My experiences trying to play the Elden Ring with real-life friends have been as arduous as my trip to Erdtree. Just as I think I’m getting closer, I fall into a ravine, or discover that there is a whole new land between me and my goal. Such is the struggle to make co-op work that I wonder if all these interruptions, invasions, summonses that do not appear, and the inability to ride horses or travel quickly together are part of the game’s big message about the necessity of suffering.
Well, I say “hoof” to all that and let me play LukeYui’s mod instead, which makes Elden Ring a hassle-free co-op game (thanks, PCGamesN). The mod, which is still running, claims to remove “all multiplayer limits and allow connections to continue after death.”
That’s not all. With this mod, you no longer have to fiddle with Finger Remedies to summon friends, and you can sit around a Site of Grace together so you can all level up, remember spells, and generally summon the mood by being on a old-fashioned RPG adventures together. To that end, the mod will support up to four players, all of whom will be able to gallop around on their respective Torrents simultaneously. There will even be small details like a quick travel voting system where players have to agree on where they will be zapped.
However, it will not all be common. Luke has added a stackable debuff called Rot Essence, which gives you different side effects every time you die. Rot Essence can be cured by resting on a Place of Grace.
Crucially, it appears that this clear violation of FromSoft’s online terms of service will circumvent FromSoft’s EAC and matchmaking systems. The mod will run through its own launcher, which means it will be its own instance of the game separate from the game. LukeYui has previously released a standalone offline launcher that bypasses EAC, which can be used by players or “for opponents to use the source code to inject their mods into the game while driving.”
The mod is not yet publicly available, but to keep up with developments, you can follow LukeYui on Nexus Mods and YouTube.