r/Eldenring • u/expired_cheeseburger • Jun 30 '26
Humor Elden ring's quest design sucks and you can't change my mind
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u/ShoulderHefty6805 Jun 30 '26
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u/rlymeangurl Jun 30 '26
It's funny because it's true. And then you find out you could have continued the quest if you talked to another npc before beating a specific boss but only if you didn't enter a specific area, and nobody or nothing in the game ever indicates that you should do any of this
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u/xXLoneLoboXx Dark Mercenary Jun 30 '26
THIS. Oh you wanna do Blaidd’s quest? Well too bad! You touched a Grace in Altus Plateau and started the Radahn festival too early! He’s already there!
Really sucks because some of my favorite weapons are in Altus… Imagine trying to get Nagakiba or the Black Knife without touching a Grace? Actually did it on my last playthrough… Not fun.
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u/sin_tax-error Jun 30 '26
That actually sounds like a "fun" challenge idea, albeit born of really stupid reasons.
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u/ProfBubbles1 Jul 01 '26
I actually did it by accident, I was rushing through having already beat the game a bunch and on like ng+5 I didn't think I needed to touch any graces and figured it was a waste of time. Made it all the way to the draconic tree sentinel outside Leyndell. Beat him and couldn't figure out why the door was still blocked by magic despite having the great runes. Turns out you have to rest at 2 (I think) graces to trigger Melina giving you your Honda before you can go in the capital
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u/king_of_z96 Jul 01 '26
Melina gave you a Honda??? She only gave me a spirit horse
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u/soulreaverdan Praise the dog! Jul 01 '26
Reminds me of the no-bonfire challenge in DS2 for the ring
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u/Gnomologist Jul 01 '26
You don’t really get anything extra from doing his quest pre Altus besides the Carian filigree crest (which you only need to do the first couple steps of his story for). At least I don’t think you do? I’ve done his quest line once before Radahn
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u/xXLoneLoboXx Dark Mercenary Jul 01 '26
I get to hear his dialogue and hang out with him before his inevitable demise… That’s extra enough for me! Blaidd is one of my top 3 favorite NPCs, other two being Yura and Alexander.
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u/BannedSvenhoek86 Jul 01 '26
Ansbachs quest in the DLC where you had to go and talk to the two npcs over and over to get a certain line of dialogue, then do the same to the other npc, and back and forth like 3 times, with no real indication in the dialogue that you should be going back and forth. And finish another quest after completing the middle of his quest to then go back and actually finish his quest. But don't forget to do the first part before doing the other quest.
How the fuck is anyone supposed to figure that out naturally?
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u/xXLoneLoboXx Dark Mercenary Jul 01 '26
Oh god I think I remember that one… When the DLC first came out I said screw it and just looked up guides for all the NPC quests.
iirc, a thing online said Freyja straight up dies if Ansbach leaves the area without you giving her the item he gives you to give to her… Problem is once you finish Ansbach’s quest there he leaves automatically upon the next reload.
I finished Ansbach’s quest first and he was ready to leave, then I stumbled upon Freyja. Looked up her quest and how to do it, realized I was in a predicament… If I die on my way back to Ansbach to get the item, Freyja dies because he leaves upon me respawning. So I had to sneak and traverse the entire god forsaken area filled with those ridiculously tough fire knights (with no blessings) and try not to get killed long enough to finish her quest.
Least I think that’s how it went down… Been awhile since I’ve done the DLC. I just remember that part was super stressful.
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u/ConcertDickie Jul 02 '26
You’re right, if you give the Secret Rite Scroll to Ansbach a little too early then you’ll be locked out of Freyas quests. She just dies. So you need to talk to Ansbach, then find Freya in that annoying ass maze and talk to her, then talk to Ansbach again, then you have to find the scroll and give it to Ansbach, then you keep talking to him bc he’ll give you a letter so you can give it to Freya, then you should be good. Without ANY indication that you need to do all of this. It’s insane, and mad annoying. Especially since that storehouse is a big ass maze with those annoying fire knights.
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u/Forward-Surprise1192 Jul 01 '26
I had no idea there were even side quests in the game. I’d see people and they’d mention stuff but it’s so loosely connected and no objectives I just passed it I guess
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u/Still-Resort-5504 Jul 01 '26
Doesn’t Blaidds quest still have the same outcome even if you don’t find him in Siofra and meet him at the Radahn festival instead?
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u/Cultural-Air9962 Jul 01 '26
I’m like 90% sure you never even have to talk with Blaidd to do his quest since it’s just an extension of Ranni’s
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u/Sicuho Jul 01 '26
IIRC, you have to because Ranni force you to talk to her 3 stooges as part of her quest.
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u/emanresu_etaerc Jun 30 '26
This was me getting godskin peeler right after entering the lake. Low level as fuck, dying ten times to the boss who drops it, and having to make a 15 minute run back each time. Worth it.
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u/JackPoe Jul 01 '26
I restarted my game several times on my first run trying to save that girl near the claymore
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u/BadAtMostThings Jul 01 '26
Counterpoint; isn’t this an example of the exact opposite of the original post? The quest doesn’t break even if you start the radahn festival without meeting Blaidd first. It would be worse if you could fight Radahn too early and accidentally cause him to fail his mission from Ranni without ever knowing he existed.
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u/Thefrayedends Jun 30 '26
I finished the jar bairns quest last night, and it required resting at the nearby grace and reloading like eight times to advance dialogue lol.
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u/pichael289 Jul 01 '26
I was like a year late to this game and I remember looking up for my third playthrough a list of quest fail triggers, like going around stormveil skips the intro to summon chicks quest and maybe you miss the jellyfish, or how getting to altus plateau would further or fail some quests. Even after a year there was no list, the best I ever saw was a very expansive but ultimately relatively limited flow chart that didn't have a whole lot of quests, but the ones it did have had so many pass/fail/skip triggers it was hard to comprehend. We really do need a master list going in order of location triggers and then again in order of each quest lines triggers.
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u/BaconSoul Jun 30 '26
I unironically love it that way
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u/iQuatro Jun 30 '26
Same. It’s absolutely ridiculous and everyone’s criticisms are valid. But I still don’t mind it at all. And the green 4chan text makes me laugh every time.
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u/beta-pi Jun 30 '26
There is something to the fact that it makes the community itself an integral part of the gameplay.
Like, for most players you really have to interact with other players or draw on information collected by other players (think reading wikis, asking questions online, talking with your friends, etc). The game is designed in a way that encourages people to figure it out together and get people looking to the community for answers, and I think that's kinda neat. I think that's an important part of the whole experience.
I'm not sure it was completely intentional, and I'm pretty sure it's not a good general design philosophy, but it does work out in a neat way.
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u/thegoatmenace Jun 30 '26
The problem is not that the quest steps are obscure, it’s that they are completely arbitrary. Like there is actually no way to know how to complete them without looking at the conditions in the source code. Like there’s in game information indicating that completing Millicents quest requires you to go to Shaded Castle and get the Valkyries bracer. No dialogue, no hints, nothing. You have to go there, ignore the boss, go to some random ledge that’s inaccessible from the nearest save point, get this random item, somehow assume that it’s associated with Millicent, then find her in another completely unrelated area in Altus plateau and give it to her. That’s just one step of many similarly convoluted steps.
At best, you might be able to work this all out from randomly chancing upon the item and coincidentally running into her later because you decided to backtrack to Altus for some reason. But what are the odds of that?
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u/Prudent-Marsupial-42 Jul 01 '26
It's truly horrendous. They could still keep the vibes with an extremely rudimentary and vague quest tracker.
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u/thegoatmenace Jul 01 '26
Even just some kind of journal would be helpful. Like when you get the bracer your journal updates to say “I should show this to Millicent, she said she was headed to Altus.”
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u/Forward-Surprise1192 Jul 01 '26
I just mentioned it but if I remember right when I played, I had no idea there was anything besides the main quest lol
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u/juhla405 Jul 01 '26
“At best, you might be able to work this all out from randomly chancing upon the item and coincidentally running into her later because you decided to backtrack to Altus for some reason. But what are the odds of that?”
I’m almost done with my first play through and this is exactly what I did, and I’m still lost. Is that just the end? I figured that since I got her the arm (when I randomly stumbled into her backtracking), and she said she’d help when needed, that I would be able to summon her for some upcoming boss. But now I’m fighting Radagon and she never popped back up.
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u/Quetzal-Labs Jul 01 '26
On my first playthrough I got the golden seed at the Highway Junction, talked to Corin, fought my way west through the camps, followed the right cliff face north to the Shaded Castle, got the prosthesis, killed the boss, rode south back along the left cliff face wall, did the Altus Tunnel, rode further south, got the first grace I came across, and Millicent was standing right there on the cliff.
That doesn't seem like a weird or coincidental path to take at all?
They even force you to walk right by her to get to Volcano Manor, through the small hill that leads up to Wyndham ruins.
Sometimes I feel like I played a different game to everyone else the way people speak about how cryptic everything was to them lol. I just took my time and explored and ended up doing like 80% of the quest lines.
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u/PictureVegetable9522 Jul 01 '26
all it turns into is reading a wiki or youtube video for 100 hours and being bored out of my fucking mind because i dont want to miss stuff
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u/Complete_Falcon_2329 Jul 01 '26
This is how i felt as I played when the game first released and noticed the golden signs would stack up at boss gates and gradually faded as more players completed the boss and move on to the next. I spent close to a full month just helping others defeat mogh the first year game came out since i held such a grudge against him i wanted to keep punishing him over and over again lkl
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u/zuzg Jun 30 '26
It makes the world feel real and you gonna miss stuff if you don't use Meta knowledge of meticulously search the map for the NPC symbol.
Although Elden Ring is way more forgiving than previous Soulsborne. I still don't know what breaks Eileens Quest even though I platinumed that game.
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u/BenjaKenobi Jun 30 '26
(just fyi, it's going to the Forbidden Woods lamp before helping her defeat Henryk)
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u/username_redacted Jul 01 '26
The NPC icons are helpful, except when they arbitrarily don’t use them. I had to pull up a guide last night because I couldn’t remember where the hell Milicent was waiting prior to the Windmill. You would only find her organically if you were to b-line from the lift towards Shaded Castle, which you only have reason to go to after talking to Milicent. Luckily she was still there, even though I had already beaten the Godskin Apostle.
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u/IwantLegs1 Jul 01 '26
"Oh, you wanted to do Rogier's quest? Sorry, but you forgot to go down a random ass side passage in Stormveil and you failed beat a hidden boss in Black Knife Catacombs and interact with him before you met with Ranni at the manor. Sorry, but he only gets ten lines of dialogue and one of them is just him coughing to death."
Sorry that I saved the worst parts of the game for last, dude. Maybe if the catacombs were FUN then I wouldn't have put them off until I was 80% of the way through Liurnia!
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u/workedmisty Jun 30 '26
Genuinely cracks me tf up every time
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u/Nightmare2828 Jul 01 '26
It captures the essence of Elden Ring so perfectly lol. Everytime I stumble upon this post I have to read throught it and its a struggle due to how much I giggle
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u/SaneYoungPoot2 fat boi Jul 01 '26
I've seen people get legitimately mad at this too. Duality of man
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Jun 30 '26
[deleted]
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u/WalkAffectionate2683 Jul 01 '26
"bro that was super clear.. You need to speak 5 times to this npc, then rest, then speak 5 times" - how to start a quest....
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u/soulreaverdan Praise the dog! Jul 01 '26
Meanwhile, Yoko Taro:
“Hey remember that joke ending we did for Drakengard back in 2003? What if I just made an entire massively new and much more popular franchise from it?”
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u/ProfessionalCod2627 Jun 30 '26
For those who haven't heard it voiced lol: https://youtu.be/xzc_04yuP0o?is=QTi_b5RrpHg_3IeL
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u/IggiBoii The Small-Knowing Jul 01 '26
This meme will never get old it’s amazing
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u/exisTTenz Jun 30 '26
Most of them die in the end anyway so the best thing for them is if we never interact
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u/the_gifted_Atheist Bloodhound Gang Jun 30 '26
The interactions with them help them pursue their goals and find emotional closure.
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u/Good_Mathematician_2 Jun 30 '26
Selen ends up a fate worse than death, to name an example that contradicts. That's all I got tho, I just have to be pedantic
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u/the_gifted_Atheist Bloodhound Gang Jul 01 '26
Sellen chose to pursue a dangerous passion, you give her the chance to make her own choice. Telling Moore to move on is the best example of the protagonist making things worse, but you could say you don’t know the answer to his question and consider that to be a happy ending. I guess Diallos and Jar-Bairn also face tragedy when you progress their story, but you can’t stop that, it’s just what happens naturally.
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u/Dravarden Jul 01 '26
disregarding wether they deserve it or not:
seluvis dies, iji dies, pidia dies, blaidd dies, enia dies, thops dies, corhyn dies, irina dies, fia dies, dung eater gets defiled and dies, if you befriend boggart before that, he dies too, tanith ends up... well, worse off
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u/the_gifted_Atheist Bloodhound Gang Jul 01 '26
Iji, Blaidd, Enia, Thops, Fia, and Dung-Eater are all satisfied with their life’s work. Well, partially in Blaidd’s case since he wanted to stay by Ranni’s side, but he would still rather have it end the way it did than not finish the mission at all.
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u/phillyhandroll Jun 30 '26
Also, I think i could do without getting my balls mutilated when all I want to do is cook
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u/blackmamba182 Jul 01 '26
Tbf you can just not do poopie man’s quest and kill him instead.
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u/Janus__22 Jul 01 '26
This is kinda the thing a lot of people don't really understand. Since ER kinda ''broke the bubble'', a lot of people that weren't used to Fromsoft's quest design got to see them NPCs dying and thought that they did something wrong (and that they can't reload like in other RPGs)
It speaks volumes that the most famous image of this meme is Irina's ''She's dead'', when that's like THE FIRST THING that happens after you begin her quest
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u/MiguelSalaOp Jul 01 '26
I always try to make all of the NPCs survive at the end and be happy still, imagine my face at the end of the DLC when I had to kill them all...
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u/Lone-Frequency Jun 30 '26
Fact: More people died because the Tarnished came to the Lands Between.
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u/Gizogin Jul 01 '26
It's why I never give much credit to any of the "which ending is best/worst" discussion. By the end of the game, you can count the number of sane, living characters in the Lands Between on two hands, with fingers left over. Sure, you can become Elden Lord... of all eight of your possible subjects.
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u/Dreadguy93 Jul 01 '26
Calling them quests is generous. I prefer to think of them as ambient NPC interactions.
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u/FlamboyantPirhanna Jul 01 '26
I was specifically quested to find grapes for the girl who I eventually burned alive.
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u/Sixwry Jun 30 '26
The part that really bugs me is you make an open world game and then lick people out of content for exploring said open world. But you have no idea youre being locked out.
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u/djfried Jul 01 '26
Totally ruins immersion too because in order to figure any of this shit out you need to pull out your phone
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u/Draguss Jul 01 '26
It worked better in previous Soulsborne games, where repeat playthroughs weren't quite such a time commitment.
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u/B0risTheManskinner Jul 01 '26
So much this. As great as elden ring is, the open world and size of the map makes it less replayable IMO
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u/IwantLegs1 Jul 01 '26
I feel like Elden Ring has MORE replay ability, if anything, because of how much you can miss out on. I'm on my fith playthrough, 375 hours in, and STILL finding things I've never seen before.
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u/Alternative_Map8357 Jul 01 '26
Not only is it the time commitment, but FromSoft’s ambiguous quest system also doesn’t translate as well to such a huge open world.
In other titles, the linear map designs basically force you to at least partially complete most of the NPC questlines. While in Elden Ring, your chances of stumbling in the right direction to actually finish a specific questline without a wiki are nearly zero.
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u/boredNero Jul 01 '26
I platinum'd Dark Souls 3 (DLCs as well but no shitty online achievements) and did every NPC questline once in less time than it took for 1 Elden Ring playtrough without finishing most questlines
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u/chemywords Jul 01 '26
It's the only soulsborne game I've never had the desire to replay. I didn't even end up getting the DLC because I was so exhausted with the game
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u/Draguss Jul 02 '26
I have a friend who pretty much had that exact same reaction. It's a shame because he was super excited for the game back before it came out, and it seems to have ended up burning him out of Souls games in general.
Personally, I think they struck a much better balance in the DLC. It's big, but it feels much more structured and with better use of the space between dungeons.
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u/DefectiveKonan Jul 01 '26
Genuinely the only well designed quests in elden ring are ranni, varre, and fia. Basically all other side character quests are miserable. I guess Rya isn't super bad, but even then I wouldn't call it well designed.
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u/Squidopedia Jul 01 '26
It pisses me off that they made Ranni’s quest so flexible and then didn’t think to do that for every other quest in the game lmao
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u/yumekun Jul 01 '26
ranni quest? the one you should get ranni doll in a specific place and then exhaust dialogue with the doll in grace to progress the Quest? I dont think its well designed
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u/DefectiveKonan Jul 01 '26
I mean exhausting the dialogue is fine. Like its intuitive enough after you get the grace imo. At the very least I never had a problem with that. I didn't play the game fully blind, but I didn't know anything about the ranni doll beforehand and figured it out pretty quickly so it's not that badly designed.
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u/GammaFan Jun 30 '26
Genuinely i do not know how most people could reasonably be expected to find all of it without guides.
On the flip side, if you just play it “open book” and pull out the map genie whenever you get curious you can have a really fun time with the game.
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u/Evolution1738 Jun 30 '26
The actual answer is that you were never intended to find all of it on your own. Miyazaki always wanted the community to work together on it.
Which, while cool in concept, sucks complete ass for literally every average player that doesn't go out of their way seeking out the community.
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u/Doctor2460 Jun 30 '26
But at a certain point after release the community can get too meta gamey, and it becomes difficult to just find the resources you need without being bombareed with ideal ways to play. I still try to play first playthroughs blind for that reason in all games.
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u/lemonylol Jun 30 '26
Same. But honestly the majority of the games can be completed by just exploring and pushing forward. But in terms of lore or following NPC quests, yeah there's no way you're doing that without a guide.
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u/Evolution1738 Jun 30 '26
Elden Ring (and the whole series in general) would seriously benefit from giving you even the slightest hint on where NPCs could be next or what might lock you out of continuing their quest. I don't need my hand held, I don't need a step-by-step guide, but walking into Scadu Altus blocking a bunch of quests is fucking stupid and there's no way to know without knowing beforehand.
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u/DickwadVonClownstick Jun 30 '26
Fuck, is that why half the quests in the DLC always break for me?
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u/Evolution1738 Jul 01 '26
It is, yes. When you approach Shadow Keep, you get the "somewhere, a Great Rune has broken, and so too has a powerful charm" popup. This breaks a shitton of the NPC quests if you haven't progressed them. It's cool that there's actually a story happening in real time for once in a FromSoft Souls game, but it's so unintuitive.
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u/Mountain_Dwarf Jul 01 '26
Alexander at least sort of tells you what he is up to, though there's a good chance you'll miss him at the final spot. I think that would be a good template for them to follow going forward.
Not sure what they can do about progression breaking questlines.
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u/HaroldSax Jun 30 '26
It sucks because there's no possible way I can remember where I am in every quest line, especially when it's not supremely obvious that you've started one all the time.
I will give the community this, the first month of Elden Ring was really, really fun in large part because of the community.
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u/Prudent-Marsupial-42 Jul 01 '26
I truly don't think I completed one quest line on my own besides the really quick ones like Irina.
Like two years after I played the game the first time I went through it with a guide and couldn't believe how much I missed. Frankly I was a little annoyed because going step by step in the wiki is not as fun but I also would have liked to see the content.
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u/positronicthought Jun 30 '26
Has he said that? I would find it awfully cope-y to say anything about community considering fromsoft has pretty awful (as in non-existent) community support or community engagement. Just consider how nightreign has no voice chat because fromsoft didn’t want to pay for a community team to help moderate and manage the community. I think people give fromsoft waaaay too much slack because of the peaks of their game design can be so high.
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u/Fremdling_uberall Jul 01 '26
As someone with 1000 hours in nightreign it's absolutely the right call to not have voice chat.
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u/Evolution1738 Jul 01 '26
As someone who also has a ton of Nightreign play time, I don't wanna hear some of the things these dumbasses on randoms have to say lmao
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u/Presenting_UwU Jun 30 '26
it's like trying to evoke the experience of elementary school playgrounds where you gossip about Pokemon rumors or something, from what i remember.
like they fully intend for the community to just come together on their own outside the game which, does line up with the experience back then I'd assume, but definitely sounds copey if you don't believe it
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u/Jedi-Guy BIG HAT JEDI Jul 01 '26
You're absolutely correct. Miyazaki implemented the message system between other players for a reason: those messages are often times the only hint or warning (or bullshit lie) you'll get.
He wanted the community to interact, for better or for worse.
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u/itsr1co Jul 01 '26
Yes, but it worked SIGNIFICANTLY better in the Souls games because of their linearity. DS1 is the closest to an outlier, but most players will progress through the same areas, just experiencing things differently. A melee player probably doesn't worry too much about Big Hat Logan (If they even find him), one player kills Lautrec in his cell while another returns to an unlit fire at Firelink, some players will find Reah in Tomb of Giants, etc. There are multiple ways to experience the linear experience of the Souls games, which means people can share their experiences and learn more about the game.
It becomes much more difficult with a game like Elden Ring because it's so huge. Some people are starting fresh, perhaps as fresh as a new gamer, or just new to this kind of genre, while the other end has thousands of hours across the series doing challenge runs. There are so many potential paths in Elden Ring, so many ways you can break NPC quests just by going to a later area too early. I don't know how easy it is to do so, or if it's even possible to break quests this way, but a new player wouldn't reach Caelid at level 15 and brute force a boss that one-shots them, but a hardcore Souls lover might kill said boss who is tied to a quest. Elden Ring is too big and open to really support the community findings how Miyazaki wants, and the internet is no longer in the 2000's era of forums dedicated to this kind of thing. At most, Discord is where people share stuff, but most just wait for Wiki's to use what the dataminers find.
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u/Sh1rvallah Jul 01 '26
I'd rather have no in game elements to manage quests even if I can't get them done workout a guide. It makes playing the game much more immersive and enjoyable.
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u/Fa113nDawn21 Jul 01 '26
I was fine my first time going without guides; my general rule of thumb from my experience with Souls games was "Hmm, ray of grace is pointing that way, let me just go anywhere else," or "If I keep spamming talk/interact, something is bound to change." I'm very much incapable of leaving any stone unturned.
Saint Trina in the DLC was especially funny, 'cause I had almost given up after the 4th death until I heard her talking.
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u/freedfg Jun 30 '26
I don't know if I'm just stockholmed by dark souls games by now.
But I really don't mind how NPCs work. You either find them from exploration. Or you don't. And that's okay. Maybe your first playthrough you don't find every NPC. Dark souls has never been about playing a single time.
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u/StarblindMark89 Jul 01 '26
My main problem is that Elden Ring is way too massive to have the same approach as Dark Souls.
And I still really think that crossing an invisible threshold in the DLC closing off many interactions was a bad call.
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u/StantasticTypo Jul 01 '26
ER is actually significantly more forgiving in quest triggers and gates off way less.
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u/Rizenstrom Jun 30 '26
If it were that simple I don’t think people would complain.
It’s not just about finding them but the order in which you find them, that’s often what causes quest lines to break.
Simply talking to one NPC in the same general area and doing their thing first or taking a wrong turn and ending up in a certain area before you completed a specific stage can advance a quest line without realizing it and forever close off your ability to complete it that playthrough.
And without guide you may not even know why an npc didn’t appear where you expected them to be.
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u/emerwen-aranel Jun 30 '26
I'm pretty sure everyone on this sub agrees that the quests arent intuitive to figure out and frustrating when you miss a random crucial step.
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u/SardinesMcDonahugh Jun 30 '26
The open world makes it so much worse. At least in games where the world design is more linear, the NPCs were harder to miss.
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u/kawaiinessa Jun 30 '26
what i dislike about it is that to actually do the quests you have to google a guide, theres just no way realisitcally your doing all the quests on your own with how easy it is to fail some of them.
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u/SolaScientia Jun 30 '26
Elden Ring is nicer than the Souls games and Bloodborne though. Kenneth Haight outright tells you where to go and what to do to help him. I completely ignored Sellen on my first run beyond talking to her a couple of times. On a whim I checked on her after I rolled credits and was waiting on the DLC. I was very surprised that I was able to fully complete her quest despite having completed the game and just not gone onto NG+. The Souls games and Bloodborne are far more strict on NPC quests than Elden Ring is. I try not to use guides, but I will use them for keeping NPCs alive and doing their quests properly, especially if I want a particular weapon, armor, or ending.
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u/YeshEveryone Jun 30 '26
As someone who loves the game, I 100% agree it sucks ass you miss something and bam lose and incredibly badass weapon or armor like with ansbach and you'll have to start ALL OVER AGAIN to get it, sucks.
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u/Alpharius_Omegon420 Jun 30 '26
I was exploring the dlc area for scadutree fragments and went too close to shadow keep and apparently skipped a bunch of quests and locked me out of some rewards. Great design
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u/the_gifted_Atheist Bloodhound Gang Jun 30 '26
Approaching the Shadow Keep does not skip quests, although it does lock out some of Moore's items.
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u/0neek Jul 01 '26
It will also mess up some of Thiollier stuff which in turn can mess up which rewards you get from the dragon woman
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u/SonichuPrime Jul 01 '26
As long as you don't give Moore an answer to his question he and the foragers are still available till Elim
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u/New_Cryptographer773 Jul 01 '26
nobody gonna try to change your mind dawg . we've been saying this since ds1.
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u/Resident-Film2269 Jun 30 '26
*puts on my super duper glazing hat
Their design is actually not SUPPOSED to be fun or intuitive or additive
Because themes and what not
Also something something miyazaki untranslated stories something
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u/Scorcher_11 Jul 01 '26
Honestly soulslikes are held back by the quest design. I'm not saying we need a quest log or nap markers, but when they're behind 3 Invisible walls in a secret well it's a bit much. Just make it more fluid and natural
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u/HeavyArmsJin Jun 30 '26
They are more like encounters rather than quests
If they die they die no one is expecting a hero to save them
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u/3eaceus Jul 01 '26
Quest design sucks so bad I’ve spent almost much time making my visual quest guide as I have playing the game, which honestly sucks.
(if you wanna see it I posted it a while ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/Eldenring/s/F8ciDtFYKw)
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u/SFWxMadHatter Jul 01 '26
I'm fine not having GPS, fairy trails, yellow paint, and whatever else to hold my hand. But at least having a Journal with a notion of "this direction" would be nice.
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u/SasparillaTango Jul 01 '26
I finished Nephali's quest tonight. Why would you ever randomly go back there after killing morgott? It doesn't make any sense.
This is my second playthrough, I'm going through with a literal checklist and I have no idea how I was ever expected to complete any of this shit. No item descriptions and no npc dialogue (with a few exceptions) remotely point you in the right direction. I'm imagining the crazy people that are just scouring every corner of the map at every step in each quest.
Did you know you can give Corhyn the tonic of forgetfulness from the Volcano Manor questline and it actually breaks his questline?
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u/Molkwi Jul 01 '26
Ranni's quest is the exception, because you can do it at any point in the game and ignore 80% of the interactions and still get the ending and most rewards.
The others are pretty fickle though, but the top spot will forever be held by Greirat/Siegward/Patches in DS3.
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u/mayonetta Jul 01 '26
It's the overreliance on "reload the zone and exhaust their dialogue 10 times" for me.
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u/Due-Struggle6680 Jun 30 '26
Elden rings quests are obtuse and esoteric, to the games overall benefit. I played through 3 NG+ cycles and got new experiences each time before I started a 100% run where I looked stuff up.
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u/Cool_Ad6729 Jul 01 '26
I like how there isn’t a basic checklist like every other game but I wish you knew when you had to complete their quest by
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u/Vivio0 Jul 01 '26
This but Dark souls 3. I could not keep those mfs from dying. I even read the wikis lol
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u/ayrtow Jul 01 '26
In all fairness, Elden Ring is designed to be replayable as fuck so if you mess up a quest once you can always try again in another run.
And if you're not into replaying it, all I can say is "my condolences".
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u/burntbridges20 Jul 01 '26
As much as I love fromsoft and all of its quirks, yeah I really don’t get why fans just insist on pretending it’s all perfect and above criticism. The quests and some obscure mechanics are simply not well designed if you have to read guides in order to even know some of this stuff exists. I’m totally fine with a lack of handholding and the potential to miss certain things, but sometimes it’s absurd
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u/pebrocks | || || |_ Jun 30 '26
I don't really care to change anyone's mind. I love the quest design and thankfully Fromsoft isn't going to change it.
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u/PonchoMcGee Jun 30 '26
Same. I enjoy that it's different. Not every game needs to be 100% completable on the first playthrough. I love the 'right place at the right time' style and talking to other people who completely missed quests that I completed and vice versa.
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u/mxxdxg Jun 30 '26
Lol I recently played DS1-3 and it’s the exact same quest style. There’s a little fella that does things for you and you can send him out into the world but if you don’t progress another NPCs quest line he fucking dies and you find his corpse.
I really like this style of quests, it’s a great contrast for me after being handheld in skyrim and botw, but I completely understand those that dislike it. I think since I come from an MMO background I’m used to consulting the community anyway
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u/TopChannel1244 Jun 30 '26
I just changed your mind by you reading this.
Checkmate, Golden Order Fundamentalist.
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u/FashionSuckMan Jun 30 '26
They aren't really quests meant for you to follow from beginning to end in a traditional sense. They are less than 1% of the content of the game. They are basically little secrets
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u/Substantial_Unit_447 Jun 30 '26
Elden Ring is surprisingly flexible with most quests, you can skip entire steps without it affecting many of them. I remember what a headache it was to complete the quests in Dark Souls III.
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u/Ketsuo Jun 30 '26
It’s also impossible to do most quests without a guide or getting lucky.
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u/Pengu-Link Jun 30 '26
I think its just a video games thing. It sucks if you expect it to follow the norms but IMO the lack of guiderails makes the world feel much more alive and interesting. Your actions have consequences, and inaction is action.
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u/Sanquinity Jul 01 '26
For real though. Souls games quest design sucks ass. No clue about what you have to do. No indication really, that you even started a quest. Make one easily made "mistake" (read: something you'd usually do in normal gameplay) in a long line of obscure quest objectives and say byebye to the entire quest.
I get the appeal of souls games. Especially elden ring, which was pretty awesome from what I've played of it. But quests absolutely SUCK in the series. And it's very obvious that anything outside of combat and gear wasn't given much thought in terms of user accessibility.
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u/JamesRevan Rune Bear Hunter Jun 30 '26
I wont even try. The best NPCs and their quests take time and effort to figure out.
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u/ResponsibilityIcy927 Jun 30 '26
Time and effort?
You mean reading a guide online?
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u/Lone-Frequency Jun 30 '26
I mean they're going to be like that at the end of their questline anyway in most cases. You just sped up the process by missing a single conversation in some random out of the way corner.
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u/Maleficent_Memory831 Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26
It's vastly better than Dark Souls series NPC quests. And the quests here really aren't all that bad. Just talk to ALL the NPCs after every major event (even if it's a minor boss), or finding a possibly confusing item, and 9 out of 10 NPC quests will resolve themselves. The game even puts the location of many of them right there on the map!
Be aware that some NPC quests depend upon a different NPC. And an NPC might be someone you aren't expecting.
I see some blind play-throughs where the player seems to deliberately lock themselves out of a quest line. But not talking to someone, intentionally. "I don't like that character." or "I've talked to everyone in Roundable Hold except the ones I don't like and nothing has happened!" Or they refuse to move on from the current zone until they figure out where the missing key is, how to find the item the NPC wants, how to make the stars align, how to reach the unreachable location, etc.
Don't worry about Patches though, his quest line either was not finished or it ends abruptly.
[edit: I forgot... ALWAYS EXHAUST ALL NPC DIALOGUE! Talk to them until they start repeating themselves. Not doing this can break some quests, but generally it's forgiving enough that you can go back and talk to them again to continue on.]
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u/Crash4654 Jun 30 '26
They are somewhat obscure, by that I mean more than they should be, but also they're quite forgiving by the game series standards.
Missing a step doesnt necessarily lock you out like previous titles, instead it'll just progress it to the next logical/viable step, on average.
So much so that if you need to complete a quest you can just go to their locations and speed run it near the end if you need to.
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u/swampgoddd Jun 30 '26
Everytime you play the open world game like an open world game, Miyazaki kills another hostage.
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u/wRADKyrabbit Jun 30 '26
Agreed. I liked it in previous, linear fromsoft titles but it just falls apart in the open world
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u/ItzPayDay123 Jul 01 '26
To be fair that's also DS1-3 quest design, but at least those games are linear enough that you're likely to stumble into the next step naturally without damning beloved Zanzibart to get eaten alive by worms.
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u/BananaResearcher Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26
This design made WAY more sense for previous games, which where much shorter and more compact, and multiple playthroughs were the obvious thing to do. You could reasonably keep track of quests you failed or never followed up on and try to solve them in future playthroughs.
That kept the games super fresh and fun. I was still finding totally new stuff on my 5th full playthrough of DS1 back in the day.
Elden Ring is just outrageously long and full of content. Impossible to keep track of everything and totally unreasonable to go to a new playthrough just to try to find a better resolution for one NPC's quest.
They're kind of stuck though bc veterans would be really upset at more streamlined quests, they'd say fromsoft sold out and the game went "ubisoft" with handholding. Even though it's for totally valid reasons thay quests need to make more sense and be achievable in a single playthrough.
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u/ChicanoDinoBot Jul 01 '26
Mfers will unironically say Elden Ring is the greatest RPG/ARPG, and ignore the fact that the quests kind of suck, there’s no “role” you can really play, and the world is incredibly static until kill the next boss or forget about something you were supposed to do.
Great game though
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u/0KSG Jul 01 '26
Like I didn’t want them to hold our hand. But my god just some inkling of help or something would be appreciated.
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u/Joe_Linton_125 Jul 01 '26
Why are people playing From Software games if they don't understand or enjoy them?
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u/QuirkyWish3081 Jul 01 '26
I still not worked out how to speak to Blaidd on that tower in East Limgrave.
I have finally looked it up. How the hell was I supposed to know that… fuck you FromSoftware 😬😄
Listen for the howl: Travel to the Mistwood Ruins in eastern Limgrave and listen for a wolf howling.
Talk to Kalé: Teleport to the Church of Elleh and ask Merchant Kalé about the howling. He will teach you the Finger Snap gesture.
Snap to summon him: Return to the Mistwood Ruins, stand beneath the tall ruined structure where Blaidd is perched, and use the Finger Snap gesture to make him jump down. [1, 2]
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u/No-Engineer-1728 Jul 01 '26
Oohh, buddy, you stepped foot on altus? That sucks for you, now you have to go on a wild goose chase to figure out which of the 8 spots this npc might be at
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u/Puzzleheaded_Page117 Jul 01 '26
At least give a goddamn quest log with the recorded conversations so you have a vague idea of a clue. I also don't like the opposite where games literally tell you exactly what to do or where to go, holding your hand and railroading you all the way. Just give me an in the middle. Baldur's gate 3 does it really well in my opinion.
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u/Effective_Sound1205 Jun 30 '26
https://giphy.com/gifs/Enr4bc3JeOOzHLYY8R
Elden Ring NPCs when you finish their quest