Elden Ring

• Don't skip the Cave of Knowledge at the beginning. It's a short tutorial area that will teach you a bunch of things covered below.

• The horse has a double jump.

• Enemies on horseback will be knocked off if they are parried.

• When on horseback, if you press and hold heavy attack, you will hold out your weapon to the side where it will automatically damage any enemy you run into. This is particularly useful against enemies that are quick and/or low to the ground, like packs of dogs, rats, or slimes.

• If you've placed a blue marker on the map and can't find it to remove it from the map/compass, don't hunt for it! Just place five markers in one spot, then delete them - that'll remove all blue markers on your map & compass, and it takes seconds to do.

• Don't stress about losing runes to silly deaths. You'll get lots more.

• You have a short invincibility window while rolling

• Don't spend too long banging your head against a boss. Go do something else, and come back with better equipment and better skills later.

• Equip load decides how quickly you move, how far you roll and for how long you are invincible. Light load is anything below 30% and medium is below 70%. Light load can be real good even if you're only wearing a dorky hat.

• Enemies have a hidden 'poise' bar. Hit them with enough strong (R2) attacks and they will be staggered, allowing you to do sicknasty moves

• The parry window and timing are real short. It's easier with lighter shields, so get a buckler and practice on some easy dudes.

• "Wow, it's almost like enemies are annoyingly programmed to attack whenever I heal \ parry in the air" - yeah, they literally are. Keep that in mind when you want some breathing room or when you want to lure bosses towards you.

• Tutorial content that a lot of people miss:
  • You can wield any weapon (even shields!) in two hands by holding Y+R1/L1. Try it out, each weapon has a different moveset and does more damage.
  • Press R2 after blocking an attack to perform a powerful counterstrike.
  • And because everyone is asking, smithing stones can be found in mines and as rare drops from some overworld mobs.

• Head in the direction the game points you to find the first merchant. Buy the torch and crafting kit asap, get the telescope later

• Your mount unlocks after a certain amount of time and will occur during a rest scene at a bonfire

• Return to the first merchant at night after getting the mount to meet a new NPC

• The Gatefront ruins have a essential weapons crafting tool

• Stealth is extremely useful to instant kill wandering enemies

• Pick up all gestures some are used for NPC reactivity and puzzle solving

• Break open glowing skulls; they contain golden runes, consumables to grant currency

• Buy a bow to make animal hunting far easier

• You can run while sneaking, makes it easier to sneak up on things, and you can even do the running attacks if you want.

• Arrows are craftable with resources picked up from the world so having a starter class with a bow is more viable economically

• Some mobs will de-aggro if you walk away once they are alerted.

• Two handing a weapon or holding a item like a casting talisman in offhand will allow you to access a special ability by using the off hand strong attack. Which ability this is depends on the weapon. Most cost a small amount of mana to use.

• You can change your character’s appearance mid-game. Exceptionally mild early game spoilers:
  Once you get access to Roundtable Hold, there’s a mirror in the room with the lady who gives hugs that you can use to get access to the character creation menu.

• Using a Furlcalling Finger Remedy allows you to see summon signs, but locks out using ashes to summon NPC spirits even if you walk into a boss arena with no phantoms with you. Using the Finger Remedy a second time will let you cancel the effect and refund you the Remedy if you don't find any summon signs and want to use ashes again.

• Ashes of War are infinitely reusable, don’t worry about experimenting with them

• In addition to the red and blue scarab beetles that refill your flasks, there are also silver ones that drop loot

• Map fragments appear as obelisk symbols on your blank map

• The first merchant sells a clue to the location of an extremely useful item

• Whenever you pick up a new item, the icon in the top left corner of the pop-up indicates which item category it belongs to. Also, pressing the left stick ("T" on a keyboard) in the inventory screen lets you sort items by the newest acquired, amongst others.

• You can assign 4 items to your interaction menu (default holding X or Triangle button on controller), such as your horse whistle and flasks so you don't have to scroll through the item menu to use them and can consistently press the same buttons to use them. R1 and L1 while holding the interaction button to two hand the weapon/item in your right and left hands respectively.