7 Things You Didn't Know About Elden Ring’s Lore
With time you will piece together the story and setting of Elden Ring but so much of the deep lore of the game is hidden from the player. We've gone hunting through Elden Ring to help you understand the story a little more and pick up on some secrets about the lore that you may have missed.
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00:00 A quest for Elden Ring's Vyke, the character who appears on the cover art, was apparently
00:18 cut from the game. You'll probably recognise Vyke as the kneeling knight on Elden Ring's
00:23 front cover. He appears only briefly in the final game as an NPC invader and boss who
00:28 rewards you with his unique armour set and spear for defeating him. But it seems a bit
00:33 odd that a character with such a small role would appear so prominently on the cover art.
00:38 Well, that's because he was originally a much bigger deal, with in-game lore explaining
00:43 that "no other Tarnished was closer to the throne of the Elden Ring than Vyke".
00:48 Elden Ring dataminers have since uncovered a cut questline featuring Vyke using some
00:53 unused voice line, making reference to a knight in armour melting inwards. Unfortunately,
00:59 no text or dialogue for Vyke has been discovered, but the quest seemingly would have had a few
01:04 dialogue choices and offered a handful of rewards, ultimately unlocking Vyke as a summon
01:10 in Stormvale Castle to help you fight against one of its bosses.
01:13 It does seem really strange that such a prominent character with so much work put into it was
01:18 cut, so here's hoping that future DLCs fill in some of the gaps.
01:30 An Elden Ring modder has discovered a tragically forgotten NPC who's doomed to never fulfil
01:35 their purpose due to an unfortunate typo. During the final phase of the boss fight in
01:39 Raya Lucaria against Renala, you will have to deal with a room full of sweetings, young
01:44 scholars who crawl around and harass you as you fight the Queen of the Full Moon herself.
01:50 Several times throughout the fight Renala will call on three of these sweetings to form
01:54 a bubble shield around her. The chosen sweetings could be any three in the room, except for
01:59 one lonely soul in the back corner.
02:01 A modder has discovered Sweeting number 21 has the ID number of 14000830 in the game
02:08 files, but a typo causes Renala to call out for ID number 140008230, meaning that this
02:18 particular NPC is never called and simply crawls around otherwise forgotten.
02:24 So next time you're running through Raya Lucaria, pull one out for this NPC, doomed
02:28 to never reach their true potential due to a mispressed number 2 key.
02:40 Hard to believe I know, but dataminers have discovered that Elden Ring's most notorious
02:45 boss Melania used to be even more difficult to beat than she already is.
02:49 By analysing and playing through the 1.0 version of Elden Ring, that is a version that's
02:53 been untouched by patches or changes since the original game, a modder discovered several
02:59 key differences with her attack pattern and abilities, making her significantly more aggressive.
03:04 The most notable change is that version 1.0 Melania uses her old waterfowl move that wasn't
03:09 originally tied to any health loss and a similar but different attack called Melania Blade
03:15 which could be chained, all the while attacking more aggressively and blocking more overall.
03:20 That alone sounds hellish, but the dataminer goes on to detail other variations which include
03:25 slightly different combos and increased use of the dreaded Scala Aenea incantation.
03:37 A pre-release build of Elden Ring has a quest that lets you craft a dream brew that makes
03:42 NPCs chatty and sleepy.
03:44 Essentially, it gets them drunk.
03:46 Prolific modder Lance McDonald released a video where they explore an earlier Elden
03:50 Ring build that included content which was ultimately cut from the game and was able
03:54 to uncover a whole questline, NPC and other items which never made it into the final build.
04:00 The quest involves a fully animated and voiced NPC named Jiko who's looking for ingredients
04:04 to make his dream brew, which he explicitly says is a type of alcohol.
04:09 Jiko says the dream brew will convince other NPCs to tell you their deepest, darkest secrets.
04:14 If you agree to help him, Jiko gives you an item called St Trina's Crystal Ball which
04:19 you use to collect Dense Fog of Sleep from napping creatures.
04:23 Bring the filled vial back to Jiko and he uses it to make his brew, which you can offer
04:27 to NPCs to open up additional lines of dialogue and hidden lore.
04:31 McDonald brings the dream brew to Merchant Kalei at his shop inside Church of Eleh in
04:36 Limgrave, and after Kalei drinks the brew, he falls asleep and has a nightmare about
04:40 eyes being burned by a frenzied flame.
04:43 Jiko then asks for 2 more vials of dream mist to make more dream brew, and it's then that
04:47 McDonald discovers additional sleeping creatures, suggesting that this questline was pretty
04:52 well formed before it was cut.
04:54 Sure makes you wonder what other stuff was snipped from the final launch version, and
04:57 if any of it is as fun sounding as getting NPCs drunk.
05:07 When it comes to cut content in Elden Ring, there's one character whose dialogue in particular
05:11 makes for an interesting dive into the game's lore, Godfrey.
05:19 YouTuber Sekiro Doobie discovered a selection of cutlines from Godfrey and there are some
05:24 interesting theories about what these new discoveries all mean.
05:27 The dialogue seems to reinforce the idea that when it comes to the Elden Ring's shattering,
05:31 Marika may have originally had a plan in advance to shatter the ring, which Godfrey knew about
05:36 all along.
05:37 If Godfrey was aware that the Elden Ring would be shattered, then the banishing of the Tarnished
05:41 was actually a plan to remove them from the Fingers/Greater Will's influence.
05:46 The consensus seems to be that Godfrey was initially meant to play an even larger role
05:50 throughout Elden Ring, with a potential storyline that would take place in the past based on
05:56 the lines heard in Sekiro Doobie's video.
05:58 There's nothing concrete here of course, just guesswork reading between the lines,
06:02 but there is a lot to theorise about with some juicy tidbits nestled with Godfrey's
06:07 lost dialogue.
06:16 One of Elden Ring's earliest merchants was originally part of a long-running, tragic
06:19 questline before FromSoftware scrapped it.
06:22 Kalei is the first merchant you stumble across in your adventures in the Lands Between.
06:27 Remember an NPC dressed like Santa Claus?
06:29 That's our guy.
06:30 Aside from selling valuable items and offering some lore tidbits in exchange for chatter,
06:34 you don't really get much else from Kalei.
06:36 As he remains rooted to the spot.
06:38 However, the merchant was once tied to a tragic subplot of the game.
06:42 Speaking to him further would have led to a mention of the Great Caravan, which was
06:46 once home to merchants like Kalei and something he yearns to find.
06:51 Defeating Godric at Stormvale Castle would send Kalei on a quest to find the Great Caravan,
06:56 with certain clues left behind to help you find the merchant's new location each time
07:01 he moved.
07:02 This would have continued until you reached the subterranean shunning grounds beneath
07:06 Glendal.
07:07 This place is eerie enough and is home to the Three Fingers, which relates to one of
07:11 Elden Ring's bad endings, but it's also littered with bodies.
07:15 Some current in-game lore explains the bodies are all the remains of the merchant caravan
07:20 after it was accused of heresy and burned alive, summoning the Flames of Frenzy and
07:25 Despair.
07:26 In Kalei's scrapped quest, he discovers the fate of his people and embraces the flames
07:31 himself.
07:39 A look back at the Elden Ring Network test highlights some significant changes to the
07:43 finished game.
07:44 In November 2021, Bandai Namco held a network test for Elden Ring, allowing players an early
07:49 glimpse of the lands between to test the game's online servers ahead of its full release.
07:53 Things obviously changed in the final release and fans noticed all sorts of little differences.
07:58 One of the more unusual changes happened to White-Faced Varr, one of the early NPCs you
08:02 encounter near the First Step's site of Grace.
08:05 While he's largely here to offer some guidance for the newly tarnished, he used to be a lot
08:09 meaner.
08:10 In the final game, he mentions maidens and the roundtable hold before telling you you're
08:14 fated to die in obscurity.
08:16 However, in the original network test version, he tells you that you're plum out of luck
08:20 and describes you as a "bit player" before telling you "feel free to go off and die
08:25 in a ditch somewhere".
08:27 Charming!
08:28 An Elden Ring fan has discovered that most of the game's song lyrics are just computer
08:39 generated nonsense.
08:40 One of the aspects that makes Elden Ring so captivating is its music, which is chock full
08:44 of haunting choral melodies.
08:47 Intrigued by the meaning behind these songs, one Elden Ring fan dug a little deeper and
08:50 found that although the lyrics may sound like Latin, most are actually just gibberish.
08:56 Reddit user MagisterOrgani, a Latin student, has been studying the game's lyrics.
09:01 They started with a song of lament, a beautiful piece sung by the game's siren-like creatures.
09:06 According to their post on the PS5 subreddit, these lyrics are actually in Latin, but they
09:11 were written by a lyricist who worked on just that one song.
09:15 Curious about Elden Ring's other songs, MagisterOrgani contacted the game's music
09:19 producers who explained that 99% of the lyrics in the game are not in any language at all
09:23 and don't mean anything.
09:25 Instead, the lyrics are computer generated and adjusted to resemble ancient languages.
09:30 Intrigued to learn more, they went on to analyse other tracks and said that sometimes the lyrics
09:34 resemble Latin, but they are not Latin.
09:36 The goal was to simulate ancient language songs to enhance the dramatic feel of the
09:40 player's experience.
09:44 So those are all the Elden Ring lore secrets that we've seen.
09:46 If there's any that you've noticed, put it in the comments below to let us know what
09:50 we've missed.
09:51 Thanks for watching.
09:53 (electronic music)
09:56 [laughs]