Elden Ring Diary: Exploring Limgrave

Elden Ring keeps blowing my expectations out of the water. The scope and grandeur of this game is beyond anything I’ve ever played but it somehow still maintains its incredibly cohesive design. FromSoftware also deliberately toys with fans of the company’s past games by hinting at familiar surprises before pulling back the curtain on something completely different. 

As a refresher, this is my diary as I play through the game. My goal is to reflect on the experience as it changes over time and to tell the stories that naturally arise from the many secrets and surprises of the world. Check out the first entry for my expectations going into the experience and my Tuesday entry for my first impressions and stories after playing for a weekend marathon.

In this entry, I’m going to talk about my experiences while exploring the map. I’ll focus on the starting area of Limgrave. If you’re playing through the game and don’t want any spoilers for Limgrave, now is the time to jump ship. Check out my first two entries and come back later when you’ve seen what the first area has to offer.

A Game of Chests

For the first few hours of my playthrough of Elden Ring, I was desperate to find a pair of pants. I’d picked the Wretch as my starting class and the character starts out mostly naked besides a loin cloth. As such, I was suitably vulnerable to every danger of Elden Ring’s treacherous world. 

I made the idiotic decision to do this because I wanted to experience the full arc of a hero becoming powerful from lowly beginnings. You become significantly stronger as you play no matter which class you pick, but I thought the journey would be that much more meaningful from such a pathetic origin.

I also picked the Wretch in order to increase the challenge on myself early, as I was worried that my experience with the company’s other games would give me too much of a leg up. As I related in my Tuesday entry, the fear that the game would be too easy early was completely unfounded in practice. To be fair, I don’t actually regret the decision, but it filled the opening hours of the game with the extra stressful spice of knowing that just about everything in the world could kill me in a single hit.

It also made the quest for early loot extremely meaningful as unlike some starting classes, I wasn’t initially equipped with a cool looking and functional armor set. Thus, anything I found would be an upgrade. So off I ventured into the world, in search of a pair of pants. 

The Dark Souls series from the same designer has an enemy called a mimic. It looks like a treasure chest, but when you open it, the opening turns into a mouth while arms pop out from the side to pull you in and eat you. It’s terrifying. It’s the reason I whack every chest with my sword before opening it in every video game I play to this day.

When searching for pants, I was acutely aware of the possibility of mimics. I was exploring a swamp area on the southern side of Limgrave. For once, I was actually having an easy time dispatching the listless zombies spread throughout a ruined structure in the swamp. After searching the structure, I found a chest that filled me with equal parts hope and fear. 

I approached it cautiously, looking around for an ambush. I hit the chest with my weapon and nothing happened. Sufficiently reassured, I cracked it open and crossed my fingers for good loot. Instead, I was enveloped in a thick layer of fog and teleported to a small cell in a dangerous mine on the other side of the world. And because I was deep in a mine, the quick travel feature that allows you to instantly jump to various save points on the map was disabled.

I was trapped, surrounded by tough enemies and still mostly naked and all because I wanted some loot. I was laughing and crying at the same time. FromSoftware knows how to pull a prank.

Later, I had made my escape and teleported back near the starting area. I was exploring the same swamp and found another encampment of those easy-to-kill zombies. I raced toward them on my horse hoping for some easy experience when a dragon crashed down from the sky and incinerated me in a single breath. I avoided that swamp for awhile after that.

Later still, I entered a darkened cave and immediately saw a chest on the left. Elden Ring often does reward you with chests containing actual loot at the end of treacherous areas, but I’d just arrived in this one, so my suspicion meter was off the charts. 

I carefully looked for ambushes from enemies clinging to the ceiling or walls and didn’t see anything. I looked behind me to see if anything was sneaking up and was clear. So I approached cautiously, ready to strike the chest to check for a mimic and claim my reward if it was legit. 

The chest wasn’t a mimic, but I didn’t find that out for awhile because as I drew near, the floor collapsed underneath me and I fell into a dark room full of ravenous rats. Hilarious stuff, Elden Ring. Legitimately, I did laugh quite a bit after I stopped screaming at the rats jumping out of the darkness to try to bite my face.

I’d eventually find pants and plenty of other armor. Enemies tend to drop weapons and armor with some regularity. Ordinary enemies don’t drop anything special, but I needed placeholders. Plus, lots of chests actually contain loot. The game messes with you just enough to force you to always approach cautiously. 

The Siofra River Surprise

At this point in Elden Ring, even my now functional armor hasn’t saved me from being killed numerous times in a wide variety of interesting, terrifying and sometimes hilarious ways. I’ve been run over by a chariot, stabbed in the back by a ghost, poisoned by a vicious flower, eaten by a worm, electrocuted by a firefly, riddled with magical arrows, stomped by a giant and impaled by a spear of lightning. It’s been awesome. 

I honestly love when a game keeps finding creative new ways to kill me. It’s part of the reason I love the adventure game Outer Wilds – you explore dangerous places and continually stumble on new, spectacular ways to die. It adds continual thrill to push forth into the unknown, completely unsure of what you’ll find.

Thankfully, not all of Elden Ring’s surprises are covered in thorns. Likely my favorite surprise so far was discovering an area called the Siofra River basin. I was wandering in the eastern part of Limgrave and trying to avoid a few giant, sleeping bears when I discovered a rotunda next to a giant tree. 

The tree itself was pretty majestic, but as I went into the rotunda, I found an elevator powered by magic — instead of the many rickety wooden elevators found elsewhere in the world. Since the rotunda had a closed ceiling, I correctly guessed I was heading down. I stepped on the pressure plate and the elevator did descend and kept going and going. 

When it finally stopped, an enormous cavern stretched out before me. The Siofra River trickled throughout leading to scenic islets, but I could also see dams and skyscrapers in the distance and a sky that looked like it was filled with stars, even though I was underground. This is where I saw those deadly fireflies, who formed a lovely part of the scenery when admired from a distance.

I couldn’t believe this entire beautiful area was hidden under an elevator in a seemingly ordinary part of the forest. I ended up exploring the area for hours, battling deadly ghost warriors and climbing on crumbling ramparts. It was wonderful. 

It also showcased Elden Ring’s mysterious environmental storytelling, but as usual early in a playthrough, I have many more questions than answers. How did these structures come to be? Why did it look like there were stars overhead in an underground cavern? Who the heck was that lone figure standing at the edge of an out-of-reach rampart on the horizon and how do I get there?

I know FromSoftware has answers to all of these questions up its sleeve, but at this point, I have none of them. I also found a rundown temple filled with a decaying reindeer and nothing else, which made me equally puzzled. Why did that temple exist? Thankfully, I have an answer of sorts to that one. After thoroughly searching the area, I found and lit several braziers at the base of these large, ornamental tablets. Lighting them all gave me a message that a horned creature had awoken, and I knew what that meant. 

I headed back to the chapel and found the decaying reindeer now covered in a blue mist. I also had a prompt to touch its horns. Doing so transported me to a whole new huge area where I did battle with the majestic creature as it flitted across the sky and rained deadly holy water down on me. It was the most serene boss battle I’ve ever fought. It was so dang majestic that I almost didn’t mind when it slaughtered me repeatedly. I even felt kind of sad when I finally won.

Since then, I’ve wandered into more swamps and across steep chasms. I’ve explored forests and misty meadows. I’ve jumped down cliff sides and scaled mountains using my horse to ride a gust of wind. It’s been an amazing experience so far, and I’m looking forward to seeing what surprises are in store for next time.