Every Souls game has placed you in the underdog position. You're outnumbered, outclassed, and outmatched in just about every encounter you faced. Only by careful play, mastery of your own moves, and ability to read and adapt to your enemies can you overcome the challenges each game stacks against you. Elden Ring is no different in that regard. You may have an entire open world to explore, but the challenges that are hidden away, or even placed directly in your path, are just as brutal as in prior games from this famed developer.
One tool that has always been included to give some relief to the challenge, and encourage more co-operation among the community, is the ability to play with your friends. Elden Ring once again features both cooperative and competitive multiplayer offerings, but like prior games, the way to access them is somewhat obscure. If you're new to this Souls-style of game, the whole process of playing with friends could be easily missed entirely. To make sure you are never without a friendly summon sign or chance to invade an unwitting opponent, here's a full breakdown on how to play Elden Ring with friends.
How to turn multiplayer on
Before getting into specifics, we need to make sure your settings are correct for even playing with friends. By default, Elden Ring will run through these settings before you start, but just in case, here's what you need to do to make sure you're even open to online play.
Step 1: Open up your options and go to System.
Step 2: In Network, make sure that Launch Setting is set to Play Online.
Step 3: You can also hit Triangle, or Y, to reset all these settings to default, which will make sure you're open to online play.
Get the multiplayer items
You can't play with friends from the very first moments you start Elden Ring. Instead, you will need to progress a small bit into the game until you are given the various items you need to do different online actions. These items are: * Finger Severer: Use this to send any co-op partner back to their world. * Furcalling Finger Remedy: This allows you to see any yellow summon signs players have left around the world, interact with them, and call them in as partners. Red summon signs will summon a player who wants to fight. * Tarnished's Furled Finger: This lays down your own summon sign so that when another player spots it, they can call you to help them in their world. * Duelist's Furled Finger: This is the same as the previous, but instead of being summoned to help, you will join to fight the host. * Bloody Finger: Use this item to invade an unsuspecting player's world to try and defeat the host. * Blue Cipher Ring: Activate this ring to make yourself available to automatically be summoned to a player's world to help them if they get invaded by a hostile player. * White Cipher Ring: When you activate this ring, it will call anyone using the Blue Cipher Ring to come to help you if you get invaded. * Small Red Effigy: Instead of placing a summon sign to fight in a single location, it will be placed in that area's pool so it can be accessed from a bigger area. * Small Golden Effigy: The same as the red, only for cooperative play.
Without spoiling anything, you can't miss these items, so just follow the normal path forward a short while until you pick them up.
How to play with friends
There are two ways to play with friends in Elden Ring, but one is much easier than the other. The hard way is to simply use one of the co-op items listed before and hope your friend finds and activates it first. The second, detailed here, can guarantee a fast and easy connection for you and your friend. Here's how to do it.
Step 1: Open the Options menu.
Step 2: Go into System and then Network.
Step 3: Change the Display Player Names option to Online ID.
Step 4: Go into the Multiplayer menu.
Step 5: Choose a multiplayer password that you and your friend know.
Step 6: In the game, go to the same region as your co-op partner.
Step 7: Use the Tarnished's Furled Finger to create a co-op summon sign in that region's pool.
Step 8: Have your friend select your summon sign from the pool. No one else will be able to access it without the password.
Step 9: Wait for your friend to appear in your world and team up against whatever challenges await.
This method will also work if you want to fight against your friends, just replace the step of using the Tarnished's Furled Finger item with the Duelist's Furled Finger item.
