Elden Ring becomes a whole new game in co-op. Summon your friends and the Lands Between suddenly aren’t so dangerous: You can split the attention of all those monstrous bosses and terrible dog beasts trying to kill you, taking them down with teamwork. I promise multiplayer in Elden Ring can be much more helpful than all those deceitful messages saying “hidden wall ahead.”
If you’re new to FromSoftware’s games, though, figuring out how to play in co-op can be a bit confusing. Which items do you need? What the heck is a summoning pool? Are you going to get invaded by other players just for being online?
Luckily like a lot of things in Elden Ring, multiplayer is easier and friendlier than it’s been in past Souls games. Here’s what you need to know to start playing Elden Ring in co-op, or to dive into the wider multiplayer community with strangers.
Why you should play Elden Ring in multiplayer
I could tell you that you should play Elden Ring as a co-op game just because it’s fun, or because it makes the game much easier. Both true! But here are some more specific benefits of trying out multiplayer, even if you typically like to go adventuring solo.
- Boss fights are all about aggro control. With multiple players, it’s much easier to manipulate a boss’s attention, giving each other time to heal or outright interrupting their attacks. It’s also easier to build up their stagger meter, opening them to a critical hit.
- Helping other players is a great way to level up. By placing your summoning sign or using a summoning pool, you can enter another player’s world and help them defeat a short dungeon or a boss. You’ll earn runes for every kill, and if you die, you lose nothing.
- You can learn bosses before fighting them in your game. Put your summoning sign down in front of a boss door and you can help other players through the fight with no risk, learning to read the boss’s attacks before you face them yourself.
- Other players can do way more damage than Summon Ashes. If you’re really struggling with a fight and your AI summons aren’t cutting it, try a player instead. With a little luck you’ll find someone with a greatsword or high-level magic who saves your bacon.
- PvP gives you reason to rethink your build. There are so many weapons and spells and items in Elden Ring, most of us will experiment with only a small fraction of them in a playthrough. Playing against other players is a good excuse to try out totally different weapons and stat choices more suited for duels than AI mobs.
Elden Ring co-op: How to enable or disable online play
You’re given the option to play online or offline at the start of the game. You can change this at any time through the Network section of the Systems tab in the menu, though you’ll need to restart the game for changes to take effect.
Even if you’re not sure about playing in multiplayer, I strongly encourage playing online. This way you get to see messages from other players as well as their blood splatters, which give you a glimpse of how they died. That can be really helpful information, and it also just generally adds to the flavor of FromSoftware’s games.
Elden Ring’s basic multiplayer items
Multiplayer in Elden Ring is built around the concept of summoning other players into your game world (or vice versa) using a variety of items. The names for them can be a bit confusing, but they’re all helpfully housed in a single menu. Here’s a rundown of the basic multiplayer items:
- Furlcalling Finger Remedy: Use this item to reveal the summon signs of other players, which will often be placed around sites of grace, in front of summoning pools, or near boss doors. Consumable, but easily crafted.
- Tarnished’s Furled Finger: Use this item to place your summoning sign on the ground. Other players will be able to see it and summon you to their game. Infinite uses.
- Small Golden Effigy: Send your summon sign to multiple summoning pools, so that players can easily summon you. Think of this a bit like entering a dungeon queue in an MMO or flagging yourself as LFG. Infinite uses.
- Finger Severer: Use this item to return to your own game if you’ve been summoned, or to dismiss another player you’ve summoned from your online session. Infinite uses.
- Duelist’s Furled Finger: Same as the Tarnished’s Furled Finger, except for PvP. Places a red sign that allows you to duel another player if summoned. Infinite uses.
- Festering Bloody Finger: Attempt to invade another player’s game. (Note you’ll only invade the worlds of players who have already summoned co-op companions). Infinite uses.
There are several other multiplayer items besides these, but they’re the ones you’ll using most commonly, whether you’re out to co-op with friendly players or get into PvP scraps.
How to play Elden Ring co-op
If you’re playing Elden Ring online, you’re ready to jump into multiplayer at basically any time, either by summoning players into your game or being summoned into another’s.
Doing either is simple, but one thing to keep in mind: in the open world of the Lands Between, playing multiplayer means giving up access to your Spectral Steed. You also won’t be able to enter dungeons and other separate areas. It’s a bit of a pain, so it’s often more practical to enter a dungeon before starting up a multiplayer session. If you find a particularly tough enemy out in the world, though, you can still try to summon some help!
Here’s how to kick off a multiplayer session.
Use a multiplayer password to play co-op with friends
From the multiplayer menu you can set a multiplayer password, which will only show summon signs from other players using that same password. Set a unique password with your friends to make it much easier to party up.
Summon Signs
To reveal Summon Signs left by other players in the Lands Between, you’ll need to use the item Furlcalling Finger Remedy. This is a crafted item that uses Erdleaf Flowers that can be found on bushes throughout the game. Once used, you’ll be able to see any Summon Signs left by other players. To make it, you’ll have to buy the Crafting Kit from Merchant Kale at the Church of Elleh just after the Stranded Graveyard. If you’ve already passed it by, you can always fast travel there.
Pay attention to the colour of the Summoning Sign—gold signs are cooperative players, but red signs signify players looking to challenge you.
If you want to create your own Summon Sign to join another player’s game to help, you need to use the Tarnished’s Furled Finger item.
Summon Pools
These are located next to Martyr Effigies—creepy-looking statues with its arms outstretched. They are found in various places throughout the Lands Between and are generally located near bosses and dungeon entrances. These effigies signal the presence of a Summoning Pool, which you interact with to activate. Once you’ve activated it, you use the Small Golden Effigy item to send your own Summon Sign to the Pool. You can get this item at the first Martyr Effigy just outside the entrance to the Stranded Graveyard.
The benefit of Summoning Pools is that you’ll automatically send your summon sign to multiple nearby Pools at once, so you’ll likely be summoned much more quickly than you would by placing a single sign with the Tarnished’s Furled Finger.
To see the signs around a Summoning Pool and summon another player into your game, you’ll still need to use a Furlcalling Finger Remedy.