Elden Ring Gameplay Reaction 100 Percent Completion

Getting to 100% in Elden Ring

A lot of people start chasing the platinum-style trophy set without realizing what they're actually signing up for. Elden Ring Gameplay Reaction 100 Percent Completion isn't a single task. It's a collection of roughly forty separate requirements, some of which overlap and some of which actively conflict with each other. I figured this out the hard way on my second playthrough after burning through two hundred hours on my first and ending up around 78 percent because I missed a couple of secret bosses and made the wrong choice during Ranni's questline. Here is what the number actually breaks down into, and more importantly here is how I approached it systematically rather than just running around randomly trying to hit everything. The core categories are: main story bosses, side bosses, Spirit Ash upgrades, incantation and sorcery acquisition, talisman collection, upgrade materials, armor sets, weapon smithing stones, achievements/trophies, and a handful of very specific quest completions. The problem most people run into is that several major quests are mutually exclusive. If you advance Ranni's questline past a certain point, you lock out two other major questlines. If you give Rykard's Great Rune to a certain NPC, you can't complete Latenna's quest. These choices happen early enough that you might not realize the consequences until three hours later when you need something that is no longer obtainable.

I learned to map out every quest before I started engaging with any of them. I kept a simple text file open alongside the game and wrote down which NPCs I had spoken to and what stage each quest was at. This probably sounds tedious but it saved me from having to start a third playthrough. The mutual exclusivity issue alone can cost you thirty to forty hours if you don't plan ahead. Now for the actual grind parts. Spirit Ashes require Gold-Pickled Fowl Feathers and Ancient Dragon Smithing Stones are essentially single-use per boss or area. There are a finite number of each in a single playthrough, and some people accidentally use them on weapons they later abandon because they found a better one. My advice here is straightforward. Upgrade your Spirit Ashes only after you have identified your long-term builds. Do not split your Ancient Dragon Smithing Stones across multiple weapons. I wasted two stones on a weapon I barely used because I wasn't committed to a build yet.

The hidden problems nobody talks about

One edge case that trips up almost everyone involves the Somber Smithing Stones for somber weapons. These weapons use a completely separate upgrade path, and there are exactly enough stones in the game to max out every single somber weapon if you collect everything. But you also need regular Smithing Stones for regular weapons, and the drop rates from certain enemies are abysmal. I spent about six hours farming Grantors in the Altus Plateau for regular upgrade stones because I was behind on my weapon upgrades and didn't want to use Smithing Stone Pedestals. That was a mistake. The pedestals exist for a reason. Use them liberally. Each pedestal can upgrade a single weapon one level regardless of whether it is regular or somber, and they are scattered throughout every major area. I probably used about twenty pedestals across both playthroughs and it saved me roughly twelve hours of pointless enemy farming. Another thing people overlook is the upgrade limit on the Flask of Wondrous Physick. You can mix only two crystallized tears into it per visit unless you find the right site of grace to upgrade the flask itself. Most players don't realize you can visit the Site of Grace at Limgrave (the one near the starting area) early on and upgrade the flask capacity to hold three uses instead of two. That small change actually matters significantly for late-game boss fights where you need an attack power boost AND a stamina recovery buff simultaneously.

What about the DLC?

If you are tracking 100 percent completion through the Shadow of the Erdtree expansion, the math changes entirely. The DLC adds another eighteen or so bosses, new armor sets, new talismans, and new spirit ashes. I completed the base game at about 96 percent and then spent another forty-five hours in the DLC reaching full completion. The DLC does not share upgrade materials with the base game, which means you will need to farm again from scratch. This is by design and it is one of the reasons the total time investment is closer to two hundred and fifty to three hundred hours if you want to be thorough about it. There is no shortcut around the quest conflicts. There is no achievement that skips the harder bosses. The game does not have a completion mode that unlocks after you finish it once. You have to go back in with a fresh character or restart the same save file and tackle everything again. Some people simply do both playthroughs in parallel, using different saves for the conflicting quests. I tried that for about an hour and realized I was effectively doing double the work for no real benefit. It is easier to just plan around the conflicts than to try to outrun them.

Quick reference for the most overlooked requirements

You need to find and speak to every single nameless NPC in the game. A few of them disappear permanently if you advance certain story events. The ones in Mohgwyn Palace are easy to miss because the area is optional and most players never go there. The two in the Haligtree require completing Millicent's quest first, which itself requires progressing Ranni's questline to a point where you can access the Royal Windmill. If you skipped any of those earlier steps, you cannot reach the Haligtree and you will never get those NPCs. The Patches questline is another common trap. You can kill him early, which sounds like a good idea until you realize he gives you access to a secret item later. Let him live until you find his notebook in the Scenic Isle area, then proceed normally from there. And yes, I counted all of this myself. I cross-referenced three separate completion checklists and merged them into one master list. The process took me about three hours to organize, but it cut my actual completion time by roughly a third because I was no longer making mistakes I had already made once before.