Elden Ring Guide: 10 Useful Gameplay Secrets You Missed

What makes Elden Ring so much fun? It is filled with tantalizing secrets! Here MmoGah, as a professional Elden Ring Runes shop, will list various gameplay mechanics hidden in the game.

Crystal Darts Control Golems

Fighting two watchdogs can actually be easier than fighting just one. With just a few Crystal Darts, you could stun and short circuit Erdtree Burial Watchdog, causing them to attack anything around them. This sort of mind control effect lasts for 30 seconds, which is more than enough time for them to kill anything else in the room. This effect also builds upon the smaller Imps, but they have to own enough health to withstand a few darts. Catacomb dungeons are all throughout Elden Ring, and this tip makes many dungeons easier, so why do Crystal Darts have this effect? It seems like Crystals were once a part of the Watchdog's creation. I recommended making Crystal Darts in the early game. They're quite powerful and easy to make, but it also bothers you.

Night Sorceries Don't Trigger Dodges

Many humanoid enemies have this habit of dodging, and they do quite a lot of input reading. I'm sure you're familiar with this, but the same goes for most Sorceries as well. There's an entire class of sorcery that specifically does not trigger enemy dodges. Night Sorceries are there for players wanting to make Elden Ring into a stealth game, including Ambush Shard, Eternal Darkness, Night Shard, Night Comet, Night Maiden's Mist, Unseen Blade and Unseen Form.

They are excellent against NPC invaders or just bosses like Malenia, who literally won't see this coming, but they'll dodge everything else. These Night Sorceries do less damage than their Glintstone counterparts, but they actually can hit the enemy, making these spells pretty worth it. Sometimes Night Sorceries are designed to be assassination spells which gives them a really nice piece of gameplay flavor since enemies can't dodge them.

Crouch Attacks Can Be Powerful

Speaking of assassination, people commonly underestimate how useful crouch is in this game. You can sneak up on enemies. If you hit an unaware enemy, you'll do 25% extra damage on your first hit, but beyond that, crouch attacks specifically can be really powerful, even if you use them mid-combat. Crouch r1 attacks have you perform the same animation as your rolling r1 attacks, so if you want access to your rolling attack on demand, then remember you can just input l3 and r1 to bring it out quickly at any time. This attack is especially great on certain Elden Ring weapons. It can compensate for the weaknesses that they have in their traditional move sets halberds. Just consider weaving these into your play style. If you aren't doing that, it can completely change the viability of certain weapons.

Weapon Feints Mechanic Changes

Another thing many players don't know is weapon faints, which are actions that you can only perform with Rapiers and Curved Swords. If you tap the dodge button while you're holding a heavy attack, you'll cancel the heavy attack while stepping backward and attacking at the same time, which allows you to maneuver for distance and deal damage at the same time. 

This backstep attack has been around since dark souls, and it didn't get much play in the dark soul. But in Elden Ring, I think there's one exception that makes this attack good: Frozen Needle Rapier. This Rapier is really cool. Its charged r2 attack is unique. It shoots a little icicle at your opponent, dealing damage and frostbite without even costing you FP. This is great. However, when you use this r2 while fainting, the icicle attack doesn't have a huge range, so you can faint at a sort of middle distance and make use of the backstep in kiting enemies around, which is an awesome playstyle, and I wish Elden Ring had more techniques like this.

Certain Spells Can Be Chain-casted

These are the sort of little combat intricacies that I love making Elden Ring builds out of, and I have another perfect tip that spellcasters will appreciate. The spells have a set cast time right sorceries. One cool thing is that you can make a lot of these spells come out a lot faster. If you combo them with other spells and attacks, you can remove the wind-up on Carian Slicer.

Here's a comparison for incantations Magma Breath comes out way faster if you use catch flame right before it, which goes a long way to make Magma Breath a viable spell. There are a ton of other spells that work this way, and while the inputs can be a little bit tricky with the d-pad, it's a really fun high-skill cap thing that you can do to deepen the gameplay of your spellcaster. A lot of spells combo in this way.

Mimic Tear Can Become a Tank

If you want to make spell casting less complicated, there's something for you to beat Radahn and progress below Limgrave to find the Mimic Tear Ashes. In Nokron, Eternal City, everyone knows this summon is powerful at this point. It's just a copy of everything on your character during the summoning, even your talismans, like Shabriri's Woe, which you can find in the Frenzied Villager.

When it's equipped, this talisman forces enemies to focus their attacks on you to the point that they'll ignore your summons completely. Usually, it makes the game more dangerous for you, especially during co-op, but one clever thing that you can do is to have it equipped and then summon your Mimic Tear Ashes, and then take Shabriri's Woe off your character, so since your Mimic Tear was summoned with this talisman equipped, it will take all of the enemy aggro, leaving you free to cast ranged attacks with complete impunity, this is a perfect way to help increase the viability of bow builds.

Armor Alteration Changes a Lot

There are three surprising facts about Elden Ring Armor Alteration that I think many people might have missed.

1. Altering a piece of armor affects its stats in all cases. Altered versions of armor offer fewer resistances but a lower weight, so if you're just shy of having the right equipment load, you can consider altering a few pieces of armor. Fashion is important, but don't roll fat.

2. In some cases, altering your armor can give it unique properties or take it away. The altered Duelist cloak leaves only the snake bracelets, which is reviled symbol that makes enemies focus their attacks on you. Altering the Black Knife Chest piece removes its Concealing Veil, which also removes its stealth-enhancing capabilities.

3. Most importantly, a lot of altered armor sets have different lore descriptions. For example, the altered land of reeds armor tells you more about the actual land of reeds, which is locked in a miserable civil war.

You Can Destroy the Chariot Encounters

There are three Chariot encounters in Elden Ring, each guarding a Hero's Grave, a particularly tough type of trap-filled dungeon you will encounter during your journey. These Chariots can't be destroyed by conventional means. You can only destroy two from three sets.

Fringefolk Hero's Grave

The first Chariot you are likely to encounter is the Fringefolk Hero's Grave, located in Limgrave, and can be accessed very early in the game. Defeating this Chariot is intrinsically linked to acquiring the Erdtree Greatbow.

Auriza Hero's Grave

The simplest method for overcoming this Grave will require dying, so make sure you aren't carrying too many Elden Ring Runes.

Gelmir Hero's Grave

The Chariots in Gelmir Hero's Grave cannot be destroyed since you are intended to ride them. You will be able to board them with a well-timed jump once you are close enough.

Weather Affects Damage

Do you know the weather can affect your damage? If it's raining, you'll do around 10% less fire damage, but your lightning damage will be increased by 10%. These effects also applied to enemies undercover from the rain, so I think this effect applies to everything in any area. You should keep this rain effect in mind if you're doing jewels at the main Academy Gate in Raya Lucaria. Lightning builds will inherently be at an advantage while fire builds will be at a disadvantage.

Use All Buff Types to Become Stronger

Lastly, let's talk about buff stacking. That's a great way to get an advantage regardless of your build, so disregarding talisman and armor buffs, which are permanent. There are different categories of temporary buffs in Elden Ring, and you can only have one temporary buff active from each category.

There are Weapon Buffs, Shield Buffs, Body Buffs, Aura Buffs, Health Regen Buffs, and Stamina Regen Buffs. In addition to these, some special buffs (such as Holy Ground and Terra Magica) don't follow these rules. Activating as many temporary buffs as you can is a huge way to unlock your character's potential, so here are the buffs that work on every character to start. You can activate health and Stamina Regen Buffs just with your flask - Wondrous Physick Mix. You need Crimsonburst Crystal Tear and Greenburst Crystal Tear to make it.

An easy way to get access to Aura Buff is using Golden Vow - Ash of War skill. This gives you 15% extra damage and 15% damage negation, and you can put this on a Light Dagger, activate it and then switch back to your main weapon.

This article refers to VaatiVidya's video.

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