How To Play ‘Elden Ring’ With Limited Amounts Of Time

by 24britishtvMay 9, 2022, 5:20 p.m. 30
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I am nearing the end of the my Elden Ring journey. I’ve found the Consecrated Snowfield which led me to the Haligtree, and while I’m sure there are loads of scattered things I’ve missed in my time with the game, I’ve gotten through most of the big pieces by now.

I was hesitant to commit to Elden Ring, despite it being GOTY frontrunner, because I was wondering if this was going to be at all possible to play as a new dad. An 80-200 hour game you can’t pause with an infant? Yeah right.

And yet, it worked. I’ve found 15 minutes here, an hour there, and it’s added up over the last two months and allowed me to get close to finishing. Granted I have more time than most in general since my 9-5 job is also technically playing video games, but some of the lessons I’ve learned can apply more broadly to those with similar time constraints.

The Lack of Pausing Doesn’t Really Matter

This has really only come up a small handful of times in the grand scheme of my gameplay, and only is a factor in the middle of an intense encounter or boss fight. For the most part, this is a game where the open world may not allow you to physically pause (well, you can by going through a series of menus, but there’s little point), but you can just set your controller down…almost anywhere? Obviously there are Sites of Grace that are almost always fully safe, but in most open world areas enemies are not just randomly going to stumble across you. I’ve set my controller down and come back to find myself dead maybe…twice, ever, and even then, you simply go get your runes again.

You need to recognize that any forward progress in this game at all is an accomplishment. That can be anything from finding a new Site of Grace and expanding your map reach a little more, to gaining a level. Even knowledge can be useful. Sure, you may die going 70% of the way through a dungeon and end up back at the start and didn’t “get” anywhere in your playtime, but you now…know what’s to come, and next time it will be 100%. With limited time you can’t really say “okay today I’m going to clear all of the Academy of Raya Lucia” if you have like, thirty minutes. Find some chests and a few waypoints and come back the next day.

When you know you’re only going to have a very short amount of time, I would use it to just do a little bit of farming to boost yourself up when you can. Farm spots usually take no more than a few minutes each, and doing them a few times will get you a level, most likely. I wrote a whole separate article about my favorite rune farms for all different points of the game you can check out here.

While yes, part of the fun of Elden Ring is discovery, the game is often obtuse to the point where you will miss an absolutely ton of stuff playing totally blind. Also, I would argue that if you have limited time, maybe it’s not in your best interest to spend ten hours scouring the map for the other half of a lift medallion where you can just…look up where it is and keep moving. No, you don’t need to Google every puzzle solution, but in certain instances, when time is limited, I think guides can help move things along.

It’s probably going to take me two full months to finish this game with my current schedule, and if I was working a normal job, you could probably double or triple that, given the amount of content here. And this is one playthrough in a game that can easily house multiples. Understand that this is not a Call of Duty campaign you’ll beat over the weekend. It’s a long term investment but one that I would argue is very much worth it. This is actually kind of a great time to play as there are not many other major game releases until fall, and you can work on it during the summer. I’d get started ASAP.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.

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