Elden Ring can feel hostile if it is your first Souls-style game. The trick is to stop treating every enemy like a mandatory checkpoint and start treating the world like a set of options.
This guide focuses on habits that make the first ten hours less confusing.
Do not fight everything immediately
If a mounted knight, giant, or boss deletes your health bar in two hits, leave and come back later. Elden Ring is built around detours. A hard fight near the start is often a signal to explore, collect runes, upgrade gear, and return stronger.
Use map markers for places you want to revisit. That is better than forcing a fight when your damage and health are too low.
Level vigor early
New players often put points into damage first. Damage matters, but early survivability matters more.
A simple early target:
| Stat | Why it helps | | --- | --- | | Vigor | More health means more room to learn attack patterns | | Endurance | More stamina for blocking, rolling, and attacking | | Main damage stat | Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, Faith, or Arcane depending on weapon |
You do not need a perfect build in the opening hours. You need enough health to learn.
Upgrade your flask before anything else
Your healing flask is the most important upgrade path in the early game, and the game barely explains it.
Two items control it:
- Golden Seeds add a charge, so you can heal more times between rests.
- Sacred Tears make each charge heal more. They sit inside small churches, which are visible on the map once discovered.
Golden Seeds often glow under small golden saplings out in the world. If you see one, grab it. A beginner with six strong flask charges survives learning mistakes that would end a run with three weak ones.
Also open the flask menu at a site of grace and check the split between health and focus flasks. If you never cast spells, shifting everything to health is free survivability.
Upgrade the weapon you actually use
Weapon upgrades usually matter more than a few extra damage-stat levels. If you find a weapon that feels comfortable, upgrade it instead of waiting forever for a perfect option.
Comfort matters. A slightly weaker weapon with a moveset you understand is better than a stronger weapon that gets you hit constantly.
Upgrades need smithing stones, and the game's caves, tunnels, and catacombs are where those live. If your damage feels flat, twenty minutes in a mining tunnel usually fixes it faster than three character levels. Later on, look out for bell bearings, which let you simply buy lower-tier stones instead of farming them.
Learn the rhythm of one enemy at a time
Most deaths come from panic. Pick one common enemy and learn:
- How close you can stand.
- Which attack is safe to punish.
- When to roll into an attack instead of away.
- When to stop attacking and reset.
Once that rhythm clicks, bosses start feeling less random.
Two mechanics are worth practicing deliberately on weak enemies:
- Guard counter: block an attack with a shield, then immediately press heavy attack. It staggers many enemies and is the most beginner-friendly opening in the game.
- Stance breaks: repeated heavy or charged attacks eventually stagger enemies and open them to a critical hit. Big slow weapons are better at this than their speed suggests.
Use Torrent and the open world to your advantage
Your horse is not just transport. Mounted combat trivializes many open-field enemies and lets you disengage from anything that goes wrong. Fights that feel unfair on foot, especially dragons and mounted knights, become manageable when you can circle and retreat freely.
The open world also respects cowardice. Almost nothing in the overworld chases you far. Grabbing an item, taking a hit, and riding away is a legitimate strategy, not cheating.
Use summons without guilt
Spirit ashes and NPC summons are part of the game. They can split attention, buy healing time, and make early bosses easier to read.
If you want a solo challenge later, you can always do that on another run. For a first playthrough, use the tools the game gives you.
Spirit ashes can also be upgraded, and a leveled basic summon often outperforms a fancy one you found later but never upgraded. If you have not received the item that enables summoning, rest at a site of grace in the first open area at night and talk to the NPC who appears.
Spend runes before risky exploration
If you are carrying enough runes for a level, spend them before entering a new cave, castle, or boss room. Losing runes twice in a row feels bad and can make you play worse.
The simple loop is:
- Explore.
- Collect runes and items.
- Level up or upgrade.
- Push into harder areas.
And when you do die with a big pile, do not panic-run back through everything that killed you. The runes wait exactly where you dropped them; the enemies between you and them are the actual danger.
Talk to everyone, then talk to them again
Elden Ring hides quests, items, and even summons behind repeat conversations. NPCs rarely mark themselves on your map and almost never explain what they want.
A low-effort habit that pays off:
- Exhaust every NPC's dialogue until it loops.
- Return after defeating a nearby boss and talk again.
- Drop a map marker on any NPC you meet in the wild.
You will still miss things, everyone does, but you will stumble into far more of the game's stories, gear, and help this way.
Final advice
Elden Ring rewards patience more than perfect reflexes. If a fight feels impossible, step away, explore somewhere else, upgrade your flask and weapon, and return with a clearer plan. The game never demands you win right now; it only asks that you come back.