prove these NCPs wrong I kept beating every boss and my head against the wall. 

I know the joke with souls games is to “get good”, which is just a mean way of saying practice makes perfect. That is obvious advice that can be attributed to any video game, but it’s not wrong. I was grinding runes (at Mohgwyn’s Palace) when my co-op buddy was offline and it was paying off. A co-op buddy is a blessing and curse in this game because it leaves you open to attack. The amount of times I got invaded early on in the game made me want to quit for a fourth time. It was disheartening and I really lost faith in humanity, that is until I finally asked for help. In the game there are these summoning pools (crosses) that you can use to see who put down a sign telling you that they are willing to come into your world and help you. I usually used this for my friends but I caved and decided I need more help on the dreaded Melenia boss fight. It was such a wonderful experience of having some stranger actually willing to help me in the boss fight and multiple times too! I tried that boss fight with a whole bunch of strangers until I landed on one lady who could tank for me ( I was a magic build aka made of paper). We tried over thirty times to beat this boss and this lady was a trooper for sticking with me through it all and not logging off. I gained my humanity back after that and realized maybe Dark Souls players weren’t so bad after all. I decided to return the favor and post up at the final boss for a while helping anyone I can become Elden Lord. So don’t lose hope. Elden Ring is a long journey that may seem not worth it at times, but a wise man once told me “if you want to finish Elden Ring you will”.

And when you finish the game you can do what I did and celebrate with Burger King. Get two chicken fingers and one of those paper crowns scribble out the words Burger King and put Elden Lord instead then you will really feel like a winner.

Written by:

Savvy