What are you talking about?!?!? The quests are NOT completable without guides 😂

The leaks are clearly fake. Anyone who has paid any attention to Elden Ring's story knows that the final boss will be Godefroy.

On a first playthrough Best: Blind Fine: Beginner tips and tricks Avoid: Get OP quick

Being able to jump made me look at every rubble pile differently lol

I played Elden Ring (1st playthrough) as a wretch with no preconceived notions of what my build might be. I let my discoveries shape my character development. Most satisfying gameplay experience I've ever had.

So glad this channel is spoiler free now that the dlc has leaked

Theres definitely a large portion of players who believe you must play with a guide. I see them in various groups online. Play how you want but i always recommend you just try it without one. Worst case you do a 2nd playthrough to get the things you missed, which youre probably going to do anyway. Best case is you discover that a blind first playthrough of a fromsoftware game is one of the most unique experiences in gaming you can have.

I deeply respect that Miyazaki said that "if player can't find stuff then it's our bad". A lot of Fromsoft fans really treat Miyazaki and Fromsoft as these perfect dieties that can't make mistakes, but we wouldn't even have a game as great as Elden Ring without building off of Fromsoft's previous works.

That's exactly why I love messages. They are the bridge between using a guide and playing completely blind. I personally use guides on NG+, because I want all spells, weapons and talismans. Still that experience of being teleported to Caelid and spending 10h in that decrepit land, was such a fun and memorable experience I wouldve never gotten playing with a guide.

First playthrough: Adventure! Second playthrough: Completionist with guide.

Miyazaki's outlook on his games remind me of that one saying which is something like "I painter can never appreciate their work" which is to say, when I go into Elden Ring blind, its fresh and brand new. I don't know anything. I don't know what the bosses names are, what they do, what the rooms look like, how long it is, what the floor texture is, what the music is, what the sounds are. A game dev never gets to experience that with their own work, and that's quite sad when you think about it. I think about this fairly often while experiencing a game I truly love. Of course they get the satisfaction of seeing their work come to fruition and seeing the positive feedback, but it is curse of the creator that they never get to experience their own masterpiece, all at once, all fully complete, all as it should be. They'll experience each part piece meal, like first a boss song, then a month later, the boss itself, then the boss room, then the lead up to the boss, then with an actual weapon in the game, then as a character they levelled in a test build of the game.

There's this video by Tim Cain (Fallout 1 director) about non linear games. He said in the 90s guides were all the rage, and outlets would work with developers to have a guide published at the game's release. He said he had trouble doing that for Fallout because nobody could even understand him, journalists would ask him "What are the players supposed to do here?" and he would say "They can solve it in any way they want, they can use stealth to steal the item, they can talk to the NPC and convince them, or they could just kill them and take it" and they would go "Yeah but which one is the real solution? For the mains story" and he would go like "There is no such thing" and they would go on and on and be unable to conceive a non linear game. They would especially struggle with "you can go wherever you want and do things in any order". Back then, most games were linear and those guides would make more sense. I think today these are just remnants of that culture but a not so small portion of players still see games in a similar manner, a medium to tell a story not so different from a film. Guides and tips for these games make a lot of sense.

I despise IGN misleading headline saying "Miyazaki is totally cool with you using guide guys! Give traction to our guides plz", when it's obvious he is "fine" but would rather people played blind.

As a guide maker, I agree with him. I had an insane amount of notes from my first playthrough to help my guide making workflow, but I can't imagine a regular player could possibly keep up with all the questlines and NPCs without also taking a lot of notes. Things could definitely be a bit better, maybe with an in-game journal, kind of like the Bomber's Notebook from Majora's Mask. Also sick song choice :D

Playing blind is how one discovers the Catacombs in the beginning of DS1 lol

I haven’t seen that spoiler or heard of it until know so thank you for the heads up honestly, so close to release!

This video made me realize that Miyazaki can never play his games blind, and there’s something sad about that.

I'll never forget my first playthrough trying to do Ranni's quest blind & ending up going to deeproot from the gargoyles coffin. Nokron & Nokstella & Lake of Rot are still my favourite areas. That feeling of exploring & having no clue how deep it goes is unmatched.

Going through Blind is the best experience. I did use a guide after Elden Beast for anything I missed. For example, I still had an achievement i was missing, it was for the Dragonlord boss. I wouldn't have found that without a guide haha One of the best bosses imo

For me it really depends on what type of game it is... For games like Elden Ring and the Souls games, there's no way I'd ever use a guide at all first playthrough. But in a game like Monster Hunter where there isn't all that much of an exploration focus and you're just fighting monsters repeatedly I don't really see any harm in looking up where to get the mushrooms I need to upgrade my weapon for example. But I wouldn't really look up strategies or gear loadouts for specific fights. I do also look up a guide on a new weapon when I try it for the first time just so I'm aware of what most of my moves are (cuz the games aren't really the best at telling you how to use any of the weapons lol)

THE CASTLEVANIA MUSIC OPENER WHAT A BANGER

I'm glad I don't really use social media. I had no idea there was a leak. lol I know next to nothing about this DLC this time around.

You know that Prince of Death face beneath Stormveil Castle? I was smacking it with the Greatsword, and it was bleeding.

I just saw a episode of the play watch listen podcast where they recommend playing your first fromsoft game with a guide, it makes me sad to hear that people recommend ruining a first playthrough.

The only thing I used a guide for is the side-quests because the reputation of them being easily fuck-upable made me really anxious. Still had some orgainc moments like randomly finding Miriam in Altus. I tried to only look at the current step I was on, but I still spoiled myself sometimes, but it made me feel less anxious so I think my play experience was improved overall. I'll try not to do this in SotE.

My two cents, because anyone cares: First playthrough: no guides. You only get one blind run, so make the most of it. Subsequent playthroughs: play each area without a guide, and then, when you think you’re done, open the guide to see if you missed anything you care about.

games like elden ring don't come by frequently so be pretty sure with how you want to expirence your first playthrough.

Best way to play through a fromsoft game is with a friend on call or with you. It lets you ask questions and get useful advice while limiting what you see

I'm pretty sure the final boss is Gourdfrey, the Great Pumpkin, but they can't say until charlie brown enters public domain day after tomorrow.

Props on the background music. Symphony of the Night is one of my all time favorite OSTs

But I believe they design things hoping that messages left by the players can guide others to some secrets

The symphony of the night track, as always ur choice of soundtracks are immaculate

I think people are forgetting that a very large portion of ER players are not souls veterans. I don't know how a first time player is supposed to know "keep taking to NPCs until dialogues are exhausted", or literal "hidden fake walls".

playing Elden Ring for the first time was genuinely one of the best experiences I ever had in a videogame. If I ever was just completely stumped by something, i would only look up the next step, but never the entire quest or anything like that. Just to nudge me into the right direction. This game is phenomenal played completely blind.

Accidentally saw the new rememberance leaks 😭 they look great, but I wish I hadnt seen them. Thank you for posting these spoiler-free videos Ratatouille 👍

I do think From could do better on NPC quests in particular. While they CAN be completed without guides (the people who wrote the guides completed them without guides), everyone I know personally who plays these games uses guides for NPC quests (even though they don't use guides for anything else). As Ratatoskr himself outlined in a video a few years ago, the open world nature of Elden Ring works against the quests being intuitively completable. For example, if you decide to do Caelid after Altus Plateau for whatever reason, you are unlikely to find Millicent in the Altus Plateau and complete her questline. I wish more NPCs did what Varre does. Varre leaves you a message at First Step when he moves to Liurnia. If NPCs were clearer about where the hell they're going next, I think less players would feel the need to fall back on guides for NPC quests.

Ever since DS1 I think there was a responsibility for both the Dev and the players: we as a community and individuals *should* put the effort to find things out, in the same way we learn boss patterns and enemy placements. ER made questlines and overall progression far easier than most Soulsbornes by virtue of having characters spell out what they want or feel to do. It's true some stuff are too vague, but ever since DS3 I felt Fromsoft pushed us a bit into the right direction with enough vagueness to mess up. Heck, DS2 started the trend of guiding enough to a small extend without pointing the right way. Missing things isn't bad, the same way having community assistance isn't bad. It's an exploration game and a RPG after all.

I honestly think there should just be more put into the design of quests where people don't feel the need to look up guides. If so many people are looking up guides to play the game then at that point there are obviously design decisions that push players towards doing that. I'm not advocating for quest markers or ways points or even really a quest log(tho I would appreciate a consolidated place for information that isn't a wiki), but at some point people have to voice their issues if they want improvements. I enjoyed the quests I managed to "complete" while doing my own playthrough, but come find out after my play through that I never saw the ending where they died or missed a step in finding them. Usually if people can find the quest they can do the quest, but the main determining factor about whether I got to engage with that character being actually finding them was a major sore point for me. I did shit blind and I went in knowing that I would miss a ton a shit and never have a complete first play through. I also thought I would do some new game runs which never happened due to burning out near that boss rush endgame. There aren't ways for people who actually want to engage with parts of the game to improve at that. I can't organically through the game actually do what I want to do. I remember being told that I didn't explore good enough or thoroughly enough so because I missed out on that quest that it was my own fault and not because I didn't go in a direction I perceived as a backtrack enough. Newsflash the solution being to explore better is not a solution. You don't see people saying to never use torrent because you move so fast that you don't look at the world or immerse yourself. People saying they don't want questing quality of life in my mind just sound like people in a world where elden ring didn't have torrent and all the meat riders saying that elden ring wouldn't be a souls game with mounts. That sprinting everywhere and wasting hours of our life was integral to the souls experience and it just being similar to never completing a story line since having to organically find and miss quests was just oh so critical to the intended experience. Guides are a solution for people facing problems. The problems these people are facing require either lucking into finding the solution sooner or spending dozens of hours methodically scouring the map. Many people will never do a new game plus play through to be able to "organically" find the new content by also not having a lot of time either. This is also a complete fuking non issue btw. Someone else using a guide and not fully realizing the "potential" of a game has no impact whatsoever on anybody else. Simple service announcements like this video saying that hey you might be tempted to use guides but also really the first time you should try it without guides but also if you are strapped for time or burning out or aren't planning on doing any more play throughs then sure go ahead and actually complete that questline.

Maybe it’s just me but for soul games I’ve always had to look up or ask my friends how to complete npc quest. It’s rarely obvious where you’re supposed to go

The main thing I hated most about doing quests in nlind in Elden Ring vs the older games.. was that in an open world scenario there is no linear path so finding the next spot for certain NPC's felt almost up too chance. Sure they added the NPC icons on the map, but they still only appear AFTER you've ran into them once. I screwed up a lot of quests because I'd take obscure paths looking for caves and secrets and ended up reaching story progression points that ended my questlines without me knowing. However this is a storytelling problem that ALL open-world games struggle with. FromSoft just so happened to struggle with it as well.

On my first playthrough I wondered for days not knowing how to level up. Was sent o hellscape called Caelid by a trap and not knowing you can fast travel, went through all those mobs on foot. I'll never forget crouching in some hole, shivering, hiding from a giant mean bird, asking myself why the hell I gave 60 euros for that game... 😅 Even later, after I finished the game I didn't know about NG stuff. I played three new games with new characters from the beginning, level 1. 😁

fantastic that rata appeals to the “covering eyes with pinkies and ears with thumbs on the roller coaster” type of player such as I

I love using video guides to figure out where to walk too. 😊

imo the pathway to the Beast is doable without guides - kill shardbearers -> Leyndell-> Mountaintop -> Farum Azula -> Ashen Capital, that’s all relatively linear and can be done organically - the QUESTS however are difficult to me, I’ve never been able to do Hyetta’s quest, didn’t know for 2 playthroughs that there’s a yura quest line, and definitely would’ve struggled or failed ranni’s, millicent’s, seluvis’, sellen’s, and etc quests without some help lmao (however I do have to play offline so no notes or messages)

I don't think playing with guides immediately removes the sense of adventure and exploration if you're just trying to not miss items and such. You can find guides on just the item locations and not spoil the rest of the experience. This is what I do because I love to collect weapons, I look up the weapons and read only where I can get them while being fully surprised as to whatever stands in the way of me and my weapons. I do have a lot of self control in that regard though where as I know others might not. Sometimes I do run into spoilers but the beauty of FS games is most of the time it just confuses me like, "wtf did I just read?" and its not until I get to that part that I understand. Elden Ring was interesting though because most of the weapons had not been found by the time I was searching for them. Sometimes I did find them before the guide was filled in. With some weapons, namely the partisan, it was really frustrating because the guide was actually wrong and caused me to spend way too much time trying to farm it at locations that it does not drop, or if it does, it is an impossibly low chance.

Love that you keep using “Wood Carving Partita” and “Dance of Pales” from SotN. Such a great OST.

My man doing Gods work 0:40

I like to play open world games with a few landmarks on a map. For ER, I just used the sights of grace on a map, but explored everything organically as much as I could.

My first run thru ER was a blind playthrough and it was a one of kind experience and well worth it.

I like to go through blindly for the most part but I definitely use the Fextra guides when I want to clean things up. This all stems from DeS and DS1 - they were very unforgiving on some quests that would entirely lock you out if you didn’t progress them correctly which is why sometimes I lean on the guides to make sure I’m not missing out. In turn however that also taught me to really explore things and read lore from the subsequent games.

There is no “being stumped on a quest then figuring it out” being stumped implies you are missing something, when Alexander says he’s “going to caelid” you know he’ll be there somewhere, just literally anywhere in an area larger than most of ds1. So you have to decid, do I waste possibly hours of my life to find this one guy? Or do I just look it up. This quest design worked in the linear smaller games, but it does not work in this game at all.

Definitely planning to do the DLC blind my first time. Once I complete it or get totally stuck, I'll probably check a guide so I can unlock more content. I'm not a purist but I do think the first time experience tends to be better the longer you hold off on checking guides.

I think there also something to say about how using a guide can you miss out on the experience of missing something itself. There are many cases where missing a particular item or npc will completely alter your experience. A big exemple would be all those people who didn't happen to find mimic tear and couldn't rely on it to get them through the harder fights. There also a certain excitement in seeing someone find something you didn't and find out at the same time as them.

Thank you for filing me up for the day ratatoskr.

"If you play with a guide, you'll miss out on the experience of finding those things on your own" I'm too dumb/bad to find those things on my own. Even using a guide first time thru, I completely missed 95% of Elden Ring's quests/characters and as a result I had a much more negative opinion of the game than I do now. Looking it up was sorta like "Oh, ER _does_ have all that stuff I was looking for." I just happened to explore in such an order that it all wiffed right by me. I almost feel punished for exploring and doing things at my pace, because one tiny slip and an extremely cool moment/character/storyline is suddenly completely locked for the rest of the playthrough at little to no fault of my own. How was I supposed to know crab-face wouldn't talk to me if I went to the Volcano?!

Wow! Leaks confirmed the final boss of the DLC will be a kart race.

I've only watched new weapons footage so that I know what build to go into the DLC with to be able to try out as many of them as possible.

The other day I was thinking how it's almost summer solstice, the longer day of the year. Then I thought of Elden Ring, its the sun's symbolism and Miquella's eclipse, and thought it would be interesting if the release date of the dlc, summer solstice, is no coincidente at all.

Miyazaki hasn't accounted for the fact that i'm very stupid.

One thing that makes the first time blind playthrough more fun is having friends who are also doing so since we will definitely have different experiences out of it. So when we meet up to share our experiences, we might learn from each other about stuff that we missed, our different approaches to the same sidequest, etc and for me, that is more motivation to explore more thoroughly and take notes for subsequent playthroughs.

I used guides for my first playthrough of Elden Ring and even though I spoiled a lot of the game just watching those guides I loved every moment and I'm still having fun over 300 hours later

Honestly, I wouldnt have been able to finish the game without guides. this being my first souls game i knew I was gonna get frustrated quickly since I didnt get any of the systems that were being shown to me. I didnt look for a guide to become op but i did look up things like how stats worked and picked a build that I liked. Now that I got the experience of the main game I feel prepared to go in blind foe the dlc. I just think that guides are a huge help for people new to this type of game like I was.

It's your game. Play it however you want

If they wish for that, then I wish they would actually provide us with a Journal.. with at least an NPCs last location and their dialogue and they certainly need to do better with NPCs hinting on where they will go, ESPECIALLY in a game like ER where it is open world and NPCs can move areas backwards cause you can do stuff out of order, with no hint on where they might be at all, cause I'll be honest, the only reason I ever open up a guide for these games is to look up whatever obscrube bullshit I need to do to activate an NPC's neurons so they can progress or where the hell to find them.. Like legit my wishlist for their next RPG project is well.. more RPG mechanics please?

The SOTN music is much appreciated

Blind is the way for me, but i do sometimes look at guides for areas/quests that ive already experienced just to see where i messed up or to check if i missed something. Usually before heading into NG+, I'll start going over what ive done and see if i cant grab something i missed before the next playthrough. It sucks to miss a "once per playthrough" weapon or something

I’m sorry but I’m not a Souls veteran, I didn’t enjoy beating Bloodborne and it took about long time to beat Elden Ring (with a guide). I went thru half of my 1st play through of Elden Right blind, however I don’t enjoy getting lost and I don’t enjoy missing out on items and weapons that are powerful or that I would need. I find enjoyment in using a guide cause i have my bearing mostly. To me, regardless of a guide or not you still gotta develop the skills to beat the game, no guide can help you with that.

My laptop froze as you said "On this channel we're doing daily spoiler-" Lol

I love these videos. 4 DAYS

My og playthrough went like this kinda: played limgrave. When I had moved on and was done in limgrave, look at guide to see if there was anything I missed. "Oh, twinblade in lake? OK close tab. Time to scrub the lake. Oh look I've been tp'd to the other side of the map." This way I kept the sense of discovery, and only when I felt satisfied that I found everything I cared to look for, I'd check and only read a hint or area that it was in. I ended up discovering the patterns to finding things and just played the game that way.

Rate my list of favorite weapons: Demons Souls - Blueblood Sword DS - Black Knight Ultra GS DS2 - Blue Flame Bloodborne - Holy Moonlight Sword DS3 - Fume Ultra GS Elden Ring - Warped Axe

Thanks Michael Zaki.

I do feel even if not most a large portion do look at the guides to finish quest since in steam the Age of Stars ending has more percentage than the regular one and that's an ending.

I generally only go to guides and wikis either on ng+, or once I've hit end game and I'm thinking about what sort of end game build I want, what items I might need for it, etc. and then it's not like I take a step by step guide to find the ring of noodly power, I just see where it sits on the map, find the mini dungeon its in, and then do the dungeon blind. So for finding the little details later in my run basically.

Messages on the ground and seeing other players ghosts will always destroy thks argument for me. As a veteran souls player i look for the messages, phantoms or bloodstains before entering a room or talking to an npc. Its never "truly" blind. You get as much help as you look for

I mean, if you use a fextralife guide, you are just gonna hinder yourself because they are never right, even on a basis like normal attacks. It's like driving into a wall full speed to make your car faster.

My first was Sekiro, the hype around the difficulty had me steering clear of FS, but I loved the world of Sekiro so much, I watched multiple boss fights and vaati vids before playing. I assumed I wouldn't be able to play it but read enough to believe I could cheese the bosses with a guide and make it through. Glad I did the first time, cause it eliminated a wall for me and I now I'm excited for a blind playthru of the DLC. Learning to parry Isshin was an Amazon moment for me.

I play every frimsoftware games blind. Even got the Japanese version of DS3 so I could play it 1 week before the global release. And I was able to find all secret locations and beat all Bosses before people started unloading spoilers all over the internet. It felt great!

There is plenty of content you could entirely miss forever if you never used a guide.

you've been miyazakied

The Symphony of the night music caught me off guard

I play a lot of videogames and I always have to look up soulsborne quest progression. That is the one area these games can improve

the only optimal play through is naked level 1, humanity’a truest, raw form

I dunno how anyone did Hyetta's quest without a guide. But I probably did 80% or more on my own and got to Elden Beast with about 200+ hours before I looked at a guide for anything.

Really can’t believe the final boss was John Elden ring

Blind playthroughs are the best. I did my first mostly blind except I looked up how to get to Consecrated Snowfield eventually. Over time I broke down and let more and more seep through and then eventually by my third or fourth playthrough I was hitting the wiki pretty hard. I would have loved to have somehow had this game when I was a kid in the days before the internet... it would have been amazing to just discover more and more over time. I'm pretty sure there is a lot of stuff I would have never figured out... Milicent's quest. Boc's quest. Rya's quest, LOL.

Yup, they're designed to go in blind, except the fact that they nerfed dodging, the most used mechanic so much that it took you two years since release to figure out jumping like it's super mario is much more efficient. Jumping was overlooked by the developers this time, but expect it to be nerfed in the next fromsoft game. These games are true old school difficult games for the sake of getting more play hours, the difference is back then they actually had a reason to do that, they were limited by the hardware

My man has good music taste

I mean there's a lot of bushes to attack to see if they're shapeshifters or fake walls to attack to open hidden passages, without a guide to do it trying to find everything would be an extremely long and tedious process and one might never even figure it out.

Usually use a guide on a second play through. I did use a guide to find a weapon in elden ring on my first play through cause I have having choice paralysis on what I wanted to play

My general rule of thumb goes as follows: first playthrough: complete blindness. I find what I find, and if my friends find stuff, I’ll let them share it with me. Second playthrough: guides are ok, I wanna find the stuff I genuinely couldn’t in my first playthrough. My one real flex is that I found the shaman village with no guide.

I saw a joke of soldier of godrick as the final boss with aspect of the crucible wings.

I only used the guide on boss weakness when I get steam rolled 50× in a row. Specifically the morning star beast on top the mountain in that crater back when the game cams out

I'm still finishing my first playthrough of Elden Ring, and I did much of it blind. However, there are tons of things (quests) that are so opaque, that I've never experienced them because I had no idea where to go or even that it was a quest to pursue. And my experience of the game hasn't been enhanced by missing out on the timing of Rya and Boggart's quests. Or as I have just gotten to the Grace outside Malenia's battle, presumably Millicent's quest. Were it not for a guide, I would never have finished Ranni's quest because I didn't realize there were dialogue options at a certain Grace. I'm not the kind of person that will invest the sheer time in doing multiple playthroughs of Elden Ring, after two years I'm still working through my first. And so, at this point, I earnestly regret not using some sort of guide (or quest tracker) to at least point me directions to complete quests (a reminder to talk to an NPC that might be in the area or something), because now there are quests and stories I'm not going to experience through play--I can only read the guide to imagine what it would have been like to play it. So, I appreciate the sentiments of going in blind, or that Miyazaki feels there is room for improvement, but none of that has value to me after its already too late.

I only use guides to clean up after completing the game tbh and I did miss a lot in my initial playthough. Used guides tho to get some good stuff like Mimic Tear, because I reached Farum Azula and couldn't get past Godskin Duo

Video Idea: Are there any known technical changes being added in the dlc. Graphics options… widescreen, lod settings, etc When ER first came out there were some stutter/performance issues. I think they scaled back some fidelity, wonder if they added any of that back. Primarily draw distance I think was reduced.

In my opinion not using guides helps encourage replay value by making you want to replay for what you've missed. I'm on my 5th elden ring playthrough and I'm still finding new aspects of certain legacy dungeons.

I have gotten a lot of enjoyment with guides. But this time I’m not going to at all. I’m gonna come in just like everyone else like I did with AC6. Just figuring strategies that work for me. It’s interesting to see how your strategy/build stacks up against the meta after you beat the game.

Born a raised when the internet became a more useable source for more information. My first playthough of Darksouls was a perfect Giant dad guide run. From falling perfectly, to the cheesy stuff. I later played a different style. Without that guide, i think i wouldve been too overwhelmed by it. Keep in mind i was like 13-15 at the time of my first playthough. All i knew was overwatch and call of duty then. Guides help the hardcore and new comer.

I heard about the final boss leak and it disappoints me but it does explain something I wasn't certain of.