Skip to main content

How to play Elden Ring with friends

A trio of knights overlooking a vista.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

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.

Recommended Videos

Difficulty

Easy

Duration

10 minutes

What You Need

  • Adjust settings

  • Unlock multiplayer action items

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.

elden ring play with firends
Image used with permission by copyright holder

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.

elden ring play with firends
Image used with permission by copyright holder

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.

Jesse Lennox
Jesse Lennox has been a writer at Digital Trends for over five years and has no plans of stopping. He covers all things…
How to unlock and use fast travel in Assassin’s Creed Shadows
shadows

The Assassin's Creed games have always been open-world titles that set you loose in a variety of historical locations. Assassin's Creed Shadows is no different, save for the introduction of the long-requested Japanese setting and dual protagonists. While you're earning XP and getting deeper into the game's story, it will become less and less viable to travel by foot or horse between objectives. That's where fast travel comes into play, but the system works slightly differently in this entry than usual. Here's how fast travel works in Assassin's Creed Shadows.
How to use fast travel

The core of the fast travel system in Assassin's Creed Shadows should be familiar to anyone who has played the series before. You will unlock viewpoints at set locations by climbing up to high points and synchronizing to give yourself a fast travel point, but there is another map marker you can use to fast travel as well. A new building called Kakurega are featured in most major towns and villages in the game that need to be unlocked by purchasing them with Mon. Once you do, they provide you with another fast travel point.

Read more
How to use the Friend’s Pass in Split Fiction
Zoe and Mio pose with dragons in Split Fiction.

Just like It Takes Two and A Way Out, Split Fiction is a co-op game where you have no choice but to play with a partner. This time around, though, the game is fully cross-platform so you can go through this adventure with a friend no matter where they are playing. As if that wasn't good enough, it also brings back the Friend's Pass that lets two players go through the game on their own systems with only one of them having to purchase the game. If you want to take advantage of this great deal, here's how the Friend's pass works.

Read more
How long is Split Fiction?
Zoe and Mio run through a sci-fi world in Split Fiction.

There are plenty of great co-op games on the market, and a lot are great for couples, but Split Fiction from Hazelight Studios is a special case. Unlike most multiplayer games, this one actually requires you to have a partner to play. Thankfully, that is easier than ever with cross-platform support and the Friend Pass, but it does mean you need to plan a bit more to make sure you both have enough time to see it through to the end. Each of the stuidio's games have gotten a bit longer, but is that the case with Split Fiction? Here's how long it takes to beat this co-op adventure.
How long is Split Fiction?

Split Fiction is roughly the same length as It Takes Two. From our experience, that puts it comfortably within the 10 to 12 hour range. However, that can easily be pushed to 12 to 15 hours depending on the skill level of both players and your ability to coordinate. Even a pair of veteran gamers who have never played a game as reliant on team work might struggle a bit early on and get slowed down.

Read more