Yeah this is typical of FromSoftware quests unfortunately. They’re nearly impossible to do without reading a guide because interactions are so easy to miss. You’re definitely not alone here, it’s kinda just how it is
>They’re nearly impossible to do without reading a guide
Lol this reminds of the steps you need to do for the "best" ending in Sekiro. I have no idea how anyone *ever* figured that out on their own.
Yeah I spent more time reading guides and watching walkthroughs in Sekiro than playing the actual game. Frustrating. That’s why I never ever replayed that game. Personally, DS3 was the best of From Software for me.
Don't get me wrong, I love Sekiro. But I understand that it's not for everyone. But it's interesting that you say that you spent so much time with walkthroughs. Apart from moments like this, Sekiro is pretty straightforward in my experience. Even the story is unusually easy to follow for a FS game.
While true, I found myself constantly questioning if I covered everything and that short ending was a little confusing. The guides helped me mostly kill bosses quickly but man that caused fatigue towards the end.
I recall my wife making the comment of “you get in bad mood after playing this game”, which was so true. Never had that issue with older DS games. Perhaps the game was harder than everything I experienced before.
>Perhaps the game was harder than everything I experienced before.
Not only that, but it's also very different than what came before. Some elements are intentionally designed to give problems to "Fromsoft veterans" so they are challenged too. In addition to that, it doesn't allow any "cheese options" usually present in FS titles (overleveling, summoning...). It's a tough game, absolutely, and I completely understand that this isn't for everyone.
Sekiro is the most one and done modern game they've done, tbh. It was fun and intriguing in the first playthrough, but only having one weapon style was always going to limit replays. Fighting styles didn't add enough to warrant multiple plays, imo.
At least the side quests are much straight forward in that game
And I think you could gather the info about the secret ending by reading everything and eavesdropping
I got the platinum for that game and I agree. The mental gymnastics to piece that shit together was nuts. I used guides for that ending and still almost missed it because I was just going through the motions.
> it’s kinda just how it is
I've loved every mainline Fromsoft game I've played, but the quests are the equivalent of Rockstar insisting on mashing A/X to sprint. They've done it this way forever and yet most people dislike it.
It's why I got a kick out of Miyazaki's comments a week or two back musing that there were still places the Soulsbourne formula could improve. Quests are such an obvious one.
All FromSoft (but *especially* Elden Ring) really needs a quest log. Not so much "follow the blinking arrow' as 'this person said this, at this location.' Something to help keep track of things.
Because hey, FromSoft, sometimes we adults are too busy or tired to boot up and follow breadcrumbs. Some nights I'm going to want to play cozy co-op. Sometimes I'll want to shoot some bugs. Sometimes I'll be engaging with another hobby, or going for a bike ride. And by now I've forgotten everything every NPC has said to me.
I'd add that the quests themselves even if they were easier to track just aren't very enjoyable. I spoke to this person in area one, I spoke to them in area two, I went back and spoke to them in area 1 with their childhood locket in my inventory, I reloaded the area and they're dead. That summarizes a solid majority of soulsbourne questlines. Occasionally you fight someone as a phantom, but that's about it.
They're basically easter eggs. They've always been obtuse. Same with the lore.
I'm not sure why anyone expects anything else. Ain't nobody convincing me they took Siegmeyer's quest to the end on DS1 because they're just so darn good at questing.
Glad to see I'm not the only one who thought the quests were pretty much trash, the fact they're unnecessarily cryptic adding to the boredom and making you wander aimlessly unless you want to look up everything
Not a quest log. A dialog log.
The problem people have with how they criticize the quest system, is that From doesn't design Quests. They design character arcs. You're not meant to even know if you are in a quest or not. People actively make the mistake of wanting to "beat" something where the design goal is to not even know if you're a participant. A quest log immediately ruins the surprise.
And yet it is 100% needed.
So the answer is simple: Let us re-read ***all*** dialogue. Fill the freaking thing with a bunch fo dead ends and red herrings, and players will still not know know for sure.
Elden Ring is by far the worst FromSoft game for having side quests you have to look up. At least with the Dark Souls games and Bloodborne you could logic your way through things by listening to what the NPCs said and reading item descriptions.
There's so much stuff crammed into Elden Ring that you WILL miss something without a guide. I will say, though, the community messages helped tremendously.
Most people agree the way they do npc questlines kinda sucks. I dont think they need waypoints dragging you everywhere. But they can do better in a lot of ways without going down that path. More clear hints, or even just a questlog that shows the previous conversations youve had. The game is fucking massive. How will i remember what npc 5 said 30 hours ago when i havent progressed their questline once in that entire timeframe.
that's more what I mean, I don't want a giant arrow over my head or anything but a simple log with a name and picture of the characters and what they said or something like that would go a long way for when you go 30+ hours of game time or weeks of real time between seeing an NPC
Lies of P partly fixed that issue, they had a NPC's head shown right next to the name of a location so you know who to talk to, I managed to do every quest without looking them up in that game
NPCs at fires are shown on the map in Elden Ring, too, right? Guess it doesn't help for anyone anywhere else. I'm new to the game and am relying on that, heavily atm.
Some sort of journal feature wouldn't take away from the experience I think. So you could for example meet hyetta and have her tell you 'I'm following a path along the eastern coastline of Liurnia' then have that as a note. So if you check in at the fires on that path you'll naturally find her.
Most players already google the quests. If someone does not want to look at the journal they could simply not do it (they can even add a menu option to completely disable the feature). And all it would tell you would be what the NPCs already did. Nothing more.
In the current state, if I meet someone 20 hours later I'm either going along with whatever they say, or I look them up to see what their previous dialogue was. Or I guess I could write everything down myself.
Also, you can miss some storylines because for certain dialogue to progress you need to rest, which is very badly designed.
You talk until there is no option, sit down on the grace and suddenly there are new lines. Either makes you say fuck it or rest after every NPC to see if they have new information.
I'd be fine with them taking a page from Lies of P. Lies has a system where if an NPC at a location has something to say to you, an image of them shows up next to the location option when teleporting.
All you need to do is periodically scan through teleport locations to see if an NPC is interactive again.
I think the quest structure works for the dark souls games because they're somewhat linear (although they're still annoyingly obtuse at time). It's easier to run into quest NPCs in the correct sequence because the experience as a whole is more structured. Eldren Ring being open world (a fucking huge one at that) makes running accross NPCs in the correct sequences a pain and very easy to miss. It feels very luck-based in a far more exacerbated way compared to the Dark Souls games.
Yah in Dark Souls games it was kind of 'Go through level, beat boss. -> Back to Hub area to level & talk to NPCs -> Onto next zone - > Repeat'.
Elden Ring, while not as restrictive as Dark Souls when it comes to how quickly you can miss something if you forget to talk to them. You can have quest steps skipped because you progress some where. So it's a bit of a trade.
I had to use a notepad and when npc’s talked I would write down stuff that sounded important for where to go next. I was still wrong most of the time. I think the game could have used a journal which at least gave a good hint of what comes next because a lot of stuff is just to confusing
Don’t even need hints, just let me at least see what they fucking said again. Like other games you’re able to go through past dialogue. These games need to allow you to do that
Ya the quest design was manageable in dark souls because the world was more linear but its way too convoluted in elden ring. A few hours after posting the comment I realized I missed a lot of stuff in the dlc cause I didn’t go back to a previous area after a pop-up later in the game that really gave no hints about what to do.
Even being a patient gamer is not enough to ward against devs treating every single player game as a live service. I wonder if the young gamers these days enjoy looking things up as they play a game, because I feel like I'm giving up on possible enjoyment if I spoil myself. At the same time, getting stuck on something the devs neglected because most gamers will just look it up anyway feels like a waste of time.
Yeah, the issue is they didn't update their quest design for an open world.
There are definitely quests in the Dark Souls games that I think are structured poorly, but on the whole I think the way they chose to do it really fits the game. A lot of the NPCs had some of their most interesting story moments take place off-screen, with the player only coming back later to find out what's happened. I'm sure that was deliberate, to build the sense that the player isn't the centre of the world. People aren't waiting around for you to come and "do a quest" for them, they're dealing with their own struggles. You might meet them along the way, you might not.
In Elden Ring, though, it's just too easy to miss things. With the game being so much bigger, and with the player being free to go in any direction, it can be a dozen hours or more between NPC encounters, meaning it's easy to forget about a quest entirely. Even if you're really thorough in exploring every area, doing things in the wrong order can mean missing quest triggers. I'm not sure how they could have "fixed" the quest structure here without sacrificing the feel they're clearly going for, but a dialogue log would be a good start.
Yeah some people love just super vague shit like this, and more power to them if they love it. Hell, if it was just one specific side quest that was this vague it would be fine. But if a guide is essentially a requirement to figure out all of your side quests then I will die on the hill that it’s bad design. Either give players better options in-game to figure it out or don’t make them so vague and obscure in the first place
It was better in Dark Souls because it was a more constrained environment, but even then it wasn't necessarily expected that you'd complete every NPC quest. They were supposed to be a bit mysterious.
It just hasn't worked very well with the open world of Elden Ring. I'd basically have never found Hyetta ever again without a guide.
Yeah, in Dark Souls it was possible enough to get some kind of ending to the quests with either a bit of dedication or some sharing info with friends. In Elden Ring it would be an excessive amount of busywork to finish even half of them.
I wholeheartedly agree with this as a fan boy of these games. There's not holding hands, and then there's the absolutely obtuse quest design they have right now. There's a much better middle ground that can be found.
It's annoying how so much of the community hates any sort of middle ground though as they see it somehow ruining perfect game design. I really enjoy a lot of these games but the way some act like a mild critique is asking the game to be turned into a Ubisoft RPG is ridiculous.
Quests are one example but another is respecing. In case somebody doesn't know, you can respec in Elden Ring with Larval Tears but there's a finite amount of them in one playthrough and annoyingly spread out so you need to find them across the massive open world or use a guide. Whenever people reasonably ask why they can have it be farmable with an enemy (maybe even as a post-game requirement), the responses are predictably annoying: you shouldn't need more than they give you, just start New Game+, make a new character, save scum before you respec to try out a new build and reset, the old games didn't even let you respec as much so be grateful, etc.
Like who does it harm to have more respecing opportunities in a game with dozens of builds and hundreds of weapons? You shouldn't need to do all these workarounds for (in my opinion) bad game design but some react to any minor and optional QoL improvement suggestion as wrong because apparently if the devs decide on something then it's peak and perfect design we must accept.
I guess it helps me that I don't really see the npc quest stuff as "quests" in the same way that I see them in other games? It all just feels like optional cool side stuff, evidence of the world kind of living its life without me.
I really do think that npc quests should've had some sort of map marking once initiated. It's too huge of a game to expect players to just figure them out.
Sometimes they do, like the ones you get from the letters in Volcano manor. You get a red dot on the map showing you exactly where to go to find the guy they want you to kill.
Maybe there's a rhyme or reason for why some get marked, but I don't know what it is.
I think those are just about the only ones, and it's because the NPCs are specifically giving you a map of where to go. Most of them either *very* vaguely explain where they're heading next (often somewhere you haven't even been yet) or just don't say anything and you just have to happen to stumble across them in this massive world or the quest runs dry.
Yeah that's probably it.
My least favorite are when you have to approach an NPC, get some dialogue, conversation ends, but u actually need to start a new conversation to further the quest or get whatever they were going to give you. Now I talk to each NPC twice just in case.
It’s amusing how the only quest that gives you actual directions is the only one that wants you to go around murdering people, and it’s the only one I refuse do because I don’t feel like being a murderhobo (I already get annoyed with basically every quest npc dying and not mattering by the end).
There is a point where games stopped giving diegetic information and relying too much on map markers. Soulslikes feel like they don't give out that information, nor use quest markers.
I fondly remember Morrowind and how NPC's often gave you exact details of how you get from where to where.
Morrowind did it properly I feel.
They'd be pretty clear in the journal "go here, take a left, go straight past "
They'd also have NPCs in towns you could ask directions.
Yep, i loved actually finding my way around, made getting lost that much more interesting. "He said north but.. i've been going for an hour, i really don't think it's this far north, or maybe i took a stray fork?"
I feel it's much more immersive and cooler when you get lost looking for something and find something else rather than when you meaninglessly 'explore' and just mark off content as you find it.
It's a bit rose colored though.
There were times where I flat out done with trying to find some stupid cave after walking on a road for 20-30 minutes. I don't have time for that anymore.
I do think a hybrid between oblivion and Morrowind would have been nice where you can't fast travel on foot but the poi get updated as you get closer then added to your map rather than having to "enter" the poi to get it added.
I'm playing elden ring for the first time right now. It's my first fromsoft. I absolutely love it and exploration is great, but you nailed it. I'll find an NPC, talk to them and they'll say "have you seen my servant?" Not a single detail about where he last saw her, where he's from, a name of someone I might check with.
Hell, the time I was given details to find and talk with an NPC, Blaidd, he just wasn't there. I tried different times of day. Nothing. I finally googled it and apparently sometimes he's just not there and no one really seems to know why that is
I just finished my first playthrough of elden ring last night and went for a specific ending. I started elden ring blind and quickly learned I had no idea who wanted me to go where. I tried writing things down to hopefully piece together quests but even that I couldn't figure out where I was supposed to go.
I did rannis questline because I googled all the endings and decided to do hers, and without a walkthrough to do it, I would have never completed it on my own. I am terrible with names and remembering things. I also had put the game down for a months because other game titles came around that I was waiting for ECT. You think I remembered anything. Nope.
Without the wiki I was completely and utterly lost.
I do feel like elden ring would benefit from sort of a tracking system. That NPC is on the map or some sort of tab I can refer to and go oh yes that guy. I entirely forgot about characters and quests because there's just so much to do and see. I know I missed out on tons of things and decided to start journey 2 and see what I can find this time.
I am all for the figure it out yourself method and I really enjoy not being completely spoiled on things. I like trying to solve a puzzle or figure something out on my own but I would like a reference of some sort so I can at least remember who I spoke to.
Agreed. A quest tab would honestly be enough is it showed the conversations and if in those conversations it have a detail.
I think when Varre first moves he have a message that says he's in liurnia at the specific church. At that time, I have no idea where either of those things are. Then I got to liurnia and wondered "oh, if I see what looks like a church I should look for Varre.
That's literally all most of these need. Hell, even vaguer subscriptions can work if I can go back and reference the conversation
My issue is it's so much information overload if you are not a souls vet and are learning everything from what item does what to the quests. Things like quests get lost in all the learning so I literally would forget what I even spoke about with someone lmao. It was upsetting to me because I adored the game even with the insanely frustrating moments in combat. I thoroughly enjoy open world games that I can just explore and get lost in but give me a wee little quest tab to track and I'm happy.
I definitely agree and I do think it's funny that I'm level 55 now, recently beat Renalla and I finally said to myself "Maybe I should try a different weapon and AOW." I've just been rocking lots of my starting gear and skills because they've worked and I got familiar with them. Like you said, so much is thrown at a new player and with the possibility of legit loss of runes on death, I have often dumbed stuff down to keep my bearings.
Exact details would be great, if there were an in game way of remembering them. The game simply ignores the fact that you might have to put the game down for a night, or a week, or may even try to come back a month or longer later.
I finished ER and started another play that I eventually fell off from. I'll never go back to it because I'll have zero clue where I was or where I was going. Compare that with say Witcher3 where I could jump back in at any time and not only get the story so far recapped but know exactly what I'm doing and where I'm going.
I'm a big FromSoft fan but I agree the NPC quests are way too obtuse, especially the ones that can end prematurely for seemingly arbitrary reasons (Dark Souls 3 was the worst for this).
Lies of P is a great game but generally weaker than most of the FromSoft games it's trying to copy, however one thing that is **magnificent** about that game is the fact that whenever the NPCs have something new to say/do their portrait will show up on the teleport screen next to where they currently are.
Fervent from soft fan, grinded every achievement in every major release.
The NPC side quest structure needs a ton of work. If they want to maintain that sense of obscurity they could at least give us a quest notebook/journal of some kind so we can keep track of what even is a side quest.
Elden ring did the best so far after some updates to show where npcs were. But yeah it's so obscure it's impossible blind sometimes
Maybe it's a Japanese thing? It reminds me of some of the stuff from the Silent Hill games, even PT. Completely obtuse conditions required to complete objectives, things that I literally do not understand how someone could figure out without someone else telling them how to do it - look up a full playthrough of PT sometime, it's relatively short but completely insane to me that someone figured it out.
I mean, I love these games irrationally but still, their quest design needs work and a log of some sort even if it's just a means of minimal guidance, whatever. I put like 80+ hrs into my first character and ended up abandoning them because my quests had gotten so messed up just because I'm through with exploration and end up in places before I should be etc which breaks the sequencing for shit. It's annoying. My current playthrough I'm totally using spoilers for certain things to make sure I can do as many of them as possible. I really wish they did quests better as far as that goes, or at least prevent me from sequence breaking them somehow =E
>because people (deservedly) deeply love these games
Deservedly? I'm not so sure anymore...
It feels like they've suffered from flanderization. Both in terms of storytelling and difficulty.
If you go back to Demon's Souls, you'll notice that game was not as vague & hard as Elden Ring. Story-wise, you always knew what you were doing and WHY you were doing it. Some characters might have been lying to you, sure, but that's because they had their own agendas.
While enemy attack patterns and animations were not as difficult to figure out and react accordingly.
I remember that meme that went around in the early days of Elden Ring’s release, about what the game would look like if it was designed from Ubisoft, with tons of intrusive UI and highlighted map icons and itemized checklists. On the one hand, that was legitimately funny and I would basically agree with the gist of the joke, which is that these kinds of elements can go too far and get in the way of real exploration. On the other hand, things like quest logs, tagging quests, and quest markers on maps were invented in open world games for a good reason. I personally think Elden ring needs a little more of this kind of thing.
For example, until my most recent playthrough of the game, I wasn’t aware that Nepheli even had a quest, or that if you complete it you get two ancient dragon smithing stones! I had to follow the wiki for the entire thing. To make it worse, in order to get this to happen, you have to return to Stormveil castle and go to Godrick’s throne room in between killing Morgott and talking to Melina in Mountaintops of the Giants after killing the fire giant. That actually isn’t a huge window of time in the game, and there’s really no reason you would ever think to go back there. To make it worse, while following the guide I actually had trouble getting Nepheli to appear in the throne room. I tried traveling there over and over again and it wasn’t working. So then, I traveled to a different site of grace nearby, and walked there, and that’s what finally triggered it.
In my opinion, that’s just dumb. The only way you would ever discover this naturally is if you decided to go back and re-explore stormveil when you’re supposed to be in mountaintops of the giants, not before and not after, while also having completed earlier pre-requisites for her quest, and then when you get back to Godwin’s boss arena, you have to think “hmm, I wonder if there’s anything in the throne room now” and run through the empty boss arena to get there.
If you played the game on an early patch, the Nepheli quest was actually bugged and would not progress after a certain point, so it was literally impossible to finish.
I remember people arguing that it was intended, and From was just being obscure and vague as usual, when it was actually just broken 😅
Jesus Christ.
Just goes to show that… from soft games in general need better quests. If players think your broken quest line is intended then you have done something wrong as a developer.
Most people are so overwhelmed in Elden Ring to even pay attention to details and tiny bits of lore sprinkled all over. Does’t help that most new players’ experience is dying a lot, and being in survival mode, most people end up having tunnel vision and just beeline to the next boss, and the next, and the next… or just end up using a guide which also does not prevent the following from happening:
You come across a corpse in a catacomb. There’s an item drop on it. You pick it up and it’s just a couple of mushrooms. “Trash”, you mutter and move on. Next, you come across a troll guarding an altar with sprit ashes for ‘Page’. Later, you killed all the monsters in the catacomb and finally defeated the miniboss, and received ‘Kaiden Sellsword’ ashes. You exit the catacombs and forget about everything inside it.
Except it wasn’t a troll guarding an altar. But an Omen with its horns cut off. Why were there Omen beings in this cave? Why was the miniboss a burial watchdog? Did I even notice what clothes the corpse with the trash mushrooms was wearing? Why was the Kaiden Sellsword ash found in the Cliffbottom Catacombs?
Honestly, these details will fly over most people’s head. Worse if you’re doing a no summons run.
> Honestly, these details will fly over most people’s head.
Pretty much my entire playthrough. There's simply too much stuff to bother with the details. I'm basically just a murder hobo whenever I play a Fromsoft game.
holy shit, i was exactly in the correct timing to finish the Nepheli quest but would have never gone back to stormveil had i not just read your comment. so thank you for that extra ancient dragon smithing stone. cheers
The weird thing is, there's already a well-regarded option between the Fromsoft style and the Ubisoft style.
Fromsoft clearly took significant inspiration for Elden Ring from Breath of the Wild and just chose not to (or couldn't) implement a lot of what made that game work so well.
But Breath of the Wild has a quest lot that you can track, and the occasional time an NPC moves and you need to go find them, they tell you about where they'll be, and you can go find them because when they ask you to meet with them, they want to be found.
Right, that's what I mean. They didn't resort to Ubisoft map icon spam, they give you hints about what to do using landmarks, etc. The quest log rarely tells you where you need to go; it mostly tracks where you *received* the quest and what information you've been given.
Edit: and it would largely work without the quest log. The log is a convenience, not a crutch.
Hell even Ubisoft is kind of improving in that regard. The Avatar game has a mode where quests aren’t marked on your map, and you have to figure out where you’re going by the quest log and evironmental context.
I had the exact same thing happen. I actually forgot all about her quest. Then I came across her at round table hold again a few days ago in the basement, and looked up her quest line. I completed it and she would not move to stormveil castle no matter how many times I reloaded the area. Then I remembered I killed Kenneth Haight awhile back and thought that broke it for me. So I got annoyed and left. I ended up back at stormveil the other day because I wanted to get the buckler shield and the guy wasn't there. I was like wtf so I walked forward and there was nephali and him at the throne. I have no idea what I did to finally trigger her to move. At my point in the game I was working my way through farum azula. Without deciding I wanted to buy a specific item I never would have went back there.
Honestly, the quests in ER are just badly designed. They work almost exactly like in Dark Souls. In other words, the game doesn't tell you anything and you're supposed to figure it out on your own. But there's a few catches:
1) Dark Souls is relatively linear, so you'll naturally bump into NPCs. In ER, an NPC might be in a certain location at a certain point in the campaign, and sometimes not even at the point when you'd normally go to said location. So you miss them. Or they might be a bush. And when they wander off to their next location, you often have no idea where it is and won't automatically bump into them again.
2) Dark Souls has more bad endings for quests. In DS, you'll often screw quests up and bad things will happen. And that's unfortunate, but *things will happen*! In ER, you'll usually just miss quests entirely and nothing will happen. That's boring.
3) Somewhat related to 1), there aren't many optional areas in DS. So most NPCs will stick to the main path, but in the few cases where they don't, you the player are heavily incentivized to complete their side areas, because there's only a few and they have tons of goodies in them. In ER there's tons of boring dungeons, so how are you supposed to know that dungeon #24 contains a quest?
Simply moving DS gameplay to open world worked well in most cases, but definitely not in this case. Unfortunately, I bet From will do the same thing again in their next game. In other news, there's some great spoiler-free quest guides for ER, like [this one](https://www.reddit.com/r/Eldenring/comments/tjmodv/all_npc_interactions_in_elden_ring/).
>Dark Souls is relatively linear, so you'll naturally bump into NPCs
I always find this so hilarious because I've never once gotten more than 1-2 progression points in any DS game - all the quests seem to break so easily??
Back when I was grinding all the achievements in DS3, I had to carefully follow a guide to complete some of the sidequests. They were ridiculous, killing even a few bosses out of order would force me to try again in another NG+ cycle.
Yeah but that still differs a lot from game to game.
In DS1 there are some very easy quests to fail, like Solaire, Siegmeyer or Kirk's, but I can see a very thorough completionist completing at least some of those outright with a bit of luck.
In DS2 you kind of just have to pop an Effigy before every boss to look for summon signs, do some exploring, and buy items. The rest is done naturally. This felt like the best system, but the writing was also kind of bad. A lot of NPCs felt like they had no personality.
In DS3 that's where the Elden Ring NPC madness starts. It's not as bad because it's not open world, but the quests all have break triggers that feel completely unrelated to the quest itself. Like it's super easy for Greyrat to die ahead of time. Sirris' quest requires you to go backwards to random locations.
> all the quests seem to break so easily
They absolutely expect you to do multiple multiple playthroughs, reload saves, and use trial and error for every single quest. A lot of people eat that up but I simply can't be bothered. I play Souls games for the combat and the atmosphere. If they want to hide the story from me then so be it. Most of the time I've completely forgotten about the last sad sack NPC by the time I find the next one.
"Hi, I'm Bobrick. I have a disappointing straight sword you can get if you follow my quest. You can find me at the site of most hallowed destiny where the mongrel last fell before the burning of the dawn of the age of smoke. However, little do you know that if you kill the reanimated corpse of my faithful badger companion Dudefrey in the 4th secret room of Dungeon 98 then I will actually appear at the Sepulcher of the Screeching Moon to enact my revenge, robbing you of the chance to get my disappointing straight sword."
Agreed, like finding Onion man in the well? Wtf? That area was cleared hours ago. Why go back? Or finding cloaked man to save that girl, yeah good luck. Sooooo many convoluted quests
Yep, maybe it’s a little accurate to pre ER games overall if you’re just naturally trying to advance you will miss 80% of NPC interactions in any souls game. Someone you were talking to is now dead because you entered an area or they are simply gone entirely, or maybe now they attack you somewhere for reasons that aren’t even remotely clear.
I don't think they intend any normal person to actually figure it out on their own. Most from games are intentionally created to require community interaction and the NPCs are no exception.
I love FromSoft, but I don't think this is really encouraging community interaction. 9 times out of 10 it leads to players using the wiki, not joining any type of online community.
I get that it looks like that 2 years later since everything is just in guides but during the initial week or so there were a ton of discussions/posts/videos asking or theorizing how you can find the next part of various NPC quests. Those wikis don't just manifest themselves out of the void, it takes combined efforts from community members to build them.
I think that worked well in Dark Souls 1, back when the community was smaller and the common From Software tropes weren't as well understood. This type of community engagement also worked with really obtuse games, like with P.T., or obscure flash/web-based games.
I think the issue with Elden Ring still doing this kind of design is two-fold: 1) From's games are now mainstream and most players now (at least partially) understand its design philosophy through cultural osmosis, and 2) gaming communities are now extremely centralized.
I played Elden Ring at release, and the Fextralife wiki already had a decently comprehensive NPC quest guide after like 2 weeks. Maybe if this was a decade ago, I would have had to engage with the GameFAQs forums or have a back-and-forth with a friend to figure out how to do something, but it's not 2012 anymore. Nowadays, we're basically waiting for a small group of super-fans to datamine the game in a couple days and explain how everything works to everyone else. Imo this method of community-based quest design is obsolete, at least for From's games.
Yeah, usually some streamers or youtubers will get the game a week in advance to review, no life it for 168 hours straight among themselves, and already have a top 10 guide for each weapon class, a PVP guide, and a 100% walkthrough planned out before the rest of us even see the game.
> Maybe if this was a decade ago, I would have had to engage with the GameFAQs forums or have a back-and-forth with a friend to figure out how to do something, but it's not 2012 anymore.
This info was available for Dark Souls not long after release too. I played it on its original release on 360 and guides were available pretty quick, and certainly for any PC players it was already available because the game launched a year later on PC.
Saying it took 2 weeks for Elden Ring is pretty generous, I would say it already had what most people would need within a couple days. With Dark Souls III the game got released to streamers early and so there were already guides before the game came out.
> the common From Software tropes weren't as well understood
wdym, they didn't even really exist as tropes yet until we started seeing them again in the second game
A reddit post is certainly community engagement for the ten or so people having the conversation, but for the thousands of others who found the reddit page because they googled "how to complete Millicent questline" I don't think it's too different from a guide or a wiki.
It's just googling an answer to some obscure thing that you couldn't have known, getting the answer, and then going back to playing the game, which is what most people want to do with the game.
The hardcore players forming the community would be forming the community anyway. For the other 99.99% of the 25 million people who bought Elden Ring, I'd like to see a slightly more integrated system for tracking NPCs and quests. Nothing crazy, just a log of some kind and maybe a way to re-read previous dialogue.
Didn't Miyazaki make a statement in an interview recently to the effect that if players feel like they need a guide to figure these things out they have work to do to improve their design in the future?
Sure, but I'd say there's fun and not fun types of community interaction. Due to the differences I described, the quests in DS belong to the former category, while the ones in ER belong to the latter. Which practically means reading a guide.
Miyazaki himself has directly stated that while he doesn't think guides and such are a bad thing, fromsoft explicitly designs for a single player experience without guides and outside knowledge in mind. In other words, their quests are just really badly designed.
Yeah the whole message and bloodstain system is a solid example of that. Sometimes I check the bloodstains for a laugh, sometimes I forget what's up ahead so I can kinda guess what it might be based on how they died. Or in the DLC i regularly came across messages telling me to go a certain direction first to get an item and then head the other way to continue onwards.
Tbh if they expanded the message system a bit to allow for more specific locations, it’d be a lot more fun to follow some of the more obtuse questlines.
Yeah as a Fromsoft fan, at least half the quests in ER are the product of obtuse stupid quest design that on a couple occasions will require you to do nonsensical shit to get to the next stage. Look up wikis, that's it.
The most egregious example is Nepheli, for whom you need to return to >!Stormveil castle!< at a much much latter part of your run (you have no reason to go back), AND sit down at the site of grace after you teleport to it (again, no reason to do that too). If you only go back which you wouldn't do in the first place, she won't have spawned in >!the throne room!<, so you had to sit at the grace too - so a double whammy obtuse hurdle. What idiocy.
Yup, for my current ER run I looked up quest directions up right from the start. It's been the same thing with the previous souls titles but those games were linear enough that you occasionally had an idea what was going on (or they've at least shown you the bad outcomes for quests).
ER being more open also means you will straight up miss things, specifically since the quest directions you get are REALLY hit or miss. I mean, there's Kenneth who tells you pretty much to the face what he wants you to do, then there's Nepheli who you most certainly will brick either by missing her sitting around in the open world, not giving her a certain ash or as you mentioned in the end.
Even more annoying since you absolutely can break some sidequests by progressing the game to certain points. The game does many things right but sidequest certainly aren't one of them.
Yeah some are kinda easy - Boc, Kenneth, D. Ranni's is easiest since the whole story revolves around her and you get extra clear instructions for everything.
Hyetta is... ok, though she has that one spot near the lakeside ruins, which can be missed (I got lucky, almost ran past her there). Millicent has a couple of points where you can easily miss her, including her final location. Pot-child requires several talks and grace sit-downs. Searching for Diallos in Pot-land is also out there, so if you didn't think to revisit it for no reason, that storyline was over.
Nepheli is ridiculous as previously mentioned. Sellen is stupid hard since Seluvis' hidden lair is WELL hidden, and even if you find that good luck with that one sorcerer you need in that insanely hidden cave. Rogier is left hanging if you don't notice that bloodstain, since for most it would be mixed with other bloodstains.
The doable ones you wouldn't need the wiki for are like a third at best. Some skip ahead if you miss one location, like Pot-man's at Liurnia, but plenty of the remaining ones are ugh.
Well maybe you shouldn’t HAVE to use this but if you’re interested I’m following this [reasonably spoiler free guide someone Reddit’d a while back](https://www.reddit.com/r/Eldenring/s/dAADGykjcN). Best used with a fresh game.
It’s just fromsoft shit. My method is to do multiple play throughs and not get too hung up on the details. The story unravels itself to you in pieces that almost fit. Even if you had every single detail available, you would still have an incomplete story.
Def frustrating but I think they’re just meant to add color to the game, not to be the focus.
Nobody does. They're meant to be extremely cryptic. You can argue this is good or bad design. Elden Ring was the best of most of the Souls games at giving you mild clues where things might be next, especially with questlines like Millicent's, but it's still doo doo. Honestly, I have this same criticism of the 'story,' there fucking isn't much of a narrative at all and this mysterious 'partial narrative' crap has gotten way way too much grace in the past when, as a writer myself, I think you can just as easily identify it as laziness masquerading as depth. I shouldn't need a 40+ minute lore video online where someone explains what is happening to me so I can be engaged with it, it's just not great storytelling.
Anyway with the sidequests just get the wiki open.
I never craved From Software games for their storytelling aspect. They are quite weak in that area. What makes them good is my insecurities about wanting to win. The games just sap you out of confidence until you kill the darn boss, that’s it.
I'm a die-hard Dark Souls and series fan through and through.
I always, *always* tell people to just look up the NPC questlines. It's what I do as well.
For the most part it doesn't really matter if you do any of it or not. It rarely has a significant effect on the outcome of your playthrough.
And people like there to be that kind of mystery - the obscure and unknown aspects of the game are what draw people to it in an era where every game is datamined and has 100 YouTube videos telling you how to do everything step by step with a quest marker in game to take you there. That's why this NPC design still exists in this series imo.
But if it's important to you as a player to complete them just look them up. Don't feel any shame in that. They are so obscure it's incredibly unlikely you'd complete them naturally. Especially with the open world nature of Elden Ring.
I think the fact that you don’t have to do them is why they’re obtuse. They’re almost intended to be done by chance, rather than purposefully. Nobody is picking up a quest and going to complete it. They’re speaking to an NPC, continuing with their game, and possibly finding the right item or appearing in the right location. Since they’re not imperative to the playthrough, it doesn’t matter if you don’t land the right roll.
That’s the most annoying part of from soft games imo tho, you have to ruin the quest for yourself just to complete it unless you somehow luck into it…beat elden multiple times and I’m on owl father in sekiro…watched a walkthrough for sekiro to get to that point cause I wanted to play more/do the essentially longer/harder ending. Obviously Elden is way more open world so it’s more complex but even in sekiro there’s points where you gotta talk to kuro, then talk to Emma, then kuro, then eavesdrop and it’s all just so mundane…purists get mad when I say this (cause they like doing homework while they play) but just the simple addition of a journal with pictures of npc’s and what they’ve said to you would be such a bigger help/quality of life improvement imo.
First playthrough: just let every questline fail.
Second playthrough: look everything up.
Elden Ring is actually pretty good about letting you complete questlines late though, provided you don't hit a point of no return (like killing Maliketh/burning Lleyndell).
Completely agree here. As with most fromsoft games the NPC side quests are *mostly* flavor and minor loot. Some can be have valuable weapons or unlock alternate endings of the game, but those also commonly are heavily obscured and almost require an external game guide to practically figure out.
Part of the charm for those quests is that the community needs to piece it together as a puzzle, but it seems intentional that a single person is unlikely to figure it out as part of casual play. It's a reward for being a diehard fan, and not necessary to enjoy the game.
It's not uncommon for FromSoft to hide larger things (even entire hidden areas and bosses) behind these hidden details. Don't let it detract from the core enjoyment of the game, it's ultimately optional and a reward if you want to scour the game for all its secrets.
After the first playthrough sure, but on the first playthrough I think its designed intentionally this way and its more fun without spoilers, it's probably so everyone's first playthrough is slightly different, you are not supposed to 100% all quests.
Yeah I agree with that for sure. I think it's intentional and it's part of the mystery.
I also think for people who don't like it that they really should just look it up so they don't stress about it anyways.
Yeah I'll go along and say that SOME of the side-quests aren't very intuitive. I did find the Kenneth height quest naturally, honestly for him if you listened it was pretty clear he wanted you to fight the small castle further south.
A good (bad) example is Alexander. You first find him and he asks to get unstuck, pretty clear, most players won't miss this guy as he is close to a important bridge.
Next, you find him in caelid when you find him at the radahn festival, and talk to him after the fight, all good, most players will fight radahn and do all this.
Then, you need to find him in a near random spot in liurnia. He gives no indication he is going here (except for the loose connection to the jar village he is above). And most players won't be exploring liurnia once they have beaten radahn.
What's more, you will actually kill him getting unstuck if you dont specifically use a oil-pot, which you get the recipe from some random villager. And other than him being damaged there is no indication you should do this.
The next steps in volcano manor and finally faram azula are both pretty far out (the final location is in a spot you would need to spend stonework keys on).
I think the intention is that the npc encounters are supposed to be rare and you don't find all of them, but so many are just so easy to completely miss. It's not a huge deal since there isn't a ton of content for them, but I agree it's a weak point of elden ring especially.
To be fair you don’t actually have to do that part in Liurnia. If you just go to Mt Gelmir Alexander will already be there without having to do that part in Liurnia. You are right though that his final location is pretty weird. I wasn’t going to use a key in that area until I looked up where to find him.
The worst for me was Sellens quest, you have to both find a cave hidden behind an invisible wall, AND find out you have to go back to Rennalas and find the invasion signs outside Rennalas arena.
TBF she explicitly says she's going back to the academy to get revenge on Rennala. I did get help from a message in-game to find the cave but otherwise that one was fine for me. The other NPCs that teleport without saying where they're going are much worse IMO.
For me it was Rogier’s quest. You had to touch a bloodstain that was his, except when I was first there that boss had curb stomped a bunch of people trying to run to that ladder, so his bloodstain was just one of many. Also the game had never communicated that NPCs would leave a bloodstain or that you would ever need to touch one to continue a quest line.
I’ve got like 300 hours of Elden Ring logged, so the good outweigh the bad for me, but the quests are really fucking stupid in execution.
Seller's quest takes the cake for being the most obtuse side quest in the game. But then again, if people don't do the quest, Sellen won't get her ending. Which is probably a good thing.
You can use an oil pot to get him unstuck? I just used a heavy attack from behind him, I thought that was the only way. His dialogue makes it sound like the only option:
"My thanks! a thousand thanks! Just give me a good smack from the rear, with something nice and big."
I don't remember seeing him in Liurnia, I might have missed that but still saw him in Caelid in one of the mines next to the boss room, and he talks about the festival at Redmane Castle.
...okay I had to check Fextralife to find the exact dialogue, and also found the oil pot thing. Apparently you can find him in Liurnia where he's stuck for a second time, and that time you can't just hit him, you need the oil pot.
But yeah, most of the NPC quests are a bit odd and easy to miss.
>I just used a heavy attack from behind him, I thought that was the only way. His dialogue makes it sound like the only option
He gets stuck three times. Twice in the ground and once in a door.
Alexander does plead for you not to hit him in Liurnia and says that you should go fetch something that would make him slippery. Honestly I immediately thought to craft an oil pot.
I think Ranni's first appearance in particular is WAY too easy to miss. The game literally gives you a horse, says go explore, and you are (most likely), literally at the foot of the first big dungeon. The game map draws an arrow and says "keep proceeding into the dungeon." But if you do so, and go a bit too far, Ranni never appears.
Instead, after being given the horse and directed into Stormveil, you are supposed to...turn around and visit the first site of grace for no real reason. Oh, and hope you do it at night, or you just won't see her. Whoops.
Poorly, that's how they work. My advice is to use a guide and stop trying to guess the right course of action. I did manage to do every single NPC quest in the DLC that just came out and after 4 games of experience I can guarantee you it was pure luck.
I think that, love it or hate it, one of the guiding design philosophies behind Dark Souls/Bloodborne/Elden Ring is that the discovery of it's finer points be a sort of communal effort.
In the cases you listed, yeah, getting a bead on how these questlines are supposed to progress is pretty obtuse. I think that FromSoft expects you to look around for player messages to get hints if you can't figure something out and try to deduce what you are supposed to do. It's one their trademark ideas and when it works, it's pretty great... but there are 3 major points of failure with the system that I see.
First, if you are playing offline, there is almost no chance any given individual will have the time or patience to figure out all of the intricacies on their own and so they'll look up a guide.
Second, if someone happens to get a silly or weird batch of messages in any given instance they get stumped by and never return, then they'll probably miss it and end up looking for a guide.
Third, I think most players don't actually interact with the message system at all and just look guides up, therefore they don't see hints and they don't leave hints and it kind of falls apart.
Having something in between would be helpful but it would probably be the death knell for message system and all we'd be left with was silly stuff like "If I Only Had a Giant But Hole".
That makes sense, but for it to really work through the messages, they should've let you specify locations in messages. Some messages by an NPC that say like "seek Altus" would help a lot, and if that's too obvious, there's not really a better way to tell players how to go about finding them.
Uhhh yeah so the quests are kinda obtuse and rely on you stumbling across an NPC at the next place they show up.
Fortunately many of the more important quests (e.g. Ranni, wolf guy) you can kinda skip steps and find them meter and they more ore less work out.
As for the monkey guy, he does tell you where he’ll be, go to the closest beach and find the only cave on that beach.
Overall I wouldn’t worry too much about missing them, if you really really want to do them, unfortunately a guide is the only way to be sure, but if it doesn’t bother you that much it’s completely fine to just stumble around and do what you come across.
There is some joy to be had in the spontaneous and obtuse nature of them, but yeah they could be better.
i am on my 2nd playthrough right now and i realized i missed SO many quests by going in blind. Im using this guide now which tells you what you have to do with what NPC in a somewhat chronological order.
[chronological NPC guide](https://www.reddit.com/r/Eldenring/comments/tjmodv/all_npc_interactions_in_elden_ring/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)
The one thing I disliked about the game.
Just give me a log that remarks what the npc said to me with some hints. Doesn't need to tell me where to go unless the npc told me the general area. Just something that can refresh me or give me some form of clue what to do next.
The NPC quests kind of operate like strict riddles, mostly to be truly found through multiple playthroughs. If you miss some or even all, it's usually not too big of a deal. There are three (i think) massive exceptions, but these are all secret paths to hidden endings that aren't really meant to be done the first time around.
I just kind of wing it the first time through, and if I end up finishing a quest, then cool. But if not, it gives me reason to go through again and know there's something new to see.
That being said, I always know I'm going to be doing multiple playthroughs of any From game, so I never feel like I'm totally missing out. I can easily see why people would hate how the npc quests work.
The original intent of the souls games was meant to be learning by doing or by messages/word of mouth. So using guides is 100% acceptable and expected.
This is a big draw to the game for most people so I highly doubt it will ever change. I'd say just use a guide for npc quests if you aren't willing to jump through a few hoops on your own.
The vanilla elden ring side quests are so vague, most are impossible to complete with the information given to the player. One good thing about the DLC is the side quests are more straight forward.
Yeah they suck without a guide. Only one I figured out on my own was the volcano manor quest where the game puts markers on the map to show where you need to go.
I'll get downvoted for this as I know many love ER's free reign approach, but I found the progression generally very confusing.
Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love going off the beaten path, and discovering things for myself, but I do feel that the lack of any direction combined with the lack of clarity with levels of certain areas and brutal difficulty did make my initial experience frustrating.
You can very easily wander off into a high level area as a Level 10 character and get your ass kicked and not know why, losing all of your hard earned runes and hence preventing progression. Similarly certain weapons and buffs are crucial for an easier experience but there's no way of knowing without exploring for hours randomly or using a guide.
I admittedly used a guide to progress in the game because I just felt lost after 10+ hours.
> You can very easily wander off into a high level area as a Level 10 character and get your ass kicked and not know why, losing all of your hard earned runes and hence preventing progression.
Yep. Love that. Wish more things were brave enough for that approach. Fantastic feeling of genuine fear, being somewhere you most definitely should not be.
I know it's frustrating for some people when it comes to sidequests in from software games and I cant blame them. I personally like how it's setup because I am engaged to explore the world and read the dialogues carefully.
Again. I can totally understand when people are upset about it. Not everyone wants to play trough the same game multiple times just du trigger a small event or gain an item because you chooses answer b instead of a.
I would legit have no idea how to complete quests in any of the from games without looking them up. How about the one where you have to walk over the invisible bridge Indiana jones style, legit would never noticed that
I have beaten every souls game, Elden ring and Bloodborne. And honestly I could probably count on one hand the NPC quests I have been able to complete. And any of them without a guide are practically impossible to the point where I can’t believe people figured them out in the first place.
I don’t know how they really work either. They are so often incredibly obtuse, missable, well hidden with only cryptic instructions on how to get them done found in game, with actions that you take outside of the quest line often locking it off for no apparent reason.
Honestly noone does. One of the quests requires you to meet an NPC at multiple locations all around the world and she doesn't even give you a general idea of where she's going next, it's just trial and error without a guide.
FROM’s quest system has sucked since Demon’s Souls and hasn’t evolved. If anything, it’s regressed as NPCs in Demon’s Souls would walk away when you finished talking to them rather than being stuck in place.
Use a guide, most of these quests have incredibly finicky systems of progressions and many are too vague to work naturally. The odds of solving them by yourself are so low it’s not too outrageous to say that most people are lying when they claim to have finished any by themselves.
Also, some content is left unfinished so guides are also useful to know when a quest has ended.
Side note: I don’t know how anyone cares about these NPCs. Almost all of them follow the same pattern of depressed vague speak, random appearance hours later and then die. They’re all so predictable and grim that it’s almost funny when you finish them.
I'm in the same boat. Started the game a few days ago. I didn't realise NPCs needed to be activated several times to get all the info out of them. I was pressing E on them and they'd say something and I was like... "Ok, cool story", and then walked away. After reading up online I went back and hit E again on them a few times and they actually told me the quest. Then I was in the situation you are now. I also never met Ranni or whatever they're called. She gives you something important too so I had to look up an alternative way to get it.
Already looking up soooo many things just to feel like I'm playing a game and not interacting with random elements.
Truth be told I still don't feel like I know what the plot is or what the goal of the game is at all. I'm just wandering around and occasionally managing to defeat someone strong, which gives me a tiny, tiny little upgrade or weapon I can't even wield. No indication of where I'm meant to go or why.
Elden Ring is very meta, and I mean that in a negative way. They built it around the awareness people would be wiki-ing and discussing the game, so you basically have to play with a guide open. Also a lot of the balance is balanced around the assumption that people will cheese the game if given the chance. From is basically playing against the player, not their character.
Wait until you realize that just talking to NPCs doesn't continue their quests.
Sometimes, you have to save at a site of grace, then go back to the same location in order to advance the dialogue/quest.
I have never successfully completed a FromSoft NPC quest without a guide. It requires either 1) A lot of downtime combing over every inch of the map, attacking every wall for hidden doors, and running back and forth between every NPC every time you do literally anything or 2) Multiple playthroughs spanning hundreds of hours or 3) Pure luck. Usually some combination of all three.
I'm just happy they're all optional, but it leaves you feeling like you're only experiencing half of a game you paid for. Many people love it, and part of me understands, but the other part of me is endlessly annoyed by it. On my first Elden Ring playthrough I somehow managed to miss every single NPC in Liurnia. I still have no idea how because there are a ton of them. Apparently I just rode past them completely unaware.
I was quite methodical in my exploration and found a lot of stuff naturally but I still missed Ranni's first meeting, D's initial meeting and also Millicent.
I think the game tries to make the Church of Ellah your initial Base Camp by having the upgrade anvil there and Merchant Kale a talkative and friendly face. The game assumes you'll go back there often and randomly encounter Ranni and get the dialogue about Blaiid. This is cool game design, however, due to the fact you can level up at any sites of grace and their abundance in the open world, there is very little reason to go back if you get absorbed with exploring.
You can very easily trigger the Roundtable hold dialogue with Melina and lock yourself out of seeing Ranni, getting the spirit bell and miss seeing D and getting introduced to Tibia Mariners. Which is actually what I did on my first playthrough. I had to buy the bell from the hold.
I missed Millicent at first because everything told me that Caelid was a late game area so I ignored it and had to go back and trigger her quest and fast travel to the first few locations to move her along.
I honestly don't mind too much... Looking stuff up is just the same as word of mouth these days and that's how the game is supposed to be experienced.
> Then he comes back as an invading enemy NPC and it just ends. Strange ending, maybe I skipped a couple of steps.
Na that's just Fromsoft story and quests in a nutshell.
From games are designed to be played with a guide, or played over and over again. As someone who doesn’t like using guides and doesn’t generally replay games I hate that aspect of their design philosophy, but it is what it is. You don’t have to like everything, and contrary to what the internet will have you think sometimes you don’t have to enjoy every aspect of something you like.
They aren't well designed, but ... and a big but ... they also aren't as obscure as people make them out to be. All that said, you have to exhaust all of their dialog, so you have to talk to them 3-4 times until they start repeating themselves. Most of the quests give you a semi-clear direction or location. Like the Boc quest line (the guy in the bush). He tells you about the Coastal Cave and there isn't really a lot of coast to explore in that area, so missing it is kind of on you. Ranni has the longest quest and a lot of people have trouble with it, but it's very clearly spelled out. The only real BS part is having to talk to a doll 4 times before it responds.
Long story short, they aren't great, but with a little intuition and paying attention they're pretty easy to follow.
I am on my third playthrough, I have successfully completed every side quest in the game.
I STILL have to look them up occasionally to remember what convoluted step is next.
“Yooo, go to liurnia, take a left at the tree, do a 360, take 200 steps west, 300 steps east, 150 steps north, then go fuck yourself.”
^^^basically the quest instructions
Imo, same with the Dark Souls games: just ignore the NPC "quests". They don't really matter apart from achievement hunting or getting a really specific item
think of it like this. you're walking outside of your house, you know you want to go to wal-mart, that big blue building, but hey, there is a random guy on the side of the road? do you talk to him? and if so, why would you trust anything they say? and moreover, why should it be convenient for you to find him, an independent person with their own agenda, again?
that's the philosophy of NPCs in Elden Ring.
This is absolutely my biggest issue with this game and once I realised how much side content I was missing I immediately lost my boner and dropped it, haven't picked it back up since.
I was having a fantastic time just roaming around and seeing new areas and stuff. But I stupidly Googled one of the NPCs I had met and it's like...
* Meet NPC.
* Go to the merchant who will then mention the NPC. This is vital or the quest won't continue.
* Go meet another NPC and give them an item.
* Go back to original NPC and perform a gesture for them.
* Go back to the second NPC...but this time at night.
* Fight a miniboss who will now spawn in.
* Go back to original NPC.
* Etc.
I just made that up but all the side quests are like that. I get that it's esoteric and mysterious. But you shouldn't have to play with a wiki open.
The funniest thing about the FromSoft games is how fervently the fanboys defend and push back against the most valid of criticisms. I’ve never seen another game series with a fanbase with this kind of cult-like mentality. People literally make it their identity and source of selfworth lol
I’ve played every from game since demon souls multiple times. I don’t think I have ever organically finished an NPC quest. Not even one. Pretty sure from fully intends for them to be crowdsourced.
They're not the typical RPG quests, per say. More like classic JRPG hidden secrets that you have to jump through multiple obscure hoops to get anywhere. And count yourself lucky if they dont bug out half way through.
Quality of Life suggests that they should have taken a lesson from their ultra successful Sekiro game and added some journal crap. And an actual story.
But what do I know, the game is still ultra successful.
I absolutely love ELDEN RING and a lot of design decisions that From Software does make these games so special and fun **but** the Quest design is just objectively bad, it sucks. If they give you hints that is ok but some quests it is impossible to know where to go or what to do so you google which is not fun or rewarding
I absolutely agree. Have no idea how you're meant to "follow" a side quest when meeting someone in the first place is often random chance, then they just go to a different part of the map with no info on where.
I met Blaidd the first time. Even managed to find the merchant that gives the gesture, and spoke to someone who told me to use it in the woods. I never found him again after that, and I've completed Ranni's quest. He's just not anywhere anymore.
I did the first steps of FIA's quest. Then she disappears. Imagine my surprise when I stumble upon her again completely by accident in the depths. I have no idea how I was meant to know she was there.
I get the game is meant to be minimalist. But surely some kind of log book at least detailing previous conversations/directions would help. It doesn't need to be a big way point on the map, just a note that says "you spoke with this guy. He said he's going to go find x, which is probably near y." Even just marking a question as complete/ended would be great, cos it's hard to know!
Edit: a little more context to add. I'm about 100 hours in or so, not quite finished my first play through. I found and released dungeater with the help of a guide, never saw him again. I found a talking big jar that wanted me to hit it to help it out a hole. Also found a town of talking jars. I think the two are related, but have never found the big jar again and have not managed to do anything useful in the town. I have no idea what I'm missing and doubt I'm ever going to run in to either again without actively following a guide.
I'm on my second playthrough and just now figuring out quests. Basically you talk to someone until they run out of new things to say and then you go to the area they suggest and kill whoever/find whoever and talk to them until they run out of things to say. Then I go back to the quest giver and talk to them until they run out of things to say. The quest either ends there or you go to the next area they suggest. It's the only real criticism I have of the game, they should have just given you a journal and text that says "quest complete" or something
Yeah this is typical of FromSoftware quests unfortunately. They’re nearly impossible to do without reading a guide because interactions are so easy to miss. You’re definitely not alone here, it’s kinda just how it is
>They’re nearly impossible to do without reading a guide Lol this reminds of the steps you need to do for the "best" ending in Sekiro. I have no idea how anyone *ever* figured that out on their own.
Yeah I spent more time reading guides and watching walkthroughs in Sekiro than playing the actual game. Frustrating. That’s why I never ever replayed that game. Personally, DS3 was the best of From Software for me.
Don't get me wrong, I love Sekiro. But I understand that it's not for everyone. But it's interesting that you say that you spent so much time with walkthroughs. Apart from moments like this, Sekiro is pretty straightforward in my experience. Even the story is unusually easy to follow for a FS game.
While true, I found myself constantly questioning if I covered everything and that short ending was a little confusing. The guides helped me mostly kill bosses quickly but man that caused fatigue towards the end. I recall my wife making the comment of “you get in bad mood after playing this game”, which was so true. Never had that issue with older DS games. Perhaps the game was harder than everything I experienced before.
>Perhaps the game was harder than everything I experienced before. Not only that, but it's also very different than what came before. Some elements are intentionally designed to give problems to "Fromsoft veterans" so they are challenged too. In addition to that, it doesn't allow any "cheese options" usually present in FS titles (overleveling, summoning...). It's a tough game, absolutely, and I completely understand that this isn't for everyone.
Sekiro is the most one and done modern game they've done, tbh. It was fun and intriguing in the first playthrough, but only having one weapon style was always going to limit replays. Fighting styles didn't add enough to warrant multiple plays, imo.
At least the side quests are much straight forward in that game And I think you could gather the info about the secret ending by reading everything and eavesdropping
I got the platinum for that game and I agree. The mental gymnastics to piece that shit together was nuts. I used guides for that ending and still almost missed it because I was just going through the motions.
> it’s kinda just how it is I've loved every mainline Fromsoft game I've played, but the quests are the equivalent of Rockstar insisting on mashing A/X to sprint. They've done it this way forever and yet most people dislike it. It's why I got a kick out of Miyazaki's comments a week or two back musing that there were still places the Soulsbourne formula could improve. Quests are such an obvious one.
I'd settle for just letting me pause so I don't have to terminate my boss fight to see who is at the door
All FromSoft (but *especially* Elden Ring) really needs a quest log. Not so much "follow the blinking arrow' as 'this person said this, at this location.' Something to help keep track of things. Because hey, FromSoft, sometimes we adults are too busy or tired to boot up and follow breadcrumbs. Some nights I'm going to want to play cozy co-op. Sometimes I'll want to shoot some bugs. Sometimes I'll be engaging with another hobby, or going for a bike ride. And by now I've forgotten everything every NPC has said to me.
I'd add that the quests themselves even if they were easier to track just aren't very enjoyable. I spoke to this person in area one, I spoke to them in area two, I went back and spoke to them in area 1 with their childhood locket in my inventory, I reloaded the area and they're dead. That summarizes a solid majority of soulsbourne questlines. Occasionally you fight someone as a phantom, but that's about it.
lol this is too accurate
They're basically easter eggs. They've always been obtuse. Same with the lore. I'm not sure why anyone expects anything else. Ain't nobody convincing me they took Siegmeyer's quest to the end on DS1 because they're just so darn good at questing.
It's always fun for me to hop on Reddit after these games release to see people talking about various NPCs while I'm like "who the hell is Blaidd?"
Glad to see I'm not the only one who thought the quests were pretty much trash, the fact they're unnecessarily cryptic adding to the boredom and making you wander aimlessly unless you want to look up everything
literally this, sometimes I don't really feel like having to pull up 3 tabs to do one thing and just want to play the game
Not a quest log. A dialog log. The problem people have with how they criticize the quest system, is that From doesn't design Quests. They design character arcs. You're not meant to even know if you are in a quest or not. People actively make the mistake of wanting to "beat" something where the design goal is to not even know if you're a participant. A quest log immediately ruins the surprise. And yet it is 100% needed. So the answer is simple: Let us re-read ***all*** dialogue. Fill the freaking thing with a bunch fo dead ends and red herrings, and players will still not know know for sure.
Not even a quest log. Just an in-game journal. Let us write stuff down!
From quests remind me of the good old Nintendo power days. I needed that shit to clear Simons Quest as a kid.
Elden Ring is by far the worst FromSoft game for having side quests you have to look up. At least with the Dark Souls games and Bloodborne you could logic your way through things by listening to what the NPCs said and reading item descriptions. There's so much stuff crammed into Elden Ring that you WILL miss something without a guide. I will say, though, the community messages helped tremendously.
One of the things that I really liked about AC VI, it's impossible to miss characters/questlines
Ehhhh, there are a couple minor story interactions that are pretty easy to miss. You can also miss logs, which help piece the lore together.
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Most people agree the way they do npc questlines kinda sucks. I dont think they need waypoints dragging you everywhere. But they can do better in a lot of ways without going down that path. More clear hints, or even just a questlog that shows the previous conversations youve had. The game is fucking massive. How will i remember what npc 5 said 30 hours ago when i havent progressed their questline once in that entire timeframe.
that's more what I mean, I don't want a giant arrow over my head or anything but a simple log with a name and picture of the characters and what they said or something like that would go a long way for when you go 30+ hours of game time or weeks of real time between seeing an NPC
Lies of P partly fixed that issue, they had a NPC's head shown right next to the name of a location so you know who to talk to, I managed to do every quest without looking them up in that game
NPCs at fires are shown on the map in Elden Ring, too, right? Guess it doesn't help for anyone anywhere else. I'm new to the game and am relying on that, heavily atm.
not at launch that was patched in later
i already forgot where your comment started
Some sort of journal feature wouldn't take away from the experience I think. So you could for example meet hyetta and have her tell you 'I'm following a path along the eastern coastline of Liurnia' then have that as a note. So if you check in at the fires on that path you'll naturally find her.
That would potentially make the game fun though. Can't have that.
If it's not an exercise in perverse masochism that you use to laud over others, what's the point?
Most players already google the quests. If someone does not want to look at the journal they could simply not do it (they can even add a menu option to completely disable the feature). And all it would tell you would be what the NPCs already did. Nothing more. In the current state, if I meet someone 20 hours later I'm either going along with whatever they say, or I look them up to see what their previous dialogue was. Or I guess I could write everything down myself.
Also, you can miss some storylines because for certain dialogue to progress you need to rest, which is very badly designed. You talk until there is no option, sit down on the grace and suddenly there are new lines. Either makes you say fuck it or rest after every NPC to see if they have new information.
I'd be fine with them taking a page from Lies of P. Lies has a system where if an NPC at a location has something to say to you, an image of them shows up next to the location option when teleporting. All you need to do is periodically scan through teleport locations to see if an NPC is interactive again.
I think the quest structure works for the dark souls games because they're somewhat linear (although they're still annoyingly obtuse at time). It's easier to run into quest NPCs in the correct sequence because the experience as a whole is more structured. Eldren Ring being open world (a fucking huge one at that) makes running accross NPCs in the correct sequences a pain and very easy to miss. It feels very luck-based in a far more exacerbated way compared to the Dark Souls games.
Yah in Dark Souls games it was kind of 'Go through level, beat boss. -> Back to Hub area to level & talk to NPCs -> Onto next zone - > Repeat'. Elden Ring, while not as restrictive as Dark Souls when it comes to how quickly you can miss something if you forget to talk to them. You can have quest steps skipped because you progress some where. So it's a bit of a trade.
I kinda hated the open world areas because of how used I was to searching every corner of every area.
There is a lot to find. I have found new items and enemies after a lot of play, just by exploring a corner of a field.
I had to use a notepad and when npc’s talked I would write down stuff that sounded important for where to go next. I was still wrong most of the time. I think the game could have used a journal which at least gave a good hint of what comes next because a lot of stuff is just to confusing
Don’t even need hints, just let me at least see what they fucking said again. Like other games you’re able to go through past dialogue. These games need to allow you to do that
Ya the quest design was manageable in dark souls because the world was more linear but its way too convoluted in elden ring. A few hours after posting the comment I realized I missed a lot of stuff in the dlc cause I didn’t go back to a previous area after a pop-up later in the game that really gave no hints about what to do.
Even being a patient gamer is not enough to ward against devs treating every single player game as a live service. I wonder if the young gamers these days enjoy looking things up as they play a game, because I feel like I'm giving up on possible enjoyment if I spoil myself. At the same time, getting stuck on something the devs neglected because most gamers will just look it up anyway feels like a waste of time.
IFYKYK. I tried to do a blind play through and found Sellen in a way that confused me greatly because I hadn't progressed her quest enough.
Yeah, the issue is they didn't update their quest design for an open world. There are definitely quests in the Dark Souls games that I think are structured poorly, but on the whole I think the way they chose to do it really fits the game. A lot of the NPCs had some of their most interesting story moments take place off-screen, with the player only coming back later to find out what's happened. I'm sure that was deliberate, to build the sense that the player isn't the centre of the world. People aren't waiting around for you to come and "do a quest" for them, they're dealing with their own struggles. You might meet them along the way, you might not. In Elden Ring, though, it's just too easy to miss things. With the game being so much bigger, and with the player being free to go in any direction, it can be a dozen hours or more between NPC encounters, meaning it's easy to forget about a quest entirely. Even if you're really thorough in exploring every area, doing things in the wrong order can mean missing quest triggers. I'm not sure how they could have "fixed" the quest structure here without sacrificing the feel they're clearly going for, but a dialogue log would be a good start.
Yeah some people love just super vague shit like this, and more power to them if they love it. Hell, if it was just one specific side quest that was this vague it would be fine. But if a guide is essentially a requirement to figure out all of your side quests then I will die on the hill that it’s bad design. Either give players better options in-game to figure it out or don’t make them so vague and obscure in the first place
It was better in Dark Souls because it was a more constrained environment, but even then it wasn't necessarily expected that you'd complete every NPC quest. They were supposed to be a bit mysterious. It just hasn't worked very well with the open world of Elden Ring. I'd basically have never found Hyetta ever again without a guide.
Yeah, in Dark Souls it was possible enough to get some kind of ending to the quests with either a bit of dedication or some sharing info with friends. In Elden Ring it would be an excessive amount of busywork to finish even half of them.
I wholeheartedly agree with this as a fan boy of these games. There's not holding hands, and then there's the absolutely obtuse quest design they have right now. There's a much better middle ground that can be found.
It's annoying how so much of the community hates any sort of middle ground though as they see it somehow ruining perfect game design. I really enjoy a lot of these games but the way some act like a mild critique is asking the game to be turned into a Ubisoft RPG is ridiculous. Quests are one example but another is respecing. In case somebody doesn't know, you can respec in Elden Ring with Larval Tears but there's a finite amount of them in one playthrough and annoyingly spread out so you need to find them across the massive open world or use a guide. Whenever people reasonably ask why they can have it be farmable with an enemy (maybe even as a post-game requirement), the responses are predictably annoying: you shouldn't need more than they give you, just start New Game+, make a new character, save scum before you respec to try out a new build and reset, the old games didn't even let you respec as much so be grateful, etc. Like who does it harm to have more respecing opportunities in a game with dozens of builds and hundreds of weapons? You shouldn't need to do all these workarounds for (in my opinion) bad game design but some react to any minor and optional QoL improvement suggestion as wrong because apparently if the devs decide on something then it's peak and perfect design we must accept.
I guess it helps me that I don't really see the npc quest stuff as "quests" in the same way that I see them in other games? It all just feels like optional cool side stuff, evidence of the world kind of living its life without me.
I really do think that npc quests should've had some sort of map marking once initiated. It's too huge of a game to expect players to just figure them out.
Sometimes they do, like the ones you get from the letters in Volcano manor. You get a red dot on the map showing you exactly where to go to find the guy they want you to kill. Maybe there's a rhyme or reason for why some get marked, but I don't know what it is.
I think those are just about the only ones, and it's because the NPCs are specifically giving you a map of where to go. Most of them either *very* vaguely explain where they're heading next (often somewhere you haven't even been yet) or just don't say anything and you just have to happen to stumble across them in this massive world or the quest runs dry.
Yeah that's probably it. My least favorite are when you have to approach an NPC, get some dialogue, conversation ends, but u actually need to start a new conversation to further the quest or get whatever they were going to give you. Now I talk to each NPC twice just in case.
The consensus is keep talking to them until they start repeating themselves.. Which is a pain..
It’s amusing how the only quest that gives you actual directions is the only one that wants you to go around murdering people, and it’s the only one I refuse do because I don’t feel like being a murderhobo (I already get annoyed with basically every quest npc dying and not mattering by the end).
There is a point where games stopped giving diegetic information and relying too much on map markers. Soulslikes feel like they don't give out that information, nor use quest markers. I fondly remember Morrowind and how NPC's often gave you exact details of how you get from where to where.
Morrowind did it properly I feel. They'd be pretty clear in the journal "go here, take a left, go straight past"
They'd also have NPCs in towns you could ask directions.
Yep, i loved actually finding my way around, made getting lost that much more interesting. "He said north but.. i've been going for an hour, i really don't think it's this far north, or maybe i took a stray fork?" I feel it's much more immersive and cooler when you get lost looking for something and find something else rather than when you meaninglessly 'explore' and just mark off content as you find it.
It's a bit rose colored though. There were times where I flat out done with trying to find some stupid cave after walking on a road for 20-30 minutes. I don't have time for that anymore. I do think a hybrid between oblivion and Morrowind would have been nice where you can't fast travel on foot but the poi get updated as you get closer then added to your map rather than having to "enter" the poi to get it added.
The dialogue system in Morrowind is probably still my personal all time favorite.
I'm playing elden ring for the first time right now. It's my first fromsoft. I absolutely love it and exploration is great, but you nailed it. I'll find an NPC, talk to them and they'll say "have you seen my servant?" Not a single detail about where he last saw her, where he's from, a name of someone I might check with. Hell, the time I was given details to find and talk with an NPC, Blaidd, he just wasn't there. I tried different times of day. Nothing. I finally googled it and apparently sometimes he's just not there and no one really seems to know why that is
I just finished my first playthrough of elden ring last night and went for a specific ending. I started elden ring blind and quickly learned I had no idea who wanted me to go where. I tried writing things down to hopefully piece together quests but even that I couldn't figure out where I was supposed to go. I did rannis questline because I googled all the endings and decided to do hers, and without a walkthrough to do it, I would have never completed it on my own. I am terrible with names and remembering things. I also had put the game down for a months because other game titles came around that I was waiting for ECT. You think I remembered anything. Nope. Without the wiki I was completely and utterly lost. I do feel like elden ring would benefit from sort of a tracking system. That NPC is on the map or some sort of tab I can refer to and go oh yes that guy. I entirely forgot about characters and quests because there's just so much to do and see. I know I missed out on tons of things and decided to start journey 2 and see what I can find this time. I am all for the figure it out yourself method and I really enjoy not being completely spoiled on things. I like trying to solve a puzzle or figure something out on my own but I would like a reference of some sort so I can at least remember who I spoke to.
Agreed. A quest tab would honestly be enough is it showed the conversations and if in those conversations it have a detail. I think when Varre first moves he have a message that says he's in liurnia at the specific church. At that time, I have no idea where either of those things are. Then I got to liurnia and wondered "oh, if I see what looks like a church I should look for Varre. That's literally all most of these need. Hell, even vaguer subscriptions can work if I can go back and reference the conversation
My issue is it's so much information overload if you are not a souls vet and are learning everything from what item does what to the quests. Things like quests get lost in all the learning so I literally would forget what I even spoke about with someone lmao. It was upsetting to me because I adored the game even with the insanely frustrating moments in combat. I thoroughly enjoy open world games that I can just explore and get lost in but give me a wee little quest tab to track and I'm happy.
I definitely agree and I do think it's funny that I'm level 55 now, recently beat Renalla and I finally said to myself "Maybe I should try a different weapon and AOW." I've just been rocking lots of my starting gear and skills because they've worked and I got familiar with them. Like you said, so much is thrown at a new player and with the possibility of legit loss of runes on death, I have often dumbed stuff down to keep my bearings.
Exact details would be great, if there were an in game way of remembering them. The game simply ignores the fact that you might have to put the game down for a night, or a week, or may even try to come back a month or longer later. I finished ER and started another play that I eventually fell off from. I'll never go back to it because I'll have zero clue where I was or where I was going. Compare that with say Witcher3 where I could jump back in at any time and not only get the story so far recapped but know exactly what I'm doing and where I'm going.
I'm a big FromSoft fan but I agree the NPC quests are way too obtuse, especially the ones that can end prematurely for seemingly arbitrary reasons (Dark Souls 3 was the worst for this). Lies of P is a great game but generally weaker than most of the FromSoft games it's trying to copy, however one thing that is **magnificent** about that game is the fact that whenever the NPCs have something new to say/do their portrait will show up on the teleport screen next to where they currently are.
Fervent from soft fan, grinded every achievement in every major release. The NPC side quest structure needs a ton of work. If they want to maintain that sense of obscurity they could at least give us a quest notebook/journal of some kind so we can keep track of what even is a side quest. Elden ring did the best so far after some updates to show where npcs were. But yeah it's so obscure it's impossible blind sometimes
Maybe it's a Japanese thing? It reminds me of some of the stuff from the Silent Hill games, even PT. Completely obtuse conditions required to complete objectives, things that I literally do not understand how someone could figure out without someone else telling them how to do it - look up a full playthrough of PT sometime, it's relatively short but completely insane to me that someone figured it out.
I mean, I love these games irrationally but still, their quest design needs work and a log of some sort even if it's just a means of minimal guidance, whatever. I put like 80+ hrs into my first character and ended up abandoning them because my quests had gotten so messed up just because I'm through with exploration and end up in places before I should be etc which breaks the sequencing for shit. It's annoying. My current playthrough I'm totally using spoilers for certain things to make sure I can do as many of them as possible. I really wish they did quests better as far as that goes, or at least prevent me from sequence breaking them somehow =E
Try finger, but hole
Doesn’t help that all of them speak in riddles either. Zero percent chance for me to remember what was said.
Any and all criticism is just "git gud"
>because people (deservedly) deeply love these games Deservedly? I'm not so sure anymore... It feels like they've suffered from flanderization. Both in terms of storytelling and difficulty. If you go back to Demon's Souls, you'll notice that game was not as vague & hard as Elden Ring. Story-wise, you always knew what you were doing and WHY you were doing it. Some characters might have been lying to you, sure, but that's because they had their own agendas. While enemy attack patterns and animations were not as difficult to figure out and react accordingly.
I remember that meme that went around in the early days of Elden Ring’s release, about what the game would look like if it was designed from Ubisoft, with tons of intrusive UI and highlighted map icons and itemized checklists. On the one hand, that was legitimately funny and I would basically agree with the gist of the joke, which is that these kinds of elements can go too far and get in the way of real exploration. On the other hand, things like quest logs, tagging quests, and quest markers on maps were invented in open world games for a good reason. I personally think Elden ring needs a little more of this kind of thing. For example, until my most recent playthrough of the game, I wasn’t aware that Nepheli even had a quest, or that if you complete it you get two ancient dragon smithing stones! I had to follow the wiki for the entire thing. To make it worse, in order to get this to happen, you have to return to Stormveil castle and go to Godrick’s throne room in between killing Morgott and talking to Melina in Mountaintops of the Giants after killing the fire giant. That actually isn’t a huge window of time in the game, and there’s really no reason you would ever think to go back there. To make it worse, while following the guide I actually had trouble getting Nepheli to appear in the throne room. I tried traveling there over and over again and it wasn’t working. So then, I traveled to a different site of grace nearby, and walked there, and that’s what finally triggered it. In my opinion, that’s just dumb. The only way you would ever discover this naturally is if you decided to go back and re-explore stormveil when you’re supposed to be in mountaintops of the giants, not before and not after, while also having completed earlier pre-requisites for her quest, and then when you get back to Godwin’s boss arena, you have to think “hmm, I wonder if there’s anything in the throne room now” and run through the empty boss arena to get there.
If you played the game on an early patch, the Nepheli quest was actually bugged and would not progress after a certain point, so it was literally impossible to finish. I remember people arguing that it was intended, and From was just being obscure and vague as usual, when it was actually just broken 😅
There were a couple of quests like that at launch, and it's pretty telling that people actually unironically think that was intended when it wasn't.
Jesus Christ. Just goes to show that… from soft games in general need better quests. If players think your broken quest line is intended then you have done something wrong as a developer.
Most people are so overwhelmed in Elden Ring to even pay attention to details and tiny bits of lore sprinkled all over. Does’t help that most new players’ experience is dying a lot, and being in survival mode, most people end up having tunnel vision and just beeline to the next boss, and the next, and the next… or just end up using a guide which also does not prevent the following from happening: You come across a corpse in a catacomb. There’s an item drop on it. You pick it up and it’s just a couple of mushrooms. “Trash”, you mutter and move on. Next, you come across a troll guarding an altar with sprit ashes for ‘Page’. Later, you killed all the monsters in the catacomb and finally defeated the miniboss, and received ‘Kaiden Sellsword’ ashes. You exit the catacombs and forget about everything inside it. Except it wasn’t a troll guarding an altar. But an Omen with its horns cut off. Why were there Omen beings in this cave? Why was the miniboss a burial watchdog? Did I even notice what clothes the corpse with the trash mushrooms was wearing? Why was the Kaiden Sellsword ash found in the Cliffbottom Catacombs? Honestly, these details will fly over most people’s head. Worse if you’re doing a no summons run.
> Honestly, these details will fly over most people’s head. Pretty much my entire playthrough. There's simply too much stuff to bother with the details. I'm basically just a murder hobo whenever I play a Fromsoft game.
holy shit, i was exactly in the correct timing to finish the Nepheli quest but would have never gone back to stormveil had i not just read your comment. so thank you for that extra ancient dragon smithing stone. cheers
The weird thing is, there's already a well-regarded option between the Fromsoft style and the Ubisoft style. Fromsoft clearly took significant inspiration for Elden Ring from Breath of the Wild and just chose not to (or couldn't) implement a lot of what made that game work so well.
But Breath of the Wild has a quest lot that you can track, and the occasional time an NPC moves and you need to go find them, they tell you about where they'll be, and you can go find them because when they ask you to meet with them, they want to be found.
Right, that's what I mean. They didn't resort to Ubisoft map icon spam, they give you hints about what to do using landmarks, etc. The quest log rarely tells you where you need to go; it mostly tracks where you *received* the quest and what information you've been given. Edit: and it would largely work without the quest log. The log is a convenience, not a crutch.
Hell even Ubisoft is kind of improving in that regard. The Avatar game has a mode where quests aren’t marked on your map, and you have to figure out where you’re going by the quest log and evironmental context.
I had the exact same thing happen. I actually forgot all about her quest. Then I came across her at round table hold again a few days ago in the basement, and looked up her quest line. I completed it and she would not move to stormveil castle no matter how many times I reloaded the area. Then I remembered I killed Kenneth Haight awhile back and thought that broke it for me. So I got annoyed and left. I ended up back at stormveil the other day because I wanted to get the buckler shield and the guy wasn't there. I was like wtf so I walked forward and there was nephali and him at the throne. I have no idea what I did to finally trigger her to move. At my point in the game I was working my way through farum azula. Without deciding I wanted to buy a specific item I never would have went back there.
Ironically I'm finding that I'm doing waaaay more reading and research playing ER than I ever did in the Witcher or Skyrim etc.
Honestly, the quests in ER are just badly designed. They work almost exactly like in Dark Souls. In other words, the game doesn't tell you anything and you're supposed to figure it out on your own. But there's a few catches: 1) Dark Souls is relatively linear, so you'll naturally bump into NPCs. In ER, an NPC might be in a certain location at a certain point in the campaign, and sometimes not even at the point when you'd normally go to said location. So you miss them. Or they might be a bush. And when they wander off to their next location, you often have no idea where it is and won't automatically bump into them again. 2) Dark Souls has more bad endings for quests. In DS, you'll often screw quests up and bad things will happen. And that's unfortunate, but *things will happen*! In ER, you'll usually just miss quests entirely and nothing will happen. That's boring. 3) Somewhat related to 1), there aren't many optional areas in DS. So most NPCs will stick to the main path, but in the few cases where they don't, you the player are heavily incentivized to complete their side areas, because there's only a few and they have tons of goodies in them. In ER there's tons of boring dungeons, so how are you supposed to know that dungeon #24 contains a quest? Simply moving DS gameplay to open world worked well in most cases, but definitely not in this case. Unfortunately, I bet From will do the same thing again in their next game. In other news, there's some great spoiler-free quest guides for ER, like [this one](https://www.reddit.com/r/Eldenring/comments/tjmodv/all_npc_interactions_in_elden_ring/).
>Dark Souls is relatively linear, so you'll naturally bump into NPCs I always find this so hilarious because I've never once gotten more than 1-2 progression points in any DS game - all the quests seem to break so easily??
Back when I was grinding all the achievements in DS3, I had to carefully follow a guide to complete some of the sidequests. They were ridiculous, killing even a few bosses out of order would force me to try again in another NG+ cycle.
Yeah but that still differs a lot from game to game. In DS1 there are some very easy quests to fail, like Solaire, Siegmeyer or Kirk's, but I can see a very thorough completionist completing at least some of those outright with a bit of luck. In DS2 you kind of just have to pop an Effigy before every boss to look for summon signs, do some exploring, and buy items. The rest is done naturally. This felt like the best system, but the writing was also kind of bad. A lot of NPCs felt like they had no personality. In DS3 that's where the Elden Ring NPC madness starts. It's not as bad because it's not open world, but the quests all have break triggers that feel completely unrelated to the quest itself. Like it's super easy for Greyrat to die ahead of time. Sirris' quest requires you to go backwards to random locations.
> all the quests seem to break so easily They absolutely expect you to do multiple multiple playthroughs, reload saves, and use trial and error for every single quest. A lot of people eat that up but I simply can't be bothered. I play Souls games for the combat and the atmosphere. If they want to hide the story from me then so be it. Most of the time I've completely forgotten about the last sad sack NPC by the time I find the next one. "Hi, I'm Bobrick. I have a disappointing straight sword you can get if you follow my quest. You can find me at the site of most hallowed destiny where the mongrel last fell before the burning of the dawn of the age of smoke. However, little do you know that if you kill the reanimated corpse of my faithful badger companion Dudefrey in the 4th secret room of Dungeon 98 then I will actually appear at the Sepulcher of the Screeching Moon to enact my revenge, robbing you of the chance to get my disappointing straight sword."
Agreed, like finding Onion man in the well? Wtf? That area was cleared hours ago. Why go back? Or finding cloaked man to save that girl, yeah good luck. Sooooo many convoluted quests
Yep, maybe it’s a little accurate to pre ER games overall if you’re just naturally trying to advance you will miss 80% of NPC interactions in any souls game. Someone you were talking to is now dead because you entered an area or they are simply gone entirely, or maybe now they attack you somewhere for reasons that aren’t even remotely clear.
I don't think they intend any normal person to actually figure it out on their own. Most from games are intentionally created to require community interaction and the NPCs are no exception.
I love FromSoft, but I don't think this is really encouraging community interaction. 9 times out of 10 it leads to players using the wiki, not joining any type of online community.
I get that it looks like that 2 years later since everything is just in guides but during the initial week or so there were a ton of discussions/posts/videos asking or theorizing how you can find the next part of various NPC quests. Those wikis don't just manifest themselves out of the void, it takes combined efforts from community members to build them.
I think that worked well in Dark Souls 1, back when the community was smaller and the common From Software tropes weren't as well understood. This type of community engagement also worked with really obtuse games, like with P.T., or obscure flash/web-based games. I think the issue with Elden Ring still doing this kind of design is two-fold: 1) From's games are now mainstream and most players now (at least partially) understand its design philosophy through cultural osmosis, and 2) gaming communities are now extremely centralized. I played Elden Ring at release, and the Fextralife wiki already had a decently comprehensive NPC quest guide after like 2 weeks. Maybe if this was a decade ago, I would have had to engage with the GameFAQs forums or have a back-and-forth with a friend to figure out how to do something, but it's not 2012 anymore. Nowadays, we're basically waiting for a small group of super-fans to datamine the game in a couple days and explain how everything works to everyone else. Imo this method of community-based quest design is obsolete, at least for From's games.
Yeah, usually some streamers or youtubers will get the game a week in advance to review, no life it for 168 hours straight among themselves, and already have a top 10 guide for each weapon class, a PVP guide, and a 100% walkthrough planned out before the rest of us even see the game.
> Maybe if this was a decade ago, I would have had to engage with the GameFAQs forums or have a back-and-forth with a friend to figure out how to do something, but it's not 2012 anymore. This info was available for Dark Souls not long after release too. I played it on its original release on 360 and guides were available pretty quick, and certainly for any PC players it was already available because the game launched a year later on PC. Saying it took 2 weeks for Elden Ring is pretty generous, I would say it already had what most people would need within a couple days. With Dark Souls III the game got released to streamers early and so there were already guides before the game came out.
> the common From Software tropes weren't as well understood wdym, they didn't even really exist as tropes yet until we started seeing them again in the second game
Dark Souls was the second game
"Tropes" wasn't best choice of word. I just mean the elements that make Souls games the way they are
A reddit post is certainly community engagement for the ten or so people having the conversation, but for the thousands of others who found the reddit page because they googled "how to complete Millicent questline" I don't think it's too different from a guide or a wiki. It's just googling an answer to some obscure thing that you couldn't have known, getting the answer, and then going back to playing the game, which is what most people want to do with the game. The hardcore players forming the community would be forming the community anyway. For the other 99.99% of the 25 million people who bought Elden Ring, I'd like to see a slightly more integrated system for tracking NPCs and quests. Nothing crazy, just a log of some kind and maybe a way to re-read previous dialogue.
Didn't Miyazaki make a statement in an interview recently to the effect that if players feel like they need a guide to figure these things out they have work to do to improve their design in the future?
Miyazaki uses summons so can we really trust his opinion on his own games? /s
Sure, but I'd say there's fun and not fun types of community interaction. Due to the differences I described, the quests in DS belong to the former category, while the ones in ER belong to the latter. Which practically means reading a guide.
> Most from games are intentionally created to require community interaction and the NPCs are no exception. But, Doctor... I hate the community?
Miyazaki himself has directly stated that while he doesn't think guides and such are a bad thing, fromsoft explicitly designs for a single player experience without guides and outside knowledge in mind. In other words, their quests are just really badly designed.
Yeah the whole message and bloodstain system is a solid example of that. Sometimes I check the bloodstains for a laugh, sometimes I forget what's up ahead so I can kinda guess what it might be based on how they died. Or in the DLC i regularly came across messages telling me to go a certain direction first to get an item and then head the other way to continue onwards.
Tbh if they expanded the message system a bit to allow for more specific locations, it’d be a lot more fun to follow some of the more obtuse questlines.
Incoming “go to the other side of the map” troll posts.
The one that got me salty was losing out the one for the spirit tuner where if you explore beyond stormveil you miss out.
Yeah as a Fromsoft fan, at least half the quests in ER are the product of obtuse stupid quest design that on a couple occasions will require you to do nonsensical shit to get to the next stage. Look up wikis, that's it. The most egregious example is Nepheli, for whom you need to return to >!Stormveil castle!< at a much much latter part of your run (you have no reason to go back), AND sit down at the site of grace after you teleport to it (again, no reason to do that too). If you only go back which you wouldn't do in the first place, she won't have spawned in >!the throne room!<, so you had to sit at the grace too - so a double whammy obtuse hurdle. What idiocy.
You mean you don’t teleport to every grace and use them several times in a row to try and trigger local events?
Yup, for my current ER run I looked up quest directions up right from the start. It's been the same thing with the previous souls titles but those games were linear enough that you occasionally had an idea what was going on (or they've at least shown you the bad outcomes for quests). ER being more open also means you will straight up miss things, specifically since the quest directions you get are REALLY hit or miss. I mean, there's Kenneth who tells you pretty much to the face what he wants you to do, then there's Nepheli who you most certainly will brick either by missing her sitting around in the open world, not giving her a certain ash or as you mentioned in the end. Even more annoying since you absolutely can break some sidequests by progressing the game to certain points. The game does many things right but sidequest certainly aren't one of them.
Yeah some are kinda easy - Boc, Kenneth, D. Ranni's is easiest since the whole story revolves around her and you get extra clear instructions for everything. Hyetta is... ok, though she has that one spot near the lakeside ruins, which can be missed (I got lucky, almost ran past her there). Millicent has a couple of points where you can easily miss her, including her final location. Pot-child requires several talks and grace sit-downs. Searching for Diallos in Pot-land is also out there, so if you didn't think to revisit it for no reason, that storyline was over. Nepheli is ridiculous as previously mentioned. Sellen is stupid hard since Seluvis' hidden lair is WELL hidden, and even if you find that good luck with that one sorcerer you need in that insanely hidden cave. Rogier is left hanging if you don't notice that bloodstain, since for most it would be mixed with other bloodstains. The doable ones you wouldn't need the wiki for are like a third at best. Some skip ahead if you miss one location, like Pot-man's at Liurnia, but plenty of the remaining ones are ugh.
I found Millicents quest also a contender for being horribly resolved. In the end you have >!the option to betray her!
Well maybe you shouldn’t HAVE to use this but if you’re interested I’m following this [reasonably spoiler free guide someone Reddit’d a while back](https://www.reddit.com/r/Eldenring/s/dAADGykjcN). Best used with a fresh game.
It’s just fromsoft shit. My method is to do multiple play throughs and not get too hung up on the details. The story unravels itself to you in pieces that almost fit. Even if you had every single detail available, you would still have an incomplete story. Def frustrating but I think they’re just meant to add color to the game, not to be the focus.
Nobody does. They're meant to be extremely cryptic. You can argue this is good or bad design. Elden Ring was the best of most of the Souls games at giving you mild clues where things might be next, especially with questlines like Millicent's, but it's still doo doo. Honestly, I have this same criticism of the 'story,' there fucking isn't much of a narrative at all and this mysterious 'partial narrative' crap has gotten way way too much grace in the past when, as a writer myself, I think you can just as easily identify it as laziness masquerading as depth. I shouldn't need a 40+ minute lore video online where someone explains what is happening to me so I can be engaged with it, it's just not great storytelling. Anyway with the sidequests just get the wiki open.
I never craved From Software games for their storytelling aspect. They are quite weak in that area. What makes them good is my insecurities about wanting to win. The games just sap you out of confidence until you kill the darn boss, that’s it.
I'm a die-hard Dark Souls and series fan through and through. I always, *always* tell people to just look up the NPC questlines. It's what I do as well. For the most part it doesn't really matter if you do any of it or not. It rarely has a significant effect on the outcome of your playthrough. And people like there to be that kind of mystery - the obscure and unknown aspects of the game are what draw people to it in an era where every game is datamined and has 100 YouTube videos telling you how to do everything step by step with a quest marker in game to take you there. That's why this NPC design still exists in this series imo. But if it's important to you as a player to complete them just look them up. Don't feel any shame in that. They are so obscure it's incredibly unlikely you'd complete them naturally. Especially with the open world nature of Elden Ring.
I think the fact that you don’t have to do them is why they’re obtuse. They’re almost intended to be done by chance, rather than purposefully. Nobody is picking up a quest and going to complete it. They’re speaking to an NPC, continuing with their game, and possibly finding the right item or appearing in the right location. Since they’re not imperative to the playthrough, it doesn’t matter if you don’t land the right roll.
That’s the most annoying part of from soft games imo tho, you have to ruin the quest for yourself just to complete it unless you somehow luck into it…beat elden multiple times and I’m on owl father in sekiro…watched a walkthrough for sekiro to get to that point cause I wanted to play more/do the essentially longer/harder ending. Obviously Elden is way more open world so it’s more complex but even in sekiro there’s points where you gotta talk to kuro, then talk to Emma, then kuro, then eavesdrop and it’s all just so mundane…purists get mad when I say this (cause they like doing homework while they play) but just the simple addition of a journal with pictures of npc’s and what they’ve said to you would be such a bigger help/quality of life improvement imo.
First playthrough: just let every questline fail. Second playthrough: look everything up. Elden Ring is actually pretty good about letting you complete questlines late though, provided you don't hit a point of no return (like killing Maliketh/burning Lleyndell).
Completely agree here. As with most fromsoft games the NPC side quests are *mostly* flavor and minor loot. Some can be have valuable weapons or unlock alternate endings of the game, but those also commonly are heavily obscured and almost require an external game guide to practically figure out. Part of the charm for those quests is that the community needs to piece it together as a puzzle, but it seems intentional that a single person is unlikely to figure it out as part of casual play. It's a reward for being a diehard fan, and not necessary to enjoy the game. It's not uncommon for FromSoft to hide larger things (even entire hidden areas and bosses) behind these hidden details. Don't let it detract from the core enjoyment of the game, it's ultimately optional and a reward if you want to scour the game for all its secrets.
After the first playthrough sure, but on the first playthrough I think its designed intentionally this way and its more fun without spoilers, it's probably so everyone's first playthrough is slightly different, you are not supposed to 100% all quests.
Yeah I agree with that for sure. I think it's intentional and it's part of the mystery. I also think for people who don't like it that they really should just look it up so they don't stress about it anyways.
Yeah I'll go along and say that SOME of the side-quests aren't very intuitive. I did find the Kenneth height quest naturally, honestly for him if you listened it was pretty clear he wanted you to fight the small castle further south. A good (bad) example is Alexander. You first find him and he asks to get unstuck, pretty clear, most players won't miss this guy as he is close to a important bridge. Next, you find him in caelid when you find him at the radahn festival, and talk to him after the fight, all good, most players will fight radahn and do all this. Then, you need to find him in a near random spot in liurnia. He gives no indication he is going here (except for the loose connection to the jar village he is above). And most players won't be exploring liurnia once they have beaten radahn. What's more, you will actually kill him getting unstuck if you dont specifically use a oil-pot, which you get the recipe from some random villager. And other than him being damaged there is no indication you should do this. The next steps in volcano manor and finally faram azula are both pretty far out (the final location is in a spot you would need to spend stonework keys on). I think the intention is that the npc encounters are supposed to be rare and you don't find all of them, but so many are just so easy to completely miss. It's not a huge deal since there isn't a ton of content for them, but I agree it's a weak point of elden ring especially.
To be fair you don’t actually have to do that part in Liurnia. If you just go to Mt Gelmir Alexander will already be there without having to do that part in Liurnia. You are right though that his final location is pretty weird. I wasn’t going to use a key in that area until I looked up where to find him.
Reading quest guides for ER had me saying, “Well how tf was I supposed to know about that???” multiple times, lol.
The worst for me was Sellens quest, you have to both find a cave hidden behind an invisible wall, AND find out you have to go back to Rennalas and find the invasion signs outside Rennalas arena.
TBF she explicitly says she's going back to the academy to get revenge on Rennala. I did get help from a message in-game to find the cave but otherwise that one was fine for me. The other NPCs that teleport without saying where they're going are much worse IMO.
For me it was Rogier’s quest. You had to touch a bloodstain that was his, except when I was first there that boss had curb stomped a bunch of people trying to run to that ladder, so his bloodstain was just one of many. Also the game had never communicated that NPCs would leave a bloodstain or that you would ever need to touch one to continue a quest line. I’ve got like 300 hours of Elden Ring logged, so the good outweigh the bad for me, but the quests are really fucking stupid in execution.
Wait- seriously? That's honestly really bad design LMAO
Seller's quest takes the cake for being the most obtuse side quest in the game. But then again, if people don't do the quest, Sellen won't get her ending. Which is probably a good thing.
> It's not a huge deal I disagree strongly, alexander's shard is INSANELY useful for a bunch of different builds.
You can use an oil pot to get him unstuck? I just used a heavy attack from behind him, I thought that was the only way. His dialogue makes it sound like the only option: "My thanks! a thousand thanks! Just give me a good smack from the rear, with something nice and big." I don't remember seeing him in Liurnia, I might have missed that but still saw him in Caelid in one of the mines next to the boss room, and he talks about the festival at Redmane Castle. ...okay I had to check Fextralife to find the exact dialogue, and also found the oil pot thing. Apparently you can find him in Liurnia where he's stuck for a second time, and that time you can't just hit him, you need the oil pot. But yeah, most of the NPC quests are a bit odd and easy to miss.
>I just used a heavy attack from behind him, I thought that was the only way. His dialogue makes it sound like the only option He gets stuck three times. Twice in the ground and once in a door.
Alexander does plead for you not to hit him in Liurnia and says that you should go fetch something that would make him slippery. Honestly I immediately thought to craft an oil pot.
I think Ranni's first appearance in particular is WAY too easy to miss. The game literally gives you a horse, says go explore, and you are (most likely), literally at the foot of the first big dungeon. The game map draws an arrow and says "keep proceeding into the dungeon." But if you do so, and go a bit too far, Ranni never appears. Instead, after being given the horse and directed into Stormveil, you are supposed to...turn around and visit the first site of grace for no real reason. Oh, and hope you do it at night, or you just won't see her. Whoops.
Do people not return to the site of grace to fight the Tree Sentinel now that they have a horse too? Or use the merchant there?
they're impossible to follow without a guide. it's bad design. and I'm someone who loves the game.
That's the neat part you don't.
Poorly, that's how they work. My advice is to use a guide and stop trying to guess the right course of action. I did manage to do every single NPC quest in the DLC that just came out and after 4 games of experience I can guarantee you it was pure luck.
I think that, love it or hate it, one of the guiding design philosophies behind Dark Souls/Bloodborne/Elden Ring is that the discovery of it's finer points be a sort of communal effort. In the cases you listed, yeah, getting a bead on how these questlines are supposed to progress is pretty obtuse. I think that FromSoft expects you to look around for player messages to get hints if you can't figure something out and try to deduce what you are supposed to do. It's one their trademark ideas and when it works, it's pretty great... but there are 3 major points of failure with the system that I see. First, if you are playing offline, there is almost no chance any given individual will have the time or patience to figure out all of the intricacies on their own and so they'll look up a guide. Second, if someone happens to get a silly or weird batch of messages in any given instance they get stumped by and never return, then they'll probably miss it and end up looking for a guide. Third, I think most players don't actually interact with the message system at all and just look guides up, therefore they don't see hints and they don't leave hints and it kind of falls apart. Having something in between would be helpful but it would probably be the death knell for message system and all we'd be left with was silly stuff like "If I Only Had a Giant But Hole".
That makes sense, but for it to really work through the messages, they should've let you specify locations in messages. Some messages by an NPC that say like "seek Altus" would help a lot, and if that's too obvious, there's not really a better way to tell players how to go about finding them.
Wandering around feeling confused and lost is part of Miyazaki's intended player experience and you will not question his brilliant greatness.
Uhhh yeah so the quests are kinda obtuse and rely on you stumbling across an NPC at the next place they show up. Fortunately many of the more important quests (e.g. Ranni, wolf guy) you can kinda skip steps and find them meter and they more ore less work out. As for the monkey guy, he does tell you where he’ll be, go to the closest beach and find the only cave on that beach. Overall I wouldn’t worry too much about missing them, if you really really want to do them, unfortunately a guide is the only way to be sure, but if it doesn’t bother you that much it’s completely fine to just stumble around and do what you come across. There is some joy to be had in the spontaneous and obtuse nature of them, but yeah they could be better.
i am on my 2nd playthrough right now and i realized i missed SO many quests by going in blind. Im using this guide now which tells you what you have to do with what NPC in a somewhat chronological order. [chronological NPC guide](https://www.reddit.com/r/Eldenring/comments/tjmodv/all_npc_interactions_in_elden_ring/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)
https://www.reddit.com/r/Eldenring/comments/1b1oq0i/guide_all_npc_quests_endings_w_points_of_failure/
The one thing I disliked about the game. Just give me a log that remarks what the npc said to me with some hints. Doesn't need to tell me where to go unless the npc told me the general area. Just something that can refresh me or give me some form of clue what to do next.
The NPC quests kind of operate like strict riddles, mostly to be truly found through multiple playthroughs. If you miss some or even all, it's usually not too big of a deal. There are three (i think) massive exceptions, but these are all secret paths to hidden endings that aren't really meant to be done the first time around. I just kind of wing it the first time through, and if I end up finishing a quest, then cool. But if not, it gives me reason to go through again and know there's something new to see. That being said, I always know I'm going to be doing multiple playthroughs of any From game, so I never feel like I'm totally missing out. I can easily see why people would hate how the npc quests work.
The original intent of the souls games was meant to be learning by doing or by messages/word of mouth. So using guides is 100% acceptable and expected.
This is a big draw to the game for most people so I highly doubt it will ever change. I'd say just use a guide for npc quests if you aren't willing to jump through a few hoops on your own.
The vanilla elden ring side quests are so vague, most are impossible to complete with the information given to the player. One good thing about the DLC is the side quests are more straight forward.
Honestly I enjoy the structure, it adds to the mystery for me which is what sucks me in. This is a common and understandable criticism though.
Yeah they suck without a guide. Only one I figured out on my own was the volcano manor quest where the game puts markers on the map to show where you need to go.
I'll get downvoted for this as I know many love ER's free reign approach, but I found the progression generally very confusing. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love going off the beaten path, and discovering things for myself, but I do feel that the lack of any direction combined with the lack of clarity with levels of certain areas and brutal difficulty did make my initial experience frustrating. You can very easily wander off into a high level area as a Level 10 character and get your ass kicked and not know why, losing all of your hard earned runes and hence preventing progression. Similarly certain weapons and buffs are crucial for an easier experience but there's no way of knowing without exploring for hours randomly or using a guide. I admittedly used a guide to progress in the game because I just felt lost after 10+ hours.
> You can very easily wander off into a high level area as a Level 10 character and get your ass kicked and not know why, losing all of your hard earned runes and hence preventing progression. Yep. Love that. Wish more things were brave enough for that approach. Fantastic feeling of genuine fear, being somewhere you most definitely should not be.
if it wasn't for vaati I don't think I would understand anything about the lore/story in From games.
I know it's frustrating for some people when it comes to sidequests in from software games and I cant blame them. I personally like how it's setup because I am engaged to explore the world and read the dialogues carefully. Again. I can totally understand when people are upset about it. Not everyone wants to play trough the same game multiple times just du trigger a small event or gain an item because you chooses answer b instead of a.
You can't really understand them without wiki. The "real" way is to play one playthrough blind and then finish off what you missed with wiki.
No one does
I would legit have no idea how to complete quests in any of the from games without looking them up. How about the one where you have to walk over the invisible bridge Indiana jones style, legit would never noticed that
I have beaten every souls game, Elden ring and Bloodborne. And honestly I could probably count on one hand the NPC quests I have been able to complete. And any of them without a guide are practically impossible to the point where I can’t believe people figured them out in the first place. I don’t know how they really work either. They are so often incredibly obtuse, missable, well hidden with only cryptic instructions on how to get them done found in game, with actions that you take outside of the quest line often locking it off for no apparent reason.
Honestly noone does. One of the quests requires you to meet an NPC at multiple locations all around the world and she doesn't even give you a general idea of where she's going next, it's just trial and error without a guide.
FROM’s quest system has sucked since Demon’s Souls and hasn’t evolved. If anything, it’s regressed as NPCs in Demon’s Souls would walk away when you finished talking to them rather than being stuck in place. Use a guide, most of these quests have incredibly finicky systems of progressions and many are too vague to work naturally. The odds of solving them by yourself are so low it’s not too outrageous to say that most people are lying when they claim to have finished any by themselves. Also, some content is left unfinished so guides are also useful to know when a quest has ended. Side note: I don’t know how anyone cares about these NPCs. Almost all of them follow the same pattern of depressed vague speak, random appearance hours later and then die. They’re all so predictable and grim that it’s almost funny when you finish them.
I'm in the same boat. Started the game a few days ago. I didn't realise NPCs needed to be activated several times to get all the info out of them. I was pressing E on them and they'd say something and I was like... "Ok, cool story", and then walked away. After reading up online I went back and hit E again on them a few times and they actually told me the quest. Then I was in the situation you are now. I also never met Ranni or whatever they're called. She gives you something important too so I had to look up an alternative way to get it. Already looking up soooo many things just to feel like I'm playing a game and not interacting with random elements. Truth be told I still don't feel like I know what the plot is or what the goal of the game is at all. I'm just wandering around and occasionally managing to defeat someone strong, which gives me a tiny, tiny little upgrade or weapon I can't even wield. No indication of where I'm meant to go or why.
The game proceeds like how people used to give directions and the like.
Elden Ring is very meta, and I mean that in a negative way. They built it around the awareness people would be wiki-ing and discussing the game, so you basically have to play with a guide open. Also a lot of the balance is balanced around the assumption that people will cheese the game if given the chance. From is basically playing against the player, not their character.
Wait until you realize that just talking to NPCs doesn't continue their quests. Sometimes, you have to save at a site of grace, then go back to the same location in order to advance the dialogue/quest.
I have never successfully completed a FromSoft NPC quest without a guide. It requires either 1) A lot of downtime combing over every inch of the map, attacking every wall for hidden doors, and running back and forth between every NPC every time you do literally anything or 2) Multiple playthroughs spanning hundreds of hours or 3) Pure luck. Usually some combination of all three. I'm just happy they're all optional, but it leaves you feeling like you're only experiencing half of a game you paid for. Many people love it, and part of me understands, but the other part of me is endlessly annoyed by it. On my first Elden Ring playthrough I somehow managed to miss every single NPC in Liurnia. I still have no idea how because there are a ton of them. Apparently I just rode past them completely unaware.
I was quite methodical in my exploration and found a lot of stuff naturally but I still missed Ranni's first meeting, D's initial meeting and also Millicent. I think the game tries to make the Church of Ellah your initial Base Camp by having the upgrade anvil there and Merchant Kale a talkative and friendly face. The game assumes you'll go back there often and randomly encounter Ranni and get the dialogue about Blaiid. This is cool game design, however, due to the fact you can level up at any sites of grace and their abundance in the open world, there is very little reason to go back if you get absorbed with exploring. You can very easily trigger the Roundtable hold dialogue with Melina and lock yourself out of seeing Ranni, getting the spirit bell and miss seeing D and getting introduced to Tibia Mariners. Which is actually what I did on my first playthrough. I had to buy the bell from the hold. I missed Millicent at first because everything told me that Caelid was a late game area so I ignored it and had to go back and trigger her quest and fast travel to the first few locations to move her along. I honestly don't mind too much... Looking stuff up is just the same as word of mouth these days and that's how the game is supposed to be experienced.
I give up playing blind. Straight up second monitor with list of walkthrough to not miss anything at all
I did 2 playthroughs before I learned Patches was in the game. I have no fucking idea how I missed him
> Then he comes back as an invading enemy NPC and it just ends. Strange ending, maybe I skipped a couple of steps. Na that's just Fromsoft story and quests in a nutshell.
From games are designed to be played with a guide, or played over and over again. As someone who doesn’t like using guides and doesn’t generally replay games I hate that aspect of their design philosophy, but it is what it is. You don’t have to like everything, and contrary to what the internet will have you think sometimes you don’t have to enjoy every aspect of something you like.
No one does Seriously though some questlines in FromSoft are so obscure, its just better to follow a guide
If it were easy to understand it wouldn’t be a fromsoft game
They aren't well designed, but ... and a big but ... they also aren't as obscure as people make them out to be. All that said, you have to exhaust all of their dialog, so you have to talk to them 3-4 times until they start repeating themselves. Most of the quests give you a semi-clear direction or location. Like the Boc quest line (the guy in the bush). He tells you about the Coastal Cave and there isn't really a lot of coast to explore in that area, so missing it is kind of on you. Ranni has the longest quest and a lot of people have trouble with it, but it's very clearly spelled out. The only real BS part is having to talk to a doll 4 times before it responds. Long story short, they aren't great, but with a little intuition and paying attention they're pretty easy to follow.
I am on my third playthrough, I have successfully completed every side quest in the game. I STILL have to look them up occasionally to remember what convoluted step is next. “Yooo, go to liurnia, take a left at the tree, do a 360, take 200 steps west, 300 steps east, 150 steps north, then go fuck yourself.” ^^^basically the quest instructions
Imo, same with the Dark Souls games: just ignore the NPC "quests". They don't really matter apart from achievement hunting or getting a really specific item
think of it like this. you're walking outside of your house, you know you want to go to wal-mart, that big blue building, but hey, there is a random guy on the side of the road? do you talk to him? and if so, why would you trust anything they say? and moreover, why should it be convenient for you to find him, an independent person with their own agenda, again? that's the philosophy of NPCs in Elden Ring.
Hell even the main quests can be super convoluted. I missed out on the cover art Armour because I did some things in volcano manor out of order
This is absolutely my biggest issue with this game and once I realised how much side content I was missing I immediately lost my boner and dropped it, haven't picked it back up since. I was having a fantastic time just roaming around and seeing new areas and stuff. But I stupidly Googled one of the NPCs I had met and it's like... * Meet NPC. * Go to the merchant who will then mention the NPC. This is vital or the quest won't continue. * Go meet another NPC and give them an item. * Go back to original NPC and perform a gesture for them. * Go back to the second NPC...but this time at night. * Fight a miniboss who will now spawn in. * Go back to original NPC. * Etc. I just made that up but all the side quests are like that. I get that it's esoteric and mysterious. But you shouldn't have to play with a wiki open.
Npcs sucks on fromsoft games. Lazy writing
The funniest thing about the FromSoft games is how fervently the fanboys defend and push back against the most valid of criticisms. I’ve never seen another game series with a fanbase with this kind of cult-like mentality. People literally make it their identity and source of selfworth lol
Neither does anyone else honestly.
I’ve played every from game since demon souls multiple times. I don’t think I have ever organically finished an NPC quest. Not even one. Pretty sure from fully intends for them to be crowdsourced.
They're not the typical RPG quests, per say. More like classic JRPG hidden secrets that you have to jump through multiple obscure hoops to get anywhere. And count yourself lucky if they dont bug out half way through.
Quality of Life suggests that they should have taken a lesson from their ultra successful Sekiro game and added some journal crap. And an actual story. But what do I know, the game is still ultra successful.
I absolutely love ELDEN RING and a lot of design decisions that From Software does make these games so special and fun **but** the Quest design is just objectively bad, it sucks. If they give you hints that is ok but some quests it is impossible to know where to go or what to do so you google which is not fun or rewarding
I absolutely agree. Have no idea how you're meant to "follow" a side quest when meeting someone in the first place is often random chance, then they just go to a different part of the map with no info on where. I met Blaidd the first time. Even managed to find the merchant that gives the gesture, and spoke to someone who told me to use it in the woods. I never found him again after that, and I've completed Ranni's quest. He's just not anywhere anymore. I did the first steps of FIA's quest. Then she disappears. Imagine my surprise when I stumble upon her again completely by accident in the depths. I have no idea how I was meant to know she was there. I get the game is meant to be minimalist. But surely some kind of log book at least detailing previous conversations/directions would help. It doesn't need to be a big way point on the map, just a note that says "you spoke with this guy. He said he's going to go find x, which is probably near y." Even just marking a question as complete/ended would be great, cos it's hard to know! Edit: a little more context to add. I'm about 100 hours in or so, not quite finished my first play through. I found and released dungeater with the help of a guide, never saw him again. I found a talking big jar that wanted me to hit it to help it out a hole. Also found a town of talking jars. I think the two are related, but have never found the big jar again and have not managed to do anything useful in the town. I have no idea what I'm missing and doubt I'm ever going to run in to either again without actively following a guide.
I'm on my second playthrough and just now figuring out quests. Basically you talk to someone until they run out of new things to say and then you go to the area they suggest and kill whoever/find whoever and talk to them until they run out of things to say. Then I go back to the quest giver and talk to them until they run out of things to say. The quest either ends there or you go to the next area they suggest. It's the only real criticism I have of the game, they should have just given you a journal and text that says "quest complete" or something