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
00:19 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.
00:39 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
01:40 Raya Lucaria against Renala, you will have to deal with a room full of sweetings, young
01:45 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. A modder has discovered sweeting number 21
02:04 has the ID number of 14000830 in the game files, but a typo causes Renala to call out
02:12 for ID number 140008230, meaning that this particular NPC is never called and simply
02:22 crawls around otherwise forgotten. So next time you're running through Raya Lucaria,
02:26 pull one out for this NPC, doomed to never reach their true potential due to a mispressed
02:32 number 2 key.
02:41 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. By analysing
02:50 and playing through the 1.0 version of Elden Ring, that is a version that's been untouched
02:54 by patches or changes since the original game, a modder discovered several key differences
02:59 with her attack pattern and abilities, making her significantly more aggressive. The most
03:04 notable change is that version 1.0 Melania uses her old waterfowl move that wasn't originally
03:10 tied to any health loss and a similar but different attack called Melania Blade which
03:15 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. Essentially, it gets them drunk. Prolific modder Lance McDonald
03:48 released a video where they explore an earlier Elden Ring build that included content which
03:53 was ultimately cut from the game and was able to uncover a whole questline, NPC and other
03:57 items which never made it into the final build. The quest involves a fully animated and voiced
04:02 NPC named Jiko who's looking for ingredients to make his dream brew, which he explicitly
04:07 says is a type of alcohol. Jiko says the dream brew will convince other NPCs to tell you
04:12 their deepest, darkest secrets. If you agree to help him, Jiko gives you an item called
04:17 "St Trina's Crystal Ball" which you use to collect "Dense Fog of Sleep" from
04:21 napping creatures. Bring the filled vial back to Jiko and he uses it to make his brew, which
04:27 you can offer to NPCs to open up additional lines of dialogue and hidden lore.
04:31 McDonald brings the dream brew to Merchant Kale at his shop inside Church of Elay in
04:36 Limgrave and after Kale drinks the brew, he falls asleep and has a nightmare about eyes
04:41 being burned by a frenzied flame. Jiko then asks for two more vials of dream mist to make
04:46 more dream brew and it's then that McDonald discovers additional sleeping creatures, suggesting
04:51 that this questline was pretty well formed before it was cut. Sure makes you wonder what
04:55 other stuff was snipped from the final launch version and if any of it is as fun sounding
04:59 as getting NPCs drunk.
05:08 When it comes to cut content in Elden Ring, there's one character whose dialogue in particular
05:12 makes for an interesting dive into the game's lore, Godfrey.
05:20 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. The dialogue seems to
05:28 reinforce the idea that when it comes to the Elden Ring's shattering, Marika may have
05:32 originally had a plan in advance to shatter the ring, which Godfrey knew about all along.
05:38 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. The consensus
05:47 seems to be that Godfrey was initially meant to play an even larger role throughout Elden
05:51 Ring, with a potential storyline that would take place in the past based on the lines
05:56 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
06:20 questline before From Software scrapped it. Kar-Lei is the first merchant you stumble
06:24 across in your adventures in The Lands Between. Remember an NPC dressed like Santa Claus?
06:29 That's our guy. Aside from selling valuable items and offering some lore tidbits in exchange
06:34 for chatter, you don't really get much else from Kar-Lei as he remains rooted to the spot.
06:38 However, the merchant was once tied to a tragic subplot of the game. Speaking to him further
06:43 would have led to a mention of the Great Caravan, which was once home to merchants like Kar-Lei
06:49 and something he yearns to find.
06:51 Seeking Godric at Stormvale Castle would send Kar-Lei on a quest to find the Great Caravan,
06:57 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 reach the subterranean shunning grounds beneath
07:06 Lendil. This place is eerie enough and is home to the Three Fingers, which relates to
07:11 one of Elden Ring's bad endings, but it's also littered with bodies. Some current in-game
07:16 lore explains the bodies are all the remains of the Merchant Caravan after it was accused
07:22 of heresy and burned alive, summoning the Flames of Frenzy and Despair. In Kar-Lei's
07:27 scrapped quest, he discovers the fate of his people and embraces the flames himself.
07:34 A look back at the Elden Ring Network test highlights some significant changes to the
07:43 finished game. In November 2021, Bandai Namco held a network test for Elden Ring, allowing
07:48 players an early glimpse of the lands between to test the game's online servers ahead
07:52 of its full release. Things obviously changed in the final release and fans noticed all
07:56 sorts of little differences.
07:58 One of the more unusual changes happened to White-Faced Vaar, one of the early NPCs you
08:02 encounter near the First Steps site of Grace. While he's largely here to offer some guidance
08:07 for the newly tarnished, he used to be a lot meaner. In the final game, he mentions maidens
08:12 and the Round Table hold, before telling you you're fated to die in obscurity. However,
08:17 in the original network test version, he tells you that you're plum out of luck and describes
08:21 you as a "bit player" before telling you "feel free to go off and die in a ditch
08:26 somewhere". Charming!
08:35 An Elden Ring fan has discovered that most of the game's song lyrics are just computer
08:39 generated nonsense. One of the aspects that makes Elden Ring so captivating is its music,
08:44 which is chock full of haunting choral melodies. Intrigued by the meaning behind these songs,
08:49 one Elden Ring fan dug a little deeper and found that although the lyrics may sound like
08:53 Latin, most are actually just gibberish. Reddit user Magister Organi, a Latin student, has
08:59 been studying the game's lyrics. They started with a song of lament, a beautiful piece sung
09:04 by the game's siren-like creatures. According to their post on the PS5 subreddit, these
09:09 lyrics are actually in Latin, but they were written by a lyricist who worked on just that
09:14 one song. Curious about Elden Ring's other songs, Magister Organi contacted the game's
09:18 music producers who explained that "99% of the lyrics in the game are not in any language
09:23 at all and don't mean anything. Instead, the lyrics are computer generated and adjusted
09:28 to resemble ancient languages." Intrigued to learn more, they went on to analyse other
09:32 tracks and said that sometimes the lyrics resemble Latin, but they are not Latin. The
09:36 goal was to simulate ancient language songs to enhance the dramatic feel of the player's
09:42 experience.
09:44 So those are all the Elden Ring lore secrets that we've seen. If there's any that you've
09:47 noticed, put it in the comments below to let us know what we've missed.
09:54 (electronic music)
09:56 (laughs)