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Can you disable messages in Elden Ring?

Jesse Lennox
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The Souls games have inspired tons of others to follow in their unique design footsteps. In the years since Dark Souls, we’ve seen a flood of games introduce stamina systems, slow, methodical combat, limited healing items that refill at checkpoints, layered level designs, and more. Some incorporate a few, iterate on others, and ignore some completely. The few systems that no one besides FromSoftware seems to take advantage of, though, are the more passive, asymmetrical multiplayer elements. The most notable being the unique message system that allows players to write messages in their world that show up in other people’s games to read.

Along with all the other standard multiplayer offerings, Elden Ring once again features a full messaging system players can interact with. These are meant to be small hints or guides, or just little community interactions with no real purpose, that make the world feel more connected, even when playing by yourself. However, this far into the Souls series, veterans and trolls have started taking pleasure in leaving less than helpful messages to try and fool new players. If you’re sick of messages promising an illusory wall ahead only to find a solid wall, or to “try jumping” at the edge of a cliff, and want to know if you can disable messages in Elden Ring, we have the answer.

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Can you disable messages in Elden Ring?

Player stands by a tall Erdtree in Elden Ring.

Even though most might be helpful, there are still hundreds of messages left littering the Lands Between in Elden Ring. Sometimes it can be a little much to stop every couple of feet to check a message to see if it has anything useful, and even worse if it sends you on a detour or into a trap. This is all intended as part of the community experience, for better or for worse, so the only way to disable messages will come at a slightly higher cost than you might hope.

If you want to disable messages in Elden Ring, the only way to do so is to completely turn off your online connection in the game. You don’t have to disconnect your console or PC from the internet — there’s a setting you can toggle — but it will also disable every other online element in the game. That includes bloodstains, summons, and invaders. As long as you’re fine with playing the game as a pure, single-player, isolated experience, here’s how to clean out those messages from your world.

From the Pause menu, select the System option. From here, tab over to the Network tab and scroll down to the Launch Setting toggle and switch it from Play Online to Play Offline. After restarting your game, you will now have no online functionality in Elden Ring, including messages. If you ever wanted to use messages, summons, or anything else requiring you to be online, you will have to go back into the settings and switch it back to Play Online again.

Hopefully, a future update will allow only messages to be disabled or limited while remaining online, but for now, this is the only solution.

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