The Start of A Great Adventure<\/span><\/span><\/h2>\nThe journey begins at class selection, which will likely change\/be modified for full release. There are many archetypes on display here, meeting many of the classic roles. As always, a class in this game amounts to starting gear and stats \u2013 you are free to take your character in any direction. I opt for a no-magic, no-frills master of melee with the Bloody Wolf. Magic is really quite robust in Elden Ring, even for\u00a0characters that would typically not be casters for two reasons; one\u00a0being that magic can\u00a0summon\u00a0spirits that can make daunting challenges much, much more manageable, and the other that the \u201cAsh of War\u201d system allows you to attach potent special effects to your various weapons. With an\u00a0Ash\u00a0of War,<\/span> you can alter weapons to have different special abilities so that you can use a weapon of your liking, but with the inherent special move of another. More on both later. With a traditional large sword and set of starting armor, I\u2019m off into the tutorial.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nCombat, as expected, is very similar to the Souls series, specifically Dark Souls 3. Also as predicted, bits of Sekiro creep in, letting me stealth behind enemies silently and utilize grass to hide from foes, allowing me to bypass them completely or get in a powerful hit before combat even begins. The tutorial area, Fringefolk Hero\u2019s Grave, is a very traditional FromSoftware tutorial zone, teaching the basics of combat in a zero-stress environment. Breaking tradition, the end boss of this area is just a basic knight with a boss health bar that isn\u2019t any trouble to best at all. Interestingly enough, you can come back to this area much later through a back door in an extremely out-of-the-way beach area to discover a secret Ash of War, Gravitas. This allows you to shoot a point-blank area-of-effect purple blast that looks kind of like Final Fantasy\u2019s Ultima spell. You can probably beat the boss in a few hits regardless of your spec and move out into the real world, but before that happens, you get your first lesson in flask allocation. Flask of Crimson Tears (health) and Flask of Cerulean Tears (mana) function identically to Estus flasks, and can be reallocated at any point of Grace <\/span>(bonfire). In this network test, you have two of each kind of flask. Unlike Dark Souls 3, where I find myself going full health flasks if I\u2019m playing any sort of melee build, I found that keeping a Cerulean flask around was quite helpful here, as mana comes in handy to use special attacks or summon spirits in rough situations.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/arcader.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/elden-ring-everything-we-learned-from-playing-it-early-1.jpg\")
<\/article>\nUp the elevator and heading outside, we enter the ostensible first zone of the game, Limgrave. This network test kept us confined to Limgrave and the Stormveil Castle area, which is normal for a brief glimpse of the game. However, it was frustrating to see all kinds of awesome things on the map and in the distance and be\u00a0blocked from going there by invisible walls. I made sure to push the limits on every border and try as many weird jump-offs as possible during the test, one of those led to finding the aforementioned backdoor to the Fringefolk Hero\u2019s Grave. Anyway, the world outside the Grave is bright, beautiful,\u00a0immediately intimidating, and wondrous in its scale and scope. Much has been said about the \u201ccompass\u201d that connects the sites of grace and leads the player in some fashion toward the next crucial big dungeon and boss, but I assure you, it\u2019s an open world through and through that begs for exploration. Attempting to head in a straight line through the game\u2019s progression will likely prove incredibly challenging for most players, and there\u2019s much to be missed via exploration.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nRight next to this critical starting point are multiple things to see and do. A boss is riding a horse nearby that you absolutely do not want to mess with just yet. To the left is a statue up a hill that shoots a dull blue beam into the air when you interact with it, guiding you to a dungeon entrance.\u00a0 Small dungeons, caves, mines, gaols, and other\u00a0encounters dot the landscape, and they are incredibly valuable to discover and complete. These range in size and scope \u2013 some underground passageways you discover may just have a piece of loot sitting in a chest, others will be several rooms with traps and dangerous creatures, and still others have multiple elevators and passageways. However, none of them are that long, and many end with a minor boss encounter. These bosses are much less difficult than what we\u2019ll call progression and world bosses, and could even contain just a more powerful version of something you\u2019re likely to encounter in the field.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nOf course, my priority was to follow the blue beam to see where it led. However, unbeknownst to me, this was probably a mistake. You see, very close to the starting point are the remains of a church that you\u2019re going to want to check out before doing much of anything else. Here, we get a taste of familiar systems for Souls veterans. The \u201cdo-it-yourself\u201d blacksmith is here, along with a critical merchant that sells many valuable introductory goods, spirit summons, crafting recipes, and more. The blacksmith here is structured the same as Souls titles, simply bring smithing stones and runes (souls) to it and upgrade your weapons. However, this hammer and forge that you handle yourself can only take your gear to +3. The game tells us that we\u2019ll have to find a blacksmith somewhere else in the lands to bring our weaponry beyond that.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/arcader.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/elden-ring-everything-we-learned-from-playing-it-early-2.jpg\")
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