I started Elden Ring when it first came out but, like a lot of people got stomped on and gave it up. I play on keyboard and mouse and I remember getting myself confused over left click being to use what was in your right hand and vice-versa, so I switched it round and got even more confused.
Recently I've been revisiting games I previously quit and Elden Ring is the third in the sequence for me after going back and completing Mass Effect and Bioshock. I love FazeJev's (now just 'Jev') videos on YouTube and he's posted loads of Elden Ring over the years. I love the look of the game and really wanted to get into it, so this time I figured I'd follow a detailed guide (bascially the complete opposite of what Borsch did above). So I started following a playthrough by a YouTuber called FightinCowboy, which was made back in 2022 but remains valid.
The playthrough is very detailed and designed to get you the Platinum trophy. It's also designed to collect items for all playstyles, so it collects all the items for melee, magic and other build types. To give an idea of the scale, you're more than 1hr30+ into the guide before you kill anything. All that time is spent going round the map collecting items to get a sold build that'll carry you for a long time to come. Or if you're good at the game, you could complete it with that initial build. Essentially it's built around getting the Bloodfang sword up to level 4. In total, there're 82 videos, each of which is at least 30mins long, so like i say a huge guide and not for everyone. But it's meant that I've completed far more in the game than I ever would have without it. I'm up to the 16th vid and so far everything has been reasonably doable. The toughest enemy by far was a Crucible Knight in the Stormhill Evergaol which probably took 10 attempts. The only Demi God fight I've had so far was Godrick the Grafted. That took two attempts, the first of which i semi-threw as i wanted to bring the co-operator lady into the fight to progress her storyline and forgot. I thought about just letting him kill me but figured I'd get some practice in before going all in the second time.
I went off script from the vids and did some rune farming and also got the level 5 and 6 somber smithing stones to level up Bloodfang. Level 5 was a 10 second run from one of the Grace's in the guide, so I'm surprised it wasn't included and feels like the only mistake in the guide I've found so far. The level 6 stone required beating a boss that was pretty tough, so fair play leaving that out. So far I've done everything in Limgrave and am going through Liurnia.
With respect to following a guide rather than blind exploration, I would say:
Upsides
-No aimless wandering
-Balanced fights
-You get to experience all the dungeons, evergaols and other hard to find parts of the game
-If you've not played before, it introduces all the game mechanics a bit at a time so it's easier to get your head round it all.
Downsides
-Being OP (for the time being at least!), you're going to improve your combat skills more slowly as you can just facetank damage and bludgeon your way though, rather than perfecting your dodging / parrying etc
-Levelling up is a bit slow as your spending a lot of time killing adds and low-tier bosses that don't drop many runes.
-Time consuming. 82 vids at 30 mins each would be 41 hours of watching. It's a real-time playthrough so if you did everything at the same speed you're looking at a minimum of 82 hours. Realistically it would take more like 100hrs.
For anyone out there though that has tried and failed at Elden Ring, or been put off by it being a tough FromSoft game, I've found following a guide to make Elden Ring a much more accessible, much more enjoyable, game than it otherwise would have been for me
