00:00 A quest for Elden Ring's Vyke, the character who appears on the cover art, was apparently
00:18 cut from the game. You'll probably recognise Vyke as the kneeling knight on Elden Ring's
00:23 front cover. He appears only briefly in the final game as an NPC invader and boss who
00:28 rewards you with his unique armour set and spear for defeating him. But it seems a bit
00:33 odd that a character with such a small role would appear so prominently on the cover art.
00:38 Well, that's because he was originally a much bigger deal, with in-game lore explaining
00:43 that "no other Tarnished was closer to the throne of the Elden Ring than Vyke".
00:48 Elden Ring dataminers have since uncovered a cut questline featuring Vyke using some
00:53 unused voice line, making reference to a knight in armour melting inwards. Unfortunately,
00:59 no text or dialogue for Vyke has been discovered, but the quest seemingly would have had a few
01:04 dialogue choices and offered a handful of rewards, ultimately unlocking Vyke as a summon
01:10 in Stormvale Castle to help you fight against one of its bosses.
01:13 It does seem really strange that such a prominent character with so much work put into it was
01:18 cut, so here's hoping that future DLCs fill in some of the gaps.
01:30 An Elden Ring modder has discovered a tragically forgotten NPC who's doomed to never fulfil
01:35 their purpose due to an unfortunate typo. During the final phase of the boss fight in
01:39 Raya Lucaria against Renala, you will have to deal with a room full of sweetings, young
01:44 scholars who crawl around and harass you as you fight the Queen of the Full Moon herself.
01:50 Several times throughout the fight Renala will call on three of these sweetings to form
01:54 a bubble shield around her. The chosen sweetings could be any three in the room, except for
01:59 one lonely soul in the back corner.
02:01 A modder has discovered Sweeting number 21 has the ID number of 14000830 in the game
02:08 files, but a typo causes Renala to call out for ID number 140008230, meaning that this
02:18 particular NPC is never called and simply crawls around otherwise forgotten.
02:24 So next time you're running through Raya Lucaria, pull one out for this NPC, doomed
02:28 to never reach their true potential due to a mispressed number 2 key.
02:40 Hard to believe I know, but dataminers have discovered that Elden Ring's most notorious
02:45 boss Melania used to be even more difficult to beat than she already is.
02:49 By analysing and playing through the 1.0 version of Elden Ring, that is a version that's
02:53 been untouched by patches or changes since the original game, a modder discovered several
02:59 key differences with her attack pattern and abilities, making her significantly more aggressive.
03:04 The most notable change is that version 1.0 Melania uses her old waterfowl move that wasn't
03:09 originally tied to any health loss and a similar but different attack called Melania Blade
03:15 which could be chained, all the while attacking more aggressively and blocking more overall.
03:20 That alone sounds hellish, but the dataminer goes on to detail other variations which include
03:25 slightly different combos and increased use of the dreaded Scala Aenea incantation.
03:37 A pre-release build of Elden Ring has a quest that lets you craft a dream brew that makes
03:42 NPCs chatty and sleepy.
03:44 Essentially, it gets them drunk.
03:46 Prolific modder Lance McDonald released a video where they explore an earlier Elden
03:50 Ring build that included content which was ultimately cut from the game and was able
03:54 to uncover a whole questline, NPC and other items which never made it into the final build.
04:00 The quest involves a fully animated and voiced NPC named Jiko who's looking for ingredients
04:04 to make his dream brew, which he explicitly says is a type of alcohol.
04:09 Jiko says the dream brew will convince other NPCs to tell you their deepest, darkest secrets.
04:14 If you agree to help him, Jiko gives you an item called St Trina's Crystal Ball which
04:19 you use to collect Dense Fog of Sleep from napping creatures.
04:23 Bring the filled vial back to Jiko and he uses it to make his brew, which you can offer
04:27 to NPCs to open up additional lines of dialogue and hidden lore.
04:31 McDonald brings the dream brew to Merchant Kalei at his shop inside Church of Eleh in
04:36 Limgrave, and after Kalei drinks the brew, he falls asleep and has a nightmare about
04:40 eyes being burned by a frenzied flame.
04:43 Jiko then asks for 2 more vials of dream mist to make more dream brew, and it's then that
04:47 McDonald discovers additional sleeping creatures, suggesting that this questline was pretty
04:52 well formed before it was cut.
04:54 Sure makes you wonder what other stuff was snipped from the final launch version, and
04:57 if any of it is as fun sounding as getting NPCs drunk.
05:07 When it comes to cut content in Elden Ring, there's one character whose dialogue in particular
05:11 makes for an interesting dive into the game's lore, Godfrey.
05:19 YouTuber Sekiro Doobie discovered a selection of cutlines from Godfrey and there are some
05:24 interesting theories about what these new discoveries all mean.
05:27 The dialogue seems to reinforce the idea that when it comes to the Elden Ring's shattering,
05:31 Marika may have originally had a plan in advance to shatter the ring, which Godfrey knew about
05:36 all along.
05:37 If Godfrey was aware that the Elden Ring would be shattered, then the banishing of the Tarnished
05:41 was actually a plan to remove them from the Fingers/Greater Will's influence.
05:46 The consensus seems to be that Godfrey was initially meant to play an even larger role
05:50 throughout Elden Ring, with a potential storyline that would take place in the past based on
05:56 the lines heard in Sekiro Doobie's video.
05:58 There's nothing concrete here of course, just guesswork reading between the lines,
06:02 but there is a lot to theorise about with some juicy tidbits nestled with Godfrey's
06:07 lost dialogue.
06:16 One of Elden Ring's earliest merchants was originally part of a long-running, tragic
06:19 questline before FromSoftware scrapped it.
06:22 Kalei is the first merchant you stumble across in your adventures in the Lands Between.
06:27 Remember an NPC dressed like Santa Claus?
06:29 That's our guy.
06:30 Aside from selling valuable items and offering some lore tidbits in exchange for chatter,
06:34 you don't really get much else from Kalei.
06:36 As he remains rooted to the spot.
06:38 However, the merchant was once tied to a tragic subplot of the game.
06:42 Speaking to him further would have led to a mention of the Great Caravan, which was
06:46 once home to merchants like Kalei and something he yearns to find.
06:51 Defeating Godric at Stormvale Castle would send Kalei on a quest to find the Great Caravan,
06:56 with certain clues left behind to help you find the merchant's new location each time
07:01 he moved.
07:02 This would have continued until you reached the subterranean shunning grounds beneath
07:06 Glendal.
07:07 This place is eerie enough and is home to the Three Fingers, which relates to one of
07:11 Elden Ring's bad endings, but it's also littered with bodies.
07:15 Some current in-game lore explains the bodies are all the remains of the merchant caravan
07:20 after it was accused of heresy and burned alive, summoning the Flames of Frenzy and
07:25 Despair.
07:26 In Kalei's scrapped quest, he discovers the fate of his people and embraces the flames
07:31 himself.
07:39 A look back at the Elden Ring Network test highlights some significant changes to the
07:43 finished game.
07:44 In November 2021, Bandai Namco held a network test for Elden Ring, allowing players an early
07:49 glimpse of the lands between to test the game's online servers ahead of its full release.
07:53 Things obviously changed in the final release and fans noticed all sorts of little differences.
07:58 One of the more unusual changes happened to White-Faced Varr, one of the early NPCs you
08:02 encounter near the First Step's site of Grace.
08:05 While he's largely here to offer some guidance for the newly tarnished, he used to be a lot
08:09 meaner.
08:10 In the final game, he mentions maidens and the roundtable hold before telling you you're
08:14 fated to die in obscurity.
08:16 However, in the original network test version, he tells you that you're plum out of luck
08:20 and describes you as a "bit player" before telling you "feel free to go off and die
08:25 in a ditch somewhere".
08:27 Charming!
08:28 An Elden Ring fan has discovered that most of the game's song lyrics are just computer
08:39 generated nonsense.
08:40 One of the aspects that makes Elden Ring so captivating is its music, which is chock full
08:44 of haunting choral melodies.
08:47 Intrigued by the meaning behind these songs, one Elden Ring fan dug a little deeper and
08:50 found that although the lyrics may sound like Latin, most are actually just gibberish.
08:56 Reddit user MagisterOrgani, a Latin student, has been studying the game's lyrics.
09:01 They started with a song of lament, a beautiful piece sung by the game's siren-like creatures.
09:06 According to their post on the PS5 subreddit, these lyrics are actually in Latin, but they
09:11 were written by a lyricist who worked on just that one song.
09:15 Curious about Elden Ring's other songs, MagisterOrgani contacted the game's music
09:19 producers who explained that 99% of the lyrics in the game are not in any language at all
09:23 and don't mean anything.
09:25 Instead, the lyrics are computer generated and adjusted to resemble ancient languages.
09:30 Intrigued to learn more, they went on to analyse other tracks and said that sometimes the lyrics
09:34 resemble Latin, but they are not Latin.
09:36 The goal was to simulate ancient language songs to enhance the dramatic feel of the
09:40 player's experience.
09:44 So those are all the Elden Ring lore secrets that we've seen.
09:46 If there's any that you've noticed, put it in the comments below to let us know what
09:50 we've missed.
09:51 Thanks for watching.
09:53 (electronic music)
09:56 [laughs]
Comments