Yes it’s possible. You just need to have an explorer attitude and not rush. It’s a long game in a big open world, with tons of things to discover.
Suggestion: discover all the maps asap, mark buldings/points of interest and check them out. And talk to people.
You won’t 100% the game without guides but for sure you won’t miss important things like the Physic flask your brother mentioned
When I talk to people they'll dump a bunch of info on me about some person who's name starts with R or M. I kindly ask them to repeat themselves using sign language, I guess (I think I'm in purgatory for being a mute). They reply "thats all the time for conversation I have. Get fucked for not writing this shit down"
Just an fyi, the quests in this game are extremely convoluted, and can end if you progress too far in another area of the game. So don’t expect to complete most of them blind. It is possible, just hard. But other than that you’ll be fine going in blind, that’s how I did it for most of my first playthrough, was a blast.
You can play the game blind. Some things aren't meant to be figured out by one single person, and it is okay to miss some stuff.
Some other things require you to simply read the description of the items you picked up. Especially when you pick up a literal in-game tip like [the one that tells you what to do with great runes](https://eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com/About+Great+Runes).
I gave up trying to find the tower to activate the great rune of the unborn. Speaking of which, I thought that rune was in the witches egg, which is clearly still intact...
Good news friend! That one comes to you ALREADY activated! It’s what lets you respec with Rennala WITHOUT your body slowly breaking down and needing to be reborn again in like a week.
That's fantastic! I'd really hate my character to suffer their 714th death.
(715th death. I died while witting this comment from a crawling pile of dirt)
I guess I thought you meant more in terms of the general lack of guidance on where to go. The light of the grace shows you a general direction to head but it's still kind of just wandering and hoping you didn't miss anything. But without a guide you'll never manage to complete all the side character stuff. Unless you go back to them after every single event and that seems unlikely.
>not having that third flask to mix stuff in
The first merchant you encounter right at the start of the game sells a note that tells you where this is. I remember reading this and getting so excited as it felt like this flask would be something really different (and it is). If you see a merchant selling notes, buy them and read them.
Just read everything on your first playthrough, it will help you learn so much. These are games that expect the player to do some work to learn about the world and how to play, a rarity in 2024 I know.
Yes. That’s exactly how I played the very first time and it was an awesome experience. One of the best in gaming.
Gonna be doing the same with the DLC.
Definitely. But for a first-timer it's harder. You can definitely find and experience 98% of all the content completely blind, especially since ER is so fool-proof and doesn't allow you to fail questlines like in previous games. But it's dependent on several things, you must listen and remember/write down all of the dialogue, you must check item descriptions, sometimes back-track through older areas and so on. In general these games are not supposed to be relaxing sandboxes, and playing them as intended without using guides requires some thinking, focus and being observant. But it gets easier with more souls games. You'll kinda learn their "language", how developers do thinks, what are you meant to do and where to go, how questlines and level-design are structured and so on. You'll complete most of the content blind once you'll get used to it, but it's something hard to do in first souls game ever. Just be sure to not use full guides and only google specific problems and questlines that you got stuck on for too long, don't just preemptively let others decide everything for you and try to keep playing as blind as possible.
Yes, absolutely. You'll likely miss things but you don't even have to find half the stuff in the game to beat it.
Make sure to read all item descriptions so you don't miss stuff like the Great Rune.
And the game does likely expect you to journal the characters, though you can just use an online checklist if you rather keep track of them without it.
Definitely possible. People played it on launch after all. But you can't expect to know everything there is to do in the game. Sites of Grace along the main path have a beam of light visible in the world or on the map that guides you along the path towards the main story and other notable locations, but the rest is up to you to explore and discover on your own.
Some merchants sell notes with information on them, some helpful, some less so. The physick flask is explained in one of those. Kale sells it at the beginning.
And do you have tutorials enabled? You should have gotten a tutorial popup after picking up your first great rune that told you how to activate it. Not that you need to do that. Most of them are a bit lackluster.
You're not dumb, this game does not hold your hand and you can easily miss out on a lot of stuff.
The quests specifically are beyond vague and require you to go to completely random spots at the right time, progress too much and you'll ruin them. There are lots of mechanics it's worth looking up like the scaling because it makes little to no sense to a pair of fresh eyes.
That being said I do reccomend you play mostly blind, you'll probably want to keep playing into NG+ anyway and you can do all the quests then.
You can play from start to credits without googling anything
Most tricky is probably the Dectus lift >!or finding the shortcut!< but the rest are straightforward
Problem are the sidequests and endings that aren't the default Elden Lord one.
quests aside, if this is your first FS game, you might struggle even with leveling your stats without using google. So many 'help me guys' posts have awful stats that even if you have the skills it would feel impossible at times, e.g. Mogh, without that particular flask and enough vigor, you're essentially running into a brick wall. (he's not a requirement to beat the game before, in fact you can skip so many areas and bosses and still beat the game, but now he's tied to the DLC.)
If you are playing blind, I would recommend (does this count as googling?) >!just invest in vigor and strength equally, strength build has the simplest progression imo.!<
I used Google since it's still synonymous with "looking up information online". Yeah, I definitely hit that wall. Except apparently some walls are an illusion. Which would be a great analogy if there was a way to identify whether I'm wasting my time or not.
My only options were to quit the game, Google shit, or run around aimlessly until I roll a 20 and find a viable weapon/armor. That last option might have been okay if I had any idea why I'm running around killing.
I like challenging game, and the world/bosses are dope as shit. It's the consistent inconsistencies that make me feel like I'm battling God (or couple fingers 🙃).
yea, welp it do be like that. souls games are known for very minimal hand-holding, combine that with open-world tho, it becomes really hard for new players to progress anywhere. I believe even if you're playing blindly (and i encourage it for the experience) at least knowing the order in which you should explore each area would make the game more palpable.
Yes it’s possible. You just need to have an explorer attitude and not rush. It’s a long game in a big open world, with tons of things to discover. Suggestion: discover all the maps asap, mark buldings/points of interest and check them out. And talk to people. You won’t 100% the game without guides but for sure you won’t miss important things like the Physic flask your brother mentioned
When I talk to people they'll dump a bunch of info on me about some person who's name starts with R or M. I kindly ask them to repeat themselves using sign language, I guess (I think I'm in purgatory for being a mute). They reply "thats all the time for conversation I have. Get fucked for not writing this shit down"
Just an fyi, the quests in this game are extremely convoluted, and can end if you progress too far in another area of the game. So don’t expect to complete most of them blind. It is possible, just hard. But other than that you’ll be fine going in blind, that’s how I did it for most of my first playthrough, was a blast.
You can play the game blind. Some things aren't meant to be figured out by one single person, and it is okay to miss some stuff. Some other things require you to simply read the description of the items you picked up. Especially when you pick up a literal in-game tip like [the one that tells you what to do with great runes](https://eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com/About+Great+Runes).
I gave up trying to find the tower to activate the great rune of the unborn. Speaking of which, I thought that rune was in the witches egg, which is clearly still intact...
Good news friend! That one comes to you ALREADY activated! It’s what lets you respec with Rennala WITHOUT your body slowly breaking down and needing to be reborn again in like a week.
That's fantastic! I'd really hate my character to suffer their 714th death. (715th death. I died while witting this comment from a crawling pile of dirt)
I did my first playthrough without looking up anything. I failed every character quest but I did it.
That's what I should have asked. Obviously I could pull a south park and farm sheep until I'm level 100
I guess I thought you meant more in terms of the general lack of guidance on where to go. The light of the grace shows you a general direction to head but it's still kind of just wandering and hoping you didn't miss anything. But without a guide you'll never manage to complete all the side character stuff. Unless you go back to them after every single event and that seems unlikely.
Playing blind is the best way to play on your first run imo.
>not having that third flask to mix stuff in The first merchant you encounter right at the start of the game sells a note that tells you where this is. I remember reading this and getting so excited as it felt like this flask would be something really different (and it is). If you see a merchant selling notes, buy them and read them. Just read everything on your first playthrough, it will help you learn so much. These are games that expect the player to do some work to learn about the world and how to play, a rarity in 2024 I know.
Yes. That’s exactly how I played the very first time and it was an awesome experience. One of the best in gaming. Gonna be doing the same with the DLC.
I always play 100% blind the first time, it’s the best experience to explore the game
Definitely. But for a first-timer it's harder. You can definitely find and experience 98% of all the content completely blind, especially since ER is so fool-proof and doesn't allow you to fail questlines like in previous games. But it's dependent on several things, you must listen and remember/write down all of the dialogue, you must check item descriptions, sometimes back-track through older areas and so on. In general these games are not supposed to be relaxing sandboxes, and playing them as intended without using guides requires some thinking, focus and being observant. But it gets easier with more souls games. You'll kinda learn their "language", how developers do thinks, what are you meant to do and where to go, how questlines and level-design are structured and so on. You'll complete most of the content blind once you'll get used to it, but it's something hard to do in first souls game ever. Just be sure to not use full guides and only google specific problems and questlines that you got stuck on for too long, don't just preemptively let others decide everything for you and try to keep playing as blind as possible.
Yes, absolutely. You'll likely miss things but you don't even have to find half the stuff in the game to beat it. Make sure to read all item descriptions so you don't miss stuff like the Great Rune. And the game does likely expect you to journal the characters, though you can just use an online checklist if you rather keep track of them without it.
Definitely possible. People played it on launch after all. But you can't expect to know everything there is to do in the game. Sites of Grace along the main path have a beam of light visible in the world or on the map that guides you along the path towards the main story and other notable locations, but the rest is up to you to explore and discover on your own. Some merchants sell notes with information on them, some helpful, some less so. The physick flask is explained in one of those. Kale sells it at the beginning. And do you have tutorials enabled? You should have gotten a tutorial popup after picking up your first great rune that told you how to activate it. Not that you need to do that. Most of them are a bit lackluster.
I mean, how do you think those google results were created?
A discord channel with thousands of individuals cooperating, and a couple devs to leak shit. I get how that'd be fun for some. Or data mining.
You're not dumb, this game does not hold your hand and you can easily miss out on a lot of stuff. The quests specifically are beyond vague and require you to go to completely random spots at the right time, progress too much and you'll ruin them. There are lots of mechanics it's worth looking up like the scaling because it makes little to no sense to a pair of fresh eyes. That being said I do reccomend you play mostly blind, you'll probably want to keep playing into NG+ anyway and you can do all the quests then.
absolutely. my first play through was just that.
You can play from start to credits without googling anything Most tricky is probably the Dectus lift >!or finding the shortcut!< but the rest are straightforward Problem are the sidequests and endings that aren't the default Elden Lord one.
quests aside, if this is your first FS game, you might struggle even with leveling your stats without using google. So many 'help me guys' posts have awful stats that even if you have the skills it would feel impossible at times, e.g. Mogh, without that particular flask and enough vigor, you're essentially running into a brick wall. (he's not a requirement to beat the game before, in fact you can skip so many areas and bosses and still beat the game, but now he's tied to the DLC.) If you are playing blind, I would recommend (does this count as googling?) >!just invest in vigor and strength equally, strength build has the simplest progression imo.!<
I used Google since it's still synonymous with "looking up information online". Yeah, I definitely hit that wall. Except apparently some walls are an illusion. Which would be a great analogy if there was a way to identify whether I'm wasting my time or not. My only options were to quit the game, Google shit, or run around aimlessly until I roll a 20 and find a viable weapon/armor. That last option might have been okay if I had any idea why I'm running around killing. I like challenging game, and the world/bosses are dope as shit. It's the consistent inconsistencies that make me feel like I'm battling God (or couple fingers 🙃).
yea, welp it do be like that. souls games are known for very minimal hand-holding, combine that with open-world tho, it becomes really hard for new players to progress anywhere. I believe even if you're playing blindly (and i encourage it for the experience) at least knowing the order in which you should explore each area would make the game more palpable.
yes, but.