While Elden Ring is technically playable in co-op, the convoluted way developers FromSoftware have implemented the mode means hardly anybody ever bothers. That’s about to change, thanks to this incredible mod by LukeYui.
It does…basically what you would have hoped the official co-op would do, by letting you and some friends jump into the game together and just play, with no weird rules or restrictions getting in the way. Here’s the official description:
Simply put, the mod allows you to play with friends throughout the entirety of the game with no restrictions. With this, it’s theoretically possible to play the game from the tutorial up to the final boss completely in one co-op session.
– If a player dies, they will respawn in the same world at the last bonfire they rested at. The session will not be terminated.
– Defeating enemy bosses and clearing areas no longer sends co-operators home.
– All fog walls/barriers that usually restrict the multiplayer zone (along with their respective teleports) are gone.
– All players can use torrent (assuming they have the whistle) in a session together.
– All map waypoints will synchronise, allowing you to navigate the world in a group easier.
– When one player rests at a Site of Grace, the world state will reset for all players. This is necessary to prevent enemy desync.
– Game progression events completed in online play will also progress the game in your own world.
Players are free to explore the entire game map (overworld, underground, legacy dungeons, etc.) together, and may split up if they wish.
Everyone can use Torrent? Waypoints are synced? Your progression carries over? Amazing! Of course, to get all that working, a few changes had to be made to the base experience. Most importantly, being able to wander around indefinitely with friends makes the game a lot easier, so a number of balance tweaks have been made, including adding a third tier of enemy scaling, locking anyone who dies in a boss fight into a spectator mode and inflicting anyone who dies in a co-op session with rot.
Invasions are gone, because they don’t work with the way the co-op mode had been built, and the Stakes of Marika have also been removed because they cause “connection problems”. And the whole thing basically comes with a warning that, while it works, it’s also still a work-in-progress and that players will be encountering bugs throughout.
If you want to install the mod and try it yourself, you can find it here.