Not satisfied with the copious Elden Ring content provided by last weekend’s brief, intermittent network tests, players figured out a way to escape the bounds of the demo’s map and explore the lands beyond its limited scope, discovering new aspects of the highly anticipated game along the way.
Over the course of a few days, From Software gave some lucky players the chance to experiment with an early build of Elden Ring. It wasn’t the whole game, mind, but a relatively small slice of the massive, open-world map. At various points, you’d find yourself happily riding your horse Torrent toward some landmark in the distance, only to smack straight into a wall of light keeping you from parts of Elden Ring the developers weren’t ready to show yet.
Of course, it didn’t take long for folks to squeeze through this barrier with a tricky exploit that gave them hours with Elden Ring content not meant for public consumption.
While there weren’t any new items to plunder and some areas simply dropped players into an endless void, there was still a lot to see in these formerly off-limits Elden Ring regions. I’m especially fond of the wild bears depicted below; the regular varieties were closer to what we’d consider bears in our world, but the big mama looks like a mutated Yao guai was somehow transported from the Fallout franchise. It also inflicted both bleed and poison effects. Yikes!
Elden Ring players also discovered a never-before-seen boss named Crucible Knight Floh. Just like Bloodhound Knight Darriwil, who was included in the legitimate areas of the demo, Floh is accessible by way of a portal that teleports the player to a pocket dimension known as the Evergaol. That said, since Floh falls through the floor as soon as he spawns, it takes additional exploits to get a good look at him.
And finally, one particularly intrepid out-of-bounds explorer happened to find themselves in the same area as Alexander, a lovable NPC featured in an official gameplay preview earlier this month. They tracked down the exact spot Alexander should have been stuck in the ground and waiting for their assistance, but the humongous pot goblin was nowhere to be found.
What a shame. Here’s hoping we see more of this large boy, not to mention his smaller brethren, soon.
If the demo is anything to go by, Elden Ring is a massive game. From Software appears to be not only adopting the open-world genre but reinventing it completely, filling every square inch of the environment with something cool, scary, or just plain weird to experience. It only makes sense that this would also extend to parts of the game players weren’t meant to see yet.