One year later, Elden Ring’s first level remains a mysterious masterpiece
For the game's one-year anniversary, we examine its stand-out first dungeon, Stormveil Castle
Games Features Elden Ring
Elden Ring never gave up its secrets easily—or its joys. One year to the day after it was first released to the public, From Software’s wide-ranging opus has been dissected, analyzed, and datamined nigh unto death by a fervent horde of fans (who would, uh, really like to know if and when that DLC is coming, thanks). And yet, in many ways, the hunt for the Elden Ring remains exactly as it was back in February of 2022: Hostile, vast, and mysterious. Hell, we’re talking about a video game that won’t even allow you to enter its first “real” level, without first letting a 12-foot tall ogre with a British accent crack your head open with a shillelagh for a couple of hours.
But once players of Elden Ring do bring down self-appointed gatekeeper (and the game’s first serious boss) Margit The Fell Omen (and his lousy, cheap-ass, no-telegraphing, infinite stamina magic sword combos), they found—and continue to find—themselves in the game’s obscure and belligerent version of putting its best foot forward. Because Stormveil Castle, Elden Ring’s first dungeon, isn’t just one of the best monster-filled castles ever designed by a studio that’s long proven it’s best in class at designing horrifying, monster-filled castles: It’s also a thesis statement that explains that, no, From Software had not lost its mind by radically reinventing one of the most successful gaming formulas of the last decade—the company’s own meticulously crafted Dark Souls.
I doubted. I’ll admit it; while playing through Elden Ring’s first public beta, I despaired at the apparent shifts in design philosophy I saw, the lack of any big, beefy dungeons to lose myself in. The game’s sprawling open world was pretty enough—and I’ll never forget the first time I got ambushed by a pack of howling wolves apparently dropped on my head by a thunderstorm whilst climbing an atmospherically rain-pummeled hill—but there was none of the meticulous craft or level design I associated with From.
What I was missing, I now know, was Stormveil, hidden as it was behind a rampaging, literally horny Brit who wanted to use my Tarnished skull as his golf ball. Once inside—and outside, and on top of, and lurking below—the castle’s crumbling walls, my confusion about what Elden Ring even was abruptly cleared up. Those vast open world spaces became, not a replacement for something I dearly loved, but the connective tissue linking them. And Stormveil revealed itself as a playground for From’s new approach to exploration, incorporating climbing, jumping, and other upwardly mobile verbs to radically expand what a level like this could be.
That dedication to choice and exploration is apparent from your first approach to the castle gates, which stand intimidatingly shut. A hyper-sketchy gatekeeper, slacking off in a side room, glumly offers to open them for you—while noting, accurately, that you will be torn to shreds in a hail of ballista fire within seconds if he does. Instead, he suggests, why not go the back way, climbing the castle’s broken walls to sneak inside from an oblique angle? Which is both a) good advice, and b) a transparently murderous plot so that this dude can scavenge cash off of your corpse every time a bird with knives glued to its feet sends you plummeting straight to hell as you make your way up the shoddily built back stairs.
That level of complexity, and that blending of “trap” and “path,” is key Elden Ring—as is the fact that your climb up Stormveil’s walls is an actual climb, incorporating running and jumping in abundance. (Also: Murder birds.) One of the key lessons the castle imposes on players at every turn is “Look up, dummy!”; the ability to jump, imported from From’s oddball Sekiro, massively changes how the game’s designers can hide strange, potent secrets in seemingly innocuous spaces. You can clear almost all of Stormveil by sticking to the beaten path, charging through hordes of soldiers, trolls, and, in one notable instance, a sort of multi-limbed dude spider. But every time you decide to push at the boundaries, to poke at the edges, to look up, the game is ready to reward you, whether with treasure, or a safer path around enemies, or sometimes with deep and terrifying secrets about the game’s lore.
From has always been good at castles, from Demon’s Souls’ iconic and decrepit Boleteria Palace, to the gilded spires of Dark Souls’ shining Anor Londo. But Stormveil is special: A genuine, good faith effort to create an entire vast medieval living space for your Tarnished hero to smash their way through, winding in from the outer battlements, through the towers, to the kitchens—maybe, uh, don’t look in the cooking pot—passing by secluded chapels and quiet libraries, and all the way up to a soldier-packed courtyard that’s the last major threat standing between the player and the castle’s twisted lord, Godrick The Grafted. By the time you’re forced to face off against the birds with knives and explosives strapped to their feet, you’ll feel like you’ve been run through a genuine, logically laid-out gauntlet.
And even once Godrick—whose misfit obsession with power has caused him to transform himself into an even gnarlier dude-spider—goes down, Stormveil continues to hold secrets. There are things lurking in the darkness beneath the castle, hints of a conspiracy that once took a golden, “perfect” order … and shattered it. Push at the edges of the map, get rewarded: It’s the Elden Ring ethos. But even for the most determined secret hunters, Stormveil won’t reveal all the answers—which have never necessarily been From’s preferred stock in trade, anyway. Instead, they raise horrifying, fascinating questions, hinting at a sickness that runs through the very roots of the world.
The wild thing about Stormveil is that it might not even be the best of the various “Legacy Dungeons” that dot Elden Ring’s massive map, hand-crafted labyrinths of brutal, exploration-focused goodness. In some ways, it’s a mere trial run for the even more detailed and elaborate royal capital of Leyndell that players will tackle closer to the game’s ending, which pulls the same trick of creating a sprawling, opulent living space, but taken to even further extremes: bigger palaces, deeper depths, nastier secrets lurking at the heart of it all.
But Stormveil is the more important of the two, because it’s where Elden Ring defiantly strikes the balance between the past and the present. It’s the place that demonstrates that From hadn’t let itself become completely seduced by Breath Of The Wild-esque rolling vistas, filled with majestic (and somewhat empty) landscaping. It proves that some of the best level designers in the business could not only still demonstrate their craft, but improve upon it, blending brilliant moment-to-moment, hallway-to-hallway gameplay with a much wider and more expansive world. It’s a huge part of the reason we can’t stop thinking about Elden Ring, a full year after the fact.
25 Comments
Brilliant game, still can’t believe I beat it somehow. Nearly quit a half dozen times before it clicked with me. Going back through stormveil on new game plus and crushing everything was sweet revenge.
I got so far, but ultimately stopped at the final boss. It was a good 40+ tries, and I just couldn’t crack ‘em. I got mad and sold the game.Still, it’s an amazing game – I don’t think a game has enraptured me since Skyrim to the degree where I’m daydreaming about what I’ve already done and thinking about my next steps when I’m not playing the game.I’ll definitely come back to it – I want to do a New Game Plus run, but it would’ve been nice to just jump into NG+, instead of having to tackle the toughest boss from the start.
Were you using summons on the final boss? I ask because I don’t think I could have solod it, but the mimic tear made the fight manageable
Basic advice for the final boss (from someone who is not that good at the game but still managed to finish it):-Consider asking for coop help. I know the accepted wisdom on this is that doing so is a bad idea because it beefs up the stats on the boss, but I find just having a couple other targets to take the pressure off can be worth it.-Respec to trim all the fat off your build (or, alternately, scrap your build for another one). There are so many different interesting ways that you divert your build, because the game dangles so many tantalizing options before you with every new weapon or spell you pick up, but the final boss is your time to refocus your build to its most purest form.-Last but not least: If you think you have enough Vigor, you probably don’t. If you have a spell-/incantation-caster build, it can be especially easy to fall prey to this mistake.
I was in the same position you are. I died countlessly without even getting the Elden Beast to half health. I finally bounced off and quit the game for three months. Then one day I saw a lore video and decided to give it one more try. I was desperately jumping around and trying to get hits on when I noticed that he was using new attacks I hadn’t seen, so I looked at its health bar and realized he only had about a tenth of his health left.I have to say that after bouncing off the game like that, nothing has been as satisfying as coming back and beating the last boss in one try.
Read all of these Elden Ring articles and decided to buy it today and man…I’m struggling to get into it off the bat. Feel like there is always an initial hurdle for me to get into games this massive.
It may be worth shifting your thinking: there’s nothing to get. The lack of context, and the way it doesn’t teach you how to play by giving you some early wins is a design choice to encourage you to make the experience your own.Literally you just need to mess around and explore until you find a way to make sense of it. The depth and breadth is there, as you’ll have seen in all those articles, but the trick is to set aside the sense that you’re missing something or don’t know where to start, and just… flounder till you stop floundering. If you can’t progress on something after a few goes, just walk in another direction till you find something else to occupy you. The connections form eventually, but they don’t form in the way you might expect.I promise: if you’re not getting anywhere, you actually are.
That all makes sense and is what I assumed and I’ve played plenty of games that are similar to this. What I meant is its always hard for me to keep going while I’m trying to figure the basics out with games like this. Had the same issue with Breath of the Wild – for the first 1-2 months I owned it, I barely played it. Then I had a 5 hour flight to Mexico and played it long enough to really get into it, couldn’t put it down after that.So its more just me getting over my own mental block.
That’s me right now with Breath of the Wild. I’m so eager to overcome this hurdle before the sequel drops. I’m so much more into my Metroid Dread sessions.
Don’t give up, it takes a while. Try going south from the start, the island & southmost castle are the easiest place to start.
Add me on steam, username yungmang happy to help out
There’s a large map somewhere that has the recommended levels for most areas, though it’s important to find a weapon or skillset at first that you want to invest in. Look at what your favourite weapons scale off of – just in case, that’s the letters of the alphabet next to stats you see when you open the weapon’s damage stat – and invest in these stats, as well as Vigor and Endurance. For the beginning, head south towards a large peninsula, and finish everything you can and want to there, then go north again, to Stormveil Castle, which will open up another large area you can then explore at your own pace. Make progress through the world by killing enemies, finding items and activating the grace checkpoints, and explore 1-2 smaller dungeons per session since their rewards can sometimes be really useful, and they are always a contained experience with a clear goal at the end.
Appreciate it – I played for 2 hours or so over the weekend and have died around ten times already lol. I left the opening dungeon and immediately faced off with a dude on a giant horse that killed me with one swipe. Snuck past him and got killed by a bunch of random bats (killed two but last one got me). Then ran into soldiers guarding some sort of camp and killed some but they swarmed me and overpowered me. Got my horse at one of the checkpoints and went into a castle nearby and immediately got attacked by a giant ogre whose guts were on display in a giant cavity in his stomach. Destroyed again. I don’t even bother trying to recover my body as I’ll just die again.Seems like at this point I just need to sneak around and avoid everything while getting the lay of the land. I’m sure I’ll get through it eventually, just is my least favorite part of games like this so I don’t mind more direction on where to start.
Go slow, kill the regular enemies until you get a feel for the game, and explore caves, beaches and stuff. The first guy on the large horse is meant to show you one thing – screw that, I’m going somewhere else now. Elden Ring lets you make progress in all possible directions at almost all times, so don’t worry about missing out on some part of its content – it’s all content, all the time, and you will return to these places later. Everything else you can gather in beginner’s guides on YouTube.
I’m glad the creators are holding back any DLC that may take away from the first player experience.
Yes, i would love a boss rush mode or some ridiculousness…but respecting every one of your accomplishments is the nice way of the creators saying “you’ve earned your moment of glory and wins”
Currently in the process of my own NG+ as well. I take it as an opportunity to play it more like a traditional Dark Souls Game – cutting out a lot of the smaller dungeons I did during my first playthrough and instead moving from Shardbearer to Shardbearer, sprinkling some exploration of the most fascinating (and eternal) palces in-between.
I missed the stuff in the basement with Godwyn’s corpse head and showing how Rogier gets infected with deathblight. Once I went down in a second playthrough and saw that it really took it to the next level. Incredible game.
I disagree that there was any lore or anything of interest to discover in this game. It was just about defeating the various bosses. And if like me you’re incapable or too impatient to not want to do so – dying hundreds of time, repeating the same thing over and over, for the one brief chance when a glitch or luck lets you win and move on, there’s nothing at all to this game. I literally cannot or am unwilling to learn how to follow what the enemies are doing in order to anticipate what they’re going to do.
What are you talking about? You couldn’t get past Godrick. I’m sorry the game didn’t work out for you, but pretending your opinion on the story of the game matters when you didn’t even complete ten percent ain’t it.
Pretending you can’t understand my comment is gaslighting and pretending that everyone can participate in this shitty impossible game is stupid.
C’mon, I didn’t even say “Git Gud” lol
I have not been much of a gamer since the 2000s, and I am not a fantasy fan, and yet I fell in love with this.I really loved the way it doesn’t tell you anything. One thing which always left me hesitant to try modern gaming was the sense that you required some level of pre-existing literacy about how certain genres or tropes in games worked. I could see moments early on in Elden Ring that clearly were speaking to people who had arrived via other From Software titles, but overall, I found the experience of being parachuted into the world and being told, “you’re on your own now” tremendously liberating.And not since the original Doom had a seen such a perfect marriage of narratological elements and ludological elements: you’re a fallen character in a fallen world (classic fantasy trope I guess) and you’re trying to make sense of what it all means and how to restore the correct order to that world. Everything is abandoned and overgrown, everyone is corrupted and befouled, everything is collapsed. The in-story context in which your character operates is “Who am I? Where am I? What do I need to do to make things right?”.That’s exactly your experience as a player starting out: “What are the rules of this game, what are the risks and strategies, and what are the victory conditions?”. Marvelously elegant.As someone without a whole lot of experience with how games are “supposed” to work, I found this audience positioning to be very helpful. When the game was frustrating, it helped me to understand that it wasn’t because the game was cheating. When I was lost or confused, it reassured me that it’s not likely I’ll break the game if I give up on my current task and go do something else for a while.Instead of the encounters or tasks being linear problems to solve in order to progress, they’re milestones you have to reach in your own time and at your own readiness.It’s a game about growth, not progress. That makes it thisvreally organic experience that transcends simply being a good recreational activity and instead becomes like literature.(That said, the lore and the writing are typically annoying, but you spend so much time constructing your own meanings in this game that it doesn’t matter if you don’t care for the daft George RR Martin background or the cripplingly shallow dialogue/acting).I wonder if the next GTA game will be like this.
Speaking of Stormvell, I’m still a bit salty on my second playthrough I found a version of godwyn down in the moat area after discovering that huge corpse he left behind under the erdtree… I’m not much one for the souls games (I am a big armored core fan though) but that was a boss fight I wanted to happen as soon as I saw him.
My experience with Elden Ring is limited, but it inspired me to craft this meme. Please enjoy.
I’m been gaming since 1977. I owned and played just about every console in the last five decades. I can say with certainty that Elden Ring is the greatest game of my lifetime. It’s everything I ever dreamed of in a game rolled into one. It’s what the little boy in 1981 was dreaming of in his head while playing Adventure on Atari. It came true and I’m glad I was here for it.